Reviews

Children of first generation Vietnamese immigrants, Van and Linny grew apart when their mother bought a house allowing them separate bedrooms. Once close, as adults they are now bound together only by their traditional father who has called them home to celebrate his finally having applied for U.S. citizenship.

Diana Campanella is coasting through life. She’s left the security of a steady job and purchased “Second Time Around”, a high-end second hand clothing store. She’s terminally engaged to a politically connected lawyer from an important Washington D.C. family. As the shop fails to gain new business and a wedding date remains undeclared, Diana grows more and more discontent. Harry blows into Diana’s life like a breath of fresh air and provides just the catalyst needed to set changes for Diana in motion.

The premise behind Water with Lemon is that it is a diet book told in the format of a novel. I appreciate the concept and can even say the story line had the potential to be very engaging. In a novel, however, I need a little more character development and a little less beating over the head with diet habits.

Alford’s exploration of what constitutes wisdom and where it comes from read a little more lightly than I would have expected. While Alford has done his research and shares many of the gems he has gleaned from his reading, I didn’t feel enlightened. His experiences during his mother’s divorce and his interviews with the elderly are entertaining, but they impart no wisdom in the end.

Dedicated to editor Hornby's son Danny, $2 of the cover price of this collection will be donated to Treehouse, a school for autistic children. Hornby’s explanation of why this collection came about in the introduction is in itself a heart-felt piece of writing. And then he's topped it with NippleJesus, a story about a nightclub bouncer turned art gallery security guard and his reactions to a controversial work called NippleJesus.

When Gwen Merchant unexpectedly bumps into Elliot Hull, a man whom she had dated furiously for three weeks during college, her seemingly perfect life and perfect marriage are dragged under a microscope for examination. It isn’t until what could have been presents itself that Gwen begins to question the difference between love and marriage. At the encouragement of her husband, Gwen poses as Elliot’s wife in order to appease his mother Vivian on her deathbed. At the dying woman’s insistence, Gwen sets out to discover the truth…and finds more truth than she was prepared for.

In the vein of documentary films Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, Resolved follows high school debate teams over a period of two years all the way to the tournament of champions. With the exception of one team, all were from private high schools. The public high school team consisted of two boys from an inner city high school, who had not been trained to speak in short-hand and didn’t base their arguments solely on research. Instead, they argued that, based on their personal experience and how they felt, the topic of the debate was inherently racist.