Just received from another user of www.bookmooch.com

Bookmooch is an international book swap site and it's simple to use.

List the books you want to give away, send them to users who want them, get other books in return.

Go on, sign up now. You know you want to !

By the way, I have a hefty reading pile so let me know if you want it and maybe I will send it to you anyway.

Posted from London, UK to Madrid, SPAIN, to Bookworm-lady as part of the bookcrossing 1st Name Sweepstake.
Well done and enjoy !

Thank you soo much; your book has arrived and looks promising. :)
Looking forward to reading it.

Reserved for Dabercro, for the WishList Tag Game. :)

Currently reading it... and pleasantly surprised! :)

As I said, this was a pleasant surprise; honestly, initially it did not seem very appealing, but I started reading and was soon hooked.
Nothing much of a plot, just a conversation between a mother and her daughter, who is in hospital recovering from surgery. They haven't seen each other for some time, and at some point I even suspected that the mother was a delirium caused by fever, and thus the detached relationship.
Stories go back and forth... and as I said, you just can't stop reading.
A quote I found interesting:
"I think of my mother in the hospital saying that money had not helped Elvis or Mississipi Mary. But I know that money is a big thing, in a marriage, in a life, money is power, I do know that. No matter what I say, or what anybody says, money is power."
Thanks for sharing, russbaum; this book will soon continue its travels. :)

Sent today to Dabercro as a WishList Tag book... and it travels with another book I tagged you with.
I hope you'll enjoy reading them both as much as I did. :)

Arrived in today's mail. Thank you for the tag and for sending the book.

A quick and enjoyable read.
Lucy grew up in poverty. Because of her marriage, she became estranged from her family. During her extended stay in the hospital, her mother comes and spends five days with her at the foot of her bed. Lucy and her mom talk about people from their hometown. Lucy also shares stories and insights into her own life.

Added to the "Books I've Read and Journaled Bookbox" #2.5.

I chose this from the bookbox.

I can't say that I liked this book, but I'm glad I read it. In fact, I find that every 12-18 months, I sort of put myself in that position--- to read something totally out of my genre and comfort zone. Maybe I do this to help me be more relatable to lifestyles very different from my own? What usually happens, though, is what happened this time. I find that the stuff in my life that I've stuffed is the stuff that causes me to relate all too well. This is the kind of story that inspires self reflection of the most difficult kind. It forces you to face the stuff you swear you've forgiven.

At first I saw this as a book of weird, stream of consciousness sort of remembrances. I feel like I should know these people? On one hand, it’s all stories of the past—-yet there is zero backstory. I came to learn that the story is the backstory.

Regardless of the stated fact that the Mom in this story loves her daughter, she is emotionally stunted and extremely selfish and she refuses to heal from the obvious generational trauma that is going on there. The toxic thing about all this is that it makes a daughter want to bend over backwards to please her. I understand this completely. This desperation for the one who has rejected you to just prove they love you. Why is that? Have I carried the trauma of my experiences with my parents into my own healthy and happy relationships with my children? Do I try to make up for my hurt when I carry way too much mommy guilt when I'm not able to entertain or please them?

The author describes the sculpture of Ugolino and His Sons. The sons are gathered around their starving father saying, "You can eat us alive --- just please don't be sad, Daddy!" That’s what it’s like. To give up all that is precious in an effort to try to be number one to someone whose number one is themselves. I’m glad I stopped doing that. My relationships with my parents have survived into my mother's older age and my father's death --- but it is because of the boundaries I was wise to construct.

The story also made me think about my recent revelation that relationships between parents and children really are two-way streets. I had to have my own children grow into adults (and have a couple very strong-headed children) to realize this. One of the biggest revelations of my life was the understanding that my actions had hurt my father and it was too late to directly ask his forgiveness.

I understood the response of the emotionally abused Sarah Payne --- "I'm just a writer. That's all." A writer has a gift of communication that is envied by all who lack it. It's a huge thing to be a writer. When we realize that, we soar.

The most heartbreaking part of all of this to me was the narrator's self-reflection about her motherhood after her divorce: "I am the one who left their father, even though at the time I really thought I was just leaving him. But that was foolish thinking, because I left my girls as well, and I left their home." For 32 years, my mother has tried to convince herself, through convincing me, that she didn't leave us kids when she left Dad for the sleazebag. But she did and we both know it. I appreciated the narrator's words. Her acknowledgment is the acknowledgment I’ve yet to hear.

There were several mentions of the Chrysler Building, and it features on the front cover, so I knew there must be some symbolism to it. Having lived most of my life on the west coast and the last 10 years in the South, this meaning was not immediately obvious to me. I looked into it a little and it seems the building is a symbol of New York City's persistent optimism, even in the face of less than optimal circumstances. Perhaps it was used to draw a parallel to Lucy who also seems to be forcedly "happy" in situations a non-traumatized person would see as toxic.