I know you wrote that you loved this book, I did not. It fell so far short of my expectations. It is of course beautifully written. She is a graceful and fairly descriptive writer. But this was called a memoir of a friendship and i saw very little of that in the book. It was all about her, a little bit about their friendship, and almost not at all about Caroline Knapp. I barely got a sense of their friendship apart from their walking their dogs and rowing. And I could not get over how self-absorbed the author was. Wow, I was really disappointed. I wanted to love this book, I wanted to cry, I wanted to rail against the universe for the loss and grief that people so intimately connected endure when they lose each other. But I wasn't allowed to care. I found myself wishing badly to know what Caroline was like. I think I would have liked her. But I do not think I would like Gail. Elizabeth Berg wrote a much more devastating, honest, complex story of a friendship and a death in her NOVEL Talk Before Sleep. Now that was a heartbreaker.

Ok, it may seem as though I am avoiding Anna Karenina. I'm not, it's just that I started so many books in January that I am trying to finish a few in between reading AK. This was a beautiful slim book by Amos Oz, who is probably the best known novelist in Israel. Called Rhyming Life & Death, it is the first thing I have ever read by Oz. I honestly picked it because of the look and the feel of the book. I do this every once in awhile. I roam the stacks and I pull out book by book to read the backs and explore. This novella takes place during the span of one night. The narrator is referred to as the "author." The author is in Tel Aviv for a reading at a local community center. He arrives early and goes to a nearby cafe to pass the time. He is not looking forward to the evening, the same questions he is asked over and over again i.e. why do your write, do you write with pen or computer, do you draw from imagination more than real life, how much do you earn, how do you handle criticism, etc. As he sits in the cafe he starts making up stories about some of the people in the cafe, the waitress, the two men sitting at a nearby table. He goes to the reading and continues to do this, makes up stories about the man who introduces him, the woman who reads his work, the heckler, the young hopeful poet, etc. The rest of the night switches between his reality and the made up realities of the characters. It is beautifully written but the stories he makes up are almost all ugly, almost brutal in their telling - this man is in the hospital with a catheter no one empties, this man lives with his mom and has to change her sheets, this woman lives trapped in the memory of an affair she had twenty years ago, etc. But there are a few passage that are so beautiful they take your breath away. It is a mix of ugly and beautiful, pure and profane. It is indeed a rhyming of life and death. I really took a lot away from it. And am definitely going to read more by this author.

I read this book in two nights. Sort of a break from Anna Karenina even though I am really enjoying it. I loved it. The premise is: a boy in high school receives a package on his doorstep from a girl who committed suicide two weeks before. She says that there are 13 reasons why she killed herself and that each person who receives the tapes is one of those reasons. In listening to the tapes he hears her story. And he takes his walkman and a map she provides and walks around his town one night with her narration of her experience as a backdrop. It was sad and honest and I really liked it. I think it is an important book for high school kids to read. Because it really demonstrates the impact you can have on someone without even realizing it. Especially in high school at that age when everything feels bigger and harder and more lonely because you don't have the skills yet to negotiate everything that can be thrown at you. Also it is important that the book shows that there was a point where she could have reached out for help but in the end she chose not to and she knew she was choosing not to. So it was of course in the end a choice she did not have to make.