What Good is God by Philip Yancey

What Good is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters by Philip Yancey
Published by FaithWorks, an imprint of Hachette

Journalist Philip Yancey has always been one to question certain aspects of the Christian faith. In What Good is God?, he seeks to determine how God works for those Christians dealing with difficult situations. In his quest to answer this fundamental question of faith, he visits many parts of the world including Virginia Tech soon after the massacre, the motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, and a conference for former sex workers.

What Good is God? was the second selection for the Faith and Fiction Roundtable, the brainchild of Amy, in which a group of bloggers read and discuss a faith-based book and then post about our discussion and our feelings on said book. This particular book didn’t generate a ton of discussion, as it seemed that many of us didn’t much like the book. Personally I thought it had good points and bad but overall I enjoyed the experience of reading it and I found it to be a relatively meaningful discussion on the power of faith – and more specifically, faith in God – in difficult times.

The book was set up somewhat awkwardly, and most of us in the Roundtable agreed that it wasn’t the best format. Basically what Yancey did was talk about a place or people or experience for a chapter, and the next chapter would be a speech he gave in that particular situation/event/place. It felt like he was recycling previous works – republishing speeches he’d given already – and most of us didn’t like that. But most of us did agree that the chapters preceding the speeches were much better than the speeches themselves and most of us got a lot out of those chapters.

For me, I think the main question the book addressed was “Where is God when life gets painful?” rather than “What Good is God?” What the book reinforced for me is the fact that regardless of the circumstances, God is there. God shows His face through his Christians, through His missionaries, through His churches and the individual people who care enough to spread His word and His love throughout even the hardest hit parts of the world.

The other thing that I was reminded of, thanks mostly to our discussion, is the fact that Christianity doesn’t look the same for everyone, and that the way we practice and show our faith isn’t necessarily going to be the best fit for someone else. In places ravaged by disease, poverty, prejudice, and other realities of life, faith may need to be expressed and felt in different ways. A group of people doesn’t need to do Christianity our way for it to still be faith in and love for God. And God shows up, no matter the details of the faith – if you love and trust in Him, He is there, regardless of the specifics of your situation.

I can’t say that I found one concrete message to inspire me in this book, but throughout the book I felt inspired and lifted up by the faith of the people Yancey came into contact with. I think everyone needs a reminder sometimes that God is here, even when it hurts, even when it seems that He has abandoned us. And I think that’s a starting point for many people, and a good one too.

Please check out what the other participants thought of What Good is God?

Book Hooked Blog, Books and Movies, Crazy for Books, Ignorant Historian, Linus’s Blanket, My Friend Amy, My Random Thoughts, One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books, Roving Reads, Semicolon, The 3R’s Blog, Tina’s Book Reviews, Victorious Cafe, Wordlily

Dancing with Gravity by Anene Tressler

Dancing with Gravity by Anene Tressler
Published by Blank Slate Press
Review copy provided by the publisher in conjunction with TLC Book Tours

Father Whiting, a St. Louis priest, feels like he’s asleep in his own life. He is worried about how well he’s performing in his job at a local teaching hospital, he’s concerned by his mother’s increasingly strange behavior, and he has just found out that one of his oldest friends has terminal cancer. The one bright spot in his life these days is Sarah James, the hospital’s head of public relations and someone who has become a very good friend to Father Whiting lately. When Sarah informs him of the fact that a Central American circus is going to be taking up residence practically in their backyard, he decides to minister to the people of the circus and while doing so, his bond with Sarah grows even deeper. It is his relationships with Sarah and later a trapeze artist named Nikolai that illuminate for Whiting how lonely he’s become and inspire him to make changes to his own life.

I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, the characters were charming and held my interest, but on the other hand I found many of the events in the story rather difficult to believe, as well as confusing in parts. Overall I can’t say I particularly liked the book but I didn’t dislike it either – it’s one of those in-between situations. Allow me to explain in better detail.

I definitely appreciated the characterization in this novel. Father Whiting is an extremely interesting character – while easy for the reader to like, he also frustrated me multiple times throughout the book as he has moments of extreme selfishness. I definitely rooted for him to “find himself” as they say, but at the same time he was so wishy-washy about his feelings towards everyone – first he was annoyed with his mother and then he loved her, first he was obsessed with Sarah and then she irritated him, etc. His character was just a bit inconsistent. I did still, however, find him charming, probably because he was adorably unsure of himself, didn’t know how to properly give and receive love, and was truly just trying to figure his life out. One character I genuinely liked was Sarah. She, to me, was a realistic character who behaved and spoke very naturally – I was absolutely drawn to her. She clearly had innocent, friendly feelings toward Whiting even though his feelings may not have always mirrored that and I appreciated that Tressler did not make their relationship into something more than it was, even though it did seem to be heading in that direction for a while there.

The writing in the novel was sort of touch and go for me. At times, I was captivated by the prose and there were some really beautiful passages for me to enjoy. But other times, unfortunately, the writing felt awkward and clunky and the dialogue felt forced. Maybe it was just me but I did feel that the writing was inconsistent.

One thing I really did like about Dancing with Gravity was the fact that I was treated to an insider’s view of life in a circus. The characters in the circus were vivid and interesting and I loved reading about what the circus life really is about. It reminded me of Water for Elephants (a book I LOVE) in that sense.

Here’s the tricky part because I really did not like where Tressler decided to take the plot in the last third of the book. It went in a direction I simply didn’t understand and I’m not sure what the point of it was. I don’t do spoilers so all I can say is that the ending just did not make sense to me. And sadly enough, it negatively affected my feelings towards the book as a whole.

I didn’t mean for this review to sound as negative as it has, but I was as honest as possible about my feelings towards Dancing with Gravity and I think that showed. I didn’t hate the book by any means but it definitely has not been one of my favorites. There were a lot of aspects to the novel that I saw as being inconsistent and I simply could not get on board with the ending. For these reasons I probably would not recommend this novel. Of course there have been other readers who did enjoy the book (check out Heather’s review at Raging Bibliomania for starters) but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
Published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin
Review copy provided by the author

Novelist Emily Wilson truly thought she had a perfect marriage until her husband of over a decade decides to leave her for another woman. Stunned, Emily heads to her aunt Bee’s home on Bainbridge Island, Washington to recover and reevaluate her life. One night, when Emily has difficulty falling asleep, she finds a red journal in the nightstand next to her bed and can’t resist reading for a few pages. What she discovers in the journal is the story of a woman from the 1940′s that seems to have real connections to Emily’s life. Emily is determined to find out these connections, and in the process she begins to put her own life back together.

The Violets of March is the type of book that had me at hello. Truly, I was about twenty pages in when I realized how much I enjoyed Emily and I gobbled up her story as quickly as I possibly could. There are so many things to love about this novel that I don’t know where to start!

I truly enjoyed Emily as a character. I really felt for her – she was completely surprised by her husband’s actions and she had to do something drastic with her life in order to get some perspective. I liked all the characters in the book, actually – Aunt Bee is a fabulously fun older lady as is her friend Evelyn, and Emily meets two guys her first week at the island, both of whom add fabulous details to the story. I always like a little romance in my fiction, you know! Emily is truly the star of the novel as she tries to put her life back together while spending time on the island, but I enjoyed getting to know each and every one of the characters.

The island itself is a character in a sense. Sarah Jio did such a great job depicting what life on Bainbridge Island is like – I could smell the salty air, could see the ferry as it pulled in to the island, and I could feel the sand between my toes as Emily walked along the beach. When I visited Seattle several years back I absolutely fell in love with it, and Sarah Jio has made me want to visit some of the surrounding islands. She definitely brought Bainbridge Island to life.

I have to admit that I enjoyed reading the story in the red diary almost as much as the book itself! This technique of a “story within a story” is one that I’m not always a fan of, but in this case it worked beautifully. I was just as compelled with Esther’s story (the woman in the diary) as I was with Emily’s, if not more so! I was completely anxious to find out the connections between their lives and I was just as sucked into Esther’s life as Emily was.

Overall, I enjoyed The Violets of March immensely. I loved the characters, the setting, the story itself, basically everything! Highly recommended.

Guest Post by Diana Spechler

Today is the release date for Diana Spechler’s fabulous novel, Skinny. Yesterday I reviewed the book (I loved it) and today Diana is stopping by with a guest post. I asked her to tell me about some of her favorite authors, or the authors who have inspired her, and here is what she had to say.

When I got to graduate school, I found out I’d read all the wrong books.
On the first day of workshop in my new MFA program, my classmates and I introduced ourselves by divulging where we’d been and what we’d been reading. I’d been in college. Specifically, I’d spent the summer working at a bar in Boulder, Colorado, where my uniform had included a miniskirt. And all I’d read, really, ever, were the books high school and college students nationwide are required to read, and books my mom had given me, most of which I adored, but which I suspected weren’t cool. I loved The Catcher in The Rye. I might have kind of loved Huckleberry Finn, except I wasn’t sure I’d actually finished it.

In graduate school, everyone else was really old. Like twenty-seven. They’d lived. Some of them were married. And they all seemed to know the same authors. There was a club for literary grownups, and I totally wasn’t a member. Lorrie Moore, Raymond Carver, and Joy Williams—names that, a decade later, are among the most significant in my life—were then foreign to me. It turned out that the literary canon was not welcome in my MFA program. There was a whole other canon, a writers’ canon, and if I didn’t start familiarizing myself with its contents, everyone was going to know I was, like, really freakin’ young.

So for the next two years, whenever I heard one of my classmates mention a writer I didn’t know, I wrote down the name, went to the library, and read at least one of his or her stories. (Lucky for me, in graduate school, we worship short stories over novels.) If I liked the writer, I read more, but the goal was just to get to know the “writers’ writers.” I wanted to be able to talk the talk. But moreover, I got the impression that immersing myself in these authors would help me walk the walk.

In many ways, I learned to write in graduate school by reading George Saunders, Alice Monroe, Antonya Nelson, and all the other writers’ writers I scrounged up in the University of Montana library. What I’d felt at thirteen when I read The Catcher in The Rye—that racing-heart, dry-mouthed excitement, that certainty that I was going to Be A Writer—I was feeling again at twenty-two, as I discovered Tobias Wolff, Junot Diaz, and Aimee Bender. An amazing thing happened when I started reading the writers who excited me: Somehow, I kept finding more. There were so many great writers! (But of course, to exclaim so aloud was uncool.)

Now, the writers who excite me the most change all the time. I still have my staples, like Raymond Carver, who can get my pulse going with a sentence or two. But the books I keep near my laptop, my literary porn, so to speak, change pretty frequently. Right now, my nearest stack includes Suzanne Rivecca and Ann Beattie.

Finally, when anyone asks me if I’ve read an author I’ve never heard of, I feel okay saying no. I used to lie—“Oh yeah, I love her stuff”—which I don’t condone. Lying is terrible. Now I just lie about music. Of course I know some band from some suburb that sounds so much like some other band from some other suburb.

Okay, truthfully, I know The Beatles. I really dig Bob Dylan. And until I decide to pursue a life as a musician, that’s good enough for me.

LOVE HER! Do yourself a favor and get a copy of Skinny – you will not regret it!

Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire and Skinny . She has written for the New York Times , GQ , Esquire , Details.com, Nerve, Glimmer Train Stories , and other publications. Spechler has an MFA from the University of Montana and was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. She teaches writing in New York City.

Skinny by Diana Spechler

Skinny by Diana Spechler
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy provided by the author

Gray Lachman is miserable. After her father’s sudden death, which she feels responsible for, she finds herself overeating and over the course of a few months gains quite a bit of weight. She also discovers, much to her surprise, that she has a teenage half-sister named Eden, courtesy of  her father’s affair, which she also didn’t know about. She decides to take a job as a counselor at the weight-loss camp Eden is registered for, hoping that she will get skinny, clear her mind of her issues surrounding her father’s death, and somehow explain to Eden how they are connected and build a relationship with her new sister.

I very much enjoyed Diana Spechler’s Who by Fire [my review] so when I found out she had a new book coming out, I knew I had to read it. Skinny is very different from Who by Fire, but I was pleased to discover it’s just as fantastic.

What made this story for me was the character of Gray. She is the kind of character the reader can easily sympathize with even though she’s not necessarily likable. She’s flawed and makes mistakes, she jumps to conclusions and sometimes hurts those she cares about, but she’s incredibly realistic. She’s the kind of person I am in my truest moments – vulnerable, sometimes a little sad, sometimes unhappy with myself, but ultimately just trying to figure life out. And it helps that Gray and I are roughly the same age. While my life is a little more “put-together” than hers (I have a house, a husband, etc. and she is sort of untethered) I still related to her emotionally. I related to her struggle to accept herself – her body and her personality – and to her struggle to accept the events in her life and move past them. I think a lot of people struggle with these things and consequently many readers will see aspects of their own lives and feelings mirrored in Gray’s.

I love the way Spechler writes. The words are put together just so, nothing fancy or anything, but in such a perfect way that the reader can’t help turning the pages. I found this to be the case with Who by Fire and also with Skinny. The dialogue is interesting and very realistic and the writing just works.

This book made me feel so many things – it is both funny and heartbreaking, happy and deeply sad. The events in the novel were all over the place – apparently a lot can happen in a few weeks at weight-loss camp! Everything came together perfectly in the end, and it was the kind of bittersweet ending I love – wrapped up well but with semi-loose ends, in a realistic kind of way. In life, things do not end perfectly, so why should things end perfectly in books? That’s the way I typically feel, anyway, and I for one was very happy with how Spechler chose to end this particular novel.

I feel like I haven’t been all that coherent with this review because I liked this book so much but I don’t have the perfect words to explain why. This is one of those times where I say: just read it!

Stay tuned tomorrow because Diana Spechler will drop by with a guest post which you will not want to miss!

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
Published by Penguin

The short stories contained in You Know When the Men Are Gone tell one comprehensive story about what life is like at the Fort Hood, Texas army base. These stories reveal what the women of Ford Hood struggle with when their husbands are away, how they form friendships and take care of their children, how they nurse their injured soldiers back to health, and how they create a solid, stable life for their families when everything about that life is ever-changing.

I decided to pick up this book because in recent years I have discovered that I really enjoy short stories when they are done well. And You Know When the Men Are Gone had been receiving so much praise from book bloggers that I knew it was a short story collection I couldn’t live without reading. I also have a slightly personal connection to the story – my youngest brother Alex is a US Marine currently stationed in Afghanistan. So although I can’t completely relate to these women as I’ve never lived on a military base or been married to a member of our military, I know what it’s like to constantly worry about that person, to live with the uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring for him.

And the book definitely lived up to my expectations. I was pleasantly surprised at Fallon’s ability to create such a solid sense of place in so few pages. She made me feel like I was a part of these women’s lives, like I was living at Ford Hood with them and I was experiencing their pain and joy as they were. These characters were real to me, but more than that, the base itself was a real character. The aspects of life on a military base became crystal clear to me and at this point I almost feel like I’ve had that experience myself. I did have the opportunity to visit the MCAS base where my brother was stationed before he left for oversees, and based on the two days I spent there, Fallon accurately captured what life is like on a military base. It really amazed me how much everything about it felt so real.

One thing I appreciated about this book was the fact that the stories were not entirely separate. Characters from one story would pop up in another story, giving the entire book a more cohesive feeling. While I can’t say that any one character in particular sticks out to me, they all won me over and I felt a deep sense of understanding them as I read each of their stories.

I began reading this book in audio format and read the first couple of chapters that way, but unfortunately the CD started skipping about halfway through so I switched to print for the second half. Having experienced the book in both mediums, I can safely say that either way works well. The narration wasn’t anything special but was enjoyable enough, and the book itself is short enough that it’s easy to fly through if you decide to read it in print.

Overall, You Know When the Men Are Gone is an excellent collection of short stories about life on a military base. I would highly recommend it.

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins
Review copy provided by the publisher in conjunction with TLC Book Tours

Nina Revskaya is an old women living in America, confined to a wheelchair because of what ballet has done to her body, when she puts her jewelry up for auction. This jewelry carries with it a lot of memories of growing up in Stalinist Russia, being a star member of the Bolshoi Ballet company, and of her best friends, her long-deceased mother, and falling in love for the first time. Nina thought the secrets of her past would be kept safe forever, but now Drew Brooks, a curious employee of the auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a professor who thinks he may have a connection to Nina’s jewelry, are determined to understand the mysteries behind these pieces.

Russian Winter is historical fiction at its best. My favorite historical fiction reads have certain things in common – a clear sense of place, excellent characters, and insight into a historical time period without being dry – and this novel has all those things and more.

The way that Kalotay was able to capture the essence of Stalinist Russia amazed me. I hate to admit this, but I don’t know much about that part of the world in that period of history, so it was definitely enlightening for me to read the historical aspects of this novel. The struggles the people of that time faced and the hardships they endured made me sick and extremely sad. The control that Stalin was able to have over his people astounded me, and Kalotay did such an excellent job illuminating what life may have been like for the people there. I truly felt that I came away from the book with a deeper understanding of this particular piece of history.

The novel switches back and forth between past and present, and while sometimes this literary device can be confusing, in this case it worked perfectly. I was kept on the edge of my seat to find out what happened in Nina’s life in Russia, while at the same time I got to read about Nina’s current situation in the US. I was concerned that I wouldn’t care enough about Drew or Grigori, as they are somewhat secondary to the real story, but luckily Kalotay gives the reader enough of their stories and allows the reader to get to know them as characters too, so much so that I cared just as much about the two of them as I did about Nina.

The characters in Russian Winter were crafted amazingly well – every single one of them, even Nina’s friends and family members from her past in Russia were real to me. While Nina is definitely the central character in the novel, the other people in her life play a huge part in the mysteries of her past, and I definitely came to care about all of them. It’s strange, because you know from reading the present tense portions of the novel that none of these people are in Nina’s life anymore, yet I would still read with bated breath, hoping that these people would remain in Nina’s life forever, that they would all grow up together and live happily ever after. I was that involved, cared that much, about these characters.

There is a mystery intertwined within this novel and I appreciated the way it revealed itself very slowly, in the context of the history and the characters. The mystery was secondary to the story itself, but was a huge part of how everything was resolved in the end. I was definitely surprised (in a good way) by how things ended and I have to say that for me, things were wrapped up perfectly.

Russian Winter is an absolutely fantastic novel. It is a perfect example of historical fiction at its finest, one that would be a great choice for all different types of readers. It has history, excellent characters, a mystery to solve, and solidly great writing as well. I loved this one.

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Published by Margaret K. McElderry, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Five teenagers, all with very different backgrounds, from different parts of the country, all searching for something in the exciting and dangerous town of Las Vegas. What they find, unfortunately, is nothing like what any of them were hoping for. These five stories start out as separate, but come together perfectly in the end.

I’ve come to expect insanely good novels from Ellen Hopkins. Her style is extremely distinct: she writes her novels in verse, and her writing is absolutely beautiful. She is able to evoke such strong emotions with her words, sometimes I am just blown away by what she manages to do with her books.

Tricks was everything I would have expected from Ms. Hopkins in terms of the writing and the beautiful poetry her words create on the page, but I have to admit that I didn’t love everything about this book. For one thing, I had a lot of difficulty keeping the characters straight in the beginning. Since this is a novel in verse, the reader doesn’t get a ton of opportunity to get to know the ins and outs of each character (more pages but fewer words than a traditional novel) and because of that, I found myself consistently flipping back to previous chapters to remember who each character was and what their individual situations were. In addition, I felt that the novel took a very long time to get to the “meat” of the story. It’s difficult for me to explain without giving crucial plot points away, but basically these five teens have one major thing in common and that particular thing wasn’t revealed until very late into the book. If I wasn’t so captivated by the writing, I probably wouldn’t have finished the book as I found myself getting impatient to find out the central issue of the story.

But I have to keep coming back to the writing and Hopkins’ amazing poetry. I never “got” novels in verse until I started reading her books, and I have to say that I am hooked. I love her writing so much and Tricks is just one more example of how she was able to create this amazing, beautiful, and haunting story using poetry. So while this wasn’t my favorite of her novels, I would still recommend reading it for the writing alone. Plus, once you read one of her novels I challenge you not to pick up another one! They are truly addicting.

The Sunday Salon – catching up

Good morning everyone! I know I’ve been noticeably absent from bloggy land the past week or two and I wanted to quickly check in and catch up with you guys. I have had a lot going on the past couple of weeks which has made it very difficult for me to find time to blog or even read.

Last Wednesday my mom and grandma came down from Chicago for a week’s visit. We did a lot in that week including mini-golf, checking out the gators at Lake Jesup, going to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, and spending a day at New Smyrna Beach. Which, by the way, is definitely the beach I would recommend going to if you are ever visiting Central FL and want a beach day. It’s a gorgeous beach, not as crowded as Daytona or Cocoa, and has an adorable little beach town shopping area. It was so nice to spend time with my mom and grandma and we really did have a great week together.

Yesterday was the UCF Book Festival, which unfortunately I was not able to attend due to work. Next year I will definitely plan ahead and make sure to secure a day off for the festival! But I did get the opportunity to get together with other Florida book bloggers for dinner last night! I met Michelle (my books. my life) and her husband, Jenny (Take Me Away) and her husband, Sandy (You’ve GOTTA Read This), Heather (Raging Bibliomania), and Liz (Cleverly Inked). It was such a fabulous time – book bloggers are seriously some of the best, most fun people around. I’m so thrilled I was able to attend the dinner and I hope we can do it again soon.

This coming week will find me almost as busy as I’ve been recently. At my job they’ve recently instituted a 6-day work week policy (not for everyone, just certain people, and of course I am one of these people). It’s still a 40-hour week, which means that I have to be at work Monday through Saturday, but some days will be longer days (8-10 hours) and some days will be shorter days (4-6 hours). If you ask me this is somewhat ridiculous but it’s clearly not my decision. So since I usually do my blogging on my days off (Sunday plus one other day) my time to read and blog is severely limited. We’ll see if I manage to get reviews done – for sure I will take care of my blog tours but other than that I’m just going to see how things go. Not putting pressure on myself is my motto as of late.

Today I’m going to attend the Central Florida Home and Garden Show with some friends. Hubby scored free tickets from a customer and we need ideas for decorating the new house. Upon our return home, I hope to relax and get some reading done!

What are you up to this lovely Sunday?

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton
Published by Bellantine Books, an imprint of Random House
Review copy provided by the publisher via TLC Book Tours

Mia, Laney, Betts, and Ginger have been an extremely tight foursome since law school. The four have supported each other through the many ups and downs of their lives, and now Betts is just days away from being appointed to the Supreme Court. But during the Senate hearings, a question is asked that drags up long-buried secrets in the ladies’ pasts, and so they flee to Ginger’s family’s summer home in the Chesapeake Bay to try to get a handle on things. During their trip, they rehash old memories, support one another through this current hurdle, and together figure out the truth about a huge part of their pasts.

Meg Waite Clayton has an amazing ability to write complex, interesting characters that truly feel like real people. Mia, Laney, Betts, and Ginger were flawed in many ways, but their flaws served to make them more human, easy for the reader to relate to. The book is told in alternating perspectives from each woman in first-person point of view, and while I have to admit it took me a while to figure out who was who and sort out their backgrounds, once I did that it became a joy to get to know each of these four women. They are four unique, individual women with very different personalities and Clayton definitely wrote them as such.

Not only were these four women easy to relate to, likable, and interesting, but they were also strong, independent, intelligent women (and these characteristics, many of you know, I love to see in fictional women). I cannot tell you how much I love a book with intelligent writing and smart characters, and The Four Ms. Bradwells has both of those things. It was such a delight for me to watch these women interact with each other, as their educational backgrounds and high levels of intelligence really shined through their conversations. I’m loving this trend of books written about smart women (The Weird Sisters, I’m looking at you too) and I really hope it continues.

I enjoyed the fact that there was a mystery within this novel, and I think the mystery was done very well. Not because it was a mystery to solve, exactly, but because it was so intertwined with the rest of the story that it just felt natural. I was left guessing throughout the entire book, and when the truth finally did surface (in all its ambiguity) I have to admit that I did not expect that particular end of the matter. This is me saying, without any spoilers, that I loved the ending.

The Four Ms. Bradwells is really  a fantastic piece of women’s fiction with incredibly smart characters, excellent writing, and a plot that really moves along well. The book is about four female friends, yes, but there are much deeper things going on here that are not evident at the beginning of the novel. I really loved the book and I highly recommend it.