Lorna Collier's Reviews




Shopaholic & Baby, by Sophie Kinsella

Becky Bloomwood is back, as shopping-addicted (but secretly sharp) as ever, only this time she's buying for her upcoming baby rather than herself. The continuation of the popular chick-lit series is tight, bright, frothy fun, if a bit predictable. Becky is still married to Luke, but there's trouble in the form of an evil red-headed obstetrician who just happens to be Luke's ex-girlfriend. Think Addison from Grey's Anatomy -- thin, sexy, slinky-haired, and not the type of woman you want around your husband when you are in the midst of pregnancy-induced hormones and bloat.

Other challenges include a crisis with the boorish major client at Luke's new PR firm, lagging business at the shop where Becky works as a personal shopper, and difficulties the couple has finding the perfect chi-chi house to move into. One subplot handled a bit too lightly involves Becky's anti-Material Girl sister, Jess, who is torn between love for Becky's old neighbor, Tom, and a new job in Chile. The interplay between Becky and Jess is fun, and could have been expanded a bit, to my taste.

Overall, if you like the Shopaholic series, you will love this new addition to the line. Definite beach reading.


The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz

Imagine your parents are detectives, working from home, who press you into service in the family business while you are still a grade-schooler. From the earliest age, you know the best ways to tail a car, stake out a suspect, pick a lock, lie to get information. Can you trust anyone?

This comedic, unusual book explores life in the Spellman family, as viewed by Isabel, who is 28 at the book's opening and dealing with the disappearance of her young sister, also a budding detective. The book uses flashbacks to flesh out the family history, which includes Izzie's various romantic misfires (who, she wonders, will be her next ex-boyfriend?). Izzie, you see, can't still the detective inside, can't quit the only life she has ever known, and thus finds herself running background checks on boyfriends. Make that ex-boyfriends.

The book's suspense is captured with twin mysteries -- what happened to a missing teenage boy (a seemingly insoluble cold case Izzie's mom gives her to crack before she can quit the agency, knowing full well Izzie will neither be able to solve the case nor quit it), and what happened to Izzie's missing little sister. Both mysteries are resolved with twists, the first being one that I didn't see coming, the second a little more predictable. To me, neither was completely satisfying.

Overall, a lightweight, entertaining read, but somewhat forgettable.

Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson (book published in 1977)
Bridge to Terabithia (film released in 2007)

My husband and I took my 10-year-old niece to see the recent film adaptation of this Newbery-winning classic, with which we were unfamiliar. We were armed only with information from the movie trailer, which had us picturing a Narnia-like romp in fantastical lands. We were stunned to find a realistic, even tragic, coming-of-age picture, which also had as a theme the power of the imagination to overcome real-life difficulties. I rushed out to get the book soon afterward. This review can't help but compare the book and the movie, which are now, for me, irretrievably interwined.

Bridge to Terabithia tells the story of Jess, the only boy among a family of girls growing up on a cash-strapped farm. Jess's father is a remote, gruff, and seemingly unloving parent to Jess, a conflict developed more in the movie than in the book. Jess is an artistic boy and also a timid one, afraid to confront the various bullies he encounters at school and afraid of physical activities (except for running, which in the book he excels at). One day, a girl his age moves in to a nearby farm. Leslie's parents are rich city-dwelling writers, freethinkers who are having a turn at the rural life; quite the contrast from Jess's dirt-poor, religious and conventional family. Jess knows he has met a compatriot when he hears Leslie's essay about scuba-diving read aloud in school (a scene handled beautifully in the movie; the film also adds a scene with Leslie admitting to having imagined the scuba experience, never having dived herself). Jess and Leslie, both lonely, sensitive and imaginative children, create their own world -- Terabithia -- in a patch of forest near their homes. In this play land, explored in much more depth and more effectively in the film version than the book, Jesse finds courage to confront his fears. This courage helps him weather the shocking tragedy that occurs toward the book's end.

Bridge to Terabithia was written by Katherine Paterson while she was struggling with cancer, and also in response to her son's sudden loss of a childhood friend. She has said in interviews that the book was a way to deal with her questions about mortality. Interestingly, the screenplay was written by her son, who develops and expands the book's themes beautifully. Both are highly recommended, though parents of younger children should read the book or more in-depth reviews first, as the material can be upsetting for sensitive younger children. I probably wouldn't take a child younger than 10 to see the film, unless the child had read the book first.


Stalking the Divine, by Kristin Ohlson

(review published by Midwest Book Review)


In this exquisitely written book, Kristin Ohlson explores a common condition many of us aging Baby Boomers face: the sense that somewhere along the way, we missed the turn-off to Faith. We thought we didn't need to stop there; religion, especially the organized variety, seems somehow antiquated, illogical and just plain archaic to our modern educated selves. But as the years pass, as the miles pile up, we realize a sense of loss. Something is missing. Something others have.

Ohlson is a skeptical searcher, trying out churches in Cleveland, where she lives, but never finding the perfect fit. Until one Christmas day, she comes upon an older downtown church, home of a Poor Clare sect of cloistered nuns. She is fascinated both by the nuns (what kind of women shut themselves up for the rest of their lives in one building -- in a dying part of town, in a church with a diminishing population, no less?). She also is fascinated by the church itself, by the priests and the community who find comfort in their regular attendance.

Ohlson continues to visit the church under the guise of a journalist, researching the nuns for an article and possible book. But her task becomes more personal as she slowly finds herself becoming a member of the church and, in the end, making at least some contact with the elusive Divine.

Highly recommended for any reader, especially those who are skeptics when it comes to religion, yet feel something missing in their spiritual lives.



Mastering Abundance (A Spiritual Approach To Getting Anything You Want By Having God Serve You)
By Nzingha Moses

(review published by ForeWord Reviews)

Nzingha Moses wants -- no, expects -- to soon own an $11.5 million mansion. She has pictures of her dream house cut from magazines; she has the entire building planned, except for the date she should expect the keys to arrive. Perhaps this year. She hasn't decided when to place her order.

Not that Moses, a minister, motivational speaker and self-proclaimed psychic, has $11.5 million -- yet. But since she has figured out how to order up whatever she wants from the universe, it's only a question of time.

After all, Moses wished to have a house before age 30 and, she writes, found what she was looking for the day before her 30th birthday. Luck? Coincidence? Or self-created miracle? Moses chose the latter explanation for stumbling across an affordable home decorated in furnishings similar to those in her apartment, just in time for her birthday. Surely, she implies, getting an upgrade to a mansion when she's in the mood to move won't be a problem.

Moses has decided to share her spiritual theories with us in a book with a cover featuring the silhouette of a couple looking upon a house, car, boat and wad of cash. The book jacket copy further spells out its message: “You will be able to draw to you: love; money; houses; cars; boats; jobs and careers etc…Whatever your heart desires can be yours!”

How to get these goodies? By ordering God – also referred to as “the universe” – to dish ’em up. After all, Moses explains, God is your servant, not your master. If you want something, all you have to do is project (“manifest”) your desire. If you remain poor, jobless, without love, or even in pain, the fault is yours for projecting defeatist messages, for not believing in the power of positive thinking, Moses-style. Or perhaps it's bad karma from sins you committed in a prior life. Either way, it’s your fault.

Moses believes so strongly in her version of the prosperity gospel that she tells her mother, who is worried about unpaid bills, to put them away and consider them paid, even when they are not. (Moses says her mother remains unconvinced by her theories, leaving us to assume that the bills remain unpaid.)

This slim, 174-page guide to achieving "abundance" is a mix of reheated prosperity gospel, warmed-over fortune-cookie platitudes, and rehashed "love yourself” feel-good banalities, mixed in a stew of cliches, repetition, and grammar so poor that some sentences are rendered incomprehensible (example: “That the more degrees you have, the greater expertise you are in that field you have become.”). Case studies showing abundance in action lack last names or any type of facts that can be verified, even when they concern successful restaurateurs and fashion designers.

If you are a fan of the prosperity gospel or you’re looking for a few phrases to add to your daily affirmations, you might consider checking this book out. Otherwise, I'm going to project a negative message to the universe here: fuhgeddaboutit.


The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith


Precious Ramotswe (pronounced ram-oat'-sway) is the first lady detective in Botswana, described by another reviewer as "the South African Miss Marple." In the first of a series of books about her by Alexander McCall Smith, we learn how she started her agency (she inherited cattle from her beloved father, then sold the herd to start a business that we suspect he might not have found so sensible). Yet Precious makes a success of the business through her ingenuity in solving all manner of crimes, large but mostly small. The focus of the book (and others in the series) is more on the relationships between men and women, showing how Ramotswe uses her feminine wiles and understanding of human nature to solve her many and varied cases. The books also showcase the rapidly disappearing culture of courtesy in South Africa. Precious is a gracious person who values the old ways, which to her dismay seem to be in less favor among the young in her country. At the end of the book, Precious agrees to marry her suitor, esteemed auto mechanic Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, who like Precious is known for his integrity.

I found this book and others in the series to be charming get-aways, evoking a world with a different, quieter pace than our modern American rush-rush society. The books are not sugar-sweet "Mayberry RFD" evocations, however; there is tragedy and violence and cruelty in them. But the overall grace and intelligence with which Precious, and author McCall Smith, handle these problems leaves one feeling comforted, rather than disturbed.




© Copyright Lorna Collier, 2005

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