Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

(From GoodReads) A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.
 
In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.

For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

(My thoughts) Mara weaves together the lives of three main characters in his debut novels that offers a haunting and sometimes chilling look at life in Chechnya during a ten year period. The language in this book quickly transports to you deep into the forest, to a war ridden village that most have deserted. The central characters lives are interconnected in unexpected ways that reveal themselves in the later pages of the novel. The chapters shift from present to past, but are clearly  marked at each chapter beginning, so as to not be confusing. The reader is introduced to what life is like in an ethnic war zone of a mostly unknown place. 

While beautifully written, this is not a light read. Its a novel that I had to put down time and time again to just digest and step away from for a bit, but it is real. War is a central character in this novel but don't let that deter you from reading this book. Its one of those novels that stays with you long after you flip the last page. 


Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to review by TLC Tours and the publishing company but was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own.

Catching Up

Days pass, I think of posts to write, life happens and my new computer sits in the corner collecting dust. 

My family and I have been finding our new normal and the process of going forward. I helped my mom tackle the project of water sealing the deck and have been spending lots of time with my cousins. There was a Barry Manilow concert. Three cousins who went two different proms. New traditions of crackers, cheese and drinks on the deck on Friday nights with family and friends. There's been a renewed friendship with someone who was once as close as a sister and a widening crack in a friendship that has been waning. A close friend lost his mom suddenly. Work days were long. One cousin is preparing for her high school graduation in less than a week. Days are slipping by  so quickly and I feel like I'm barely present before running off to the next thing. 

Last week in a bit of a clumsy  moment, I severely strained a tendon just under my knee forcing me to cancel all the weekend plans I'd made. I was bummed to cancel plans, but I suppose its  the Universe's way (albeit really, really painful way) of saying, "Look, sister, slow down." According to the doctor, I'll have to rest my leg as much as possible over the next two to three weeks which give me plenty of time to catch up on reading and blogging...two things I really love but have been neglecting. 

So, tell me, whats been going on in your lives, lovelies?

An Open Letter to AT&T

Good afternoon, 

I am writing to you today to express my complete and utter frustration with your customer care staff. I’ve been dealing with them for the past several days, on what should have been a very simple task. Instead I have spent over 6 hours on the phone – either on hold, being transferred to another department or trying to explain what I needed. I was transferred countless times, dealt with rude customer care staff and somehow throughout this process apparently had my cellphone number disconnected without my consent. I am beyond frustrated and disappointed in AT&T at the moment. I have been a customer for over a decade and have never had the trouble I have had in the past 5 days.

Please, let me start at the beginning. I am the owner of a shared family plan that consists of 4 phones. My father recently passed away, when I went into the store to cancel his account, I was told I would have to pay a cancellation fee because the line was still under contract. 

After discussing the matter with my mother, it was decided that we would port our landline to the now unused cellphone number and leave it on the plan. I know others who have done completed this action and it seemed like a very simple process. This was apparently my first wrong assumption. 

I called AT&T customer care on Saturday to speak with a representative who assured it me it was a simple process and could indeed be done. The plan was to port the landline number and replace the cellphone number. The woman was very kind and explained the process. She informed me I would need to contact AT&T U-verse to “split” the landline from the DSL, because the DSL still needs to remain connected. This is where the trouble started. I was disconnected from the number the kind woman gave me. From there I spoke to no less than 7 different people who were all eager to transfer me to the department of their choice. I was bounced around to several different departments, none of them the right one, before I was finally transferred to a Spanish speaking agent who couldn’t comprehend what I was saying and vice versa. The line was disconnected and I had spent 4 hours on the phone.

I attempted to call back on Sunday with similar results. I only had a few hours to waste that day though. I attempted again on Monday and after being on hold for over an hour, finally spoke with someone who assured me she could help. Again, she was very friendly and told me she would take care of things. She explained that the separation of the landline and DSL would be done on Wednesday and on that date I could call the wireless number and let them know the number would be ready to port over. 

This morning I received a call on the landline from a gentleman who said he would be handling the dry-loop reinstallation of the DSL and it would only take a few minutes. I then proceeded to call the wireless group to let them know the landline number was ready to be ported over. I was then transferred to two different departments and on hold, again. I then reached someone in the porting department who took all of the information including account numbers, the landline number  and the cellphone number it was to replace on the plan . I was on hold for several minutes while she verified the information, she stated she was on the phone with the DSL gentleman, and they were working to make sure everything was correct before informing me that someone would call me in a few hours to make sure the transition had gone smoothly. 

A few hours later, I sent a text message from my phone only to have that person inform me my number was now the landline. When I returned to work, I had a voicemail from someone stating that the switch had occurred and everything was in working order. Only it wasn’t. The landline number was now going to the incorrect cell phone number instead of the number I had given no less than 5 people in the ATT customer service pool. This woman was kind enough to leave her direct number, so I was able to call and speak with her. I informed her that the landline number had gone to the wrong cell number; she told me she would quickly get to working on correcting the mistake. That’s where I currently am. Waiting for the cellphone number I’ve had for years,  to be returned to me and the landline number to be switched over to replace the other phone on my plan. 

I hope you can understand my frustrations. Because all of the services were under the AT&T umbrella, I should have only had to make 1, maybe 2 phone calls and it certainly should not have taken as many hours as it has. I should not have had my number dismissed and still be waiting to see if its available. There should be call logs and comments on my account documenting all of this, I certainly spoke to enough people along the way. I should not have had to go around and around to different departments and speak with dozens of different customer care people. 

I hope that you can take a few minutes to look into this situation because if it’s happening to me, it’s happening to several other people as well. Customers shouldn’t get the run around when trying to make changes or updates to their plan. Customers shouldn’t have to worry about losing their cellphone numbers when workers make mistakes and don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. Porting a landline to an existing cellphone already on a family plan should not be this difficult. If this is how loyal customers get treated, perhaps more focus should be paid to training and customer service. 

In the future I will be very wary of dealing with customer service. I will certainly start investigating my options, as well as letting friends and family know about this situation. 

If my proper number is not restored and the rest of the issues with AT&T not addressed, I will be contacting the Attorney General and the FCC to address this matter. 

Best,
An angry customer

Review: The Clover House

From Goodreads: For fans of Victoria Hislop's The Island and Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key, a powerful debut novel about a woman shuttling between America and Greece to solve the mystery surrounding her family's past and claim an identity of her own.

A phone call from her cousin sends Calliope Notaris Brown from Boston to the Greek city of Patras to sort through an inheritance from her uncle. She arrives during the wild abandon of Carnival, when the world is turned upside down and things are not as they seem. Digging through the keepsakes her uncle has left, Callie stumbles upon clues to the wartime disappearance of the family's fortune and to the mystery of her estranged mother's chronic unhappiness. As she pieces together family secrets that stretch back to the Italian occupation of Greece during World War II, Callie's relationship with her fiancé, her mother, and her mother's two sisters will change irrevocably.

My thoughts: As a huge fan of Tatiana de Rosnay's novel, Sarah's Key, I was really excited to receive this book to review. While I do think this book isn't quite on level with Sarah's Key, it is a great book in its own right. 

Powers weaves together the stories of mother and daughter, to tell a dramatic tale about family, secrets, and forgiveness.  I enjoyed reading the first person narrative of Callie, the daughter and seeing how she viewed her family and their way of life in Greece and eventually uncovers the family secret. I would have liked to have known more about the history of Greece and the World War, but this is a fairly long book and I understand not everything can be included. 

It did take me about 150 pages to fully become immersed in the plot, but once I became engrossed in the novel, the story basically carried me away to be beautiful land of Greece and their Carnival festival. If you enjoy stories about family ties, complex relationships, and the end resolution, definitely give this book a read!


Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to review by TLC Tours and the publishing company but was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own

Guest Post: This Too Shall Pass

Sometimes you feel like you're drowning and you've forgotten how to swim. The waves are coming faster, growing taller, and you're gasping for breath. You're reaching up, hoping someone, anyone, is there to save you. You're struggling with everything inside of you and praying that this isn't the moment that will break you. Please, don't let it be this moment that breaks you.

Sometimes you feel like you're never going to be enough. You'll never be fast enough, never be strong enough, and of course, never be thin enough. You'll never be able to do those things that other people do. You'll never be brave enough, rich enough, or smart enough. You'll never be where they are and you'll never be that successful. Your life won't be what you imagined and you'll never be enough.

Sometimes you feel like you're faking it. Every single bit of it. You're faking the positive energy and the fact that you have it all figured out. It feels like you're trying too hard, pushing too hard, and soon, everyone will see what you see. This facade, this mask. It's not really you, it's just how you cover up your fear and insecurity.

Sometimes you feel like your trapped inside a hurricane. Swirling and twirling and there's no way out. Spinning and spinning. You've lost sight of center and so you collapse into the weight of the wind. No where to go.

And that's when you finally take a moment to breathe.

Remember, you are not alone. You are not the only one who fees this way. You are not the only one with questions as you walk into the hazy glow of the future.

Put on your yoga pants. Inhale and then exhale. Stretch. Move your body. Focus on you. Not the chaos, not the stress, and not the fear. This, right now.

Remember, we don't expect you to have all the answers. We don't expect you to be perfect.

Make a hot cup of chamomile tea and open your journal. Be honest with yourself and be open. Admit to yourself that you can't do it all. You can't keep spinning these plates without one of them crashing to the floor. You can't keep running at full speed without burning out. Admit that you don't have it all figured out and that scares you to your core.

Cry.

Let yourself feel afraid, embarrassed and insecure. You cannot intellectualize your way out of this, so let this be a day of grey clouds and tears. Let yourself be this imperfect mess.

You are still perfect anyway.

And eventually, without grasping for it, something will change. The clouds break and the sunlight will peek through the window. You will breathe again and the tears will stop. Your heart won't feel so heavy.

And you will know you'll be okay.

You'll know that this too shall pass.

Ashley Wilhite is a Life Coach who helps courageous women break free from expectations, create radical change, and begin living a bigger, bolder, more radiant, super awesome life.  Whether you want to move across the country, backpack through Thailand, become a yoga instructor, write a book, or quit your soul-sucking job, Ashley will help you change your life, one daring adventure at a time! You can find Ashley at Your Super Awesome Life.

Before This & After This

There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same and time is divided into two parts, before this and after this. ~ Unknown

 On our individual life timeline there are usually peaks and valleys, places that are marked by life altering events, where time is absolutely divided into the before this & after this. On Sautrday, March 23rd, another was added to my life timeline with the passing of my stepdad. 

 Over the course of 17 months my stepdad's body was fully tested and in the end, he was tired of fighting. When you have a parent who's body has been through as much as my stepdad's (a major stroke, subsequent surgeries, partial paralysis), its important to realize events like that ages them in a way that doesn't seem possible. Its an odd realization to parent  a parent and that something as simple as pneumonia or a urinary tract infection could be very dangerous. 

In the before this, my mom was (and remains) really amazing. Being a fulltime caregiver to my stepdad at home, while working a full time job of  her own was no small feat. She gave everything she could and more to him. There were numerous learning curves and challenges to overcome but she took care of him in a way that I really believe not many people could care for someone else. It was difficult, but rewarding, but also really, really hard. My stepfather's situation basically confined both of them to home, with her only being able to leave in 2/3/4 hour increments on the weekend. Seven days a week, there were aides who were able to provide much needed assistance while my mom and I worked. My stepdad was happy being cared for at home, but he wasn't living the sort of life he wanted to live.

The day my stepdad passed away was a sunny but cold, the first weekend of Spring. He was surrounded by many of the people who loved and cared about him the last 14 years of his life. He was able to hear his three children on the phone and most importantly, wasn't in any pain. Always steadfast, my mom held his hand the entire time. 

When you have a parent who is ill, sometimes, in the quiet hours, your mind will wonder to what the end may be or look like. I am incredibly relieved that when Death came it was swift and painless. My stepdad had suffered enough and deserved to part from this life peacefully. In my heart I truly believe that his body was tired of fighting, his spirit tired of holding on. 

In the after, I have learned there is peace. I know that my stepdad's spirit is free and he is no longer in pain. There will always be sadness, but right now, I'm holding on to peace. In the immediate after, there were numerous phone calls, text messages, cards and people.  There were arrangements and decisions to make, pictures to go through and people to greet. People bring food that you may or may not remember to eat. Time seemingly fast forwards and everything happens very quickly. Then relatives leave, the house is quiet, and you expect to hear him call you or his power wheelchair move across the floor. Only it doesn't. 

There is silence in the house that haunts you in unexpected ways. Suddenly, you have only yourself and the dogs to worry about in the morning before work. The flowers people graciously sent start to wilt and life goes on. My mom, brother and I are getting back to the business of life, finding a new normal, and hopefully finding ways to honor my stepdad along the way. 

The fog is lifting and with this new season in our lives, I know that as the longer days become warmer and the flowers bloom, we will find comfort and healing.  

 A huge thank you to everyone who called, emailed, texted, sent cards, etc. I appreciate each and every one of those thoughts more than you know. 

Review: Capital of the World

From Amazon: From 1944 to 1946, as the world pivoted from the Second World War to an unsteady peace, Americans in more than two hundred cities and towns mobilized to chase an implausible dream. The newly-created United Nations needed a meeting place, a central place for global diplomacy—a Capital of the World. But what would it look like, and where would it be? Without invitation, civic boosters in every region of the United States leapt at the prospect of transforming their hometowns into the Capital of the World. The idea stirred in big cities—Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans, Denver, and more. It fired imaginations in the Black Hills of South Dakota and in small towns from coast to coast.

 

Meanwhile, within the United Nations the search for a headquarters site became a debacle that threatened to undermine the organization in its earliest days. At times it seemed the world’s diplomats could agree on only one thing: under no circumstances did they want the United Nations to be based in New York. And for its part, New York worked mightily just to stay in the race it would eventually win.

 

With a sweeping view of the United States’ place in the world at the end of World War II, Capital of the World tells the dramatic, surprising, and at times comic story of hometown promoters in pursuit of an extraordinary prize and the diplomats who struggled with the balance of power at a pivotal moment in history.

 

Charlene Mires is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden. She is the author of Independence Hall in American Memory and a co-recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

My thoughts: As a student of history, I was really looking forward to reading this novel. Thoroughly researched and well written, Mires offers a full fledged account of how the UN came to be located in New York. There were incredibly long passages that honestly, sometimes did  not hold my interest. While I knew some of the background story of the UN, there are many more stories presented in the book. Honestly, sometimes my interest in these stories waned and I stepped away from the book several times. Only to come back and become engaged once again. This book contains a lot information between the covers and at times the reader can get slightly buried in the details. If you are a history buff, especially American history, this is a book that will definitely be of interest. 

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to review by TLC Tours and the publishing company but was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own.