Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: Compulsively Readable Mystery

Paris, 1897: France is bursting with Republican fervor. Enter Clarie, wife, mother and schoolteacher. Clarie considers herself fortunate because her husband supports her career teaching. But when one of the lycée's "charwomen", Francesca, asks Clarie to help find her two missing daughters, Clarie runs up against the limits of her husband's modern-mindedness. Author Barbara Corrado Pope plots Clarie's search with precision, giving just enough detail to move the events along but never to the degree that the ending is obvious. The Missing Italian Girl will delight fans of both mystery and historical fiction.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

Compulsively Readable Mystery

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