"The Dream Daughter"

One of my favorite books of all time is "Time and Again" by Jack Finney. It's a marvelous time travel book where an advertising art director travels back and forth to 1880's New York City. Well, this book is a virtual tie with it. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started it. It's about a woman who lives with her sister and brother-in-law in the Outer Banks in 1970. She recently lost her husband in Viet Nam and is bearing his child. Late in her pregnancy, it's discovered her child has a heart defect which will kill her soon after being born. To her astonishment, her B-I-L reveals that he's actually travelled back in time and has the ability to send her to the future where, through medical advances, can have surgery to save her unborn daughter. 

The story doesn't delve into the science of time travel, and I wouldn't really classify it as science fiction, but more of a love story. And boy did this book grab me. By the time I got about half way through it, I absolutely couldn't put it down. I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon racing through it, it was that good. And not only was it a brilliant story, it was extremely well written. I can definitely see this turned into a movie.

"A Star is Bored"

 

What a wonderful book. Very entertaining. The author mentions in the preface that it's a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people and events is coincidental. That said, it's about a young man who is unsure of himself and is at a crossroads in his life He applies for and gets a job as a personal assistant to an actress that strongly resembles Carrie Fisher. Who's kidding who here? It's really about Ms Fisher because you simply can't make stuff up this rich and entertaining. The dialogue and action had me hooked from page one and it turned out to be one of those rare books I couldn't put down. While most of the book is full of zany antics, the Carrie Fisher-like boss ultimately becomes sort of a surrogate mother to the author. And in the end, she helps him grow and evolve into the person he was meant to be. It's ultimately a sweet character study I highly recommend.