"The Wedding People" by Alison Espach (re-read)

I hugely enjoyed "The Wedding People" by Alison Espach the first time I read it, back in February 2025, and I immediately pegged it as a book my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club would likely enjoy, as it features that rare creature: a childless-not-by-choice heroine!  Happily, my co-host read the book and agreed!  and our group will be reading and chatting about "The Wedding People" throughout the month of October.  :)  I just finished re-reading it in preparation for our discussions, and (spoiler alert! lol)  I enjoyed it just as much the second time around.  

At first glance at the cover and description, you might dismiss this one as a "beach read" -- after all, it takes place during a lavish week-long "destination wedding" at a swanky oceanside resort hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. But there's more to the story here.  

Phoebe Stone arrives at the Cornwall Inn without luggage, dressed up in a green silk frock and gold high heels. We soon learn why she's there. **CONTENT WARNING & SPOILER ALERT** She's always wanted to stay at the Cornwall, and she's flown there from St. Louis on the spur of the moment to treat herself to one last big splurge -- before she commits suicide. Her husband has left her, for someone she thought was a friend (a colleague AND a mother to boot!), following repeated (unsuccessful) rounds of IVF and a miscarriage. She just turned 40.  She's also struggling with job burnout and -- the final straw -- the death of her beloved cat.    

But while checking in, Phoebe learns the entire hotel (apart from her suite) has been booked for a lavish, week-long wedding party.  Almost immediately, she's drawn into the lives of "the wedding people," and, in particular, the self-centred, chatty young bridezilla, Lila.

So -- much more than a standard "beach read."  The book touches on a lot of sensitive themes/realities that the many readers will relate to (especially childless women), including some sharp observations about marriage and weddings, grief and loss, friendships and how they change over time. But it's also a fast and often very funny read that kept me turning the pages.  

Overall, I (still) loved it. :)  My original rating for this book was 4.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded down to 4 on Goodreads. "5 stars was very tempting," I said then. 

This time around, I'm giving into temptation:  5 stars.  :)   

This was Book #26 read to date in 2026 (and Book #1 finished in September), bringing me to 65% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am currently 1 book behind pace to meet my goal. You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books."  

"Still Glides the Stream" by D.E. Stevenson (re-read)

My D.E. Stevenson fan group read "Still Glides the Stream" together not that long ago, in the summer of 2021 (previous reviews here & here). For our summer 2026 reading, I would have preferred to choose a Stevenson book I haven't read before, or in a long time (there are still a few of those!) -- but when another member stepped in to suggest "Still Glides" (one of her favourites) -- along with an offer to organize the discussion (something I was too busy to commit to this summer) -- members eagerly took her up on it.  We began our discussion on June 22nd, and finished today.  

The title "Still Glides the Stream" comes from a Wordsworth poem. First published in 1959, this book is sometimes referred to as a "sequel" to "Amberwell" and "Summerhills," both about the Ayrton family.  A couple of the Ayrtons make a brief appearance here, but it's really a standalone story.  

Will Hastie is back with his father in Scotland, after spending 12 years in the military during and after the Second World War ( = it's now the early/mid-1950s). His childhood best friend Rae, from the neighbouring estate of Langford, died during the final days of the war, and Rae's younger sister Patty is engaged to her cousin Hugo, who will now inherit the estate. 

Before he died, Rae wrote to Patty, hinting at a big secret he hoped to share with the family when he returned home. This piece of unfinished business has been gnawing at Patty, and when she shares the letter with Will, he decides to go to France, trace his friend's final days and try to figure out what he wanted to tell his family. What he learns there changes everyone's lives. 

Like Stevenson's other books, this is a warm, gentle little story of a bygone era -- in both positive and negative ways. On the minus side, the clash between French and English cultures and ways of doing things is a thread that runs throughout the book (including the implied assumption of British superiority). The decision made by one of the characters near the book's end might horrify modern readers, but I am sure readers of the day had no doubt that she was doing the right thing.  

Nevertheless, I appreciated the themes of post-war grief and loss and moving forward, as well as Stevenson's usual well-drawn characters and lovely descriptions.  

On previous reads, I rated this book 3.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded up to 4 on Goodreads. Those ratings still stand. 

Our next book is to be determined.  

This was Book #24 read to date in 2026 (and Book #6 finished in August), bringing me to 60% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 1 book behind pace to meet my goal.  :)  (Catching up...!)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books."  

Odds & ends

I've been collecting "odds & ends" of links for at least a month now... I know I've missed out on recording a LOT of great stuff I've read lately, but I think it's time to share what I do have! 

• Big (((hugs))) to Mali at No Kidding in NZ, who recently lost her husband.  :(  
• Ali Hall at Life Without Children ponders something many childless & childfree women have realized:  too many people wanting (expecting?) a village, too few people stepping up as villagers. ("How Expecting One-Way Support From Women Without Kids to Mothers Is Anti-Village.") 
• Also from Ali Hall: "Why It’s Important for Childfree and Childless People to Have Friends Without Kids" (as well as parent friends).  
• Jody Day shares more details about her Alterkin project, one year after it began, on her Gateway Elderwomen Substack. 
• Not necessarily ALI/CNBC related, but worth a read (made me smile!):  Mary Elizabeth Williams, an American living in Glasgow and writing on Substack, ponders "What Scotland's Tartan Army can show us about joy."  :)   (One memorable line:  "be the chaos goblin you wish to see in the world."  lol) 
• This one might not be an an easy read for some of us in our community -- I certainly found myself cringing as I read it.  And for a "Critic's Notebook," I wish the article contained less of fashion commentary and more actual criticism, and had more to say about pronatalism and the agenda at work here, etc.  But it certainly reflects where American society & politics are right now...! Gift link:  "The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image." 
• A member of my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club -- where we recently read "You Are Here" by David Nicholls, one of my favourite novels of recent years -- alerted us recently that the BBC is adapting the novel, and has cast Claire Foy and Matthew Macfadyen in the roles of Marnie and Michael.  Nicholls is doing the screenplay, and the director, Lenny Abrahamson,  was in charge of the exquisite screen version of "Normal People,"  so this bodes well!  
• Sara Petersen at "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops" on Patreon talked to Kathryn Jezer-Morton about her new book ("The Story of Your Life"), "the flat story," "snark communities" and redemption narratives. Fascinating stuff!  
• Kirstie Kimball at "beyondbeurreblanc" is an independent food critic from Minnesota, who wrote a moving essay about her infertility:  "The Ghost in My Third Bedroom."  (T/W:  Cancer.)  
• Jill Holly at "Spinster-esque" on Substack has some great content related to being childless/free, including several recent posts with reading recommendations. Example:  "Books to become a feisty childfree elder:  All the inspo you need to age disgracefully."  ;)  
• Lana Manikowski has had several thoughtful posts lately on her Substack "Infertile and Childless. So Now What?"  including "The Hardest Part of Infertility" and "I’m Not the Same Woman I Was When Fertility Treatment Ended." Sample passage:  

For years, I thought surviving fertility treatment was the hardest part. Looking back, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Turns out, the hardest part wasn’t going through IVF. It was figuring out who I was when there wasn’t another protocol to try or another cycle to start.

The best-laid plans....

I'm back! (did you notice I was gone??)  

I am dead tired, and I am sure I am forgetting some things, but I wanted to break my silence (aside from my book reviews) and tell you about my recent trip west to visit my Dad.  .  

We arrived there on July 18th, as scheduled... but the situation was not what we'd been expecting.  Earlier in the week, my sister called me, in tears, to tell me one of Dad's former neighbours had taken him to the local hospital emergency room. He was having intermittent abdominal pain and (ummm...), shall we say, bathroom issues?  He was not in very good shape, severely dehydrated with some concerning bloodwork results. I asked her if we should change our flight and come earlier.. She told me she was on her way out there to see him, and not to do anything until she'd seen him for herself and reported back.   

When I talked to her again, she told me they were admitting him. They weren't sure what the source of the problem was (and they were ultimately not able to determine that), but he was being closely monitored, and the drugs and hydrating fluids they were giving him seemed to be helping.  He told her (only half-joking, I think!)  to bring a deck of cards and some money (we play for quarters, lol).  That made me feel better! so we decided to stick to our original plan. 

We stopped briefly at Dad's apartment to unload our stuff when we arrived on Saturday afternoon, and then headed over to the hospital.  Dad was in bed with the covers drawn up, but that was because the air vent was right above his bed and he was cold.  He looked and sounded a lot better than I expected, and he was anxious to get home again, but they told him they were still waiting on some test results from the city, and that he'd be there until at least Monday.   

We visited him at the hospital a few times every day for the next two days -- and then on Monday, he was discharged. It was his 87th birthday.  :)  He didn't feel much like cake just then, but he was very happy to be home.  

My sister had planned to take a week off work while we were there -- but since she'd already been off for a week unexpectedly while Dad was in the hospital (on top of other recent time off to help clear out the house, etc.), she decided to return to the office while we were there to look out for Dad, and come out on the weekends. Dad's apartment only has two bedrooms, but his old neighbours generously offered to let her & her partner stay in their basement while we were there, so that worked out very well.  

Dad didn't sleep very well at the hospital, so I was relieved when he declared, the first morning he was back home, that he'd had the best night's sleep he'd had in months. While in the hospital, he developed a taste for vanilla Greek yogurt (lol), and so we bought him some at the local store, and he ate several helpings of that every day.  One of the neighbours gave him some vanilla Boost to try, and he actually liked that too (my grandfather loathed the stuff -- maybe they've improved it since then??). He also tried and loved the bottled iced tea that my sister was drinking. He doesn't drink nearly as much water as he should, but he would drink iced tea (and it's fluids!), so dh & I were kept busy running to the store to stock up!  He has his meals delivered several times a week (and ordered meals for us too), so we didn't have to do a lot of cooking -- although we did have some fresh vegetables from the weekly local farmers' market while we were there (yum!). So he seemed to be eating a little better -- I heard him telling someone he had more of an appetite than he'd had in a while -- and my sister said she thought he looked and sounded better (and much more like his old self) than he had in months.  (I thought so too.)  

Dad asked us, early on, if we'd stay an extra week.  For some unfathomable reason, I was not able to change our tickets online (as I did when we extended our stay in January, after Mom died) -- I had to call the airline's 1-800 customer service line -- and sit on hold for more than two hours before I was able to speak to an agent!  It cost us a ridiculous amount of money to change our tickets (on top of the ridiculous amount it already cost us to buy the tickets in the first place -- travel within Canada is not cheap!) -- but I paid up, because it was clear Dad really wanted us to stay longer, and I wanted to make sure he was OK before we left. Plus he needed our help with a lot of stuff related to Mom's estate and the recent sale of the house):  we took him to the lawyer's office, the bank, and another bank in another town where we'd lived in the 1970s (we took Dad there when we were there in May, too!)  

We shopped for groceries, picked up the meals that were delivered to the building's door downstairs and reheated them later for dinner, and cooked on the nights we weren't getting those. We got Dad's yogurt, Boost, iced tea and breakfast cereal for him whenever he asked for it.  I dusted the main living areas (which needed it!), cleaned the bathroom and swiffered the floor. (The cleaning lady he & Mom had at the house is going to start coming in a few times a month, which will help.)  We picked up prescriptions at the local drugstore. We bought TV bingo cards, and I played with him every Saturday afternoon.  

Dad watches Game TV for hours on end (the game show network -- much to our consternation -- arrrghhhhhh... he's also fond of "Judge Judy"...!), but he also watched a lot of CFL football games and Major League baseball (especially the Toronto Blue Jays). I'm not a huge sports fan, but that was infinitely preferable, lol.  

We watched the construction of a new gas station next door from the balcony.  And we played cards just about every night we were there.  

We also had visitors:  Neighbours from the house dropped by several times to see how he was doing.  Parents' Neighbours' Daughter brought over all three Princesses when we had cake for his birthday, and returned with the Littlest Princess (#3) several times a week while we were there.  Her parents also came by to visit when they were in town for the day.  And one of my cousins, in Manitoba visiting family, stopped by for an hour, before heading home to Alberta. I hadn't seen her in about 25 years, so it was great to catch up!  

And we went (back) to the funeral home:  Dad purchased a niche at the local cemetery, which fits two urns, and we made arrangements to have Mom's ashes interred while we were there.  We did that last Saturday, just before we returned to Ontario. There were just the five of us (me, dh, my sister & her partner, and Dad), PND, three of Mom & Dad's former neighbours/friends, and the minister at Mom's church who presided at her funeral.  We were only there about 15 minutes, and then we went back to the apartment for lunch.  I'd ordered a tray of deli meats, pickles and cheese a couple of loaves of rye bread and some potato chips from the local grocery store, and my sister brought some Mom's favourite KitKat bars for dessert  We all had a nice visit.   

On the downside: Dad fell twice while we were there:  once, heading from the waiting room at the medical clinic, into the doctor's office (!). He insisted on using his cane and not bringing his walker with us in the car -- reached out for the counter to steady himself -- missed, and fell. :(  Everyone came running to help him (and would you believe the doctor threw out his back trying to help dad up??).  He skinned his knee (which the doctor cleaned and bandaged), and I think his pride was bruised, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage, thank goodness.  

The second time was two hours before we were scheduled to leave for the airport (!!), in the bathroom, just after he got up. I think he was still half asleep and lost his balance. With a little help from me and his walker, he was eventually able to pull himself up off the floor, and again, aside from his pride, he didn't seem to have sustained any injuries. THANK GOODNESS.  (I called him when we got home that night and he insisted he was fine. Hopefully he wasn't downplaying things...)  My sister is looking into getting him a Lifeline ASAP (and hopefully he will wear it...!).  

The doctor had mentioned he would refer Dad to homecare services too -- someone to look in on Dad regularly and maybe help him with his bath/shower.  That would be a load off my mind (although I also have memories of my mother arranging a similar service for my grandmother, 30 years ago, only to have Grandma refuse to let the person into their apartment...!).  

A few personal notes:  Staying an extra week meant we were not at home on Katie's day (Aug. 7th -- 28 years later!) to do all the traditional things we usually do. It's not the first time we've been away fro home on that day, but it's been a while. We did go out for a while that afternoon on our own to spend some private time remembering her together.  One of our traditions is a visit to the Dairy Queen for Blizzards  :)  -- there is no DQ in my parents' town, but there is a great little drive-in restaurant that's been around 60+ years (as long as I have!), and so we went there for ice cream, just the two of us. :)  

We also went to the local cemetery, to scout out the site ahead of the committal service. I said to dh as we drove there that I wished I knew where my old boss (the owner of the local weekly newspaper who gave me my first job after journalism school) was buried. Would you believe he (and his wife, whom I also knew) were both cremated, and their ashes are in the same wall where Mom & Dad's niche is, just a few rows above them?  I patted the marker in delight, said, "Thanks for my career, H." --  and dearly wished my late friend R., who worked for him too, was still here, so I could tell her.  :(  

My sister & her partner brought me "the box" from their house in the city (the one I'd filled with all the stuff I wanted to keep, when we were there in May, clearing out Mom & Dad's house). We brought an extra empty suitcase with us, and I was able to bring home the rest of my diaries/journals and other youthful writing projects, autograph books from my school days, part of an old scrapbook with concert tickets and reviews in it, etc. My sister had thrown in our great-uncle's letters home from Italy during WWII, which I had insisted should go to the county museum where my mother's family is from. I decided to take those home too, to look through and scan. I'll figure out how to get them to the museum later.  What's left in the box is mostly some books, and I should be able to take all or most of those with me when we're back again at Christmastime.

We got back here on Sunday night.  We were sooooo tired!!  And then (wouldn't you know it?), the stupid carbon monoxide detector (wall plug-in unit) started beeping at 5 AM on Monday morning!!  We bought it 10 years ago when we moved in, and I remembered the manual said it had a 10-year shelf life, and sure enough...!  I found the manual, found the switch to turn it off and that was that -- but of course by then, we were pretty much awake. Needless to say, it was an early bedtime...!  

We're still really tired, though. Extending the fatigue (lol):  we spent Tuesday morning with the Little Great-Nephews (lol) -- SIL/their grandmother asked if we'd stay with them for a few hours while she went out for an appointment, and of course we said yes. They are/were pretty good, but noisy and full of energy. Dh spent half the morning chasing LGNephew #2 around the house. Then the little guy wrapped himself up in a blanket and conked out (on the floor!) before his grandmother got back -- and dh did likewise this afternoon when we got back home!  

I tried to keep with reading and commenting on your blogs while I was away, but I will admit I was not very successful...!  (Likewise, I barely looked at my social media accounts.)  I'm hoping to catch up a little, now that I'm home. 

(Did I say I was tired??)  This eldercare stuff is not easy.  (And my sister has been shouldering most of the responsibility for many years now.  And Dad is in better shape than many elderly people, I know.)  Kudos to all of you who have caregiving responsibilities of any kind! 

Bicentennial memories

I was 15 years old during in the summer of 1976. I'm Canadian, but my mother was American, and I spent a lot of time in Minnesota with my grandparents and extended family during the holidays -- especially the summertime -- every summer (until I was 17 and got a part-time summer job that cut into my traditional lazy summers,  anyway). In 1974, we'd moved to a town that was closer to the border and to where my grandparents lived -- an easy drive for a weekend's visit -- so we were able to spend a lot more time there than we had in the past. 

So I was in the U.S. a fair bit during the two years leading up to U.S. Bicentennial celebrations, as well as on/around July 4, 1976, itself.  My memories from 50 (!!) years ago are not as sharp as they once were, but I do have some from that time. 

You couldn't NOT notice what was going on!  There was a huge buildup in the years, months and weeks ahead of July 1976 -- including two-plus years' worth of Bicentennial Minutes -- brief snippets of American Revolutionary history, broadcast nightly on the CBS TV network, narrated by CBS actors.  You can watch some of them on YouTube! (of course!)  Moving closer to the border meant we could pull in some U.S. TV stations with our rotary antenna (cable came to our town a few years later) -- CBS was a little out of our range (although we could sometimes pick up a fuzzy picture on an especially clear night, or after a thunderstorm), but there was plenty of other Bicentennial-related content on the ABC and NBC affiliates we could pick up. I think it's safe to say that Canadian kids of my generation grew up knowing more about American historical events/mythology and figures from watching American TV than we did about our own country's story.   

Norman Rockwell, the artist whose work is synonymous with "Americana," was from New England, but I used to see his paintings and immediately think of my mom's small hometown in Minnesota (population about 1,400, back then).  It was that kind of place and that kind of vibe.  As part of its Bicentennial celebrations, the town organized a huge all-school reunion -- which meant that, even more than usual, my grandmother's little house was full of neighbours, old friends and relatives who had come "home" for the occasion, dropping by to visit. Grandma always had a pot of coffee percolating on the gas stove, home-baked goodies in the pantry, and a warm welcome for everyone who came through the door. The screened-in back porch, covered in Virginia creeper, was always full of people, sitting and chatting and laughing. It wasn't a big porch, but I'm always amazed when I think of how many people we were able to pack in there!  

On the 4th of July itself, we all went downtown to watch a big parade and, later that evening, drove to another nearby town to watch fireworks. In between, we hand-cranked homemade ice cream on the screened-in back porch, in an old-fashioned ice-cream making tub (packed with ice and rock salt), which we ate with fresh local strawberries. I remember my uncle and cousins setting off their own fireworks in the field behind Grandma's house, and lighting sparklers in the back yard, although I'm not sure if those memories are from Bicentennial 4th or other Fourth of Julys, growing up. 

There were lots of cousins and extended family in the area at that time -- the ones who lived there then, and others who were visiting -- and we drove to my great-aunt's house, about about an hour away, for a barbecue/mini-reunion with relatives from my grandmother's side of the family.  Those present included our hostess (Grandma's sister-in-law, divorced from Grandma's brother, but still close to everyone in the family), her son (Mom's cousin, 22 years old at the time), who lived with her, and her daughter, who lived/lives in California, was there with her husband and two kids; my parents, grandparents & sister;  my uncle, his wife and my two cousins; another great-aunt (Grandma's older sister), her daughter (another cousin of Mom's, who was also my godmother) and her two daughters. Years later, the California cousin's husband sent me some digitized photos from that day, including a group photo of all the kids, and another of me, my sister and the next two oldest girl cousins, sitting in one of the cars, windows open, listening to music on the radio (and running down the car battery, no doubt...!) and reading Tiger Beat magazine. :)  

All the kids in those photos are now in their late 50s and early/mid-60s. (I am the oldest cousin of my generation on that side of the family. Interestingly, only three of the eight of us who were there that day have kids.) Of the adults in the photos, my grandparents, my two great-aunts, my mom, her brother (my uncle), their then-22-year-old cousin and the California cousin's husband who sent me the photos, are gone. Just two of my mom's cousins who were there, as well as my uncle's wife and my dad, are still with us today.  

Maybe it's the loss and the absence of these wonderful people. Maybe it's the charged political atmosphere today (although 1976 wasn't too far removed from the turmoil of Watergate and Vietnam, etc.).  Maybe it's because I haven't been to the States in several years, and haven't been able to absorb the atmosphere for myself. Maybe there just doesn't seem to be as much hoopla, that I've noticed from the other side of the border, anyway. Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic, fuelled by so many reminders of the past while helping my sister clear out our parents' house recently.  Maybe I'm just getting older, and looking back through rose-coloured glasses.  

But I'm not feeling the same sense of anticipation and excitement about tomorrow's milestone holiday, from where I sit across the border, or from my family & friends there...  

I miss them all. 

"London Falling" by Patrick Radden Keefe

I haven't been able to stop thinking about or recommending the book "Say Nothing" by Patrick Radden Keefe since I read it, almost exactly 7 (!) years ago.  (My review here.) 

I think I will be saying the same thing about Keefe's latest book, "London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth."  It's the story of 19-year-old Zac Brettler, who fell to his death into the murky water of the Thames River from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment building in London, in November 2019.  What happened to Zac, and why?  His grief-stricken parents, Matthew and Rachelle, began looking for answers. And the more they looked, the more questions they had -- and the more they realized how little they really knew about their son...  

I don't want to give too much away, but this book took some pretty wild twists and turns, involving Russian oligarchs (plus a few Indians and Saudis), scammers and gangsters, inept (and possibly corrupt) investigators, complicit bankers and politicians, amazing coincidences and connections, the Holocaust, and long-hidden family secrets (among other themes explored). You almost need a "who's who/cast of characters" list to keep all the characters straight! 

While the subject matter and place are clearly not within my frame of reference, I was struck by the realization that Matthew and Rachelle Brettler are about the same age as me (perhaps a few years younger?), and their older son Joe would be about the same age as my stillborn daughter would have been. I could also relate to the picture the book paints of the pursuit of wealth run amok, and the attraction that money and status can hold for an impressionable teenager: I live in a very affluent suburb where big McMansions, flashy cars, designer labels and Instagram-worthy weddings and other social events are something many people have or aspire to.  

(I'm reminded of a party I attended a few years ago where a thin, tanned, well-dressed languid woman who -- I kid you not -- carried a small dog in her designer bag -- mentioned they had recently had to downsize their home because her husband lost it while gambling (!!).  Thankful to (finally) have something I could contribute to the conversation, I said I could relate, because we too had recently downsized our home, from a 1400 square foot, three-bedroom house to an 875 square foot two-bedroom condo  "Downsizing" for her meant leaving her 10,000 square foot home for one that was "just" 4,000 square feet. Ooooookaaayyyy.... I mean, I guess for her, that was downsizing, but still...!)  

What I could relate to most (ALI alert here!) was the Brettlers' grief over the loss of their son -- and how sensitively the author handled the subject. Obviously, theirs is a very different kind of grief than mine (age of the child, the circumstances...) -- but so very similar in many ways too. There's a passage in Chapter 14 that sounded soooo familiar:  

They did not know that Matthew had recently lost a child, and he did not tell them. "It's quite a lot to put on people,"  he explained. He often struggled with this dilemma of how much to reveal about the tragedy that had engulfed him. When he reconnected with old friends he hadn't spoken to in a while, they would ask, "And how are the children?"  Matthew would hesitate, thinking, "I'm not going to lay this story on them."  At first he wondered if he might be disrespecting Zac's memory somehow by opting not to tell people. But it's also not fair when people innocently ask and then feel awful for having done so, he thought.  So often he would dissolve the awkwardness with humor, saying, with a gentle smile, "You're really going to regret asking that question..."  

And in Chapter 22:  

....since going public, the Brettlers had started to hear from other parents who connected in one way or another with what they had experienced with Zac...  Rachelle liked the thought that something good might come from Zac's death. And it was less lonely knowing there were other parents our there contending with similar dilemmas. 

Throughout the book, Keefe weaves in the Brettlers' family stories about surviving the Holocaust, and in Chapter 22, they reflect on that legacy:  

"...I think it's a real challenge to live, when you have that weight on you," [Matthew] continued.  "You've got to keep going."  

"I would say that's what both our dads have done,"  Rachelle said... Rachelle seemed determined to do at least that much for Joe [their surviving child].  "She has made herself get out of bed and hae a full and active and interesting life," Gaby [Rachelle's sister] said. Rachelle and Matthew might not have realized it, growing up, or might not have thought they would ever need it, but the greatest gift they had received was this astonishing example, on both sides of the family, of how to live joyously in the face of loss.  

"It's choosing life," Rachelle said. 

And a little further down:  

Grief might be a process, but it is not a problem that you solve.  

(Amen to that!)

Kudos to Keefe for another absolutely riveting read. I could not put this one down.  

(I've had "Empire of Pain" in my TBR pile for a while now;  I think I will have to make that a summer reading priority too...!)  

5 enthusiastic stars on both StoryGraph & Goodreads. 

This was Book #15 read to date in 2026 (and Book #1 finished in July), bringing me to 38% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 4 books behind pace to meet my goal.  :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books." 

"Evvie Drake Starts Over" by Linda Holmes

I'd had a couple of childless friends recommend "Flying Solo" by Linda Holmes to me as a good CNBC-friendly read.  But I couldn't remember which Holmes book they'd told me about, offhand, and picked up her debut novel, "Evvie Drake Starts Over" (which was a "Read With Jenna" book club selection). Oh well!    

Evvie Drake has been holed up in her big house in a small town in Maine, ever since her husband died in a car accident.  Everyone assumes she's grieving. (It's complicated...)  

Then her best friend Andy asks if she'd consider renting the small apartment attached to her house to an old friend of his who's also laying low: Dean Tenney, a Major League baseball pitcher (New York Yankees!)  who's got a bad case of "the yips," has lost his mojo and is being hounded by the press about it.  

Would you be surprised to learn these two gradually move from a landlord-tenant relationship to friendship to something more??  (Me either...)   

Author Roxane Gay called this a "Hallmark movie" in her Goodreads review. She's not wrong. It definitely falls into the "rom-com" category -- and it's utterly predictable.  (There's even a cute puppy, near the end.)  The romance is the slow burn variety -- maybe almost a little too slow. On balance, it's a pleasant read, and it says some wise things about grief, near the end.  I will admit I developed a bit of a crush on Dean.  ;)  And  I would love to see/own Evvie's cottage by the water! 

I will likely look at "Flying Solo" as a future read.

3 stars on Goodreads & StoryGraph.   

ALI/CNBC notes (mild spoiler alerts):  Evvie does not have children, but she does dote on Andy's two young daughters. 

I got a shock of recognition in Chapter 31:  Dean says some things about his career that, while not about fertility treatments, definitely gave me a feeling of deja vu. (If/when you read the book, you'll see what I mean...!)  Points to the author for that!  

This was Book #14 read to date in 2026 (and Book #4 finished in June), bringing me to 35% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books behind pace to meet my goal.  :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books." 

Odds & ends

• Anyone else feeling overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of prom, graduation and last day of school photos on social media this week??  (In Canada/North America, anyway -- I know different countries have different school year calendars!) It's been going on in dribs & drabs over the past month or so, as the school year wound down, and I've been doing OK so far -- but today/tomorrow is the last day of school hereabouts, plus lots of grads & proms this week, and it's like I've reached the saturation point…! 

• Mel is marking a big milestone over at Stirrup Queens! Go over and congratulate (and thank) her!  

• Sue Fagalde Lick at "Can I Do it Alone?" recently landed in the hospital :(  Go wish her well and read some of her posts from the past month about what happened and what childless seniors living alone can do to better cope with these crises. 

• On a related note:  Jody Day was interviewed about her Alterkin project, aging as a childless person, and aging generally, as part of an article on aging in The Atlantic! Here's a gift link for "Americans Are in Denial About Elder Care." (Not just Americans...) 

• Jody Day also flagged this thought-provoking article from "The Shift by Sam Baker" -- a guest post from Kim Willis:  "Stop calling me 'child-free'." 
• I wrote a similarly themed post in the early days of this blog, almost 19 (!) years ago (and have returned to the subject several times since then):  "Am I childLESS or childFREE?"

• Nora McInerny reminds all of us who take photos to "Get in the picture." (That includes those of us without kids -- a subject I have written about in the past -- here, for example.)  

I’m only asking you to consider that with the exception of the worst people in the world, life is tragically short. Someday, you will look upon this version of yourself and see yourself through new eyes. Eyes that might need bifocals or cataract surgery, but eyes that still work well enough to see that you, with that rogue chin hair or the jeans that Gen Z TikTokkers are trying to bully you out of wearing are more beautiful than you know.

Someday you will long for the version of you that exists today, however flawed you believe her to be. Give future you something to marvel over, grab your Cybershot, and get in the picture.

• “Everything happens for a reason.” Or does it?  Lexi Weber Johnson at "Not Expecting" explains why this is not a helpful thing to say to someone who is grieving. 

Underneath the “everything happens for a reason” line is something more universal: a discomfort with uncertainty. We want life to make sense. We want outcomes to add up. We want suffering to belong to a larger story. Because the reality that some things simply happen, full stop, is harder to bear.

• Jennie Agg at Life, Almost says "I can't keep up." (She is singing my song...!)
• Jennie also has thoughts on "Trimester Zero" (!). ("Let's not do this.") 
  

• I haven't quite lost all my elders yet -- I still have my dad, and most of my dad's siblings, and my maternal uncle's wife, and several of my mother's cousins (and am thankful for every day I still have them all in my life). But I found myself nodding vigorously as I read Cyndie Spiegel's post from "Life, Created" ("v. 70 One Day You Realize That There's No One Left to Ask"). 
• I have been feeling this keenly since my mom's death in January, and the task of sorting through several generations' worth of possessions. More and more, I feel my past slipping through my fingers and receding into the distance. And I'm mourning that loss alongside the loss of my mom.  

Recent odds & ends

• World Childless Week (WCW) has announced the daily topics for WCW 2026 (Sept. 14th to 20th).  Learn more about WCW 2026 and how you can get involved here.   
• In a blog post for the World Childless Week website, Gayle Letherby offers "Some Reflections on Being ‘Other'." 
• Lana Manikowski at "Infertile and Childless: So Now What?" poses an important question: "When IVF Fails Again and Again: How Do You Know When Enough Is Enough?" 
• Lexi Weber at "Not Expecting" shares five observations about infertility (including that "Infertility makes you weird at brunch").  
• PJ is "In Transition" -- and yes, PJ, this all definitely sounds familiar!!  (Read her post and a few of my latest, and you'll understand why...!)  
• Every now & then, a long-dormant blog on my blogroll will pop to the top of the list with a new post. "Tips on Triplets" re-emerged recently with a post ("Trauma Chameleon") looking at the lingering effects of loss and trauma, 15 years later. 
• Y'all know I love the Flavia de Luce novels by Canadian author Alan Bradley. Sadly, I learned through one of my book clubs (where we read the first Flavia book together which was happily very well received!) that Bradley died on May 19th at age 87. How he managed to channel an 11-year-old girl (from 1950s UK -- when he'd never set foot there before he wrote the first book!) so incredibly well will remain a mystery...!  
• Very happily, he left one final Flavia novel for us:  "Numb Were the Beadsman's Fingers," available on Nov. 3rd.  :)  Also, "Flavia" the movie (based on the first Flavia book, "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie") will be released in North America on Dec. 4th! (It's been out in the UK since early April.)  

The little wooden chest

Right after I told my mother over the phone, that day in March 1998, that I was pregnant,  she started shopping. It wasn't long afterward that she excitedly told me about the bargain she'd found and snapped up from an an end-of-season clearance rack -- an adorable little furry white bunting bag. She mentioned other things she'd found too -- a cute little outfit, a Beatrix Potter/Peter Rabbit cup, a book.  She mentioned gifts from friends and neighbours, including handknit or crocheted items. 

After we lost Katie, I remember her wiping away tears at my kitchen table one day and whispering, "Someday I'll show you all the little things I bought."  

One of the next times we visited there, there was a new addition to the bedroom where we usually slept:  a small wooden chest with a nature scene painted on top that my dad had won in a charity raffle.

I knew immediately what was inside. 

Over the years, I did open the lid and take a peek a couple of times, but didn't have the heart to start pulling things out or rummaging through them.  

Almost 28 years passed -- and we never did go through the contents of that little chest together. 

And then my mom died in January.  

My sister asked me if we were going to take the little chest home with us, and offered to keep it for us if we wanted it.  I knew getting it home would be a problem -- obviously, it wouldn't fit into a suitcase! -- and where would we put it here?  I told her I would go through the chest myself and decide what to do with it and its contents.  

I did it one day when we were there last month, during the week she was at work in the city and I was by myself upstairs in the house, going through boxes and boxes of stuff. It was now sitting in the adjacent empty bedroom next door, as the usual room was now empty of furniture and being used as our work/sorting area.  I pulled the chest into the middle of the room, sat down on the floor, took a deep breath, and started taking things out and taking photos of each item.  

Dh found me sitting there a while later, tears rolling down my face. 

The chest was not as full as I'd remembered. I suspect Mom had quietly given a few of the items away over the years. (I knew that a little sweater and cap set, knit by a kind neighbour, now dead, went to Little Princess #3, as I wrote here at the time, almost three years ago now. Her mom, Parents Neighbours' Daughter, sent me a photo of her wearing it.)  

The bunting bag was there, a little jacket in bright primary colours, a (very few) little outfits. The Peter Rabbit mug.  (I thought there had once been a matching bowl that went with it, but it was not there.)  A book.  A program from the All Saints Day service at our church, where Katie's name was among the loved ones who had died during the year (dh & I attended, and I sent a program to Mom). Mother's and Father's Day cards sent during my pregnancy, with excited notes from me inside and, in one, a photocopy of my ultrasound scan photo.  (I found a couple of similar cards that my grandmother had saved, which I'd completely forgotten about, and broke my heart to read.)  An invitation to the baby shower that was never held, from the hostess (dh's Cousin/Neighbour's Wife, who enclosed a warm personal note expressing how excited she and her two little girls were about the prospect of having a baby in the family nearby). 

Separately, we also found a still-wrapped package in a drawer (that I think had once been in the chest?) from one of Mom's friends, wrapped in baby-appropriate paper with a small card "For Baby from L."  I brought it home with me too. I still haven't opened it. (It feels like a baby book.)   

I kept the wrapped package, one of the little outfits, the book, the Peter Rabbit mug (which now sits in my china cabinet), and the cards, and brought them home with me in my suitcase.  I bagged the rest of the clothes and told my sister she could donate the bag somewhere, as well the now-empty chest.  

Here are photos of some of the things I found:  

The little wooden chest. (It looks huge here, but it wasn't.) 

The painted top. 

With the lid open. 

A colourful little springtime jacket. 

The bunting bag/snowsuit. :( 

The tag inside read, "Little Miracles."   :(  

Some lovely friend or neighbour knit this beautiful little hat/cowl. 

The Peter Rabbit mug. 

This is the outfit that I kept. 

Outfit #2. 

Outfit/ensemble #3. 

A book. 

In two weeks of letting a lot of treasured things go, this was one of the very hardest. 

(SOME of the) Things I found while helping to empty out my parents' house

My parents were married for more than 65 years, and lived in the house that just sold (and is closing at the end of this month) for 42 years. During that time, they also helped clear a couple of other people's houses (and accumulated some stuff from those places) -- most notably the house my mom grew up in, which was built by her grandparents/my great-grandparents after their marriage in 1904, and bulldozed in early 1998. (My grandparents had moved in the early 1980s, to an apartment and later to the care home in town, but there was still a lot of stuff left in the house until just a few years before it was torn down.). 

Neither my mom, nor my grandmother, were very good about throwing things away (to put it mildly...). In a nutshell, there was (and still is) a LOT of STUFF to go through!  My sister & I started going through closets while I was still there in December/January, and she has continued the work over the past few months (mostly on weekends, because she's still working and lives about an hour away). By the time I got there a few weeks ago, the pile of boxes in the closet assigned to me to go through had grown quite a bit since my sister sent me the photo I used in this post) -- and of course there were still other closets and cupboards to empty too. 

Some of the stuff was mine. (I'm a bit of a packrat too -- although moving to and living in a condo has forced me to do better...! And suffice to say, I would not want to leave a similar amount of stuff behind for the nephews to go through, after I've gone...!)  My sister & I have done two or three weed-outs of our stuff at Mom & Dad's in the past, but there was still a LOT there that needed to be sorted through and disposed of. Somewhat miraculously, I managed to pare down what was there enough to fit into one box (after filling a suitcase to take home with me -- also miraculously, it did NOT exceed the airline's weight limit!!).  My sister and her partner have agreed to keep the box for me for one year. I figure I'll be heading back in July and likely again at Christmastime, and should be able to bring what's left home with me over the next two or three visits.    

It was physically tiring work, but emotionally exhausting too. (Kleenex was required.)  All these things, saved and treasured by my mom & grandmother (and great-grandmother) for all these years... and now it was up to my sister & me (both childless -- the buck stopped with us) to decide what the heck to do with it all.  

We sorted things into several different piles:  

• keep (for Dad's apartment, my sister or me, or possibly PND), 
• ask our cousins if they want it (not likely, as they just finished emptying out THEIR parents' & other grandparents' houses!), 
• recycle, 
• take to the local thrift store,
• take to the local library (books),
• possibly sell? (PND's dad sells vintage stuff through his eBay store -- he got some jaw-dropping prices for our old Barbie dolls and their clothes!). 
• I also set aside a few things I thought should be offered to the museum in the Minnesotan county where my mom's family is from.  (Not sure how or when we can get things to them, since neither my sister nor I are anxious to cross the border anytime soon...)
• Sadly, many of the things we found had to be tossed -- but I did take a lot of photos of some of the more interesting or memorable items. 

Among the things we found:  

• Tchotchkes upon tchotchkes... decorations for all seasons! (My sister is keeping some of the Christmas decorations for now, since Dad has expressed an interest in having a small tree in his apartment.)  
• At least four or five (mostly) complete sets of dishes, some of which my dad & sister took. The rest went to the thrift store.  
• Drinking glasses (some of them chipped and cracked -- we gleefully tossed those -- we'd been trying to get our mom to throw them out for years!!).  And lots of coffee mugs.  We took the ones that get used the most over to Dad's apartment.  
• We found an entire set of vintage early 1960s highball glasses that I dimly remember from my childhood, wrapped in newspaper and packed away in a box in the garage. I don't think it had been opened since Mom & Dad moved in, 42 years ago. When we realized what was in the box, we closed it up again and set it aside to go straight to the local thrift store.  
• An entire box (plus an entire drawer) filled with vintage recipe books that belonged to both our Mom and Grandma, as well as their boxes of recipe cards and piles of recipes written on random pieces of paper. My sister set most of these aside to go through later. 
• (There was also a stack of recipes in our great-grandmother's handwriting -- most of them in pencil and barely readable. Sadly, most of these got tossed.)  
• More empty plastic margarine tubs and casserole dishes than anyone will ever have use for.   
• Piles of towels and sheets, worn threadbare -- as well as some that were like new and barely or never used?? 
• What seemed to be every single greeting card my grandmother ever received, dating back to at least the 1940s. (Grandma, I love you, but seriously??)  
• Umpteen vintage postcards, some of them signed (some by family members), but many of them blank. (These may ultimately get tossed, but my sister is going to look into whether they're worth anything.) 
• Boxes & boxes and piles & piles of old photos (both our family's and Grandma's), dating back to the late 1800s. Some identified or identifiable, but many sadly not. (My sister is going to arrange to have them scanned, or as many as possible, but says she can't keep all the originals, which makes me cringe.)  
• Tax receipts and receipts from local businesses in my mom's/grandmother's hometown, dating back to the early 1900s, including some for my great-great grandmother's house.  (Those got tossed.) 
• My grandmother's report cards from school. (She wasn't a particularly good student!) 
• All of MY report cards from school! (I took these home with me.)  
• Letters and paperwork related to my medical history as a child, including a couple of vaccination records. (Ditto above.)  
• A box containing my childhood/teenaged/young adult diaries & journals and assorted other writing. This was a huge relief, as I'd been looking for these on previous visits home and they were not where I thought they should be. There were a lot more notebooks than I'd remembered, and they made a HEAVY pile!  I took some of the earliest (and likely funniest) ones home with me and will bring the rest on future visits. 
• I didn't have time to go through them, but I did glance into a couple (and shook my head -- "He's not worth all the angst, teenage Loribeth!"). 
• I may toss some or all of them eventually, but I would like the chance to look through them more closely first, and I didn't have time to do that then. 
• I did immediately toss one notebook filled with really bad, cringeworthy teenage poetry. Yikes!!  lol  
• I'd tossed most of my school notebooks, etc., during previous clearouts -- but I'd still kept several scrapbooks, projects, etc., plus programs from high school band concerts, drama productions, etc. and many of the essays I'd written.  I think I kept every university essay too.  I tossed almost all of them, but took photos of some of the grades and teacher/prof comments. 
• I had to chuckle/shake my head when I looked at the titles/topics of some of the papers (which sounded strangely familiar/current...!):  Quebec separatism, western Canadian alienation, the rise of the Moral Majority and evangelical churches' influence in U.S. politics, Trudeau's record as prime minister (Pierre, obviously -- Justin was a child at the time!)...  Plus ca change...! 
• On a Grade 12 essay on Shakespeare's Hamlet, my teacher dryly observed, "So much story here to get to the point you wish to make."  I took a photo of that comment -- touchez, Mr. P!  (Dh will tell you things haven't improved over the past 45+ years...!  lol and ouch!) 
• A stack of vintage 1970s Osmonds bubble gum cards. 
• A stack of all the 1970s-era 45s my sister & I owned (separately & jointly, pooling our allowances). 
• LPs: I already had most of mine (and gave them to Older Nephew when we moved into our condo), but there were still plenty owned by my sister, ones we owned jointly (lots of Archies, Partridge Family, Osmonds, Bay City Rollers, K-Tel compilations), Christmas albums (many of them gifts from our grandparents), and ones that were my mom's. 
• Beautiful church certificates from my great-grandparents' 1904 marriage, as well as similar baptism certificates for several of their children, including my grandmother. 
• Guest books for both my grandparents' funerals, my great-uncle's funeral and my parents' 40th wedding anniversary party.  
• Stacks of letters/notes that my grandparents wrote to each other in the years between when they started going out together (late 1920s) until their marriage in 1937. This floored me, because they lived in the SAME SMALL TOWN during almost all of that time!!  Many of them didn't even seem to have been mailed (no envelopes, just names written on the back of carefully folder pages.  I'm guessing they passed notes to each other in the hallways at school, or had them delivered by friends?  
• Another (smaller) pile of letters.... from other girls to my grandfather (!!).  Flirtatious ones too, from what I gathered at a glance. (No time to sit and read all this stuff, even if I wanted to!)  
• This also floored me for two reasons:  (1) My understanding was my grandparents only ever had eyes for each other... apparently not!  (2)  My grandmother actually KEPT these letters from her rivals in her house??!  
• A vintage 1899 single-page "love letter" in beautiful handwriting, from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother (!), apparently in the early days of their courtship. She was leaving on a trip west:  he laments that their acquaintance to date has been too brief, and ends by asking her to "Please do not forget your [name]."  Awww..... 
• A pile of letters and V-mails from my great-uncle (my grandmother's younger brother) from when he served in Italy during World War II, as well as his induction notice, discharge papers and other related paperwork. He never married or had children... lived a quiet, unassuming life with my grandparents after he returned from the war, and worked on a local honey farm as a beekeeper, until his untimely death at age 58.
• Also:  my grandfather's induction notice, and his medical board rejection notice (!). 
• Also:  a stack of my great-grandmother's wartime ration books (!) -- WITH coupons still inside them!!  
• I insisted to my sister that these need to be donated to the county museum. I think I've convinced her.  (I hope.)  I took photos of one of the letters, but I wish I'd had time to read more of them.  
• An entire box filled with letters my mom wrote to my dad (!) and her pre-dad boyfriend/fiance from nursing school (she was there one year before getting married), as well as a diary. Yes, I was curious!  But -- my sister & I decided there are some things you probably shouldn't know about your parents (especially when one of them is still around), and agreed these needed to go, unread. 
• My mother's 1960 wedding dress (short, pale blue) and several vintage 1950s prom/bridesmaid dresses.  The wedding dress sadly had long-established mildew stains on it and had to go, but my sister is going to see if any vintage stores or charities that outfit girls for prom would be interested in the others.  
• MY 1979 graduation dress. (I took a photo of it and put in the pile for the thrift store.) 
• Several adorable children's dresses that my sister and I wore back in the 1960s.
• An adorable little red sweater with white trim and little buttons that look like owl faces, hand-knit for me when I was a toddler/pre-schooler by one of my mom's high school friends. We showed it to PND and she took it home to wash and see if it would fit Little Princess #3.    
• A large box filled with smaller boxes, ALL containing Mom's jewelry (and some of Grandma's too, I think). The vast majority of it was cheap costume stuff.  We didn't have time to go through it, but my sister said she will and she'll set aside anything she thinks I'd be interested in. 
• And... a little wooden chest, that I'm going to post about separately.  

It's not often that I manage to make my sister completely crack up
with laughter, but this photo did the trick!!  🤣
It's from a Grade 1 (1966-67) scrapbook project, titled "Ways Plants Help Us."
The page on the right is captioned "Beauty and shade" 
and apparently is illustrated with a vintage ad for bras and girdles!  
🤣🤣🤣

#MicroblogMondays: Homecoming mantra

I'm generally not a nervous flyer... but I do tend to tense up a bit during takeoff and landings.  (Once I'm in the air, or on the ground again, I'm generally okay.)  And for years and years, whenever I was flying "home" to visit my parents, I would repeat a silent mantra to myself, from the time the plane started to taxi down the runway until it was safely aloft in the air:  "Take me home safe to my mother... take me home safe to my mother."  

As the plane pulled away from the terminal on our recent flight west, my eyes filled with tears and I had to pull out a kleenex from my pocket, as I realized:  I can't say that any more:  I have no mother to travel "home" to any more.  And to say "Take me home safe to my dad," while accurate, seemed a bit jarring after so many years.  

"Take me home safe," I finally repeated to myself instead. (Works both going there and coming "home" to the Toronto area too.)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"Regeneration" by Pat Barker

I recently finished reading "Regeneration" by Pat Barker, part of another "slow readalong" with Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents. It's mostly set at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, Scotland,  in 1917, where Dr. William Rivers (a real-life historical figure) is treating traumatized soldiers, including (real-life) war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Today we'd say they were suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder);  back then, they were labelled "shell-shocked."  

It's Rivers's job to treat his patients and make them well enough to be sent back to the front to continue fighting  (!). Rivers mostly uses talk therapy, in contrast with his colleague Lewis Yealland, whose methods are detailed in a wince-inducing chapter near the end of the book that reminded me a little of the dental chair scene in the movie "Marathon Man" with Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman.  (IYKYK -- no dental equipment is involved, but be forewarned...!)  

Graphically described primitive treatment methods aside, there's a lot in this book that I liked and enjoyed.  Although the main characters are all male, I was pleasantly surprised to find women's perspectives featured, particularly through the character of Sarah Lumb, who works in a munitions factory. 

And, as usual, Simon's "footnotes and tangents," and the comments and observations of other readers, added a lot to my enjoyment and understanding of the novel.  I particularly enjoyed the YouTube clips Simon posted of well-known actors reading some of the war poetry mentioned in the book. The poetry was an unexpected highlight:  I was familiar with Owen's classic "Dulce et Decorum Est," thanks to my wonderful high school English teachers, and I'd heard of Sassoon, but hadn't read any of his work before. Still powerful stuff.  

"Regeneration" is the first book in a trilogy featuring some of the same characters. Simon says we'll probably read them both eventually on F&T, and I will look forward to that!  This was my first Pat Barker book, and I would definitely like to read some of her other work. (I did not realize at first that "Pat" was actually "Patricia" and not "Patrick!" -- give me a demerit on my feminist membership card, lol.)  

After some thought, I've given this one 4 stars on both Goodreads and StoryGraph.  

Next up at Footnotes & Tangents:  "The Inheritors" by William Golding, beginning June 5th and running through to the end of the month. (Not sure I'll be joining this one.)

This was Book #9 read to date in 2026 (and Book #1 of 2 finished to date in May -- one more to come). You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books."