Definitely will appeal more to the female readers in the audience. A woman coming of age book with a few interesting twists. I liked it. ( )

This novel is probably the most intriguing of those I’ve read about father-daughter relationships. Miranda and her stand-offish father live on a tiny island in Maine. Her mother died when Miranda was very young. The dad seems cruel at first, but this story is really about how Miranda grows to understand and appreciate him. Life for both is quiet on the island, but things change for Miranda when her dad finds her a job in New York City, a place he himself once lived.

The author refers to parts of Ovid’s Metamorphosis because the father’s job, within the story, was to translate this work. At first, I felt a little lost, not being big on mythology nor having read Ovid’s work. However, the mythology itself was treated lightly and wove its way into Miranda’s thoughts quite beautifully so I wasn’t put off by it after all.

There were two things that bothered me about this book, though. One was that two relationships in which Miranda engaged seemed somewhat thrust upon the story rather than emerging naturally. The other situation that bewildered me was that one character was just left dangling at the end!

Nevertheless, the overall mood of the story, that of melancholy and loneliness, seemed to just carry me along. I like that Miranda felt comfortable enough with her loneliness that it helped her to make personal choices in her favor. I think that’s a nice message. ( )

I saw this cover on a blog devoted to book covers. It is one of several covers. I loved the cover. While at my public library I saw the book. I am so glad that I read it. It is hard to believe this is her first novel. The story has "coming of age" intertwined with loneliness. She literally grows up on an island off the coast of Maine. It is also a book about how we develop our sexuality. ( )

coming of age, maine, new york city, ovid, novel, lesbian, island, ovid ( )

A charming debut novel, about Miranda Donnal as she comes to know both herself and her eccentric father Peter. Deeper than its slim size would suggest, the book contains allusions to both Shakespeare's Tempest and tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which Peter has spent all of Miranda's life translating. Being a mythology geek, I really enjoyed some of the paralles Miranda drew between the tales she learned from her father and the people & events in her life. Overall, this is a genuine coming-of-age story that feels both modern and timeless. ( )

I started reading this book as the train was taking me to a long awaited holiday. I hoped it would be an easy read but it took me by surprise.
The novel is full of hidden meanings and it is a story that seems followed by a cloud of sadness. The atmosphere is gloomy and it isn't at all the funny novel that you would expect when you read the title.
The daughter of a classical literature passionate, Miranda leaves on a journey of initiation to the city of all possibilities - New York - a city full of her father's hidden youth secrets but also of unexpected perspectives for the young girl who had spent had childhood almost inside of Ovid's Metamorhosis on a savage island in Maine. Miranda goes through the transformations of adolescence in a city that offers her more than she would have wanted. the greatest discovery, however, will be the love she has for her father and the permanent need to go back to her origins. ( )

So so - Miranda's route to self-discovery and connection with her father is too plodding and the secret is too transparent. ( )

It’s hard to resist a book with a title like this, and for most of the book I wasn’t let down. It wasn’t until the rather clichéd ending that I was a bit disappointed. The story is really told in two parts, the first is about Miranda’s early years on a tiny island off the coast of Maine where she lives with her reclusive and eccentric Ovid-translating father and a vague memory of a mother who disappeared long ago. The father is the epitome of the focused academic and if it weren’t for the amiable local fisherman, Mr. Blackwell, and Miranda’s wise-beyond-her-years cooking ability they’d probably starve. As the story develops Miranda makes her bumpy and uncomfortable way through puberty and finally moves into her father’s old Manhattan brownstone working for the Institute of Classic Studies where he apparently lead a vastly different lifestyle than the one Miranda now associates him with. It becomes apparent that her father, and his subsequent married life, might not be as predictable as most, and as Miranda tries to understand her own leanings she also comes to better understands her mother’s desperate choice and her father’s reclusive existence. I did think Miranda’s sexual choice in the end was a bit clichéd, but overall the story was pretty good. ( )

From the cover of this adult novel, I was expecting an artsy-fartsy literary thing. I was pleasantly surprised. I liked it. Is it one of the best books I've read all year? No, mainly because I can't think of a single student to recommend it to. But, the author definitely wins the coolest first name award.

Miranda grows up on an isolated island in Maine caring for her intellectual father who is translated Ovid. She cooks, cleans, and takes care of her absent-minded father. She doesn't lead much of a life on the isolated island. Her only real friend is Mr. Blackwell, a friend of her father's, who mysteriously "breaks up" with her dad for some unknown reason. Miranda finally gets a chance to leave the island to work at the Institute in NYC that her father founded. She is overwhelmed by the city and the people she meets. She is trying to find herself, but has a difficult time breaking away from her father and his past that keeps haunting her. Quite the coming-of-age love story. ( )

It is not unusual for first novels to be of the "coming of age" variety. But seldom has anyone come of age the way that Miranda Donnal, the main character in Aoibheann Sweeney's first novel, manages to do it. Miranda, an only child, was taken to live on an isolated island about a mile off the coast of Maine when she was only two years old, and because her mother died not long after the family's arrival, she spent her formative years on the island with only her father and Mr. Blackwell, the family caretaker, as company.

Miranda's father isolated himself with his books and his lifetime project of producing a new translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses and was not much of a father to Miranda, preferring to leave her to her own devices as long as she was always home for dinner and available to type up his latest pages of translation. Luckily for Miranda, Mr. Blackwell did have some paternal instincts and he came to love the child in a protective way that her father could never equal. It was Mr. Blackwell who made sure that Miranda was enrolled in school and who was there to take her by boat to the mainland every morning until she was old enough to handle the trip alone. And it was Mr. Blackwell who educated Miranda in the ways of life on the island during all the years when her father seldom seemed to think about her.

Despite this unusual upbringing, Miranda felt protective of her father and seemed to understand why he was incapable of expressing or showing his love for her. So when he surprised her after her high school graduation by arranging a job for her in New York City with his friends at the cultural institute he helped to found there before leaving for his new life in Maine, she exchanged her tiny island for a much larger one. And she found more there than she expected to find.

She found her father.

Clue by clue, she pieced together the life her father lived in New York and came to realize that he was nothing like the man she had imagined him to be all of her life. And, at the same time, she learned as much about herself. She found friends and she found lovers in New York City. Her problem was to decide which were which, and when she finally did that she was ready to begin the rest of her life.

Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, is a frank presentation of how life sometimes surprises us just when we think we have it all figured out. Sweeney places the reader in this unusual world in a way that makes it understandable and to seem almost normal, a remarkable achievement.

Rated at: 3.5 ( )