Susan Richards Shreve

This is an absolutely wonderful memoir. It's hard to imagine leaving my children on their own for two years at a combination medical facility/camp, as Shreve was left by her parents, but polio forced some hard choices.

She writes with a very moving and honest style. Surprisingly there is a lot happening in these two years to the point where I was anxious to find out what happened. I'm sure part of writing the book was to explore actions for which she must feel guilty. Reading about or show more thinking about children doing things that have terrible consequences for other people is both fascinating and horrible all at the same time, because I can desperately wish they didn't make that decision or mistake and at the same time realize they were young and didn't have the experience to look ahead in the way an adult can. Is it just part of growing up but most of us are lucky enough to not do anything for which we need to feel responsible? I don't know, but Shreve writes about her own experiences in a way that is very compelling.

In some ways, this book reminds me of Prep, which is fiction, but also deals with a young girl living in a world of children and only a few adults. Both are excellent explorations of that cusp between childhood and adulthood. I recommend this book to everyone. show less

Kids have to deal with a lot of things in their lives that they have no control over. Some of these things they understand and some they only partially understand, while others may be completely beyond their grasp. In Susan Shreve's novel, Blister, tween main character Alyssa is faced with all of the above and has to muster the resilience to make it through.

The book opens with the stillborn birth of Alyssa Reed's little sister. This loss cracks open the already fragile state of her family's show more life together with her mother plunging into deep depression and her father moving out (and moving on with someone else). Having to start a new school on top of the loss of the baby and her parents' separation is a lot for any one fifth grader to handle. Renaming herself Blister, she decides she's going to do things her way from now on, including stealing clothes, makeup, and jewelry from her father's girlfriend in the hopes of breaking them up, trying out for the cheerleading squad, even if it is just a popularity contest, and generally taking advantage of the neglect of her parents. She's also going to create a new persona in school. Luckily Blister has her grandmother to lean on when she really needs to and to explain in an age appropriate way the things that Blister just doesn't completely understand.

There were so many issues here, grief, depression, a mental health crisis, divorce, infidelity, cliques, neglect, and more, that it felt like a sort of pile on even though Blister didn't realize the extent of the everything. She also came across as rather precocious and unrealistic for an up to now fairly sheltered ten year old. She shows her resilience and elasticity in the end but even that felt sad on top of so much other sadness along the way. I'm uncertain if I'd hand this to kids Blister's age, not because the issues are tough but because the nuances make it more mature. Tweens probably won't recognize that baby Lila Rose was supposed to save the Reed's faltering marriage nor the depth of the neglect Blister experiences from both of her parents (her mother because of her deep depression and her father because of his affair) but that doesn't make this tale of a young girl trying to find herself in the midst of such terrible tragedy and sadness any less troubling. show less

This is one of the most thought-provoking books about polio that I have read, and I read a pile of polio books a few years ago while researching a book I was writing. But Shreve's book cuts to the heart of how children afflicted with the dread disease were often isolated from their families, and hospitalized for months and sometimes years, undergoing operation after operation, "stabilizing" joints and "transplanting" muscles. Shreve herself endured some of these surgeries, taking for granted show more that they would help, although the truth is most of these surgeries were experimental in nature and probably were not all that useful. Shreve does not dwell on that part of her time at FDR's "polio haven" though, choosing instead to remember how she coped, between the ages of eleven and thirteen, with being on her own and wrestling with feelings of sexual awakening and homesickness. She chose to be optimistic and useful for the most part, but she also was something of a rebel, gaining a reputation as someone who stirred things up on the sprawling hospital campus. It was during the endless hours of waiting, treatment and healing that she first discovered the pleasure of her own imagination and decided to be a writer. She also considered larger questions - flirting for a time with conversion to Catholicism, partly perhaps she had a crush on the priest who was the chaplain at Warm Springs. Shreve somehow survived her long internment at Warm Springs, and perhaps it even made her a stronger person, although this is a question she still wrestles with, as she continues to speculate on her relationship with her long-gone parents. I stayed up late last night to finish this book. There is much to be learned from Shreve's account of her time at Warm Springs, and not just about polio. For this is a book about growing up, and about finding your place in an often confusing society. Shreve is now a very respected writer and teacher, the author of dozens of books for both adults and children. I admire her tremendously for all these accomplishments, but particularly for finally writing this book. show less

(32) Strange little book. A Kindle Lender's Library freebie from the Nancy Pearl Book Lust rediscoveries series. Books from the fairly recent past that are out of publication that have been re-released with her endorsement, introduction, and discussion questions. I have had read a few of this series and for the most part they are pretty good.

The imagery was actually quite haunting - An American ex-pat family are traveling through Italy. The parents of 4 small children just happen to be in show more the lunch car of the train when a random terrorist bomb explodes there leaving the children orphans. This is the story of what happens to those children as they grow up under the ever watchful eye of the oldest brother Sam who was seven at the time and the only one with permanent memories of their parents and the accident. It is a great premise, but then the book takes an odd turn. The children grow to adults and actors in a comedy series loosely based on their absent parents. Their adult lives seemed a bit surreal and much of the poignancy was lost for me.

Overall, this was an interesting, fairly well-written read. There was much about it that I liked and certain haunting contextual details that were well done. I wish the novel had went in different directions; it had much more potential in my humble opinion. The books in this series so far have been good, light reads (and the price [free] is right) through Amazon Prime! show less