Month: September 2025

How to Read a Book–great characters and story from Monica Wood

How to Read a Book

By Monica Wood

Published 2024

Read Aug 2025

This was the first Monica Wood book for this reader.  It was recommended to this reader by a fellow reader with reliable recommendations (including the Dr Siri series).  She indicated that she found it engaging and read it quite quickly as a result.  That was a good enough recommendation for this reader so the search for a copy ensued.  Libby and Cloud Library that this reader could access had the book, but with long wait times.  This reader tried Hoopla which usually was a reliable source for “older” books and this reader was very pleasantly surprised to find an eBook copy available for immediate loan.

Two days later this reader had finished the book and thoroughly agreed that it was very engaging and a really enjoyable read.  Monica Wood provided a story of complex characters simply but powerfully. 

Violet is twenty-two years old and in prison for manslaughter.  She was driving the car that hit another car and killed its driver.  She was eighteen and in the process of leaving town with her boyfriend.  He made her the driver because he realized he was under the influence of too many drugs and alcohol to be trusted.  She wasn’t sober either.  Violet suddenly finds herself released from prison a bit early.  Her sister picks her up from prison and deposits her at an apartment in Portland she has secured for her.  Violet is very unsettled with this as she expected to return to her small town, not Portland, and especially because her sister has told her that neither she nor any other family member wants anything to do with her. 

Violet had been a member of a prison book club led by Harriet, a widowed English teacher, who is finally finding some meaning in post-retirement life through this activity that she provides for a collection of imprisoned women.  We enjoy learning about her book selections for the prisoners and their reactions to them.  An outcome of this is that this reader now has interest in reading “Spoon River Anthology”, a book this reader managed to never previously encounter.

The third main character is Frank, the husband of the woman Violet killed.  He is also retired and also has found retirement difficult until he creates a job for himself at a local independent bookstore who needs a handy-man to address maintenance issues that the young book-loving owners can’t manage themselves.  Frank is interested in speaking with Harriet who frequents the bookstore to find and order books for her prison book club, but he is shy, and his initial attempt is ineffective.  When Violet turns up at the bookstore while Frank and Harriet are there, Frank has a bit of a meltdown when he sees Violet, whom he hasn’t seen since the trial.   Harriet scurries Violet away.  Thus, the three become connected and the story takes off. 

The action of this book occurs over a few months.  The book tells the story by alternating between the three characters which engaged this reader quickly and completely.  We root for Violet as she gets a job that she loves, but we become concerned about her boss’s actions towards her.  We hope that Frank and Harriet can find a way towards each other.  Monica Wood tells these stories in a compelling but not overly sweet way.  She also gives us the back story of each of these characters which confirms that they are coping with human disappointments as they figure out how to live day by day.

This reader truly appreciated the author’s insights regarding retirees and their transition into the “retired” state when their work life has ended.  This reader also found it interesting that the author’s third character was a young woman who is trying to re-start her life after it was disrupted in such a truly life-changing way just as she was hoping her life was starting. 

At first, the ending felt a little abrupt to this reader but then it felt quite perfect.  How else would this reader want the book to go?  

This book compelled me to read more about Monica Wood and more by her.  You’ll find posts for several of these books at this site; search the “books by author” page for Monica Wood to locate them.  This reader certainly hopes Monica Wood will keep writing!

The One in a Million Boy–another great Monica Wood novel

The One in a Million Boy

By Monica Wood

Published 2015

Read Sept 2025

The structure of this book was very appealing to this reader.  There are two story arcs:  one of a boy (unnamed), likely “on the spectrum”, and the 104-year-old woman (Ona) for whom he is doing a boy scout service project; the other of the father of  this deceased boy (we learn this very soon in the book—this is not a spoiler) as he fulfills the remainder of his son’s service project after his son’s death.  The story of the boy and Ona is told through the recordings he made of Ona as he’s drawing her story out of her and simultaneously pushing her to seek a Guiness Book of World Records regarding something about her age.  The father’s story is told in a more usual style using his thoughts to describe the past situation—he was a professional guitarist who married his girlfriend when they learn she is pregnant—which, in addition to the loss of his son, help us understand his current mindset and actions.  He is grieving for his son, he is grieving for being a bad dad, he is grieving for the failure of his relationship with the boy’s mother (they married and divorced twice), and he is continuing to try to make it as a professional musician, a very difficult career path. 

Wood can draw such wonderful pictures of real humans that, although you may never know someone like them, you now know them so well.  This reader really appreciates this gift of hers, and it certainly drives this reader to read more from her.

This reader finds it strange that she cannot find a New York Times review of this book or any other of her books since her second one, My Only Story.  Possibly this is because that review indicated “Wood, whose first novel was titled ”Secret Language,” is an often graceful writer, and her appreciation of tragic lives that still manage to embrace love is marred only by a bit too much sentimentality.”  (1) This faint praise may have unfortunately eliminated her from a list of authors they follow since this book is as good or better than many this reader has read that they have reviewed.  Her publishers may not have done enough to ensure appropriate reviews and prizes but this reader is definitely a fan and highly recommends her books. 

When We Were the Kennedys: a memoir from Monica Wood

When We Were the Kennedys:  A Memoir from Mexico, Maine

By Monica Wood

Published 2012

Read Sept 2025

This reader reads few memoirs, but this one was a must-read for this reader after reading several of her novels. 

Monica Wood grew up in Mexico, Maine, across the river from Rumford, Maine.  Oxford Pulp and Paper Company was the major employer for these two towns and the surrounding area. Her father worked for this company. 

This reader went to this mill in Rumford, Maine twice in 1977 with her employer.  The mill was no longer Oxford Pulp and Paper.  At that time, the mill was part of one of several corporations who owned the facility over the years following the sale of the mill by the family who founded it and ran it for three generations.  This reader was an intern at a supplier to the paper industry that made a retention aid product that helped retain tiny pieces of cellulose and additives (such as clay, titanium dioxide, and others) in the paper web as it was made.  Retention aids were becoming increasingly important to the paper industry at that time as it sought to reduce water pollution that the industry had historically caused.  So, this reader wanted to know more about life in Rumford, ME and its neighbor across the river, Mexico, ME. 

Two other reasons made this must-read.  First, every book by this author that this reader encountered was great so this memoir would give this reader more insight into this author.  Second, Monica Wood and this reader are contemporaries.  Ms Wook was born in 1953 and this reader in 1957, so our childhoods occurred in a similar time period in the history of the country.

Like this reader’s family, Monica Wood’s family had a stay-at-home mother and a father who worked many hours in a factory and brought home a very comfortable middle-class income. But after that, the particulars of our lives were different. They were Catholic; we were not.  The children went to Catholic school; we did not.  They lived in an apartment in a town; we lived in a house in the country.  But Wood’s talent for enabling her readers to feel completely embedded in her story meant that this reader felt she had been a resident of Mexico and knew this family intimately. 

The Prologue rapidly and engaginly introduces the reader to “My Mexico”—the origin of the name of the town, the multi-cultural aspect of the town, the product of the town—tons and tons of paper that their fathers made, the mill where it was made, and the relationship of the mill with the town, the lynchpin of that relationship and the genesis of this memoir. “Our story, like the mill, hummed in the background of our every hour, a tale of quest and hope that resonated similarly in all the songs in all the blocks and houses, in the headlong shouts of all the children at play, in the murmur of all the graces said at all the kitchen tables.  In my family, in every family, that story—with its implied happy ending—hinged on a single, beautiful, unbreakable, immutable fact:  Dad.  Then he died.” 

The bulk of the memoir is centered on a particular year of Wood’s life—1963—when she was nine and the year her dad died.  Monica Wood’s father was an immigrant—he came from Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her mother’s family was from there as well, but they met in the US.  She had two older siblings, brother James Barry who was 27 and married with two, and sister, Anne who was 22, lived at home with her parents and three younger sisters, and taught English at the local public high school.  Monica was the middle of three younger girls who came in short order much later.  The oldest of these three, Elizabeth was mentally disabled and was in second grade for the third time, sharing a desk with the youngest of the three, Cathy.  The girls started their elementary school career at the Irish Catholic school in Rumford as they had ways to support children like Elizabeth, but when the school bus service from Mexico to that school was discontinued, the girls moved to the French Catholic school.  Their rented apartment was the top floor of a 3-flat.  Their Lithuanian landlords lived on the first floor and had a lot of rules to keep the three little girls quiet. 

We learn these things as the memoir rolls out through the eyes of nine-year-old Monica as she recounts the impact of the death of her family on her and on her family.   He was 48 when Monica was born and 57 when he suddenly dropped dead on his way to work one day.  She tells us about that day and the following week of making arrangements, viewing, the funeral, and the after-funeral wake.  We listen to her nine-year-old view of this with our seasoned adult eyes and are right there with her when we were children and when we were the adults in the affairs.

 Monica realizes her mother was devastated.  They no longer fit the “normal family” mold—there was no father who brought home the paycheck.  “Thank goodness for FDR” her mother said frequently when she received social security checks as a widow with 3 small children.  Uncle Bob, a Catholic priest and Monica’s mother’s brother was also devasted and eventually has a breakdown.  This was a major impact to Monica and her sisters and Uncle Bob visited them, and the kids at their school, weekly.  He took them for great adventures, swimming and the like.  Monica recounts their family’s visit to him at the Catholic hospital/rest home in Baltimore (the same home that’s mentioned in her novel Any Bitter Thing).

Then six months after her dad dropped dead on the way to work, JFK was assassinated.    The family’s trip to The Nation’s Capital went forward as planned despite it being at the same time as JFK’s funeral.  Her mother didn’t get to see Jackie but she states she felt a strong bond with her.

Wood gives us this story of her life and this year through the voice of nine-year-old Monica.  It’s such a believable voice.  What she understands and what she doesn’t understand about what’s happening over the course of this year is very well done. 

Fortunately, Wood includes an epilogue that helps us know how the family member’s fare.  Except for her mother, who dies of cancer only eleven years after her husband’s death, the rest of the family members have good lives.   Anne, the eldest daughter, who became her mother’s primary friend in early widowhood, has an especially lovely story.

Wood chooses not to detail anything about what happens to the town as the circumstances of the mill and its workers change substantially over time.  There are only premonitions in the last chapter  “..who can imagine the strike of ’64 as the last civilized walkout, the last conflict of the “good Old days of the Oxford”? “ “The strike has tooled the first, faint alarm for what is to come, a slow vanishing, almost imperceptible at first, another thousand souls gone away at the threshold of each coming decade….”.  She turns back to the focus of this work, her family.  She now describes the excitement they feel as Annie, who just got her driver’s license, is driving their dad’s car through the town and parking it in their driveway.  “And us is this family of women, singing the car-trip son.  There is no journey we cannot make this way.”

Wood does give us an excellent view of the impact of the strike of ’64 in her book of stories, Ernie’s Ark. 

As with all Wood’s books this reader has encountered, whether fictional or not, the author takes you into the lives of her characters in a way that you feel you’re reading about people for whom you really care.  And she does this with a straightforward, non-saccharine manner. 

Any Bitter Thing–a great Monica Wood book for discussion

Any Bitter Thing

By Monica Wood

Published 2005

Read Sept 2025

This reader tore through much of Wood’s canon because each book she read was so compelling, had interesting and fully fleshed characters, and often a twist or two.  This book is no exception.

Thirty-year-old Lizzy has much to process.

Following a fight with her husband, Lizzy went for a run at night, dressed in dark clothes (not smart!) and was a victim of a hit-and-run accident that left her near death and right in the middle of the road.  The next car stops; the driver pulls her to the side of the road and then leaves without calling for help for her.  This is not the first time Lizzy has been left quite alone. 

Her parents died in a car accident when she was two.  Her Uncle Mike, a Catholic priest convinced the court and his superiors that he is the only option to take care of her, and they allowed it.  Lizzy had a great childhood with him for about 8 years.  He was a wonderful foster father for her despite having no role models for how to handle various situations as he has no nieces or nephew and their parents to guide him.  His housekeeper had opinions but was not a mother herself and he didn’t appreciate most of her suggestions.  He ddid make friends with a neighbor woman who has a child the same age as Lizzy and he sought guidance from her at times.  When Lizzy was nine, the housekeeper reports two incidents she witnessed that suggest child abuse and she is taken from him.  Uncle Mike’s sister took her in for a short while (yes there actually was an aunt but she didn’t want to take on raising a little girl while she had her hands full with several young sons of her own), only long enough to ship her to a boarding school.   When Lizzy asked her aunt about Uncle Mike, the aunt informed her that he died of a heart attack—heart conditions ran in their family.  So three times within nine years she was left quite alone in the world. 

After college, she returned as a high school counselor to the town where she spent the happy part of her childhood.  Her husband agreed to live in this town, but he really wanted to return to city life.  They argued frequently about this conflict and Lizzy also suspected he might be having an affair.  Since their last argument had driven Lizzy to take that fateful run, he felt somewhat obligated to stay with her.  He worried that she is losing it when she describes a visitation from Uncle Mike while she was in the coma despite knowing that he died shortly after their separation.

The story moves back and forth in time and between the voice of Lizzy and the voice of Uncle Mike.  It’s got some very interesting twists that I won’t reveal.

This reader thinks this has lots to offer a book discussion group.  The characters all have secrets and all have made a number of fateful decisions over time.  Did they make the right decisions? 

Bravo, Monica Wood, for another great read.

Ernie’s Ark–great stories from Monica Wood

Ernie’s Ark

By Monica Wood

Published 2002

Read September 2025

This reader has read several of Monica Wood books recently and it’s high time to post on them.  The order of the posts will not be the order in which they were read but rather the order in which they were published.   

This reader enjoys interrelated short stories, so she anticipated liking this book and she was well rewarded.  The book is by a Maine author, as is Elizabeth Strout,  author of the Olive Kitteridge books which was kicked off by a collection of short stories titled Olive Kitteridge.  A major difference between the books is that Olive Kitteridge centered primarily around a single character.  The stories in this book take place in fictional Abbott Falls, Maine during the strike against the main employer in town—a pulp and paper mill owned by Atlantic Pulp and Paper.  They tell about how various members of the community and the CEO of Atlantica Pulp and Paper are reacting to this strike.  The CEO is the third member of the founding family to lead the plant which is the major employer in the area.

The Ernie of the title is Ernie Whitten, a pipefitter at the mill, who was 3 weeks from retirement when the strike started.  His wife is dying from cancer and is in a hospital 40 miles away.  He is angry at the strike timing and about his wife’s illness and especially about his impotence to change the course of either.  He decides to compete in a contest run by the art department of a nearby college and takes a small wooden boat he builds to the college to submit it as an entry.  He learns he’s misunderstood what an “installation” is and how the contest works.  Rather than merely submitting his plan (the usual approach as the “installations” are large works of art), he decides to build his installation–an ark- in his yard.  He brings his wife home against medical advice so she can witness his gift to her.  He refuses to acknowledge the instructions from Dan Little, another striking paper mill worker who is currently working as a code enforcement investigator for the town, to dismantle the ark.  Ernie actually gets Dan to take photos of him with his wife, two dogs, and two birds on the ark.

Dan Little figures in other stories, both as a major character and as a minor character.  Many of his family members worked at or are currently working at the mill, including his youngest brother who decides to cross the picket line as a scab.  This causes great disruption in Dan’s family and with his relationship with other community members.  Dan’s ex-wife, now remarried to a philandering artist, also appears in several stories as does her step-daughter, Francine.  Ernie’s wife and their son James are also major and minor characters in some of the stories. 

This reader was very immediately captured by Wood’s book.  Monica Wood knows what she writes.  Wood grew up in Rumford, Maine whose major employer was Oxford Paper and for which the CEO was the third member of the founding family to lead the company.   There had been several short strikes over time which were all resolved amicably, providing the workers with a good wage and benefits package and the company with a labor contract that still provided an appropriate profit.  During Wood’s childhood, there was a strike at the plant that was different.  That strike was resolved only when the mill was purchased by another company, paralleling the situation in this story.  This was a turning point in the history of the mill as competition from other companies and water quality regulations began to impact the viability of the plant.  This was also a turning point in the community. 

Wood’s stories in Ernie’Ark describe the pressure the situation at the plant is having on the worker and their families who are living through the strike, how their relationship with this company has shaped them, and how this relationship is now evolving.  There is no trace that the author has an opinion about the company, the union, or the strike.  Rather she gives us very human stories of some of the workers, their families, and their struggles, both strike-induced and otherwise.   This isn’t a book about a single person but a collection of people in a community wrestling with a difficult situation that they know is bound to impact their lives significantly. 

Well developed characters, great writing, and good stories.  This is a book worth looking for and reading. 

Louise Penny Books—very bingable!

Louise Penny books in order of publication:

Book                                                 Published                        Read

Still Life                                          2005                                  July 2024

A Fatal Grace                               2006                                  May 2025

The Cruelest Month                  2007                                  May 2025

The Brutal Telling                     2008                                  June 2025

A Rule Against Murder            2009                                  May 2025

Bury Your Dead                          2010                                  June 2025

A Trick of Light                           2011                                  June 2025

The Beautiful Mystery              2012                                  June 2025

How the Light Gets In              2013                                  June 2025

The Long Way Home                2014                                  July 2025

The Nature of the Beast          2015                                  July 2025

A Great Reckoning                    2016                                  July 2025

Glass Houses                              2017                                  July 2025

Kingdom of the Beast             2018                                  July 2025

A Better Man                               2019                                  July 2025

All the Devils are Here            2020                                  Aug 2025

The Madness of Crowds        2021                                  Aug 2025

A World of Curiosities            2022                                  Aug 2025

The Grey Wolf                            2024                                  soon

The Red Wolf                            coming in 2025            not yet!

If you take a look at when these books were read, you will notice two things:  nearly a year between reading the first book and the second; and then the following 17 books in 4 months.  Why?

This reader read the first book just before discovering the Colin Cotterill books which set off a binging of all available Dr Suri books.  This reader later looked up Louise Penny books as they are set in Quebec, the destination of this reader’s bike trip planned for June 2025.  Why not read a book set near where this reader was headed?  And so, this reader became thoroughly hooked.

Why?  Several reasons. 

Availability: This reader read the entire series as audiobooks available through her library’s Hoopla service.  So, it was easy to get the next book in the series immediately after finishing one regardless of day or time. 

Great Readers: The same wonderful reader, Ralph Cosham, read books 1-10.  It is quite wonderful to hear recurring characters’ voices sound the same in each book.  Ralph Cosham unfortunately died too early, and Louise Penny was faced with shifting her readers to a new reader for her audiobooks.  She describes the reason for the change and the process she used to select a new reader, Robert Bathurst.  Since the lead character learned English primarily in London and speaks with a slightly British accent, Robert Bathurst being British worked for this reader, especially with the help of Louise Penny’s discussion of the change.   Louise Penny again shifts readers starting with the 2024 book and moving forward choosing a Quebec native.   The 2024 book wasn’t in this reader’s Hoopla library which frankly enabled this reader to take a pause and read something else!   But this reader will certainly read both the 2024 and 2025 books soon (2025 book not yet published!)

What else?  So, availability and great readers are nice but obviously it’s the writing—the characters, the stories, and the language that makes a series truly bingeworthy.

Characters and Place: Penny has developed a set of characters who reside in Three Pines, a small hamlet in the Eastern Townships of Quebec that is not on any map.  All the Three Pines books noted above involve the village of Three Pines in some way and most of the recurring characters play some role.  Over the course of the books, some of the roles change so those listed are the roles initially in the series. 

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the lead character, is head of the homicide division of the Surte du Quebec. 

Jean-Guy Beauvoir:  second-in-command to Gamache

Isabelle LaCoaste:  critical member of Gamache’s team 

Reine Marie Gamache: Armand’s wife and retired lead archivist for the National archives housed in Montreal. 

Clara and Peter Morrow: Three Pines residents; artists

Ruth: Three Pines resident; nationally recognized poet; she adopts a baby duck, Rose who becomes a constant companion.

Myrna: Three Pines resident; retired psychologist who now runs a used and new bookstore and lives in the loft above the store

Olivier: owner of the Three Pines Bistro

Gabri:  Olivier’s partner and operator of the Tree Pines B&B

And there are others including the Gamache’s children and pets.

Armand and Reine Marie remain in love after a few decades of marriage.  It’s interesting to this author that this series and the Dr Siri series have a protagonist who has remained in love with his wife and married to her throughout a long career (although Dr Siri’s wife has died before the series starts).  This is in contrast with many drama series this reader watches on TV in which the lead detective is divorced and often estranged from his children or their marriage is dissolving. 

And The Stories

There is some sort of mystery in each book although sometimes it takes awhile to show up.  Similarly with murder—there is usually one but sometimes it occurs late in the book.  But Gamache is always dealing with something be it solving a murder, convincing others that a seemingly natural death is a murder, tracking down a friend’s husband, protecting a speaker whose message he finds disturbing, seeking to clear corruption from the Surte’s academy, etc.  Penny brings contemporary topics into the stories—the Covid pandemic, opioid addition, fentanyl trafficking, eugenics, impact of the internet, and more.  There is some movement of the story arc of Gamache and his friends and family as well in each book.  In some books, the personal story is at least the initial primary story but, in those cases, there is a story that weaves in that involves a criminal act. 

Penny’s writing is compelling.  Her books seem to move slowly at times, but many times the actual timeframe covered slowly is happening over only a few days.  The slowness arises from absorbing descriptions of the surrounding landscape or from revealing the thoughts of one of the characters.  We are privy mostly to Gamache’s thoughts and feelings but at times we hear those of others, most usually his second in command, Jean-Guy, or of Isabelle LaCoaste, another team member. At other times the action she is describing is quite intense and this reader found herself closing the book for a few minutes to rest before continuing. 

Throughout the series the reader is reminded frequently (but not too frequently) of Gamache’s virtues, including his willingness to take a chance on police personnel that others aren’t (Jean-Guy, Isabelle are two examples), his commitment to the Surte’s motto: Service, Integrity, Justice, and his kindness. 

While a reader can start with any book in this series, it’s worth starting at the beginning and moving through the series so that the evolution of the characters and their relationships can be most fully appreciated.   This reader is glad she found the series long after it began so that she wasn’t confronted with having to wait for new entries to be published until now.  This reader is about to join the large number of Louise Penny enthusiasts’ wait for new additions to this excellent series.