Book Review - Life Sentences by Laura Lippman

Synopsis: Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, acclaimed for their brutal, unexpurgated candor about friends, family, lovers - & herself. But now, after a singularly unsuccessful stab at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction

When Cassandra was a girl, growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, her best friends were all black: elegant, privileged Donna; sharp, shred Tisha; wild & worldly Fatima. A fifth girl orbited their world - a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins - who, years later, would be accused of killing her infant son. Yet the boy's body was never found & Calliope's unrelenting silence on the subject forced a judge to jail her for contempt. For seven years, Calliope refused to speak & the court was finally forced to let her go. Cassandra believes this still unsolved real life mystery, largely unknown outside Baltimore, could be her next bestseller.

But her homecoming & latest journey into the past will not be welcomed by everyone, especially by her former friends, who are unimpressed with Cassandra's success - & are insistent on their own version of their shared history. & by delving too deeply into Calliope's dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own - forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother's pain, a father's betrayal ... & what really transpired on a terrible day that changed not only a family, but an entire country.

First Line: "Well," the bookstore manager said, "it is Valentine's Day."

Random Quote: "As long as she didn't say any words she wouldn't be a liar."

Review: This one snuck up on me.

This is another author who has a series that I like who's now writing her second stan

Image by ktylerconk (Tennessee) via Flickr

dalone. I'll confess that I really hated the first one, What the Dead Know, & actually couldn't get through it which is rare for me - so I approached this book with some trepidation.

The start is slow, but the story & the women in it really do creep up on you, get under your skin, make you keep reading. Add to that all the thinking I ended up doing about memoirs & the nature of memory & this was a really good read. The point is a simple one - that essentially all books based on memory are in some way fictionalized because we only really know our own side of the story - but it's well made & done so without beating you over the head. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.