Lennon has written a strong first novel that takes us, as other reviews have described, into the horrific world of family violence. The story takes place in the 60s and reminds us of how things were during that decade.
Structurally the story doesn't work. Lennon has developed Cathy as an intelligent, sane and very creative independent teenager. Cathy's imaginary friends help her. This can be seen as an aberation or a sign of tremendous ingenuity, given their witty sidelines and caustic remarks. So when the plot swivels to an end suggesting that Cathy may be just as crazy as her mother, it doesn't work. Furthermore, the incident that carries Cathy into the loony bin is the very one in which she is at most herself: fighting back, finally, against her mother.
Indeed, if the book has to work, Cathy's characterization needs to change into something more demonic. Or, the ending of the book needs reworking.
And it's not so that the book ends well, it's that it ends right and true, in line with how it's been created all along.

Care and attention make this odd-sized publication special. Quality binding, an extra-thick hardcover, professional cover design and the perfect fitting typeface: these are telling trademarks of experience at work. You know you're in for a great read.
It's a collection of notes, letters and journal entries Connelly made while living and travelling in Calgary, France, Spain and Greece.
Letter writing is almost a thing of the past and Connelly recalls the peculiar magic that only a letter offers: the writer and the reader touching on a page, strangers no more. Words received, she says, are very powerful, especially when received from far away.
It's not all fun, the business of travelling, and Connelly's writing bites into less than pleasant days and nights of cold, loneliness and confusion. She's equally at home in describing beauty through outer landscape and inner peace. She's gifted in an ability to reach and touch people, including us, her readers.
Engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. A thoroughly good read!

"This book is an essential read for those who wish to understand the modern world of investing."

Only someone who has an interest in having his friend sell as many books as he can would say something as blatantly false as this. There's nothing new in this book.

Moreover, El-Erian's egotistical writing style jars the serious reader with constant references to a previous or upcoming chapter. There's endless name dropping that in some cases extends up to 3 lines at a time. (None other than the great Greenspan wrote the above supportive quote, the same Greenspan who keep interest rates low for too long, inflaming the credit crunch, the same one El-Erian apparently discusses.)

There's plenty of references to other books, speeches, theories and very little thought. The first 3 chapters are devoted to recapitulation of what happened in the markets during 2007. He describes, rather than explains, what happens, and the tone implies that everyone is a bungling idiot for not having seen what was coming.

Turns out he's just as hoi polloi: around page 110, he conjectures what might happen next (assuming publication in Spring 08). He figures the emerging worlds will lead the developed countries out of the current fiasco. And with every word that follows, I began screaming "wrong wrong wrong".

Chapter 6 promises to advise on how to navigate the journey. "For investors, this means capturing risk-adjusted returns." Really, now that's an original thought!

And another, "Nation policy makers have to figure out how to make a debitor nation a creditor one." Wow!

Finally, the most important thing he learned at his very important time at the International Monetary Fund was how to manage time by defining the difference between urgent and important.

It's quite important that potential buyers urgently ignore the impulse to buy this book.

Obituary writers, like those who toil at the IRS audit department or in the city sewers, are accustomed to the inevitable widening eyes, visible shudders and morbid remarks triggered by their reply to the question: "What do you do for a living?"

Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat tells quite a different story. An avid reader will instantly know she's in the throes of an accomplished author, gripped by an original perspective that captures the imagination and delights the soul. Johnson declares that an "obit" writer dwells in a world of humour, poignancy, marvellousness, perverseness, and pleasure. It's a world celebrating life, and what can be more glorious than that!

Ever since the Obituary Revolution in the 80s turned "the obit page from a holding pen for broken-down journalists" into a fascinating vocation akin to detective work scouring for the key that is the secret of a life just passed, waking up tense every day to wonder if her subject has died yet, the charged life of an obit writer is getting better all the time. And with an aging population about to set fire to the funeral business, it's never been a better time to celebrate.

Johnson's style is energetic, imaginative and personably engaging: "One of the great things about this vocation is its expandability...(it) can take you to heroin level in no time" she writes, extending an invitation to walk up ninth avenue in New York to meet the editor of obituaries from the New York Times. The interview is one of many in the United States and Britain, and extends memorably to Jim Nicolson, the "father of all obit writers" who set the standard in the Philadelphia Daily News in 1982 for writing about the ordinary man. "Nicholson plucked people out of the sea of agate type and wrote full-blown feature-style obituaries about them: a janitor, a grandma known for her love of poker, `a world-class scammer.'" Budding obit journalists were tutored into the profession by his obit kit.

Johnson's book offers more than a tour of editors and writers. She covers the annual gathering of writers are the Sixth Great Obituary Writers' International Conference, attendance at the celebrity memorial service for Arthur Miller, and offers a grand chapter on how 9/11 created the Portrait Page.There's her not-so-favourable opinion of tributes, a literary set piece of which she says life has been written out. There's marvellous descriptions of the British obituary scene where in London, obits dominate in quality and quantity, generous with understatement and use of The Code (euphemisms such as "passed on").

And lastly, an introduction to alt.obituaries, a Google group considered Grand Central where obituaries are posted and discussed. "The good ones are as intoxicating as a lung full of snowy air."

Johnson's focus on life touches a nerve. It's true: "obituaries have a pull, a natural gravity, for those of us who've observed that life has a way of ending."

This is a grand book that opens the door for explorations into the challenges facing the obituary industry: how to increase visibility for women and Negroes (who oddly enough, don't seem to die very often), of a declining traditional newspaper readership, difficult economic times and modern technology that facilitates all forms of dying such as Art Buchwald's online video.