Claire Conger

“I don’t have time to be married!” wails Julie in Julie and Julia, a movie about Julia Child and devote Julie Powell. What Julie really should have cried, was “I don’t have time to work all day at my stupid government job!”

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The Secret Life Of Bees (2002), spiritual writer Sue Monk Kidd ‘s first novel, tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl escaping from her father and discovering what happened to her mother. It’s a page-turner, populated with wise women and stupid men, and told in the voice of the girl. This voice, well crafted by Ms Kidd, carries the story, and, unlike her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, Ms Kidd keeps this story moving. (I couldn’t read The Mermaid Chair, and my posting Stephen King’s Backstory Well Done in Carrie explains why.)

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I tried hard to read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Mermaid Chair and I just couldn’t do it. I got through 30 or so pages of the paperback and gave up, then I got through two discs on the sound recording and gave up. Why could I not read this book?

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The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, a book of seven interconnected short stories by Melissa Bank, has excellent advice about dating: Be yourself!

Dr Phil, I’m sure, would agree.

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Where Juno and Beverly were inquisitive and rebellious in losing their virginity, Stella (played by Georgiana Cates) in An Awfully Big Adventure (the movie 1995) is direct and purposeful.

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