I'm on a review roll!

Today I finished The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya. It’s a short little book that chronicles the last days of a Russian émigré artist’s life and the complex relationships of the people surrounding him. It was a good, quick read that gave some insight into a community not often examined.


I also finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I originally resisted reading this book, though I can’t recall exactly why. It seemed like there was a lot of hype, but hearing about it didn’t thrill me. In any case, I continued to hear about it on goodreads, then I saw it at the library and in a fever of ohmygodlookatallthebooks!!! grabbed it and that was the end of that.

The story pulled me in pretty quickly. It took me a little while to get used to the writing style, but once I got used to that I became completely immersed in the story. The characters were lively and dynamic and while they were sometimes kind of frustrating, that just made them feel all the more real.

The Help is a great story, and it’s actually well-written, so that’s hard to beat. It gets my stamp of approval (or would, if I had one) and I definitely recommend it.

Now I shall leave you with one passage from the book that really amuses me:

I give in and light another cigarette even though last night the surgeon general came on the television set and shook his finger at everybody, trying to convince us that smoking will kill us. But Mother once told me tongue kissing would turn me blind and I’m starting to think it’s all just a big plot between the surgeon general and Mother to make sure no one ever has any fun. 

The Help p. 148