The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel

I finished this yesterday and immediately recommended it to a friend. It's not that it was the absolute best book I've ever read, but it had moments of such insight, clarity, and humor, that it captured me. I think one of the things I enjoyed the most was that this patchwork family of three women who come together to help raise the baby one of them has, are all English Lit grad students. The constant interplay of literature in their lives was like hot fudge on ice cream, certainly not necessary, but once added, turned that plain old scoop of frozen deliciousness into a sundae.

There were many, many moments that  captured me. I blogged about one here and then just nodded in agreement with a number of others. The author has a knack of adding little touches that made the characters and the situation seem very real. (Like the story of the candlesticks that Janey's grandfather gave her grandmother. He brought them back for her from Paris, instead of the perfume most men bring their sweethearts, because he remembered how beautiful she looked in candlelight, and carried that image, and the candlesticks, until he could return to her. I'm betting that's a real story, from Frankel's own family lore, incorporated into the story, with love.) (And, for the record, Janey's grandmother is a fabulous character, reminding me so much of someone close to my own heart, that I'd swear Frankel and I were related, though we're not.)

Anyhow, this is a novel both literary, and lovely. Thank you Laurie Frankel.

Tags: a-favorite-author, books-about-books, didn-t-want-to-put-it-down, first-novel-or-book, i-liked-it, read, satisfying, thank-you-charleston-county-library