Thank you for Visiting

This book club provided an opportunity to discuss books with authors from 2009 - 2013. I like to think we were a group of daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, well... women finding time to meet while juggling daily life. I hope you enjoy exploring The Manic Mommies Book Club Archives. We read 46 books over the years, with audio or written author discussions for each book read documented on this blog. Note: The audio archives are no longer available on iTunes. ~ with kindness & gratitude, Mari

Book selections for the rest of 2009

I'm pleased to annouce our book selections for the rest of 2009. I have read our September and November selections, they are really good books. I will be reading Oxygen in the next few weeks and will post a review.

Happy Reading, Mari

September 23: Waiting for Daisy


In addition to our written discussion, I’m pleased to announce we will attempt our first skype book discussion. If you are interested in joining us, please send me an email with your Skype name or phone number with ‘Waiting for Daisy Sept Skype’ in the subject line and I will add you to the distro. I will send a reminder the week before the call, to confirm who can attend. With this being our first call, it will be a MM only call (to avoid technical issues with a full audience).





November 7: The Wednesday Sisters

We will be discussing this book with the author, in person while at the MM Escape in Napa! If you are not able to join us and want to discuss the book, I am working on a way for you to join us in Napa. Watch for more details as we get closer to the event.

This book is available at Target

December 16: Oxygen



In addition to our written discussion, I’m pleased to announce we will discuss the book with author Carol Cassella, via Skype. If you are interested in joining us, please send me an email with your Skype name or phone number with ‘Oxygen Dec Skype’ in the subject line and I will add you to the distro. I will send a reminder the week before the call, to confirm who can attend.

This book is available at Target
Watch for a book give-a-way late fall

MMBC7: A Reliable Wife Discussion begins today!


Originally posted in Big Tent… view comments for full conversation.

Today we start discussing ‘A Reliable Wife’. I encourage everyone to visit the MMBC Blog to read the Q&A with Robert Goolrick. His answers may spark a discussion topic for you, or maybe another question to ask everyone. This dialog is meant to be a discussion between friends – let’s keep the discussion casual and hopefully we will continue learning something new about each other along the way.

Feel free to answer any/all of the questions below:
- What was your overall view of the book? Did you enjoy it?
- Deception… what did you like/dislike about Catherine?
- This is a story of despair, what were your thoughts while reading this book?
- Ralph and Antonio have a sex addiction, would the story be different without these scenes?
- Did you have a favorite character (include why you liked the character)?
- Did you have a favorite part in the book?

A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick answers our questions!


Thank you Robert for answering our questions!
Our discussion begins tomorrow – I will post questions for us to discuss in the morning.

This is a very interesting plot, did you know Ralph’s journey from the beginning? No. I knew I wanted to write a book about people who were not good, but who struggled to find something of the goodness and meaning of life. Actually, the first scene I imagined from the book was the last one, with Catherine and Ralph in the garden. Then I had to figure out who they were and how they got there.

In your interview you mentioned reading classics as a child, in what way did characters from these books carrying into this story? The classic novels-- Dickens, Trollope, Austen, Tolstoy, the books I read as a child so I would have something to talk about with my aged grandmother, all carry at their center a strong, good, story, often about redemption of some sort or another. I particularly like Austen, who has a trick which never fails to satisfy -- all the happiness comes at the end, all of a sudden, like a magic trick. So it is with Ralph and Catherine. I find a lot of contemporary fiction to be all context and no content, so that, even though I like the process of reading new books, very few of them stay with me for long. I just can't remember the story.

Did you have to research much as you wrote this novel? I’m always interested to learn how easy/challenging the writing process is for authors. I had already read Michael Lesy's WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP many times, but I read it several more. I did some research into St. Louis and Chicago, but not exhaustively. I don't consider this an historic novel. It doesn't attempt to recreate a period or tie a story to important events. The characters are very contemporary people, who are removed from us by time, and put under a microscope.

Catherine... I don’t know if I liked her or hated her. What is your impression of Catherine? Catherine, like all the main characters, is the kind of adult an abused child grows up to be. I am moved deeply by the abuse of children; I have written about it before. They are both deeply disturbed and, at the same time, strangely innocent and hopeful. Catherine, Ralph and Antonio are all facets of this, and not everybody can be saved from the consequences of damage over which they had no control.

If I was Catherine I would have ran quickly after learning about Ralph’s past. Why do you think she decided to stay? He had everything she wanted. And, when what she wanted began to change, she discovered that he was, in fact, a kindred soul, and offered what her heart needed to heal.

Why did Ralph want Antonio home so badly knowing that he was not actually his son? He felt guilty about the way he had treated Antonio as a child, and he wanted to redeem himself through his son, and continue his name after his death.

If Ralph knew he was being poisoned, why did he allow it to continue? When he realized that Antonio wasn't coming home and that Catherine was lying to him, he completely gave up his last hope, and was ready to die out of his own guilt and shame and foolishness.

Do you think about Ralph and Catherine’s future after the book ends? Are they happy, does the baby life or does despair continue to be part of their lives? I think about their future a lot, and I hope that their moment of happiness lasts. Maybe I'll write a sequel. Would that be a good idea?

The writing style comes across ‘cold’ for lack of a better word – was this intentional? I thought it added to the reading experience but this might be personal opinion. Ralph and Catherine come across heartless yet loving, manipulative and deceptive. I think the writing style played an important part in my experience. I want the reader to feel what I write in the body as well as the brain. I hope it is vivid and almost tangible. I wouldn't have called it cold, but it is alternately terse and poetic, kind of like life.