Mary Hogan (1)Reseñas

This is the first historical fiction I have read that deals with the flooding of Johnstown on May 31st, 1889. This is a very dramatic and tragic aspect of the book and one of the reasons I liked the book so much was just the fact that it really moved me.

But, I'm getting ahead in the story. We are first introduced to the characters in the dual stories, Elizabeth Haberlin a rich young woman who spends the summers by the beautiful lake above the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She spends the summers rubbing shoulders with the Carnegies, Mellons, and Fricks and she seems at first to be just another rich spoiled girl. But, as the story progresses do we learn more and more about her she is actually a very bright, although sheltered girl. And, a disastrous event will change her whole life...

In the present story do we meet Lee Parker, who on her 18th birthday finally learns more about her real mother. She was adopted as a baby and she loves her adopted mother, but she has a need to find out more about where she came from. In her papers is there a photo of her mother, standing in a pile of rubble from a disaster, besides Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. She got curious and decides to find out more about this...

I really liked this book, the class differences that are a large part when it comes to both stories. At first, I found Elizabeth Haberlin a bit hard to connect to, but after a while did she start to grow on me and towards the end did I find myself really liking her. Contrary did I find Lee Parker to be right from the very start a fabulous character, easy to connect with. I also liked how the Jewish lifestyle was a big part of both stories. All and all is this a great book!

When I saw the cover of the young adult novel Pretty Face by Mary Hogan at my library, I got high hopes for it. I deduced that it was about a plus-size teenage girl living in skinny-obsessed Southern California who discovers to love her body as is during a life-changing trip to Italy after quickly scanning the cover flap. My heart fluttered, because it was reminiscent of one of my favorite books, the memoir An Italian Affair which was about a woman who learns to accept her body (inside and out) while carrying on a long distance relationship with an older man she met while traveling in Italy. I snatched it off the shelf and quickly took to reading it. I held all my hope and reservations in check until I finished it.



Pretty Face is the story of Hayley, an overweight teen who is being badgered (damn near abused) by her mother to lose weight—a woman who lost weight on a Weight Watchers program and now is cooking & badgering her family with the zeal of a skinny convert. Self-conscious Hayley hides her pain of not fitting in with the pretty skinny folks of Santa Monica by binge-eating on comfort food in front seat of her car or making up for being fat by being the funny girl. Feeling she needs a change of scene, her parents send her to Italy to spend the summer with an old family friend. This is where and when the transformations begin.



Hayley is automatically seduced by the long, home-cooked meals and her diet plans fail her. The descriptions of yummy dishes will have your mouth watering. She spends her days at a slow anti-Santa Monica pace. She walks and bikes everywhere. She gardens. She reads and plays board games with her host family. She stops to literally and figuratively soak up everything the small Italian town has the offer. Instead of spending days self-loathing, Hayley begins to enjoy life. And her life becomes very sweet when she finds the gorgeous, gap-toothed Enzo—her first love and lover. Their romance is strong, quick and heady, and they fall under the spell of each other easily. Best of all, he loves her body. She’s his curvy Americana with a beautiful face, and the phrase is not used as an underhanded compliment. Hayley finally accepts and learns to love her big body.



Upon returning to California, she is immediately crushed by her mother’s size obsession as Hayley body has firmed up and slimmed down a bit from her daily walking tours and visits to ancient churches. Hayley does not revel in the compliment of being/looking smaller because she is past needing it. Then on the last page, the book takes a turn. Hayley steps on the scale and is happy about the number on it! The book tried so hard to create a journey of a protagonist who takes care of herself physically AND emotionally for the first time and accepts her body for what it is and can do, but it suddenly kills that positive message by having her equate it to the number on the scale.



With that said, I do come away from the book with less self-loathing about my weight and I’m sure several girls (and maybe boys) will as well. The love story between Hayley and Enzo was sexy without being graphic or smutty. The author also does an excellent job of transporting the reader to a different place, and making one long to take a trip to Italy ASAP. The other downside of Pretty Face is the liberal sprinkling of cultural references that dates the book, and will have readers 3 to 5 years from now running to Wikipedia to understand them all.



On a scale of 5 stars, I give Pretty Face 3 stars. (Five stars for the excellent descriptions of food.)

I read a lot of mixed reviews on this book before I started it. Some people loved it, others not so much. When my Mom was terminally ill and I was her caretaker, I often fantasized about what I was going to do when it was over. When life was "good" again. I found myself doing the same thing when caring for my terminally ill fiancé. Imagining a bright future helped me deal with the horrors of the present. I'm so glad I was given the opportunity to read this book. I feel like I connected with Fay and I totally understood what she was dealing with.

I read a lot of mixed reviews on this book before I started it. Some people loved it, others not so much. When my Mom was terminally ill and I was her caretaker, I often fantasized about what I was going to do when it was over. When life was "good" again. I found myself doing the same thing when caring for my terminally ill fiancé. Imagining a bright future helped me deal with the horrors of the present. I'm so glad I was given the opportunity to read this book. I feel like I connected with Fay and I totally understood what she was dealing with.

"Two Tales" revolves around the third and youngest child in the Sullivant family, Muriel. Muriel often felt unloved and overlooked by her mother and father due to their affections being focused on Muriel's older sister Pia and brother Logan. Muriel's mother and father Lidia and Owen seem at times to not even want Muriel around and she spends her life trying to get her parents and older sister to love her.

The author Mary Hogan, flashes back to the past focusing on Lidia and Owen's initial relationship to the present day focusing on Muriel's relationship with her sister Pia. We also get to some flashbacks to Muriel as a younger child with her sister and mother.

We do get to spend a little time from Pia's point of view which was nice and I thought haunting at times (I don't want to spoil potential readers) and it was good to see where her new found honesty came from and why she wanted so badly to reach out to Muriel.

The only quibbles I had with this book were that I wish that we had seen the story told from Lidia and Logan's points of view as well. I did end up liking "Two Sisters" but thought at times the story took too long to get to the ultimate conclusion in the end that I really didn't think worked based on what had came before it with all of the characters.
Please note I received this novel via the Amazon Vine Program.

Not good but some interesting parts. Very predictable. Really.

It could have kept it going a little better. It took me a long time to read this book. I read about half of it and set it down for a year before I finished it yesterday. But it was a nice story and am glad I finally finished it.

Story of a younger wife and her older husband of 20+ years who develops dementia. Very nicely written.

What a wonderful wonderful ending to both protagonists in the end of the book. Now I can understand, after having read the epilogue, why the older protagonist was written in first-person. This book is such a well juxtaposed rendition of both historical fiction and a modern setting including , even barely touching , on the rights of women, the accomplishments of determined women like Clara Barton, and a tragedy based on class indifference.

What a wonderful wonderful ending to both protagonists in the end of the book. Now I can understand, after having read the epilogue, why the older protagonist was written in first-person. This book is such a well juxtaposed rendition of both historical fiction and a modern setting including , even barely touching , on the rights of women, the accomplishments of determined women like Clara Barton, and a tragedy based on class indifference.

Fay and Paul have had an intriguing marriage, with both physical and intellectual compatibility. A trip to Spain, that initially delights, brings fear and a sense of foreboding when Fay realizes the very astute, Paul , a Judge, a man of the world, is slipping away into the beginnings of dementia. Her life begins to exist in both its realistic challenges and in her own daydream fantasies of a parallel life. There were very sincere moments here, believable relationships, and a plot that held interest.

A wife’s journey as her husband begins to leave her. But not in the way you think. Very well written and very touching. The author’s first hand real life witnessing of this is evidenced by her accurate writing. My only question is who would be the target audience?

3.5 He was much younger than her, a respected state supreme Court judge, already married once with a son. He was kind, funny, smart, and from the moment Faye saw Paul, they clicked, married. Now after many years of a successful marriage, Paul surprises her with a trip to Spain. At first things go marvelously, but then she begins to notice little things, and then something major happens.

There is such a realistic feel to this book, a honesty that is compelling and heartbreaking. Watching someone you love, leave you unwillingly in body and mind. Caregiving such a demand on the spirit, the emotional toll on the person. Family who try to help but don't understand, and then a granddaughter and a caretaker who have words of wisdom, much needed.

The author has watched someone she loves struggle with Alzheimers, and does a wonderful job here conveying the emotional and physical struggle on all involved. A difficult book to read, but one that provides an important insight into this horrific condition.½

I loved Fay and Paul story of how they met and their relationship. It was a true love one. Although, my issue is that this love and bond they shared was not so easily conveyed to me. In the matter that I was not able to fully embrace them or the story as strongly as I wanted too.

For this story, it should be about the characters. I am only basing this off the story and not on the author's life. This book is part memoir/non fiction about the author's marriage. Alzheimer's is a sad disease. It was apparent in this book. It does not just affect the person experiencing Alzheimer's but also the person's loved ones as well. I felt for Fay and her frustration with trying to get help for Paul. It was like she was hitting brick walls. The most powerful sentence in this book was said by Paul when Fay caught a glimpse of her husband in his eyes. He said "I never left".

This was a quick book to read. Sad, of course, but like many books of this sort it tries to be uplifting in some small way. Told from the viewpoint of the wife, she wanders off into her own fantasy world to cope with her husband's growing dementia but her fantasies are proved to be no better than her reality. My overriding feeling after reading this book is just how horrible this disease is.

***I received this book through LibraryThing Member Giveaway. The opinion is solely my own."

Like the title says, Left is a love story and is told from the main character, Fay's point of view. Fay fell in love with Paul, who is a judge and is 20 years older than her. I finished the book in just a day or so, but it really stuck with me. The story is just about an ordinary woman with a "normal" life. One could really relate. Then she slowly begins to notice odd behavior from her husband. Eventually we discover he has dementia. To cope, Fay begins to imagine a different life she could escape to. The end of the book allows us to see that things may not always be better elsewhere. I would love to read more from this author. I received a complimentary copy as part of the Librarything Early Reviewers program.

Paul Agarra, a respected judge, and his much younger wife Fay are on the last day of a trip to Spain. Fay proposes a quick side trip on the way to the airport, but they soon got lost. They pull into a diner so that Fay can use the rest room and ask for directions; Paul will circle around until she comes out. Except that Paul never returns. Frantic, with no money or cell phone (she had left her purse in the car), Fay finally makes her way to the airport, where she finds Paul waiting for her. He insists that going to the airport without her was the logical thing to do, since they were lost and he knew that she was expected to be there. This is one of the first signs that something isn't quite right with Paul, and the rest of the book tracks his slide into Alzheimer's. Fay struggles with the changes while Paul, his children, and his ex-wife refuse to accept his decline--until one night the police find him wandering in the middle of the night.

This book has been likened by many to 'Still Alice.' Don't believe it--this one is far inferior. Yes, it's about a smart professional who develops Alzheimer's. But whereas Lisa Genova focused primarily on Alice herself, Hogan's main character is Fay, and I found it extremely hard to empathize with her. She's a vain, shallow, pampered woman who is really full of herself. I got tired of reading about her classy outfits, her constant primping, her flashing diamond earrings at doormen to let them know how important she is, her fantasies about younger men that she expected would fall in love with her, her claims that she looked much younger than her years, her insistence that she had the most perfect husband in the universe, yadda, yadda, yadda. By the time she tried to redeem herself, it was too late for me. It also bothered me that, after Paul suffers a serious shoulder injury, the whole family is ready to blame the surgeon and the hospital for his rapid decline. I have great compassion for families having to deal with a relative suffering from this dreaded disease, but I know that there are much better novels written about the issue, ones that make you care about their dilemma. The only likable character is Lola, the dog. Not recommended.

When things go wrong in life, some people retreat into fantasy. Sometimes the life they imagine is very basic and other times it can grow to be an elaborate escape from the reality they are facing. This is the case in Mary Hogan's newest novel, Left: A Love Story.

The novel opens with Fay Agarra, the narrator of the story, walking her dog Lola and talking to and about a pre-war building in her New York City neighborhood, a building she's fallen in love with and is fantasizing about moving into "after it was all over" without mentioning what "it" is. The story immediately jumps to Spain and a vacation she took with her husband, the time from which she dates the changes in her life. Fay is 21 years younger than her husband and although she says often that their May-December romance shouldn't have worked, it has been a nearly perfect marriage for 22 years. Paul is a well-respected sitting judge in the city and has an adult son and an annoying ex-wife. Fay is an artist whose Etsy store is finally taking off. They're in Spain for a break from real life and so that Fay can find some more inspiration for her lamp shades. As they are getting ready to leave Spain, something strange happens though. Fay's "there kind of guy" drives off and leaves her, then telling police that she's lost. This turns out to be the first instance of Paul's forgetting, his dismissal of Fay's concerns, and a rather abrupt personality change that comes and goes. Fay is concerned by what she sees as significant changes but when she mentions her fears to her stepson and to Paul's doctor, each of them discounts her observations, suggesting she is imagining things. Only after a fall and surgery change things irreparably, does the truth come out.

Fay, as Paul's wife and caretaker, narrates the story, flipping back and forth from the past that led her to where she is and the present where she imagines herself falling into a relationship with a man she's seen in the building she covets. That she has created a whole story about this man---she's dubbed him Blake and invented his entire life out of thin air--and seems to truly believe her invention or maybe just wants to believe it so badly that she is shocked when it turns out to be as far from the truth as possible seems a little odd, as does her obsession with the building this man lives in. This easy belief in her own story, and the fact that Fay is so easily bullied, unsure of her observations about Paul once they are questioned, contribute to her coming off as far younger than she actually is. Her world, until the incident in Spain, seems to have been so charmed that she is incredibly naive and completely blindsided by any hint of trouble. Although Fay narrates her own story, she resolutely steers away from discussing everything going on with Paul as much as she can, escaping into her imaginings rather than detailing the actual day to day with her failing husband. This means that although the novel deals with a very difficult subject, the story as a whole remains mostly quite light and superficial. It does address some of the stresses of being a caretaker but obliquely instead of head-on, making it difficult to connect and sympathize with Fay's character. She almost seems as if she spends the entire book in shock, repeating phrases throughout and focused on inconsequential things rather than bigger issues and concerns. The reader is told about the Agarra's wonderful marriage but never shown it to make it real. Secondary characters, including Paul, are lightly sketched, keeping Fay as the main focus of the story. The book, this tale of a love and marriage slowly fading away, is quite short and a very fast read that many readers will find sweet and affecting.½

Thanks to the publisher, Wm Morrow, via LibraryThing, for a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

Mary Hogan is a new author for me. She has written a passionate novel about a happily married couple of 22 years who find themselves coping with the husband's dementia. He is a prominent judge and over 20 years older than his wife and has always been there for her. She's an artist and is overcome with his condition so creates a fantasy world to escape which adds a lot to the story line. Their dog, Lola, is prominent throughout the novel.

Since I have done volunteer work with patients suffering from dementia, I have knowledge of how this ravaging disease affects not only the patients, but their caregivers. I found this author did a great job of describing the path of decline for the judge and his wife's reactions to various situations. It's a very difficult situation for both.

"Left: A Love Story" is about a married couple, Paul and Fay. Paul is a New York judge who is in denial about being in the early stages of dementia. The story is told from Fay's point of view as she watches her once vibrant husband turning into a stranger and how she tries to deal with it. It was a good story and I enjoyed reading it.

***I received this book through LibraryThing Member Giveaway. The opinion is solely my own."

Left: A Love Story is a poignant book about watching your beloved fall victim to dementia and decline. It is both affirming of love and heart wrenching. The effects that this process has on family members is well-explored, describing the various reactions of the children and other family.

This book is easily read and is written so that you want to continue on to see what happens. I read the book in a day. It flips back and forth between the past and current day, and addresses a coveted apartment building as if it were a lover. I enjoyed the description of the apartment building, as well as the details about the various locations.

This is a book that can be difficult to read for its sadness, but I am glad that I read it.

Hogan provides a painful but beautiful way to present the issue of Alzheimer's in a novel. She writes from person experience because her father died so recently from the condition. Fay, the judge's young wife, slowly discovers what is happening to her husband but is unable to make anyone else understand. Hogan provides a clever beginning to the book as we watch Fay try to conceive of a future life for herself. It's sad that the book is so accurate in the portrayal of anyone working with someone with Alzheimer's -- the patient's mind has left and the partner has been - left. I liked Fay so much and thought the author probably put a lot of herself into the character.

This is a beautiful and poignant love story about a young woman watching the love of her life slowly fall into the depths of dementia. Kudos to all those caretakers out there who decide to care for their loved ones at home. This book made me very sad as my own father developed dementia and unfortunately my sisters and I were not able to take care of him. 3 stars and an extra 1/2 for the caretakers point of view. I won this book from LibraryThing.

Left is a beautifully written story about a woman coping with the onset of her husband's dementia. Dotted with touches of humor, and understandably sad at times, the novel made for a quick and enjoyable read.

I liked this book and for the most part had sympathy for Faye. I did feel like it ended abit abruptly and at times I was confused as to where I was in the time line. It was interesting to read about this subject though and to see how Faye coped with Paul's decline.