Kelly Dwyer

This was a great book. The characters and emotions were so real, I got totally immersed in the story. Laura Neuman runs from California to Boston away from a terrible secret. She is only 18 and is now an orphan. Her flashbacks to her mother's battle with cancer and death are heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Laura gets a job in a restaurant and befriends Nadia an artist, in love with a married man. She is followed home by a strange man in a baseball cap, then falls in love with David who allows her to tell her awful secret.

After her mother died, Laura goes into deep depression and feels a great loss, which she still bears. Her father does not help her and he ends up remarrying a woman he had an affair with. Laura doesn't forgive him. When he gets in a car accident and ends up paralyzed, he asks Laura to do the unthinkable and this haunts her all the way to Boston.

I found it so interesting the play between the two religions and faiths and the intense struggle to believe in God and an afterlife. This continual doubt is part of many folks lives and does it make a person's life better to believe or not?

David is not who Laura thinks and she escapes relatively unharmed and the angel she speaks to is released. Laura begins again.… (más)

Self-Portrait with Ghosts tells the story of a woman, Kate, and her daughter, Audrey, who are forced to cope with the the suicide of their brother/uncle Luke. The story is told in alternating chapters, told in the present via Kate/Audrey, and in flashback via Luke. These flashback chapters explain Luke's life and what leads to his suicide. What emerges from this is that Luke is desperately, almost hopelessly depressed, and the rest of the family is plagued by problems too. The result of Luke's suicide is that it ultimately brings the family together, particularly Kate and her estranged sister Colleen. Clearly the saddest character in the book is Luke, who is extremely depressed, to a level that anti-depressants cannot help. He seems, in short, to be wired differently in a way that is incompatible with life. Luke is presented as the kindest and least flawed character. In Dwyer's presentation it's almost as if luke *has* to die. He's the saintly sacrifice that mends his family's wounds. Luke is kind, he's quiet, he gets along with all of his family members, he's generous. These are all things of which the rest of the family falls short. The irony in the story is that Luke's calmness and kindness are what allow the family to stay divided. His moderating influence preserves the divide. Ultimately, I'm struggling to find the larger point of this book. There's a great deal of sadness, some heartfelt family moments, but there didn't seem to be a larger takeaway. While engaging enough to read, it's not the sort of book that left me thinking about it afterward.… (más)