Maybe good to recommend for insight into grief issues. ( )

Okay, I'm starting to get over my prejudice toward "women's fiction," which I'd always steered away from because I thought it was depressing. Books like Beyond the Waves are why. I'm still not to the point where I'll seek them out, but I am changing my attitude--it's not easy to teach this old dog new tricks, so this is a pretty good achievement.

Beyond the Waves is about Miranda, a mentally disturbed twelve-year-old, and her psychiatrist, Abby Cohen. Ms. Marek does a fabulous job of getting the reader into Miranda's head, and we see her isolation from everyone and everything but her overprotective father through her eyes. The story starts with one day when her father is later than he's ever been, so she leaves the house to find him--something she's never done--gets lost, and winds up in a mental hospital, where she meets Abby.

Abby is also isolated, emotionally, since her daughter's death two years ago. As she works to open up Miranda's psyche, she opens her own.

It's an emotionally real story, about grief and isolation, and reaching out to life. I'm glad I read it. ( )