Sunday, March 21, 2010

19. Life Sentences - Laura Lippman

Audio read by Linda Emond (excellently)
9 unabridged cds/ 10.5 hours
2009 Recorded Books
352 pages
Rating: 2.5

Cassandra Fallows, well-known memoirist, has returned to Baltimore to write another "true life" story. This time it will be about a woman who was a peripheral character in her elementary school years and has become a media sensation for admitting nothing when charged with murdering her baby son. Cassie begins to dig. About half the book is from her point-of-view, telling what's happening as she unearths clues about Callie Jenkins. Part of the book are excerpts from her first memoir, which give us looks into her past, particularly about her friends Tisha, Donna, and Fatima. And the rest of the book puts us into the minds of some of the characters that she is encountering on her current quest for the truth. Lawyers, police officers, elementary friends, and her parents.

Great reader. So-so story. I didn't like the protagonist at all...I kept hoping she would think or say or do something that would endear me to her even slightly, but no such luck. Then I realized that maybe you're not supposed to like her? I mean, I didn't hate her, but I certainly didn't admire her, or feel sorry for her....I really felt she was a self-centered .....jerk. Ah well. Much of the story centered around her father and his second wife, Annie, a black woman that was the "love of his life." Annie is dead by the time the story takes place, but the father is not. Didn't like him either. Another self-centered....jerk.

Ah well. Life goes on. At least I tried a new author, right?

No comments: