Lost and Found (Carolyn Parkhurst)

I haven't read very much fiction lately, so I was looking forward to Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst. All I knew about it was that it was about contestants on a reality TV show and it had gotten good reviews, which was enough for me to want to read it. The first chapter begins from the point of view of a mother who is competing on the show with her teenage daughter, and by page six, the reader finds out their big story, the reason why they're on the show, which is that the daughter was pregnant and had a baby with the mother unaware of this until the night she gave birth. This information was presented so dramatically that I wasn't sure I could handle the rest of the book if it was all this emotionally supercharged.

Luckily, a few of the other contestants in the show (including the daughter) also take turns telling their stories in the chapters (former child actors, a "saved" gay man and lesbian woman now married to each other), and while I still felt there were uber-dramatical moments throughout, it got better and better, and I had a hard time putting this book down. I was sucked in and had a lot of gasp-out-loud moments. This book would be a good one for traveling or when you have an afternoon or two where you don't have to be anywhere or do anything and you can lose yourself in a book.

There'll be a slight haitus for the blog while Jim and I head to Hawaii to enjoy hikes in dormant volcano, a tour of a goat cheese farm where we'll get to help herd the goats and feed them, and various kinds of water activities. Mahalo!

Next book up: Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball by Molly O'Neill