These Things Hidden / by Heather Gudenkauf

"I have no money, no job, no friends and my family has disowned me, but I'm ready. I have to be."

There aren't many secrets in tiny Linden Falls. So when 

popular teenager Allison Glenn is sent to prison for an unspeakable crime, it's not just her previously flawless reputation that gets tarnished. Her family suffers too, so much so that they want nothing to do with her after her release five years later. Her parents even deny Alison's existence, cutting ties with their daughter in abrupt fashion and doing the whole "never mention her name" bit. No one seems to pity Allison: her former friends whisper maliciously about her, classmates jealous of her beauty and talent glory in her downfall and others join in the constant mocking of her younger sister Brynn in the school hallways. Brynn herself mirrors her parents disdaining attitude but can't help be drawn back to the night of the incident and the real truth about what took place. It may seem like Brynn's burden to bare, and her parents to a lesser extent, but others are involved.

Others like Charm Tullia who seems removed from the Glenn family's circumstances but perhaps not so far as she'd like. Currently caring for her ailing stepfather while going to school to become a nurse, Charm would like to forget the past but also can't hide from the truth and what she knows. Also involved are Claire and her husband Johnathan, the local booksellers who've recently adopted a little boy, Joshua, who was found abandoned near the town's firestation. Knowing little about the Allison incident yet drawn in all the same by the web of secrets steadily permeating through the town, the young couple and their young son soon find that they too are a part of the past, a very big part indeed. Gudenknauf's The Weight of Silences was a dazzling debut. And while These Things Hidden doesn't carry the same allure and novelty, it's no slouch either. A literary thriller of sorts in which the oh-so-horribly scandalous incident driving the narrative isn't revealed until much later, the author paints a vivid portrait of interconnected lives and how even the smallest choices matter. With tidily hinted clues implanted throughout, the story is one which will peak reader interest all the way until the final penultimate revelation sets everything anew and changes everyone's lives forever. (FIC GUDENKAU)

The Cure For Modern Life / by Lisa Tucker

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Lisa Tucker's tried her hand at quite a diversity of occupations in addition to writing. Once a computer programmer, she's also been a waitress, math teacher and touring jazz musician. Having penned three popular novels prior to her latest, The Cure For Modern Life, Tucker's developed a loyal audience with her well-written books often chronicling the parallel lives of loosely connected characters from opposite ends of the social spectrum.

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40-year-old Matthew Connolly is a successful research scientist and executive for the prominent drug company Astor-Denning. Having helped cultivate a wonder drug called Galvenar which has since exploded onto the scene, Matthew's a major reason why Astor-Denning is currently sitting atop the market. But not everyone's so excited. Amelia Johannsen is a chairperson on a bioethics committee which is evaluating Galvenar in its early treatment phase, closely monitoring its counterbalanced side effects and not-unfrequent adverse reactions in patients. Amelia also knows Matthew personally. The pair were once amorous young lovers engaged to be married before the whole thing dissolved over an illicit affair. Now she's dating Ben Watkins, Matthew's longtime best friend and the doctor who helped develop Galvenar.

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Even if he is only 10 and despite the fact that he's had virtually no formal education, Danny knows how to work the streets. As is so often the case these days living with his undependable junkie mother, Danny must do what needs to be done so that he and his toddler sister, Isabelle, can survive. Its only through his savvy in creating pity and empathy from passers-by which enables them to get any food at all, much less the medicine that a sick Isabelle badly needs. But even Danny's not expecting what the tired-looking man in the suit does when Danny asks him for bus fair. Before long, Danny and his sister find themselves swiftly caught up in quite an unexpected turn of events.

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Tucker is a nice writer but this story's just too multi-faceted. The problem has as much to do with content apportionment as quantity. It's difficult to accurately get a handle on the characters as they wind their way through a quagmire of weighty issues like world-saving medical cures, relationship woes, serious ethical dilemmas, instances of charity gone haywire, drug addiction, pregnancy and abortion. Aspects of the backstory are hard to concede as well, mainly in the premise that three people as different as Matthew, Ben and Amelia have been best friends since college--not to mention each's awkwardly depicted livelihood as semi-famous yuppie science nerds. While largely unveven and overly sentimental, the book's message of mutual integrity in the medical profession--whether within corporate pharmaceutical policies or the domestic well-being of the underpriveleged--is easily understood by the end.

Secrets & Lies (1996) DVD w/ Brenda Blethlyn, Timothy Spall & Marianne Jean-Baptiste; a film by Mike Leigh

"This is the life, innit, sweethearts?"

 

Widow Cynthia Purley is a woman doomed by fear and insecurity. Over the hill and over-involved in the lives of her now grown son and daughter, she's become a product of isolation and despair, unwilling to confront being left alone. Loving and considerate her children may be, her son Maurice and live-in daughter Roxanne are frustrated by their weepy mother's pandering intrusiveness, equally desirous to have their hands untied. Both have their own lives now, Maurice with his wife Monica, a new home and photography business and Roxanne, who despite living with Cynthia, is increasingly occupied with her job and new boyfriend. Meanwhile, not too far across town, Hortense Cumberbatch has just lost her adoptive mother to cancer. Resolving to seek out her birth mother after 30 years, Hortense goes through the process of locating her real family in between shifts at her optometrist practice only to find the results too far-fetched to believe. The records show Hortense, who's black, to have a mother who's white. When double-checks and second opinions confirm this as the actual truth, Hortense bravely decides to seek out her real mom for the first time.

Known as your favorite director's favorite director, Mike Leigh has long been one of the world's most influential filmmakers, his deeply intimate films revealing an unprecedented vision of dramatic realism. While at the center of this moving film are of two women--one bold, the other frail--mutually encountering a daunting truth, it's the peripheral characters, specifically Roxanne and Maurice, who complete the drama. Maurice played by Timothy Spall may be the only thing standing between Cynthia and the deep end, his shaky stability practically the fulcrum by which the family stays afloat. And yet his own life is weighed down by convictions of personal inadequacy and self-doubt, perpetually confronted with a wife unable to give birth and a need to sustain his teetering photo business. Seemingly held back by her circumstances, Roxanne might have the incentive but lacks the direction and most of all the means to get out from under. The story's ultimately defined by its two leads though, the culminating meeting and revelation between Cynthia and Hortense portrayed as an intensely awkward but wholly believable circumstance. (DVD SECRETS)