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A couple of books that sort of resonate a common theme of complicated, and not always complementary female friendship:

Kate Christensen’s Trouble is loosely centered around the friendship of three women: Josie, Raquel, and peripherally, Indrani. Josie has almost spontaneously decided to leave her husband, and is seemingly bursting with the desire to experiment with new men. When she receives word that semi-has been rock star, Raquel is in the midst of a personal and public relations crisis, she takes advantage of her new personal freedom to fly to Mexico City and lend support. Their experience there takes “girls weekend” to a new level. The novel isn’t overly compelling, but the characters are interesting and it’s a good, elevated chick lit offering.

More complex (read, “difficult to follow”) is The Generosity of Women, by Courtney Eldridge. This is not a traditional novel, written in the now common style of showing the overlap of multiple characters’ lives by shifting perspective from chapter to chapter. Near as I can figure, the closest to a central figure is Bobbie, a gynecologist. Around her revolve her best friend, her daughter, and several patients, one previously employed by the best friend. Men make guest appearances. It’s an awkward assemblage, frankly, and I’m still not quite sure why I kept going back to it. But I did. So you’ll have to decide for yourself.

I’m always excited to discover a new great author, and a couple I’ve read just since posting this blog are back already with new offerings.

First, and, I think even better than her debut (Sharp Objects), is Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Flynn is chief TV critic at Entertainment Weekly, but anyone expecting light, commercial fluff from her novels will be shocked and surprised by the distinctly dark and distasteful characters that populate these psychological explorations of family dynamics and fallout. Sharp Objects featured a young woman who had a unique approach to self-mutilation. Dark Places focuses on Libby, who “was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in ‘The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.’” Libby lived, but became a really screwed up kid, an even more skewed adult, and is now about to lose what little money she had from the incident to survive on, with no apparent plan to move forward as a productive adult. Enter, The Kill Club, a secret society offering to pay her to help investigate the murders and ply her for details that may exonerate her brother, who has been in prison for the crimes all these years, primarily because of her testimony. Crazy stuff. Great reading.

Second, and much more straightforward, is the latest from Chelsea Cain, Evil At Heart. This marks the return of Archie Sheridan, still locked up in the psych ward, his partner Henry Sobel, girl reporter Susan Ward, and blonde bombshell/escaped serial killer, Gretchen Lowell. It’s just good, old-fashioned thriller-fun. Love the characters. Read it in a day. Good stuff.

“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty, too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

That’s an excerpt from Little Bee, an unique and poetic book by Chris Cleave. I love this book. I can’t say much about it because it’s important to let the story unfold on it’s own, but it begins with a young woman from Africa leaving a detention center in Britain to search out the only person she knows in the country she has risked so much to relocate to. How she knows this person, and what results from this desire to seek him out is an unusual and compelling story that will stay with you, and, I suspect, eventually find its way to film.