Happy Holidays :)

I've been having the most wonderful holidays with my family...lots of good eating, reading and painting.  Who could ask for anything more?  One of my many favorite gifts is the 'wood stove' heater that my husband gave me for my studio.  I love it!  And I've also been enjoying so many books in between bon-bons and Christmas movies, here are the latest:

Irma Voth 
By Miriam Toews

I am a huge fan of Miriam Toews writing - she grew up in the same town as my husband and his family so it's always interesting to see some of the local and cultural history of the area come through in her writing.  Irma Voth is a young Mennonite woman who lives with her family in Mexico with an extremely controlling father under the weight of a dark  family secret.  Though her story is difficult and at times very sad she views  life with a wry sense of humour and chooses to create a new life of freedom for  herself and her sisters.  She discovers herself and begins to understand  forgiveness.

The Memory Keepers Daughter
By Kim Edwards

Though I found this one to be a bit of a slow start, I thought the story was quite intriguing.  A surgeon delivers his fraternal twins on a stormy evening in 1964.  He realizes that his daughter is born with down syndrome, and because of his past experience and understanding of the heartache involved in loving and  losing someone with down syndrome, and while his wife is under aesthetic,
he  makes a snap decision to institutionalize his daughter and to tell his wife that their daughter died at childbirth.  His nurse, Caroline chooses instead to move  elsewhere and raise Phoebe as her own daughter.  Though his family is unaware of the events of this one night, they grapple with the consequences of his guilt over the following 25 years.