There she goes again. Judy Wheeler has been wonderfully supportive of SWEETSMOKE, and she mentioned it once more in the newspaper, in the San Jose Mercury News, in fact. In a discussion about The Good Thief.
Towne Center Books
What we liked: “Good writing and character development.” “The orphanage with all the kids.” “The lifestyle seemed pretty accurate for those times.” “Both Ren and Benjamin were good in the same ways.” “I especially liked the lady who ran the boardinghouse.” “It’s different from what I usually read.”
What we didn’t like: “It was gory. Not appealing to me.” “I kept waiting for it to lighten up.” “Ending was too neat.”
We were surprised that: “It was written by a woman. It had a very male energy, the way she described the smells.”
We thought the theme was: “Survival. Every person in the book was trying to survive something.” “Family.” “Identity.”
The comment of the night: “It was nature vs. nurture. Ren could still be good.”
Other books we like the looks of: “Old Cape Magic,” by Richard Russo; “Sweet Smoke” by David Fuller; “Sweeping up Glass” by Carolyn Wall; “Traveling with Pomegranates” by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor.