The Terrace Public Library\u2019s book club picked Practical Jean for this month\u2019s read and I was one of the people who helped choose it. Here\u2019s the blurb:<\/p>\n

Jean Vale Horemarsh is an ordinary, small-town woman with the usual challenges of middle age. She\u2019s content, mostly, with the life she\u2019s built: a semi-successful career as a ceramics artist, a close collection of women friends (if you ignore the terrible falling out she had with Cheryl all those years ago), a comfortable marriage with a kind if otherwise unextraordinary man. And then Jean sees her mother go through the final devastating months of cancer, and realizes that her fondest wish is to protect her dearest friends from the indignities of aging and illness. That\u2019s when she decides to kill them . . .<\/p>\n

I love to be surprised by books \u2013 to find something I haven\u2019t read before \u2013 and Practical Jean certainly fits the bill. In fact, I\u2019m finding it to be a pretty harrowing read. Not because of the killing aspect \u2013 so far no one\u2019s died except Jean\u2019s mother \u2013 but because of the truth behind the darkly funny storyline: that we witness casual cruelty all the time, both as children and as adults, and we\u2019re not supposed to \u201cover-react\u201d to it, or to grieve about it, either. And if we can\u2019t \u201ctoughen up\u201d or turn a blind eye to disease, suffering and death all around us, we may \u2013 like Jean \u2013 go a little insane.<\/p>\n

Definitely a worthwhile read. I can\u2019t wait to see where this one goes, because at this point \u2013 I can\u2019t guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Terrace Public Library\u2019s book club picked Practical Jean for this month\u2019s read and I was one of the people who helped choose it. Here\u2019s the blurb: Jean Vale Horemarsh is an ordinary, small-town woman with the usual challenges of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.lalaprojects.com\/coraseton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}