The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

For me, one of the biggest benefits in being in a book group is that sometimes a member reads a relatively unknown book and wants to share it with us.  I had never heard of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, and if someone had told me what it's about, I doubt I would have picked it up.  But it has a magical quality that I really enjoyed.  It takes place in Burma, and we meet a cast of characters that are intriguing.  The book's narrator is a woman who is looking for her father who mysteriously disappeared from their New York home.  She finds hints that he has returned to Burma where he grew up in search of a woman named MiMi.  The book then switches back to her father's childhood and we learn about his life and his relationship with MiMi.  There's a strong fantasy/mystical level to the book, and you can't read it looking for logic.  For example, Tin Win (the narrator's father) is blind as a child, and has supernatural hearing where he can hear the heartbeats of the people around him as well as find his way easily by hearing familiar sounds.  It's a slow-moving book but I enjoyed the ride. -June

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

This was a recommendation from Sister BT who probably could relate to the prison scenes in the book.  While I'm not familiar with prisons, I do know a thing or two about secrets, and there were lots of those in The Crying Tree.  I had to fight the urge to gather all the characters in a room and have them all spill their guts just to see what would happen.  The main character, Irene, is devastated and angry when her son is shot.  The shooter is on death row, and after being miserable for years, Irene chooses to forgive the shooter and begins a secret correspondence with him.  Her husband, Nate, knows much more about the murder than he tells anyone.  Even the shooter has a story he keeps to himself.  This is really a great book, and the characters are well done.  However, it's a sad book, and even with the outlook of hope at the end, it still is hard to read sometimes.  Thanks, BT.  -June