Tiny Imperfections

Tiny Imperfections by Alli Frank
Josie is a single mom in San Francisco. Her daughter will be heading off to college soon. A college that Josie is sure to chose for her. Etta, however, has other ideas. She is devoted to becoming a ballerina and has worked very hard at perfecting her craft. Josie has a few other issues in addition to teenage rebellion. Her boss is a bully, her aunt who lives with her had a heart attack and her friends are constantly trying to fix her up despite her being happily single. Nothing here is unusual or odd but the author's make it so real with fantastic dialog and characters that come to life. I listened to the audio book which was perfectly done by Bahni Turpin. In fact, this is a great example of Turpin at her best.

The Pure Gold Baby / Margaret Drabble, 291 p.

Globe-trotting Jess comes of age in postwar London, when the world seems to be opening up to young women.  But when the result of an affair with her anthropology professor is her beautiful, golden daughter Anna, things change.  Anna is sweet and happy, but as she grows it becomes clear that she has intellectual delays.  So Jess turns away from the wide world and devotes herself to mothering her child.  Softly plotted so as to be just barely a novel; still, it's an affecting meditation on difference.  Along the course of Jess' life, she interacts with a group of people in an experimental psychiatric hospital, as well as classmates of Anna's with various cognitive deficits, and through all of these encounters she examines their worlds with an anthropologist's eye.

Little Fires Everywhere

Little Fires Everywhere / Celeste Ng, read by Jennifer Lim, 338 pgs.

Elena Richardson is a good person.  She rents a property to deserving people for below market rate.  She feels good about giving them a leg up.  When Mia and her daughter Pearl show up, they seem like the perfect tenants.  Pearl becomes fast friends with Elena's son Moody and is soon a fixture around the house. Mia ends up taking an offer to clean and cook for the family of six.  But when Mia gets involved in a situation with a co-worker who abandoned her baby but now wants her back, Mia and Elena clash.  Elena decides to find out more about her renter with the mysterious lifestyle and background. The consequences affect both families and things become irreparable. I love how we get to know the Richardson family and the Mia and Pearl.  The perspectives of each character is fascinating. This book has been on my list for awhile and I'm glad I finally got to it.  Excellent narration by Jennifer Lim.

Maid

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive / Stephanie Land, 270 p. 

The author finds herself 32, mother to an infant, Mia, and homeless, after Mia's father's behavior becomes so disturbing they are forced to flee.  Over the years of Mia's infancy in Washington State, Stephanie works frantically to sustain herself and her daughter through carefully maximizing all government benefits available, and working a variety of housecleaning jobs, all while taking online courses in an attempt to move her family on to something better.  Stephanie's book makes clear the effort of conscientiousness and organization required to hold on to those meager benefits, and opens up the feelings of being an anonymous household 'maid,' required to clean the toilets of strangers.  Her exhaustion, vulnerability and loneliness are clear.  Particularly enlightening is a story she tells of being in a grocery store using a WIC coupon and hearing an older man in line behind her shout angrily, "You're welcome," presumably because he felt he should be thanked for contributing to her child's glass of milk.