Dear Great Book Guru,  First, the Halloween Party and Parade Friday at 1pm on the front lawn of the Children’s Library  and then the next day- the Pet and Puppet Parade  at 11am organized by Karen Kessler- what an exciting weekend here in Sea Cliff!  Will I have time to read -please something short but, of course, meaningful?  Lover of Pets, Puppets and Parties

Dear Pets, Puppets, and Party Lover,  I have a  beautifully written,  very disturbing  200 page book that I highly recommend: THE CHILDREN ACT  by Ian McEwan.  Fiona is a highly respected English Family Court judge who deals with troubling cases of parental rights. Her own life is comfortable, but she is beginning to rethink past decisions and life choices. Her latest case involves a young man with leukemia whose treatment requires blood transfusions. He and his parents are devout Jehovah Witnesses so transfusions are out of the question.   Because he is a few months short of his eighteenth birthday, the court can supersede his wishes and it does. The transfusions take place, he recovers, his parents are secretly jubilant, and all is well…..or so it seems. When he becomes estranged from both his religion and his parents, he reaches out to Fiona as a beacon of beauty and wisdom. While she tries to maintain a professional distance, she finds it more and more difficult as her affection grows. Yeats’s “ I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears” becomes the youth’s refrain, and Fiona, while neither young nor foolish, is indeed full of tears by the end of the novel.   Thought- provoking and highly recommended!