Dear Great Book Guru,  Well,  the time has come to bid a fond farewell to Summer 2015 and I will be doing just that at Roslyn Park this Sunday, August 30 at 6:30pm where my friends and I will gather for a family social and music by that great new band  Bittersweet; at sunset we will watch the beloved classic  “Muppets Take Manhattan” – all presented by the Sea Cliff Civic Association.  Before this great event, I would love to read a summer’s end book.           Sad to See  Summer End

Dear Sad to See Summer End, Yes- it has been a beautiful Sea Cliff summer, but I am sure fall will bring its own glorious events. For now, I suggest you read a very interesting and unusual novel- PRETTY IS by Maggie Mitchell.  This is a literary thriller that studies the changing nature of truth over time.  Seventeen years before the story opens, two twelve-year-old girls were kidnapped and spent six blissful  summer weeks  in a cabin in rural Connecticut with an abductor whom they  came to genuinely like. Zed chose Chloe, a child beauty pageant queen, and Lois, a national spelling bee champion, for reasons neither of the girls can understand, but both seemed to find in that infamous summer a reprieve from unhappy childhoods.   Memories of their captivity change as each in turn recounts those weeks’ events to the reader.  The Kraft macaroni dinners, the Nancy Drew mysteries they read, the advice Zed dispensed- all make for a cozy tale of sorts,  but what was it really all about?   A very interesting study of memory- recommended!