From My Bookshelf....by Lynn Willoughby

The Matter With Morris ~ David Bergen
This is a heartbreaking novel in many ways. Morris, raised in a Mennonite home, is a pacifist, but in the heat of argument he dares his son to join the army. Twenty year old Martin does just that, then is tragically killed in Afghanistan, by friendly fire. Morris must face his grieving wife and daughters, but mostly himself.
He leaves his wife and home, moves into a spartan apartment, quits his job and spends his days reading Plato, Kierkegaard, Socrates, Cicero, Dante, Boehme, Shakespeare and other great thinkers, hoping to find salvation. But the answers to what ails us, to life's big questions - are just not that easy to find. Once, grasping for an answer "...he felt a moment of contentment. I am on the earth for no reason other than to be Morris Shutt."
As Morris goes ever further off the rails - cashing in his life savings and buying a safe to keep his cash in his apartment, meeting strange women, writing wild, incendiary letters - one to the Canadian Prime Minister, ending up with a gun, spying on a dinner party held by old friends, where he is discovered after being attacked by a dog - we wonder how it will all end.
For all its darkness, this novel about mourning remains an optimistic book. The contrary needs of friends, colleagues, lovers and family unite a parade of interesting characters all on the journey to find answers to the human dilemma. And what that answer is, for Morris, is amazing and totally surprising.
This is not an easy read. It is a complex, intelligent and very moving story of male mid-life crisis. Sometimes I need a book like this to push me to do some introspection of my own.

• The Retreat
• The Time in Between

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You ~ Louisa Young
The horrors of WW I trenches, hospitals and those left behind were so vivid in this novel, it was often necessary for me to put it down and regroup. Never have I read descriptions like this.
Riley Purefoy's childhood and adolescence was unusual, to say the least. From a poor, working class family in London, he is taken under the wing of an artist, ends up living in his house and thereby crossing paths with Nadine, one of the heroines in this story. Nadine's father is the conductor of the London Symphony, so these two young people should never have met. But as their friendship deepens and they fall in love, Riley feels the only way he can leave Nadine, as her family wishes, is to enlist.
While Riley Purefoy and Peter Locke fight for their country, their survival and their sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine, Julia - Peter's wife and Rose Locke - must deal with experiences at home that will shape future generations - all of us who grew up in the twentieth century.
The reading in this novel regarding the pioneering of plastic surgery and how it developed from necessity in this war was fascinating, yet nauseating. The artist in the book, Henry Tonk who redrew shattered faces, and the surgeon who rebuilt them, Major Gillies were taken straight from the history books.
The black humour used by patients to hang on to their sanity, or as it exhibits insanity, is especially moving. The doctors and the nurses who worked under such abominable conditions, the rain, the mud and the blood, with few supplies and less sleep are truly amazing! Never have I read such graphic words regarding Ypres, the Somme, Amiens, Passchendale. And yet humanity and kindness are not absent.
This is one story that will probably never leave me. We all have ancestors who fought these battles or nursed in the stench or who tried to help rebuild shattered bodies and lives. Because of this connection this book becomes very personal.

• Baby Love
• A Great Task of Happiness

…..and others, including children's books.

Who Knew?
The term "plastic" surgery denotes sculpting, from the Greek word "pastike" - the art of modeling malleable flesh. Reconstructive techniques were being carried out in India as early as 800 BC.