The First Book Of 2018 Is, Ironically, The Last One Read In 2017!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                         That's right, girls!  At 9PM on New Years' Eve, I finished "A House Among The Trees," by Julia Glass.  I never miss one of her book, though some friends had said they found it hard to get into. Which caused me to approach it, with some trepidation.

                                           Maybe because I am such a literary person, I felt connected to it.  The tale of Mort Lear, a deceased children's book author, his devoted, spinster personal assistant, Tomasina (Tommy) Daulair, and what happens when the media frenzy that is the making of a biopic about the man, descends on his estate, headed by a charming leading man named Nicholas Greene, who wants to do on site research, a predatory museum curator named Meredith Galarza, and what happens when all these characters come together, (not to mention Tommy's estranged brother, Dani, whose role turns out to be far more important than could be imagined) is a display of literary fireworks that will keep discerning readers puzzled and guessing.

                                            I kept wondering.  The relationship between Mort Lear and Tomasina directly parallels Shakespeare's Lear and Cordelia, when things were good, but when it got to the gay and tragic relationship with lover Soren, I had to wonder--is Lear based on Maurice Sendak?  And is Ivo, the boy in Lear's ground breaking book "Colorquake," a stand in for Max, in "Where The Wild Things Are?"  And who expected Dani to take umbrage at being appropriated for a character when he had no idea?  A bit too mercenary, perhaps?

                                              Poor Mort Lear.  Though deceased, everyone, even Tommy, wants some piece of him, and will not let him rest in peace.  Glass' story raises the question as gorgeously as she can, of how to retain an author's respectability, without, in today's market, becoming just another cottage industry.  And does so in only the gorgeous, prosaic way Glass can.

                                               So, my reading year ended not with a bang, or a whimper, but a well satisfied sigh relief that my final text was one of high literary quality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!