[OakShannon]

Suz - no kidding! I'm going to have a 2 foot high stack by my bed tonight.

Has anyone else ever read Jane Hamilton's book A Map of the World? I don't think I've seen it mentioned yet. It was such a powerful book. The characters are finely drawn and it felt incredibly real and believable to me. Hamilton's best book in my opinion. It's about a woman who is babysitting her best friend's children and, in a moment of inattention, the little girl gets out into the yard and drowns in the family's pond. That's really how the story starts and then you see how everyone deals with the aftermath. It's so good - some of the images from that story will never leave me. But it's one book I've never been able to pick up again because it's such a painful story.