On the Shelf book review
Dalene Hawthorne, Special to The Gazette
Saturday, August 30, 2008
“You are what you pretend to be.”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Ever wish you could somehow reinvent yourself? Ever tell a lie that you then couldn’t figure out how to reverse? Ever wish you could just be someone else for a while?
Well, our friend Cassie (and she does come to feel like a friend) does that almost accidentally. She finds herself at the beginning of the book a young but relieved widow who needs a job. She is dyslexic, has very little self-confidence, no college degree, and her only real work experience was at her husband’s towing service and the local wildlife refuge.
After disheartening rejections from employers and employment agencies, Cassie makes one more attempt, only this time she writes on her job application that she has a psychology degree from the University of Michigan. She instantly gets a break, and interviews for a job as an administrative assistant at a nearby university.
After interviewing with an eccentric, older female professor, she is offered a job working for Professor Pearce and another faculty member who turns out to be a very attractive, younger male expert in animal behavior. OK, so the ending may be kind of obvious by now, but the journey there is entertaining and warm.
Cassie has a pet African gray parrot who is really a person named Sam. She discovers a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers in the woods behind her house. The ivory-billed woodpecker is considered extinct or nearly extinct, and the woods behind her house are not the right kind of habitat for them, but somehow they are there and Cassie visits them regularly.
The characters in the book all seem like people I’ve known.
It’s fun to read about Cassie’s best friend, her hippy-dippy mom, the nasty co-worker, and Sam the parrot. Oh, and there’s Black Dog and Ahab, too. Cassie goes through some of the same dating nightmares that many single women experience, but it’s heartening to witness how she gains confidence through her job. She gains enough confidence by the end of the book to enroll in college courses and do well in them. She’s truly an inspiration for all slow starters.
For a while toward the end of the book, it seems that the ending that seemed so obvious in the beginning isn’t going to happen, and did Cassie really see those ivory-billed woodpeckers ...?
This is an uplifting, easy read. Enjoy your new friends.
On the Net:
http://www.aversionofthetruth.com/home.htm.
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