Book a Month Challenge: May

Are you sitting down? I would like you, my loyal readers, to note that not only am I on time with this month's book, I am also ON THEME. Yes, I Kerry, went to the Book a Month site, read that May's theme was "Mother" and chose a book to fit the theme. I read Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons. (I know, you all were thrown off because my Library Thing link says I've been reading Lady Oracle. I did pick-up Lady Oracle and then discovered after about 30 pages that I'd already read it--I hate it when that happens--I just haven't gotten around to updating Library Thing.)
Charms for the Easy Life tells the tightly woven life stories of three generations of women: Charlie Kate, her daughter Sophia, and granddaughter Margaret. Charlie Kate is a mid-wife and unlicensed doctor in Wake County, North Carolina. She is stubborn, blunt, spirited, and talented. Her daughter and granddaughter are equally stubborn in their own ways. Gibbons manages an intricate dance in which she endows each character with an individual identity while maintaining a sense of continuity between the three generations of women and she achieves three utterly believable but likable people. Gibbons' characters nearly pop out of the page to walk into existence in your living room; you feel that if you could travel back to pre-World-War II Wake County, you would surely find these women there. I like too that this book does such a fantastic job of portraying a relationship--that of mother, daughter, granddaughter--that has been so central to my own life and own identity (I see much of my grandmother in the Charlie Kate character). If you have a mother or are a daughter, I recommend that you read Charms for the Easy Life. And preferably sooner rather than later so that we can talk about it.