George and Lizzie Book Review

The boy meets girl narrative is as old as the beginning of storytelling. The question is, how do individual writers put a new twist on an old story?

Last year, Nancy Pearl published her debut novel, George and Lizzie.

George and Lizzie grew up in different households with two sets of parents who had different ideas of what parenting should be. George came from a loving and supportive household, raised by a dentist father and a stay at home mother. While Lizzie’s famous psychologist parents provided for her materially, there was an obvious lack of parental love. She was more akin to a ready-made psychology experiment than a daughter to her parents.

While their marriage is certainly a happy one, Lizzie is still feeling unfulfilled. Then a secret from her past comes back to haunt her. Will Lizzie choose the past or her future with George?

The book is interesting. While the author starts with the standard boy meets girl meet cute, the narrative becomes non linear.  While I appreciated the non-linear narrative and the effort it took to create, I found the style of the narrative to be a little hard to read.

Do I recommend it? Maybe.

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Three Identical Strangers Movie Review

The question of nurture or nature has haunted humanity since the begging of our species. Are we simply the product of our environment or do our genes control our actions and our choices?

The new documentary, Three Identical Strangers, starts in 1980. Robert Shafran is starting his freshman year of college. As he is moving into the dorms, he is greeted classmates who are referring to him as Eddy. Robert knows that he was adopted, but he knew nothing else of his birth family.  This strange encounter leads to a twin brother, Eddy Galland. Neither Robert or Eddy knew that each other existed. The press gets a hold of this story and a third brother comes forward, David Kellman.

While the brothers are bonding and becoming media sensations, there are unanswered questions about the past.  Why were they separated? Why were the adopted parents not told about the other two boys? Who is behind the separation and could they have had less than honorable reasons for hiding the truth?

As documentaries go, this is top ten, if not one of the top five documentaries of the year. It’s the type of story that is almost too good to be true.  What makes this documentary compelling, at least from my perspective, is the unseen dark forces that shaped the lives of these men well before they knew that they had the ability to make choices.

I absolutely recommend it.

Three Identical Strangers is currently in theaters. 

Unfortunately, Racial Profiling Is Alive And Well in America

Imagine the following: you are a person of color in America. Being that it is summer (and by extension, warm outside), you don’t want to sit at home all day. You want to barbecue in a public park, your kid wants to sell cold drinks on the front stoop or you want to go to the town pool.

First there was BBQ Becky.  Then there was Permit Patty. Now there is ID Adam.

On July 4th, Jasmine Edwards decided to visit the town pool with her child to get a break from the oppressive heat. Another resident of the area, Adam Bloom called the police on her when he felt that she was not forth coming enough on proving that she had the right to be at the pool.

From my perspective, this is the very definition of racial profiling. Ms. Edwards was doing nothing wrong. But Mr. Bloom felt that he had the right to question her, simply based on her skin color.

The hopeful perspective on America was that we were past judging another based on their skin color, especially considering that President Obama was in office for eight years. But it is obvious that racism and racial profiling is still unfortunately alive and well and in America.