Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

…Then, my friends, you make that the title and move on, because ain’t nobody got time for that.  (Those dishes, sadly, aren’t going to be doing themselves anytime soon.)  I just finished listening to Laura Marx Fitzgerald’s The Gallery, which I checked out for my daughter because she loves art AND mysteries.  (She and I both also really enjoyed Fitzgerald’s other middle grade novel, Under the Egg.)  Sadly, listening to it might not have been ideal–the accents fluctuated, and I think I would have preferred my own conception of Martha’s voice–but with so many books and not enough lifetimes to read them all, sometimes needs must.

I did end up liking it more than I thought I was going to for the first third of the book, which was happy.  I was expecting something similar in style to Under the Egg, and this wasn’t so much; it was a bit more of an overall mystery, whereas Egg was a bit more of a coming-of-age-with-a-mysterious-problem-to-solve-as-the-catalyst.  1920s New York also has its own kind of feel as a setting, and that played in.  By the end, though, I was thoroughly caught up in the what’s-going-to-happen?? mindset, and so on to my oldest it will go.  What she’s going to think of Martha, a Catholic school suspendee turned maid under her housekeeper mother, is anybody’s guess.  As for the newspaper magnate and his crazy (or is she?) wife, well–we’ll just have to see.

Bottom line?  If you’re interested in art, mysteries, or New York on the edge of the Great Depression, pick this one up.  If not, well–it’s up to you.