2010 book 29

Gail Godwin's Unfinished Desires
This GREAT book (with a somewhat terrible title) focuses on an elderly nun who served as headmistress of a girls' school in NC for many years and is now working on her memoirs, but is stuck on a terrible event that happened in the 50s. Godwin does a really good job of keeping the tension/interest up by flashing back and forth in time between the 50s and the early 2000s, and by shifting perspectives from the headmistress (who also recounts her own days as a student at the school) to the girls of the 50s and their young nun teacher. I think this would be a good book club book--lots of meaty plot and character and family stuff to discuss--and recommend it to my regular readers highly. Apparently Godwin has written many books but I've never heard of her before, which I'm glad has been rectified. A.