Rating: 
Summary: This is a book I'll keep for a lomg time
Review: I liked "Breathing Room" because it dealt with everyday issues. The book seems so real. It dealt openly about real problems and the book didn't give you some fairy tale ending. It gave you today's society as we see it everyday."Breathing Room" talked about problems that "we" as teenagers go through everyday.I would highly recommend "Breathing Room" to anybody because it is a good in-depth book.
Rating:
Summary: This is a book I'll keep for a lomg time
Review: I liked "Breathing Room" because it dealt with everyday issues. The book seems so real. It dealt openly about real problems and the book didn't give you some fairy tale ending. It gave you today's society as we see it everyday."Breathing Room" talked about problems that "we" as teenagers go through everyday.I would highly recommend "Breathing Room" to anybody because it is a good in-depth book.
Rating:
Summary: Powerfully refreshing
Review: In 'Breathing Room', Patricia Elam brings an intoxicating new voice to contemporary fiction that is simplistically elegant. Her warm, earthy characters are animated, yet familiar, and simple, attaching themselves to your emotions throughout the entire novel. Her prose is lyrical, eliciting colorful images of ardor, nostalgia, and aplomb.Breathing Room oscillates between the lives of Norma and Moxie, two very different women who have shared a bonded friendship since college. Both women face situations that drive them, deter them, and ultimately withdraw them from one another for various reasons. Patricia strips Norma and Moxie down to their bare essentials, exposing their deepest fears, desires, and issues to us...almost soliciting our assistance in some situations. Moxie is a single mother, raising a gorgeous teenager, and grappling with past demons and present prejudices. Norma is married, dealing with the adversity and rewards of motherhood, being a wife, and making a marriage work. Breathing Room leads us on a journey through realistic qualms in friendship, marriage, and day to day living. Posing questions about morality, support, and conviction. This refreshing, poignant story will remain in your thoughts well after you finish the novel. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the Relationship Drama
Review: My first thought about this books was, this is a mature story. A refreshing change from stories about relationships, excess baggage, or abuse. It is a well written story about life. It is told by three individuals whose lives were intertwined. Moxie has not accepted her mother's suicide death, which happened over 25 years ago, and she has suffered guilt that only an 11 year old child can imagine. Her failure to release the shadows of her past, affected her marriage and is causing problems with her 15 year old daughter, Zadi. As a counselor for troubled teens, Moxie's job is to listen and make recommendations to her clients. But she does not take this skill home, she tends to direct, with too firm a hand, the course Zadi's life will take. She fails to really listen to her daughter so they don't communicate. To complicate matters, Moxie suffers with bouts of depression and wonders if history will repeat itself. Her best friend Norma has been her link to reality, forever. When Norma's daughter is 'stillborn' and her husbands goes into himself to grieve, Norma has to share her emotional lost with Moxie. Norma floats in a haze for months looking for some semblance of stability and meaning to her life. I would love to have known Norma better, as some of her actions were not clear to me. When she shares a secret with Moxie about how she is coping, Moxie's disapproval causes the bond between them to unravel in an unexpected way. Zadi, Moxie's daughter, is a typically spoiled middle-class teenager and the reader hears her story through daily entries in her diary. Zadi's diary entries give you a very real look at what teenagers think and how they communicate, the essence of the story was told through Zadi. At 15, she definitely had her own agenda and she resented her mother's interference. She constantly pits her parents against each other, but finds herself entangled in her lies. Patricia Elam's debut novel is a wonderfully written story about humanity, with the message being everything is determined by our attitude and our resolve. The main characters struggled to deal with the disappointments and contradictions that tend to drag the very essence of life from your soul. This book was breathtakingly honest, and it exposed Ms Elam as a natural storyteller. Hopefully this is just the first, of a long list of titles from this talented new author.
Rating: 
Summary: Another page turner from another new voice!
Review: Other reviewers said it all so I'll keep this one short. If you're looking for something fresh from someone new on the fiction scene, BREATHING ROOM by Patricia Elam is just the right recipe for the ingredients of a good book. It's a definate page turner and captivates your from beginning to end. A story about friendships, relationships, pain and growth, BREATHING ROOM will have you re-evaluating your own life and what's most important. READ AND ENJOY!
Rating:
Summary: MOVE THIS ONE UP ON YOUR (to be read)LIST
Review: Patricia Elam has written a winner. The Character development is wonderful Zadi, Moxie and Norma cannot be contained on the pages they will invade your thoughts and your heart. The author explores several subjects, the handles them all extremely well. But the one that really got my attention was the relationship between Norma and her 3 year old son Miles, Norma honestly does not feel the love and nurturing towards Miles that is expected of a mother. It disturbs her and he feels it too. She has no idea how to change it. Elam explores it with such depth and sensitivity that you understand and empathize with Norma. Definitely one of the best of 2001!
Rating:
Summary: 10 stars if it were possible
Review: Patricia Elam's debut is a lyrical work of art, a beautiful song that carries you straight to the very end. The story is told through the eyes of Norma a professional photographer who has committed the worse possible crime as far as her best friend Moxie is concerned. Moxie has her own set of woes as a Probation officer and single mother of Zadie, a spirited smart teenager who challenges all that her mother has taught her in one fell swoop by dating the wrong type of boy and straightening her beautiful natural hair just to be accepted. The tumultuous relationships are intertwined by love, expectations, disappointment and loss. Not one beat is missed. Anyone who enjoys deeply written stories about love and friendship will enjoy this one wrapped in a warm blanket and a cup of steaming java.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Debut
Review: Patricia Elam's debut novel is an outstanding read. The story is of two friends Moxie and Norma who have been friends since their college days. When Norma reveals a secret to Moxie it truly puts their friendship to the test. The secret puts a wedge between their friendship and nearly stops them from communicating. Will they get their friendship back on track? You will have to read the book to find out. I enjoyed the realism of the story that Patricia Elam tells. This is truly a story of friendship and letting go of the past. I look forward to more from Patricia Elam and wish her continued success and blessings. Peace.
Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Literature
Review: Real. Deep. Moving. There are so many words to describe Patricia Elam's new novel. It's a compelling story of two friends, Moxie and Norma, and how their choices and convictions tear them apart, and ultimately bring them back together. Ms. Elam's novel was a refreshing change on the literary horizon. Breathing Room is a true, unpredictable depiction of two women's lives. I read a lot of fiction, and in most books I've read of late, the plot lines have been rather predictable. But Breathing Room breaks that mold; I eagerly followed its twists and turns not knowing what was going to happen next...just like real life. Moxie's struggle with her teenage daughter Zadi would remind most mothers of the tumultuous relationship that culminates at the brink of adolescence. Many of Moxie's choices prompt Zadi to make choices of her own that leads to a stunning and powerful ending. Norma's own choices affect her already-rocky marriage and builds up to a rather interesting climax. I won't reveal the details here, but I will tell you that they will shock you. Ms. Elam wonderfully weaves key plot twists throughout the story. Each revelation is subtle and believable, as is her characters' dialogue. I could imagine myself overhearing Moxie and Norma talking, or Zadi chatting with her 'dog' Allegra. Ms. Elam expertly sprinkles Zadi's lively journal entries throughout the book, adding substance to the story. Some authors use the journal entry technique merely to move the plot along, to take the place of dialogue. However, in Breathing Room, while Zadi's journal entries does advance the plot, it really gives a different perspective on the same story. Very clever, Ms. Elam! Despite the perpetual gray overcastI felt the entire time reading the book, it was a powerful book nonetheless. Don't hold your breath, get Breathing Room now.
Rating:
Summary: Breathing Room
Review: This book is a must read for the year of 2001.
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