Book Reviews November 2019

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.  I had heard much hubbub about this book when it came out a couple of years ago, and I must say, the hubbub was very much deserved.  The main character, Frances, is 21 and a college student in Dublin.  She and her ex-partner, but still current collaborator, Bobbi, meet Melissa and Nick, an author and actor married couple when Melissa is doing an article on Frances and Bobbi’s spoken word poetry performances.  I thought I wouldn’t find the book very interesting, not being hugely invested in the conversations and inner monologue of 21 year olds, but it was so well done!  And charming and wry.  Rooney does such a good job with Frances, and even if she is a flawed and self-centered person in the way that everyone is at 21, it was a really interesting book.  I recommend.

The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith.  This is a historical novel recreating the life of George Eliot.  It begins with her “second” marriage when she was sixty to a much younger man, John Cross, concentrating on their honeymoon in Venice when Cross apparently tried to commit suicide by jumping from a balcony into a canal!  I had not known about that tidbit of info:  apparently it was written about in Venice newspapers but the connection to Eliot the writer was pretty well masked.  Anyway, the chapters go back and forth from the honeymoon to Eliot’s entire life, and it was an interesting read.  She was so smart and successful, and really had to fight her way to the life she achieved.

The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose.  Julie Zickefoose is a bird artist, a writer, and a songbird rehabilitator.  In this book she writes of all the different birds she has interacted with over the years – many of whom were giving to her as fledglings in distress.  She nurses them, raises them, and then in most cases sets them free.  The drawings were beautiful and the stories fascinating.  I read it slowly over months and enjoyed it very much.

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell.  This was a great read!  I highly recommend.  Lucy is a down and out mother of two, living a somewhat homeless existence in the south of France.  The book switches between her and Henry, her brother, a very unreliable narrator who tells the story of their childhood, when their once wealthy socialite parents welcomed into their home a man who became a kind of mini cult leader.  Meanwhile, another main character, Libby Jones, has just discovered that she has inherited a mansion in Chelsea where all the events described by Henry took place years ago.  It’s a fun and very fast-paced thriller.

Grocery:  The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman.  This is a book about grocery stores in the US, how they have changed over the years, and what the business is like now.  He focuses in particular on Heinen’s, a small grocery chain in Ohio.  It was interesting, at times, although Ruhlman loves a list and used way too many of them.  On the whole, an essay about this topic would have been enough for me.

Book Reviews October 2019

Salt Lane by William Shaw.  This is the second mystery of his that I have read, and it focuses on detective Alex Cupidi from the previous book.  It’s another mystery set on the Kent coast, and the land there plays a central role.  It was very well written, and I liked that he continued on with Detective Cupidi, who is still dealing with her teenage daughter, as well, in this book, as her mother and a past lover.  It is suspenseful, and Shaw has a great eye for detail. I recommend.

Bloody Genius by John Sandford.  I can never pass up a new Virgil Flowers mystery:  they are always so well paced and quietly entertaining.  This was a good one.  Instead of getting sent to the outer bits of Minnesota, in this one Virgil is in Minneapolis at the University, trying to solve the mystery around the death of a professor in the library.  Virgil is as methodical and laid-back as ever, and slowly, eventually, puts all the clues together.  It is fun.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout.  I loved the first Olive Kitteredge book, and was so happy to discover that Strout was writing another one.  Like the first, it is really a book of short stories based in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine.  Some are directly about Olive, but in many she just makes a brief appearance.  I think Olive is such a brilliantly conceived character.  She is always completely Olive, and always a delight.  In this book, Olive is aging and dealing with the infirmities that come along with.  She’s trying to fix her relationship with her son, and continues on doing her quiet good deeds while never thinking a thought that goes unsaid.  It was delightful and beautifully written, and soon I will read it again.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow.  I finally submitted to the buzz and got this book, and it was a much more enjoyable read than I thought it was going to be, based on the subject matter.  Farrow wisely chose to make the book about his pursuit of the Harvey Weinstein story, rather than the story itself.  Of course the story is worthy, but focusing on how he investigated it, the interviews he got, and how he was stymied at almost every turn by NBC was really fascinating.  Not to mention disheartening.  It is a fast, smart, and astonishing read.

Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver.  I really enjoy Barbara Kingsolver’s nonfiction voice, and I hadn’t read this collection of essays, so was looking forward to it.  And it was good – and many of the pieces I quite enjoyed – but she wrote a lot of them in response to 9/11, so they are very much from that specific time period.  Her quirkiness can get a bit preachy at times.

 

Book Reviews September 2019

Reasons To Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe.  I love Nina Stibbe’s books.  She has a quirky, wonderful sense of humor and a great eye for character.  Like her first two, this novel stars the wonderful Lizzie, who is now done with school (and done with her job in the nursing home) and has now found a job working for a horrible English dentist.  Lizzie’s mother is still as loose a cannon as ever, but Lizzie is beginning to spread her wings and move away from her family.  Although the dental work scenes can be hard to read if you are dental work sensitive, Stibbe is just so funny and makes Lizzie even more so.  Lizzie’s desire for a sexual relationship with her somewhat boyfriend, who also might perhaps be her mother’s boyfriend, is so real and poignant.  I enjoyed this throughout.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  I got three of Adichie’s novels after reading an article about her in The New Yorker.  This one was her first and it was a good story.  She immediately draws the reader in and sets the scene well with a young girl, Kambili and her brother, Jaja, two wealthy kids in Nigeria with a controlling and abusive father.  That was actually my problem with the novel:  that an abusive father is kind of an “easy” plot twist.  It’s a cheap thrill in a way.  I do look forward to reading her second novel next.

The Birdwatcher by William Shaw.  I liked this mystery.  It was surprisingly subtle and good.  William South is a police officer in a coastal town in England.  He is an everyday policeman, but gets involved in the solving of a murder, because it was his friend and neighbor who was killed.  The book switches back and forth from the present day case, to the death of Billy’s father in the troubles in Northern Ireland when he was young.  He also befriends the lead detective on the case and her teenage daughter.  The strange landscape is a main character of the book and the whole thing was smart and well done.

Even If Your Heart Would Listen by Elise Schiller.  This is an account of the addiction and death of Schiller’s daughter, Giana Natali, from a heroin addiction.  Schiller’s study is mainly about how the existing rehab programs failed her daughter, relying as they do on the format for alcohol addiction.  Most of the many rehab programs Giana went to also emphasized moral failure (re the 12 steps), instead of treating opiate addiction in the ways that are proven to have the best chance:  via inhibitor drugs.  It was a sad and eye-opening read.  Schiller is honest about what she and Giana’s father failed to notice and do, and has gone on to advocate for better options for others.  

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke.  I got the second book in this series and was about to read it, having heard the author and enjoyed her on NPR, when I realized that there was a first book.  So I got it but did not really enjoy it.  It is about Darren, a Texas Ranger, who is estranged from his wife who wants him to return to law school.  Darren has a love/hate relationship with his job and badge and can’t leave it yet.  He starts to work on a case involving two murders in the backwoods of Texas, that are probably aryan brotherhood related.  For me, the book got off to a very slow and sometimes confusing start.  Halfway through it began to pick up a little, but on the whole, I wasn’t hugely enamored with it.

Book Reviews August 2019

Lady In The Lake by Laura Lippman.  I really enjoy Laura Lippman’s novels, and this was a good one.  It takes place in the sixties, and the main character, Madeline Schwartz, is on the verge of exiting her marriage and housewife life.  She had always wanted to write, so finagles her way onto the staff of a Baltimore newspaper, more or less as a secretary.  She becomes involved in the discovery of a dead body, and pursues the case even though – because the dead woman was black – the police want to write it off as a suicide.  Maddie investigates and annoys people on all sides of the case.  She is interested in the truth, and in setting herself free with it.  It’s a good read.

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani.  I did not like this at all.  It’s a fictionalization of the horrible case in NYC where a nanny killed two young children.  I don’t think Slimani adds anything of interest to the story.  Her nanny lives in France, and slowly unravels, but since you know the outcome from the beginning, it is a painful slog.

Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.  I loved this novel and thought it was brilliant.  First, it is a compelling read, despite the fact that the characters aren’t hugely likeable.  In the first two-thirds of the book, you follow the newly separated Toby, a hepatologist and father of two young children as he navigates his new life as a divorcee.  Toby is angry at his ex, Rachel, and the reader is treated to explanations of all she has done wrong.  Meanwhile, he is also dating with apps and, as the parent with a more flexible work schedule, taking care of his children.  I should add that Toby’s tale is being told by an old college friend, Elizabeth, who is going through a midlife crisis of his own.  Even though Toby is a bit of a jerk, it is still a really compelling read, but when Brodesser-Akner gets to the Rachel section, the structure of the book was so amazingly conceived.  When you read of what Rachel is going through, it totally changes all that you learned from Toby in ways that I think are really specific to women’s experiences.  Elizabeth’s situation adds to this too.  It makes you realize all that women are still up against, and it is done so cleverly.  It really seemed to me to be a modern day Mrs Dalloway, and so poignant when you take into consideration who is doing the telling and why.  I highly recommend.

Last Child In The Woods by Richard Louv.  This is a book about how children today are so much more separated from nature (in the U.S.) than at any time in the past.  He writes of how children used to have a lot of wandering time in nature, and how now – because of development and safety and electronics – this has changed for the worse.  He investigates connections between ADHD and lack of time outdoors, and explores the idea of “nature deficit disorder” in children today.  It was interesting, if a bit long.  It’s already over ten years old, so he doesn’t address climate change issues, which definitely have an impact on his topic.  I was hoping it would be more along the lines of parenting advice, and it really isn’t that kind of book.  He does do a good job at examining the programs people are starting to try to fix the issue, including outdoor classrooms and nature perserves where kids can dig and play, etc.  

The Safest Lies by Megan Miranda.  This is one of Miranda’s many YA novels, and it was good, if a bit overly action-packed.  Kelsey is a high schooler with a mother who is paranoid because of a kidnapping incident in her past.  She has been raised to always expect the worst and to know how to react when it happens.  And the worst keeps happening!  From car accidents to home invasions to spending time in a panic room:  Kelsey experiences all, and most with the help of the boy she is interested in from her math class.  It was a suspenseful read and I’d recommend it to those in the mood for some suspenseful YA fiction.

Book Reviews July 2019

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson.  Kate Atkinson is one of my all-time favorite authors, and I was very excited to hear that after a few novels’ hiatus, she was returning to write about the detective Jackson Brodie.  She is such a skilled author that reading her books is a treat – you can relax, knowing that you are in excellent hands, and enjoy the mystery as it unfolds.  Jackson has moved to be closer to his ex, Julia, and his son, Nathan, and as per usual, crimes seem to find him.  He is hired by a woman who thinks she is being followed, plus he witnesses a young hitchhiker picked up by a suspicious older man and his wheels start a-turning.  It is a fast, fun, and suspenseful read.  

Crow Planet:  Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.  I first read this a few years ago when it came out and loved it.  I got it out to loan to Sean because I thought he might like it, but then I took it back because I wanted to read it again.  I did and it was just as good as the first time.  Haupt is very knowledgeable about birds, and it is a book about seeing crows in the urbs and suburbs, but it is also about living on this planet amongst birds and animals, the changes to our planet, and life in general.  I don’t always agree with Haupt, but her writing is intelligent and thought-provoking and I highly recommend.

He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly.  This was an excellent train read, except that I got so involved in it I kept almost missing my train stops.  Laura and Kit are a new couple back in the nineties when they go to watch an eclipse in Cornwall and end up stumbling upon a rape in progress.  They help the woman and, as witnesses, later testify in the trial of the rapist.  The book goes back and forth between the events of the past and the current time, in which they are living undercover so that the woman who was being raped can’t find them.  It goes back and forth from Laura’s story to Kit’s, both of whom are keeping secrets from each other.  It is well planned and a really good read.

The Darkness and The Island by Ragnar Jonasson.  I read two Icelandic mysteries by Jonasson featuring a detective named Hulda Hermansdottir.  They were both good, light reads – light not in subject matter but in depth.  They read quickly and don’t have much variety of detail.  In the first, Hulda is on the job, when she is told by her boss that she is being forced to retire.  She has two weeks left to work and is told to pick a cold case to work on.  She does, and starts finding out information about an immigrant whose death was declared a suicide, but who Hulda expects was murdered.  Hulda has many past traumas which are brought to light as she works on the case.  It has an ending which keeps the reader hanging.  Then I read the second book in the series (there are only two books so far), but it begins chronologically many years before the events of the first book.  It’s similar to the first:  an okay mystery with interesting scenery, but nothing spectacular.  A young woman was killed ten years ago and a group of her friends get together to reminisce, when things go awry.

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda.  This was a really fun read and I recommend it.  It takes place in a fictional town in Maine; Avery is a townie who has a career as a property manager for rentals owned by a wealthy family who summers there.  The time swings back between a year ago, when Avery’s best friend, Sadie, was found dead, to now, when Avery begins to find out things about Sadie’s death which she finds perplexing.  It’s a good mystery and very well written.  Miranda is great with detail and she does a very satisfying wrap-up at the end.

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda.  I liked The Last House Guest so much that I moved straight on to another of her books (she has many!  Yay!), and liked this one even more.  Leah is a journalist, who has become a teacher and randomly moved to Western Pennsylvania with an old friend who was relocating there.  The friend, Emmy, has a night job, and it takes awhile for Leah to realize that she hasn’t seen her in a few days.  She is finally concerned enough to contact the police, and when she does so, the police, after investigating, don’t quite believe this person exists.  Leah then sets out to both find her friend and figure out what has happened.  It is so well done and well written and was an excellent read.

Conviction by Denise Mina.  I love all of Denise Mina’s books, but this one is definitely one of her best.  It was such a good read and a good idea.  The main character is Anna, who begins her day looking forward to listening to a podcast once her kids are off to school.  When she does so, she realizes that the true crime podcast features someone that she used to know.  When her current life situation is upended unexpectedly, she decides on a whim to figure out what really happened to her old friend.  She keeps referring to episodes of the podcast, which are printed out, and then ends up starting a podcast of her own, while now totally mixed up in the mystery featured in the original podcast.  It is really suspenseful and such a good read.  I highly recommend!

Book Reviews June 2019

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.  This book started as one thing, and then at some point became a completely different kind of book!  Completely!  I was so surprised!  I did not see it coming.  The narrator, Rose, is a young girl growing up in California with her parents and brother.  Her mother is a little lost and her father a little clueless.  One day her mother bakes her a lemon cake and Rose can taste all her mother’s angst in the cake.   From that point on, she has to be very careful of what she eats, because she can taste the mood of the cook in the food.  Okay, so it’s quirky, and a little bland, and I was getting annoyed that the narrator was a kid, when all of a sudden, Rose learns something about her brother, which is NOT what you would expect.  And the book completely changes.  I will not say more than that.  I’m not sure Bender pulls it off, and I didn’t love the book, but kudos to her for trying!

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors.  This was a beautiful book and I found it heartbreaking and original.  Sonja is a 40 year-old woman living in Copenhagen and learning to drive for the first time.  She is also at a crossroads in her life, having grown up in the countryside and become a successful translator of mystery novels.  Her interactions with her driving instructors, and learning how to drive become a symbol of all that she is confronting now with what her life has become.  She has a good friend with whom she no longer has much in common, and a sister who does not want much to do with her.  It is a fast read and smart and lovely.

Unfuck Your Habitat by Rachel Hoffman.  This is a Marie Kondo-esque book about not living in squalor.  She makes some good points and has good strategies about how to unclutter your physical surroundings, but it is more a book geared to a young twenty-something (very slobby) audience.

The Idiot by Elif Batuman.  I really enjoy Batuman’s pieces in the New Yorker, so decided to read her first novel.  At first I was a little put off because the narrator, Selin, is a first-year student at Harvard and in love with her first love, Ivan, and Batuman gets it so right, that it is rather painful to read.  It was bad enough to experience that the first time – one really does not want to dwell.  So at first I was a bit grumpy with the book, but Selin – although often infuriating in her inaction – is cerebral and charming and awkward and ultimately very likeable.  She very much tries to live what she learns in her college courses and tries to make sense of her feelings for and interactions with Ivan, ultimately following him to Hungary in the summer where she teaches English in small villages.  It’s a good novel and I felt tender toward it.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou.  This is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranos, which was supposed to change the whole blood testing world, but ultimately ended up a scam.  Carreyrou is the journalist who broke the story in the Wall Street Journal, and it was a fascinating read.  It’s an interesting story and he gets so many great sources, and the whole time I was reading it I just didn’t understand how/why she pulled it off for so long.  So manly people could see that her technology didn’t work, yet she retained a board of political superstars.  Anyway, I recommend the book, and listening to the podcast, “The Dropout” afterwards.

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg.  I didn’t love this book.  It is all about one woman, Andrea, the narrator, but each chapter is sort of set up like a stand-alone short story, so you end up getting repeated bits of information that I found confusing.  At first I thought each chapter had a different, yet obviously similar, narrator.  So it took me awhile to work out the form.  Andrea is a 40 year-old single woman living in New York and conflicted about relationships.  She had a turbulent childhood, and a difficult relationship with her mother, yet is very upset when her mother moves to New Hampshire to help out her brother and his wife, who have a dying child.  It is witty and well-written, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Book Reviews May 2019

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.  This is the first in a three-volume science fiction series, and I immediately understood while reading it why it has won so many awards.  It is told from the point of view of a ship, which sounds quite odd, but makes sense in the context of the book.  The narrator is actually part of the consciousness of a ship, and is on the lam after realizing and witnessing some damaging information about the leader/s of her world.  The writing is excellent:  Leckie immediately draws you into the world (galaxy really), having you make sense of things by the narrator’s account of the past and present.  It is hard to explain, but I very much recommend.

Strangers Tend To Tell Me Things by Amy Dickinson.  This is a memoir about returning to live full-time in a rural town in New York state by Amy Dickinson, who is the Amy of the advice column, “Ask Amy”, and a regular participant on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.  She left the town when she went away to college, and then lived in Chicago and DC, but as the single mother of a daughter would return to her hometown in the summers.  When her daughter is grown, she returns in part to help take care of her ailing mother.  The book is about her past and her life growing up in the town, but also about finding a second chance at love there and marrying a high school friend.  She’s an entertaining writer, and I enjoyed the book, although I didn’t particularly find her to be a kindred spirit.  I’m still laughing at a line she wrote about going on a blind date with a (rather mean) guy who had very tiny hands, and all she could think of was those hands washing an apricot in a stream.  Ha!

Something In The Water by Catherine Steadman.  This was a fun British thriller written by an actress who had a role in one of the seasons of Downton Abbey.  It’s a fast and hard to put down read, although once you are finished, I’ll admit, not everything quite adds up.  However, it begins wonderfully and the suspense is high.  Basically Erin and Mark are on their honeymoon in Bora Bora when they find a bag in the ocean filled with money and diamonds and a gun.  At first their intent is to do the right thing, but down on their financial luck, they consider keeping their find and start to plan how they could get away with it.  The criminal owners of the bag are soon on their trail.  It is fun!

Late In The Day by Tessa Hadley.  This is a rather melancholy novel about what happens to two intertwined London couples and their families when one spouse dies.  Zachary was the glue that held them all together, so when Christine, Lydia, and Alex are left behind, there is a certain amount of unraveling.  Christine is the main character, an artist who worked closely with Zachary and his art gallery.  She and Alex invite Lydia to live with them while she is grieving.  There are stories of the past woven into the present, and you hear about how the four met and what has happened in their lives over the past twenty years.  It was a nice, calm, read, but my problem with it is that I basically disliked all four main characters, plus their two daughters.  All bothered me for different reasons.

Book Reviews April 2019

How To Live With Kids: A Room-By-Room Guide by Gabrielle Stanley Blair.  This book had been on my nightstand for a while.  It’s the kind of book that is fun to dip into now and then and get inspiration.  However, I was tired of it taking up space in my “to read” pile, so finished it to move it along.  It is basically a book about home décor, the best part of it being the pictures of various options.  What she does well is a sort of “Marie Kondo” approach of making sure that you consider how each space in your home can best work for you with the least amount of clutter.

The Nix by Nathan Hill.  This was the longest-residing book on my kindle, and as I was in an orderly mode, its time was up.  It is a very long read, and while reading the first half of it I was a little grumpy; however, the second half won me over.  The first half was primarily the narrator’s childhood reminiscences, and I find I’m a little resistant to so much of that.  I think the book would have been better had those parts been edited out.  But I do see why the book made it to so many top ten lists of 2017.  The narrator is Samuel Andresen-Anderson, an English professor who is not very motivated by his job or life.  He spends most of his off hours playing a video game, until one day when his mother, who left Sam and his father when he was 11-ish, is in the news for throwing a rock at a Trump-like politician.  Samuel has a publisher – for a novel that has long been in the works – and this guy gets him to go visit his mother to try to write a book about her actions.  As mentioned above, the book goes into too much detail about Samuel’s childhood; it also goes into his mother’s considerably more interesting past, and why she abandoned Samuel.  There’s also a very funny and well-written storyline that involves the star player of the video game he plays, who goes by the moniker Pwnage, and is addicted to gaming.  The writing is often very funny, and when everything starts coming together in the second half, I really liked it.  

99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown.  Ugh.  I HATED this.  It is a biography, more or less, about Princess Margaret, but it becomes more about how impossible a biography is, especially a biography of a royal figure, who is so much façade to begin with.  I could easily get on board with such a metanarrative – and with 99 sections both very short and long; however, I just found Brown tiresome and annoying.  He does gimmicks where he pretends Margaret married Picasso, and there is a section or two where this topic is treated as fact.  Sometimes he did do interesting studies, such as presenting all the different viewpoints/opinions of an event.  But I found the majority of his ideas puerile and it was all I could do to make myself finish reading the book.  Don’t so torture yourselves.

Savage News by Jessica Yellin.  I follow Jessica Yellin on Instagram, and really like her stories, in which she presents the news of the day.  Her thing is to do “news not noise,” filtering out all the stories of the day in Washington that are really just noise.  I recommend her.  Anyway, Savage News is her first fiction, and it is a fun, light read.  She wanted to write a news novel that was a comedy and I’d say her book is a success.  The narrator, Natalie Savage, is a broadcaster trying to make it as a serious journalist in the world of television news.  She wants to report the facts, and her bosses want her to get her hair straightened, and report on the gossip and rumors rather than what might really be going on behind all the bluster.  She tries to please her bosses enough to not get fired, while following a real story about a disappearance of the first lady and all its political implications.  It’s a quick and fun read.

Hold Sway by Sally Ball.  I read one of my best – and oldest! -- friend’s new book of poetry this month and it was a treat.  Hold Sway is Sally’s third poetry book and it is a rich collection.  There’s so much in it to stop and think about, and when I finished it I found myself immediately returning to the first poem to start all over again.  It did not come as a surprise to me that Sally’s poetry is smart and reflective, but there was so much humor, both wry and otherwise in the book!  There are a pair of dog poems, both called “Can You Hear My Dog?” which – having a new young reader in my household, reminded me of the do you like my hat sequences from Go Dog Go.  There’s also a line about a hiking trip, in which the food carried is “lentils, lentils, lentils, quinoa!, lentils” which cracked me up.  And a poem about a Shakespeare sonnet we had to memorize in 10^th grade that ends with the BeeGees!  It is all done, too, in a thought-provoking, original, and lyrical manner.  I think my favorite is a poem called “Breaker,” in which the narrator shuts down, emotionally, like a circuit breaker powering off, switch by clicking switch.  Her topics range from being in Paris during a terrorist attack, to seeing a heron fly up and away, and listening to her daughter sing jubilantly in the car.  There’s also the wonderful poem, “Hold”, about the disturbing state of our planet and its changes in climate.  Hold Sway is an impressive book of poems that will stay with you long past your initial reading of them.

The Hollow of the Hand by PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy.  PJ Harvey is my favorite musician of all time, and I was pleased to receive her first book of poetry as a gift.  The book is half poems, half pictures taken by the photographer, Seamus Murphy, when they were traveling in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington DC.  Each location has its own section in the book of poetry followed by photography.  Her poetry reads a lot like her song lyrics, which is not to denigrate either.  As I read though, I could hear her singing the words (and some of the phrases from the Washington DC section in particular appear in her album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.)  As you can imagine from the locales to which they travel, the subject matter is bleak.  Harvey is good at painting a scene in few words and closing with an image that is poignant and food for thought. 

Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman.  I adore Elinor Lipman’s books and this one does not disappoint.  Her books tend to stay on the surface, in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get manner, but she is really funny and she has a knack for setting up humorous situations.  Here, Daphne is a young woman whose marriage has ended and mother recently died.  She found out that her husband had only married her to get his trust fund money, so she is bitter about that.  Then when her mother dies, she bequeaths to Daphne a yearbook filled with notes about what all the graduates went on to be and do.  Daphne decides she doesn’t want this and puts it in the recycling bin in her Manhattan apartment building.  However, a woman down the hall finds it and decides to make a podcast out of the information.  In trying to stop her from doing so, Daphne discovers a secret her mother had been keeping.  Meanwhile too, her widowed father has moved from NH to Manhattan and is enjoying his retired life as a professional dog walker.  Daphne also starts dating an actor who lives next door.  She frequently travels to NH regarding the information from the yearbook, and it is all an amusing farce. 

Book Reviews March 2019

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton.  I really enjoyed reading this.  It is very much a Kate Morton novel, in that there are multiple parallel storylines going on that all take place in different times but share a connection.  In this novel the connection is a house out in the countryside in England that was first an artist’s retreat in the late 1800’s, and then a school for girls in the early 1900’s, and then a refuge for a family whose home was bombed in London in WWII.  The daughter of the title, who is one of the main narrators, is a ghost (which you learn right away so I’m not being a spoiler in revealing it).  She, known as Lily, was the muse of the painter who lived in the house in the 1860’s, and was trapped there after an incident which had reverberations for years to come.  It’s hard to explain without giving too much away, so I won’t.  But all of the characters are interesting and well written and it is easy to get invested in their stories and fun to piece all the parts together.  I recommend.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I kept hearing good things about this book and was not disappointed.  It’s a light, quick read – more a novella – and simply done.  Korede is the narrator, and she is a hard-working nurse at a hospital in Nigeria.  She is the opposite in looks and temperament from her sister, Ayoola, who is a beautiful serial killer.  When the book begins, Korede has been called to clean up after Ayoola’s third murder.  As her sister’s caretaker, she does, but when Ayoola shifts her attentions to a doctor at the hospital at which Korede works – and a doctor who Korede has feelings for – Korede is torn between helping her sister stay out of trouble and helping the doctor.  It is fast-paced and stripped down.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman. This is the third Fredrik Backman novel I’ve read and I am quite fond of them.  His books are sweettarts – sugary treats with a sour narrator and generally happy endings.  This book follows the tradition of A Man Called Ove, and Britt-Marie was Here, in that they have a slightly on the spectrum narrator who likes things just so.  In this case, however, the narrator is a 7 year old, Elsa, who is teased at school for her oddness and rigidity, and who has a wild granny she adores.  Her granny is fighting cancer, and leaves Elsa a series of letters to deliver to various people in her neighborhood, who then tell Elsa their story.  Britt-Marie lives in Elsa’s building (her novel comes after this one in sequence), and is as OCD as ever, making sure people don’t put signs up or let their dogs bark, etc.  I thought it would be a good novel to read after reading about a serial killer, and I was right.  It’s fun, and although Backman definitely has a formula, his books are quirky and enjoyable.  I will continue to read them.

Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.  This was a fun ghost story/thriller read.  It's a "stand alone" book and not part of any of Griffiths' series.  Clare is a high school teacher and is also working on a book about an author of a famous ghost story.  A fellow teacher and friend of Clare's is murdered, and the whole community is thrown for a loop.  When a second teacher is next to die, things get serious!  The point of view rotates between Clare, her teenage daughter, Georgie, and Harbinder Kaur, the detective in charge of the case.  Interspersed throughout is also the full text of the ghost story, which begins to run parallel to the events Clare is living through.  I did figure out who the murderer was pretty early on -- and if I did, then all of you will figure it out much faster -- but that did not inhibit my enjoyment of the book.

Book Reviews February 2019

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith.  This is the fourth Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott mystery novel by J.K. Rowling, and I found it as delightful as the first three.  It is thick and meaty and slow-going in a good way – I was very excited to read a few chapters each night, and was sorry when it was over.  It begins more or less a year after where the third novel left off – Robin has married Michael, and is recovering from her serial killer attack.  She is back at work with Cormoran, and they get a new case figuring out who is blackmailing Jasper Chiswell, a member of parliament.  Robin goes undercover and works in Chiswell’s parliament office, while Strike chases down other leads.  Chiswell has many adult children and a wife and ex-wives, and all seem to be working at cross purposes.  Plus the Olympics are underway in London, and Michael is as displeased as ever with Robin’s job.  Like all in this series, it’s a very detailed, slow-paced and satisfying read.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson.  I had heard good things about this book, which was nominated for a Booker, but it wasn’t the book for me.  I should begin with my pet peeve, which is when people write a novel with the events all out of sequence for no reason whatsoever.  Now when this is done well, I love it, but I feel it is too often used as a crutch to disguise a weak narrative.  This novel is basically a re-writing of the Oedipus story in present day time, and the narration is mostly that of Gretel, a woman who has just found her mother after a 16-year disappearance.  Her mother now is senile and doesn’t understand who she is or that Gretel is her adult daughter.  We get flashbacks to their life together on a houseboat, and Gretel tries to work out why her mother disappeared suddenly from her life ten years previously.  Then we also get chapters from the point of view of Margot, who transitions to Martin, and who ran away from home because a neighbor predicted he’d kill his father and sleep with his mother.  All of this could, possibly, have worked, but I didn’t like any of the characters, fitting together the back and forth timeline was annoying, and although most of it takes place on the river Avon in England, the locale of it all was strangely generic.  Plus Gretel steals a dog and then later on loses him, and is not at all bothered by this.  Sigh.

Watching You by Lisa Jewell. This was a really good read.  It takes place in a small town outside of London, and the chapters switch back and forth between Joey, a young woman newly married and recently returned from living abroad, and who is trying to get her life together and be a more responsible adult; Jenna, a high schooler who is living with a mother with mental illness that manifests itself in paranoia; and Freddie, a high schooler on the spectrum, and the son of the head superintendent of the local school.  When the novel begins, someone has been murdered, and it is someone connected to Tom, Freddie’s father, a charismatic and successful man.  Everyone is watching everyone else:  Freddie takes pictures of people in the town from his window, Tom seems to be watching two high school girls in particular, Jenna’s mom thinks the whole world is in on some spying conspiracy involving her, etc. etc.  There are layers and layers of watching, all skillfully done, and it is fun trying to figure out when the watching is nefarious and who is guilty of what.  It’s well written and very enjoyable.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.  I didn’t like this one.  Apparently, it is the first of a series, but I won’t be reading the rest.  It’s about a young London policeman, who one day out on patrol sees a ghost hanging around the scene of a crime.  Because of this ability, he becomes an apprentice in a kind of hidden police version of the ministry of magic, and is taught about the magic underworld existing in tandem.  They also then are working to figure out why there are so many murders committed by non-criminals.  There’s this whole plot about all the murders acting out old Punch & Judy puppet shows, and then the young policeman is also meeting all the gods of London’s rivers, etc. etc.  It was clever, and the writing wasn’t bad, per se, it just came across to me as an exercise.  I was glad when I finished the book.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper.  I loved this book and highly recommend it.  She is such a good writer.  This is her third book, and whereas the first two had characters in common, this one is “stand alone.”  It’s about a ranching family in the way outback in Australia, where the sun is so hot that you can’t be outside without a water supply nearby.  It begins with Nathan learning that his younger brother Cameron has died from such a fate.  Cameron was an experienced rancher, though, and shouldn’t have been defeated by the elements.  Things get even stranger when they discover that his car, stocked with food and water and working air conditioner, was nearby.  The police expect it was a suicide, but something doesn’t add up.  Nathan has a farm nearby, but he goes to stay at the main homestead with his extended family, and they all try to piece together what happened.  Nathan is working through his own difficult path, so that often the title refers to him as much as to Cameron.  The writing is so wonderful!  Harper is so good at creating interesting characters and then shaping them subtly.  It’s well-paced and fascinating and I loved it from beginning to end.  Read this book!

Book Reviews January 2019

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.  I really enjoyed this novel.  It flips back and forth from a family in the present day living in a ramshackle house in Vineland, NJ, to a family living perhaps in the same house 100 years earlier.  In the present day, Willa is a middle-aged woman whose family is having financial difficulties.  Her husband is a professor whose job keeps getting downsized, her son is a widower with a newborn, and her daughter is a hipster with leftwing beliefs that tend toward the extreme.  Willa is not where she thought she’d be at this point in life, and the house they inherited is falling apart around her.  She starts doing research to see if they can declare it of historical value, and discovers that a famous scientist who corresponded with Darwin, Mary Treat, might have lived there.  Meanwhile the reader knows Mary Treat lived next door, since we are also privy to the situation of Thatcher, a young teacher and Darwinist who is trying to support his wife and her mother and sister, in the manner to which they would like to be accustomed.  He is trying to teach a more modern science in the high school there, but comes up against the founder of Vineland, a bit of a tyrant.  It has a welcoming, leisurely pace and Kingsolver of course does a great job of creating a world both factual and fiction and connecting it to what is going on today (there are many interesting connections between Trump and the tyrants of yore).  I recommend. 

At The Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen.  This was a pleasant, light read – nothing spectacular but it is fun in a tense way.  When the book begins, it is WWII and the young Maddie and her husband and best friend are living a rich alcoholic kind of life in Philadelphia,  Ellis and Hank tried to enlist in the army, but couldn’t, and the three of them are dealing with scorn from those who think they are cowards.  Ellis’s father was involved years ago in a discredited search for the Loch Ness monster, so on a drunken whim, the three end up crossing the ocean during wartime (and getting shot at), and end up in Scotland looking for the beast.  Maddie soon realizes that she didn’t know her husband as well as she had thought, and that he has all sorts of nefarious plans he is trying to bring to fruition.  Meanwhile, she becomes close to the owners and workers in the small guesthouse in which they are staying.  It’s a fun, fluffy, yet also tense romp.

This Close To Happy: A Reckoning With Depression by Daphne Merkin.  This was a more “enjoyable” read than I had guessed it would be, since the subject is Merkin’s life-long depression, which has had her in and out of institutions since childhood.  She is an excellent writer, though, and begins with her fascinatingly odd childhood as one of six kids born to wealthy Park Avenue parents who don’t seem at all interested in having or caring for children.  She and her siblings have thus struggled emotionally all their lives.  Merkin examines the beginnings of her depression as a young child, and explores honestly, it seems to me, how it was only when she was depressed that her mother would care for her.  It’s an honest and interesting exploration of her condition and how it has affected her personal and professional life.

Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris.  This was a really fun thriller to read!  I recommend.  One has to suspend disbelief a bit, but if willing to do so it won’t disappoint.  Jack and Grace seem to have the perfect marriage.  Jack is a wealthy lawyer, and a doting husband, who seems like he’d do anything for Grace and her disabled sister, Millie.  About a third into the book, however, you discover that all is not what it seems.  And all is pretty horrific!  I can’t say more without giving it away, but it is well-done and tense and very fun, subject-matter notwithstanding.

Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane.  This is the first Dennis Lehane book I’ve read and it has made me curious about the rest.  The first half of the book is about Rachel, a young woman who is trying to learn the secret of who her father might be, since her mother will not tell her.  She becomes a journalist, and investigates many leads.  She then becomes a successful television journalist, until her stint in Haiti causes her to have a breakdown live on TV.  So the first half of the book is establishing who Rachel is, and I found her compelling and the novel interesting.  But then!  Then all of a sudden she gets an inkling that her husband is not who he says he is.  She starts investigating what he has told her and then the rest of the book is this amazing fast-paced thriller, in which she discovers secret after secret, many of which are dangerous.  It is an exciting read, although I am still trying to piece together some of what happened.  I couldn’t put it down.

Astrophysics for People In A Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  I know nothing about physics, sadly, and not much about astrophysics either.  I’m not sure I’m “in a hurry”, but I definitely needed to start with the basics, and Tyson does a good job doing that.  He’s a good conversational writer, and also good at putting things in layman’s terms. I think I’d fail a test on the material, but I happily read a chapter each night, and enjoyed trying to wrap my mind around what he was explaining.

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro.  I really enjoyed Dani Shapiro’s writing, and would like to read some of her other memoirs.  This one centers around two years ago when she does the Ancestry DNA test and discovers from the results that her half sister is not related to her.  She begins investigating why her father is not her biological father – her parents are both dead so she has to figure it all out for herself.  She remembers a conversation she had in her twenties with her mother, who mentioned a fertility institute in Philadelphia, so Shapiro pieces it together – and somewhat amazingly figures out who her real father is in the course of two hours.  The rest of the book is her contacting her biological father, a man much different from the orthodox Jewish father who raised her.  Shapiro is smart and calm and explores all aspects of her new information, how it answers questions she always had about herself growing up (the only blonde in the family), and how it affects her sense of self and family.  It’s a very good read.

Book Reviews December 2018

Becoming by Michelle Obama.  I was looking forward to reading this and enjoyed it even more than I thought I would:  Michelle Obama is a very good story-teller.  She starts from the beginning, writing a lot about her childhood growing up on Chicago’s South Side, in a family that gave her and her brother a lot of support.  I wasn’t surprised that she is who she is, after seeing how she grew up.  She writes poignantly about the death of her father, and hilariously about the meeting of young Barack.  It was really interesting to see things from an insider’s point of view, even if occasionally some of her descriptions of her FLOTUS initiatives could be a little longwinded toward the end.  It was an inspiring read and I highly recommend it.

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso.  This is a graphic novel that (I think) was on the short list for the Booker prize — or nearly so.  It was hard to get ahold of, and I read tons of high praise for it before beginning it myself.  So perhaps that is why I remained a bit indifferent to it.  It’s a good story and an interesting read, and I did see the advantages that a graphic novel can have over a “regular” novel, in the scenes that it can show without committing to words.  I guess what left me slightly underwhelmed was how things were wrapped up at the end.  I wanted a bit more umph, somehow.  The novel begins with a woman, Sabrina, petsitting for her parents.  In the next chapter, we learn that Sabrina has disappeared in what seems like a kidnapping type crime.  Her boyfriend has had a nervous breakdown and shows up at an old childhood friend’s house.  The friend,  Calvin Wrobel, is really the main character of the book.  He is in the military, and is dealing with having been left by his wife and child, who now live many states away in Florida.  Anyway, Calvin is nice to the boyfriend, who lies in bed and listens to conspiracy theories on right-wing radio, getting more and more radicalized.  The theories start co-opting the disappearance of Sabrina, and Calvin has to try to talk his friend off a ledge.  It was good and I would read more from Drnaso; I just had built it up too much before reading.

Cockfosters by Helen Simpson.  Short stories are not my favorite genre, but Helen Simpson is my favorite short story writer by far (I guess second would be Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro).  I really like her style of writing, and more so, I like her topics.  She is my age, so her characters are now similarly aged women dealing with the trials and tribulations and realizations that come with one’s late forties and early fifties.  Many of these stories are two women talking — on a train, or in a restaurant — and they are witty and insightful and moving.  Her story collections are always on my must-read list.

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter.  This is an odd little book, and I wasn’t sure while I was reading whether or not it was fiction or nonfiction.  I still am not.  It is about a man with two young sons whose wife dies unexpectedly.  The characters are four — the man, his two sons, and Ted Hughes’s crow, who is there to torment and help the family.  The prose is often poetic, and Porter marks each section with who is speaking, Father, Sons, Crow.  Crow puts up with the grief for awhile, but then he is having none of it.  There is even an appearance or two by Ted Hughes.  It’s interesting, and a very quick read, although I’m not 100 percent convinced of its success.