Reviews – Fiction

1/14/25

One of the Best Books of the Year!

Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor. Harper Collins, 2025. 484 pages.
Thank you to Harper Collins for an advance readers copy of this book.

At 484 pages, this rich novel-within-a-novel is hardly long enough!

The story of a complex woman, paired with the futuristic novel that brings her fame and fortune, is so well-written that one reads avidly, in anticipation of what will happen to the imaginative plot and characters.
Zelu, American-born daughter of educated, well-to-do Nigerian immigrants, is at a low point in her life. A paraplegic since a fall at age 12, now at 32 she is an adjunct professor of creative writing, and a novelist whose book has been rejected 10 times. Assertive, sometimes arrogant, and certainly not diplomatic, at her younger sister’s wedding she receives word that she has been fired from her job because of on-going student complaints about harsh comments on their work and ability.
At this nadir, she begins to write a new novel, one that is part science-fiction, part parable, about the interweaving of physical, emotional, mental, and moral qualities in a post-human world. Called “Rusted Robots,” it catapults her to success.
Relationships are central to the story, and to complicate Zelu’s experience of the world, she is enmeshed in her large family with five siblings and her parents. All her siblings are professionals – medicine, law, engineering – and they live locally (in Chicago) and gather regularly. And all are not shy about expressing their doubt and disbelief around Zelu’s life choices. Some, in fact, are antagonistic and even contemptuous of Zelu’s difficult decisions.
Already feeling judged and found wanting by her large family, Zelu now has a following of thousands who also have opinions about her life. The highs and lows of social media add another dimension to the story.
The structure of the book increases its unique appeal: interspersed between the narratives of Zelu’s life and her fictional book are first-person interviews with her family members. They give another, kinder, perspective on the family’s wish to protect Zelu after her devastating accident as a child.
With the parallel future world of automatons who have consciousness and volition, and a brilliant, surprise ending, this book is a paean to storytelling – how it happens, who does it, and why it matters.

1/10/25

The Choices Mothers Make

The Heart is a Star, by Megan Rogers. Central Avenue Publishers, 2025. 272 pages.
Published in Australia in 2023, this moving novel throws us into the disordered lives, secrets and lies of two generations of women. Layla, the main character, is in her mid-late 40’s, a physician, married, mother of two, and still dealing with deep emotional scars from her childhood. Her sister, Willow, six years older, left the family when Layla was 10; her father, the only physician in their Tasmania town, drowned when she was 14. Her mother, needy, demanding, and sometimes deluded, refuses to give Layla the answers she craves.

The story takes place at Christmas time, when Layla and her family, now living in Queensland, usually visit her mother. This year, her mother in crisis, Layla comes earlier with her aunt Dawn, her mother’s older sister. And secrets finally unravel.

Rogers writes profoundly and poignantly about the choices mothers make, and the circumstances creating emotional storms that tear lives apart. The natural world also is powerfully present, with the land, sea and the night sky central to understanding the characters’ world.

Well-plotted, lyrically written, with varied and strong characters, this is a skillful story of love, grief, art, and science, seen through the eyes of a strong yet fragile woman. What she learns has lessons for many of us.

12/29/24

Healing Hearts and Minds

Shy Creatures, by Clare Chambers. Mariner Books, 2024. 392 pages.

In this bittersweet novel it is 1964, and psychiatry is beginning to move from the trend of medicating patients to listening to them.

Helen Hansford, 34 years old, is an art therapist at one of the more modern and benign mental institutions in Croydon, in south of London. Caring and concerned about her patients, she is also preoccupied with Gil Rudden, a married, charismatic member of the medical staff. He is committed to limiting psychotropic drugs and building relationships with patients, and has strong opinions about this and his colleagues, who often do not agree with him.

Into their lives – and three-year-long affair – comes William Tapping. William is a strange, mute man of 37, found unkempt and uncommunicative, living with his elderly aunt. He also is a gifted, self-taught artist whose situation and talent bring Helen and Gil closer in their professional work, but cause Helen to take a new perspective on their relationship.

The absorbing, sensitive, and finely written novel traces the undoing of the secrets from William’s painful past, and the unraveling of Helen and Gil’s affair.

Almost 10 years later, in 1972, I was a young social worker at a large and unenlightened mental hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I saw the changes in treatment still in process, more often in theory than in practice. Among the many acutely mentally ill patients with whom I worked, I vividly remember a former nun and librarian. We had developed a therapeutic relationship, but her depression quickly resulted in a lobotomy, after which I was not allowed to see her.
Fortunately, William’s story, and Helen’s, have happier outcomes.

11/26/24

Of silence and stories

The Cemetery of Untold Stories, by Julia Alvarez.  Algonquin Books, 2024. 227 pages.

This novel introduces us to two very different Dominican-born women, whose lives intersect through a magical tale of untold stories.

Alma, a pale-skinned Latina, one of four sisters, has spent much of her life in the United States.  She has become a famed writer and teacher, but she is haunted by the life of another famous writer, a friend and mentor whose inability to finish a novel eventually destroys her mind. 

As Alma ages (she is about 70 when the book’s action takes place), she, too, finds that there are many stories she has begun, but cannot finish.  Determined not to have her life undermined by these, she decides to return to the Dominican Republic and, on land left to her by her father, create the eponymous cemetery of untold stories.  With an artist friend, she buries or burns her manuscripts, and creates sculptures to stand in their place.

Her neighbor, Filomena, uneducated and unloved, becomes the caretaker of the cemetery – or sculpture garden, as Alma sometimes calls it to limit speculation and superstition.  Filomena, about 20 years younger than Alma, hears the voices from the untold stories, and becomes the vehicle for us to know them, too.  The most persistent and moving are the ones from Alma’s father, a medical doctor and political dissident, and the abandoned wife, Bienvenida Inocencia, of brutal Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, “El Jefe.”  And in speaking to Filomena, they start to converse with and comfort each other.

Yes, this is magic realism, which, somewhat to my surprise, I am enjoying more and more.  (Anecdotally, I know that some of my OWLS readers are not in love with it.)  Here it is beautifully done, with both language and plot.

This book also is rich with questions and insight:  What does an author owe her characters?  Are there some stories that don’t want to be told?  Is it betrayal to base stories on the real experiences of other people?   Can one revise life as one does writing?  Are there “stories we keep to ourselves and even from ourselves about who we are, and what we love, and whether our lives reflect that?”  (Page 142.)  And one of my favorites: “Regrets are just a way to make the same mistakes over and over.”  (Page 216.)

Despite its occasional use of untranslated Spanish, this is a stirring and sympathetic book to read and discuss.

10/23/24

Two haunting tales with strong women at their center

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd, Atria Books:  2020, 381 pages

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield, Atria Books:  2019, 496 pages

Both these books are set in Victorian England, and both are a blend of humor, ghost stories, and the supernatural.  They’re also very moving in their themes of love and lost children.  But they have different settings, and different difficulties to explore.

Things in Jars is set in 1863 London, and introduces Mrs. Bridie Devine, 30-ish red-haired smoker of all sorts, whose scientific mind is helpful to the police in working out how people die in bizarre and inexplicable circumstances.  She has been called upon to investigate the kidnapping of a strange young child, a fish-like girl, who is wild and without speech.  Helping her is the ghost of Ruby Doyle, whom she alone can see, a young prize fighter who is transparent, but with moving tattoos that are “a circus to the eye.”  He is only partially dressed, though he has a top hat.  He aids her in any way he can – though he cannot affect physical events – and their relationship develops in a sweet, sad way.

The book is filled with odd characters, some evil, some good, all drawn with humor and insight.  There are poignant moments, but also ones of growth in understanding, in relationships, and acceptance of difficult times in life.

Once Upon A River takes place in 1887 Oxfordshire, around a real place on the Thames River:  Swan Inn, where the regulars try to work out who is the dead little girl brought from the river.  Miraculously, she awakens, but is mute and cannot explain anything about herself.  Three families think she may be their lost child, and the plot moves back and forth as the circumstances and claims are put forward by each.  An outsider, Rita Sunday, a compassionate nurse born in a convent, has a larger view than those more intimately involved in the mystery, and this helps with maintaining perspective on heart-rending situations.

Most of these characters are good-hearted and sincere, if occasionally a little strange or simple.  Though the book is long, the writing flows and the hopes and fears of the families and their neighbors carry the reader on.  There also are relationships built beyond the families, friendships and loves that enrich the story and help its satisfying conclusion.

10/15/24

Life in a climate-changed world – perhaps the distant past, perhaps a post-apocalyptic future

The Ancients, by John Larison.  Viking, 2024.  400 pages.  

Thank you to Viking for an advance readers copy of this book.

This saga of survival takes place in a climate-damaged world, set in an indeterminate time and place.  It could be the distant past; it could be the post-apocalyptic future.  A few lines eventually do place it in time, but that is almost incidental, as this is a mythic story of cultures destroyed, rebuilt, in conflict and in renewal.

Two major societies have endured for countless years.  Their histories and social norms are richly described: the Coastal villagers, whose creation story begins with the Sea, whom they worship in a matrilineal community.  Theirs is a simple existence, rich with stories, songs and worship, but basic in material goods and learning.  They are seen as “primitives” by the technologically advanced hilltop dwellers, whose creation story begins with the Sun, whom they worship in their patrilineal society.  This “civilized” culture is replete with archives and armies, theaters and hospitals, and the manufacture of all kinds of quality goods.  The hard work is done by stolen “primitives,” who work as slave laborers.

There are many vivid characters in each culture, and their situations are described in powerful, often short, statements.  Their narratives interweave, moving the plot along for all.  Relationships are based on family, forbidden love, self-interest, and transactions at different levels.  However, at all levels children are valued, and the efforts to care for them are quite moving.

The book also is rich with imagery – crows and sand and floods abound; an Ark is being built to take the “civilized” society across the flat ocean to a green and fertile land – and there is a thought-provoking exploration of the concept of history, who records it and how it is used.

An absorbing and enjoyable read, this book raises many issues about inter-racial and cross-cultural relationships, as well as humans’ responsibility to the earth and to each other.  It does not resolve them all, and precisely because of that it would be a fine book group choice.

9/17/24

A quirky coming of age story for grown-ups

Death and Other Inconveniences, by Lesley Crewes

Thank you to Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book.

What begins as something of a farce becomes a humor-filled and generous story of grown-ups finally growing up.

Margo, 62, newly widowed by the inelegant death of her second husband (her first left her for another man), is petite, pretty, and a wizard with beauty products.  She also is indecisive and dependent on others for everything from finances to remote controls.  And she has to deal with her late husband’s embittered first wife and daughter.  Fortunately, she has close, mostly sweet, relationships with her grown children and grandchildren, her first husband and his partner, and her much older sister and brother. 

As she learns to live on her own, return to work, and make decisions, those around her also move forward with their lives.  This quirky coming-of-age story is both delightful and insightful, and can be appreciated by adults at any stage of growing up.

9/10/24

A Lesser Known Immigrant Experience that Resonates with All

Songs for the Brokenhearted, by Ayelet Tsabari

Random House, 2024.  352 pages.

This beautifully conceived and crafted novel brings to life a lesser known immigrant experience:  that of the Yemeni Jews who arrived in Israel in 1949 and 1950.  They were seen as “other” by the dominantly Ashkenazi (European) culture, and with blatant racism their traditions were suppressed, including educating children to reject their family and religious practices.  Only in the last decade have some of the Mizrahi customs been revived publicly, though discrepancies in education, income, and social status remain.

The action takes place during the summer of 1995, as the Oslo peace talks between Yitzhak Rabin’s government and the Palestine Liberation Organization are moving forward and being ratified, and Israelis are torn between the desire for peace and resentment at having land given away in the process.

At the heart of the story are the tape-recorded songs that Zohara discovers when she returns to Israel at her mother’s death.  Through them Zohara learns about the songs composed and sung by Yemeni women.  While the men sang in synagogue, the women had an oral tradition that reflected the private experiences and emotions of women at home and in life, not written down and rarely recorded.  Zohara’s mother was unusually gifted in these.

This is a novel of missing fathers and sons, and misunderstood mothers and daughters.  It brings together three storylines:  There is young immigrant Yaqub in the 1950’s. Then In 1995, the focus is on 31-year-old highly educated Zohara, who is at the center of the plot and the narrator in her sections.  Finally, there is Yoni, Zohara’s 17-year-old nephew, who is dealing with grief and confusion about his life and his country.  All converge around the death of Saida, Yaqub’s first love, who is Zohara’s estranged mother, and Yoni’s beloved grandmother.  These imagined lives are richly drawn in both their emotions and actions.

Through these characters, Tsabari has opened up a world with her depiction of the Jewish Yemenite experience in Israel, both its tragedies and its beauties.  And it has a wider appeal and resonance in the literature of immigration and “otherness.”

I highly recommend it to all.

9/4/24

Little Women in the Age of Addiction

Blue Sisters, by Coco Mellors.  Ballentine Books, 2024. 352 pages.

Like the March sisters of Lousia May Alcott’s Victorian classic, there are four modern Blue sisters, and each has a personality matching one of Alcott’s creations:

Avery, the eldest, an attorney, is the sensible one who looks after her sisters in the psychological absence of their parents.

Bonnie, the boyish one, is a boxer, strong-willed, stoic, yet soft-spoken.

Nicky, the sweet and sensitive one, has a knack for female friendship and suffers an early death.

And Lucky, the youngest, is the artistic one, sharp-witted and secretly shy.

Their story, however, is far from the Victorian niceties of the March family:  addictions dominate their lives.

Early on, the prologue gives snapshots of them and the fact that the book begins on the first-year anniversary of Nicky’s death from a fentanyl-laced overdose.  Nicky, however, was not the addict in the family – she suffered from intense and almost constant pain of endometriosis, which nothing short of a hysterectomy could control.  But Nicky wanted children more than she wanted pain relief, and died having neither.

Her sisters’ reactions to her death, their grief and their growth, are the heart of the book.

Avery, 33, married to a woman therapist, living in London, finds herself returning to the addictive behavior she thought she had recovered from 10 years before.  She is drinking, smoking, stealing, and having casual heterosexual sex.

Bonnie, 31, is a former champion boxer, the most disciplined yet gentlest of the sisters.  She left the ring following Nicky’s death to work as a bouncer at a club, and has lost her beloved career path as well as her sister.

Lucky, 27, is a world-class model, who leads an appalling lifestyle of abusing drugs, alcohol, and sex.

When the book opens, the three surviving sisters, once so close, have rarely spoken and have not seen each other in the year since Nicky’s death.  They reunite when their parents decide to sell the small NYC apartment the family shared for years.

All are at the lowest points in their lives, both physically and emotionally.  There is some explicit sex, both lesbian and heterosexual, and disturbing details of drug and alcohol addiction.  There also are deeply wounding words as their loss overwhelms the sisters’ love for each other.

And yet – while the paths they take can be painful, their experiences are absorbing, believable, and reward the reader with a sense of hope.  This can be a wrenching story, but it is so well-written that it is definitely worth reading.

8/20/24

Waterways as a Source of Life and Stories

There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak. Knopf, 2024.  464 pages.

In its themes, images, and flowing together of several timelines and plots, There Are Rivers in the Sky is one of best books I have read this year.

The story is told in three separate but interrelated timelines, linked by images and themes, and the Thames and Tigris rivers.

In 1840, Arthur is born in the muck of the polluted Thames, but rises to become a genius at interpreting cuneiform, especially the story of the Flood.  In 2014, nine-year-old Narin, who is losing her hearing because of a genetic abnormality, is watching her Yazidi Village near the Tigris being demolished to be flooded for a dam in Turkey.  In 2018 London, 30-year-old Zaleekhah, whose mother was Iraqi and died in a flash flood, is a hydrologist concerned with hidden rivers in London and around the world.

The book moves easily back and forth with their stories, starting briefly in Nineveh around 640 BC, where the source of recurring themes takes place:  one drop of water, and more importantly, the lapis lazuli tablets etched with the trials of Gilgamesh, the ancient, flawed hero seeking immortality.  These themes are echoed in the lives of the main characters, all searching for missing parts of themselves.   Their stories are told with tenderness by the author, in a clear-eyed account of the pain that is part of life and love.  

In this beautiful book about some awful experiences, water serves as a sustaining image, described by Shafak as the consummate immigrant, always in transit, never able to settle, perpetually displaced and relocated, resilient yet vulnerable.  As the book glides from one person and time to the other, images and artefacts resurface and tie together the different characters and their suffering, survival, and sometimes, success.

8/14/24

Women and Weaving in 17th century England

Blue Hawk by Chloe Turner. Deixis Press, 2024. 304 pages.

Thank you to Deixis Press and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

Gloucestershire, England, 1663, in the heart of the weaving and dyeing industry: the motherless Browning sisters live with their father whose faltering small weaving business sends him to drink and is further diminished by this.  Even though both daughters spin and weave, the small family usually does not have enough to eat.

Initially, the story seems sweet, if not subtle:  Joan, 15, the central character, is loving and industrious; Alice, 17 is selfish, mean and ambitious.  Joan’s friendship with an older widow brings to life Joan’s many talents in creating dyes and designs, and re-building her father’s business.  Descriptions of the natural world in which they work and struggle add color and depth to the narrative.  As the story moves through the years, it becomes more complicated.  There is love, loss, betrayal, reconciliations, fleeting triumphs, great disappointments, and more stable success.

Those interested in fabric arts as well as women’s history can enjoy this book, based on historical records of the 17^th century cloth industry.  Although few real women achieved positions of influence and success in it, some did, and they are engagingly represented here.

8/4/24

Living with America’s Actions in Viet Nam

Absolution, by Alice MacDermott. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2023. 324 pages.

Absolution is 83-year-old Tricia’s account of her months in 1963 Saigon, when she accompanied her husband, a CIA advisor, on his posting there.  The book is addressed as a soliloquy to the now 68-year-old woman, Rainey, whom Tricia met there as the 8-year-old child of Charlene, another American wife.  In the three parts of the book, covering two points in time, Tricia speaks in the first and last, and adult-Rainey narrates the middle. 

The story centers on Charlene, intriguing and ambitious, manipulative and determined, confident and crafty.  It is Charlene who names the narrator “Tricia” – until then (and presumably after), she is called Patricia, Patsy, or Pat.  But Charlene gives her a new identity, which is an important part of the story.

“Tricia” is 23 years old when they meet, newly married, shy and uncertain.  Pretty and pert Charlene makes quiet Tricia a partner in her rather admirable schemes, which revolve around helping poor Vietnamese children and lepers.  Charlene already is well-known to the ex-patriate community for her good works, but always with a touch of misbehavior – fooling other Americans, bending Army rules.  By giving credit to Tricia for new ideas, Charlene engages people who have become wary of her ideas and methods.  Inspired by Rainey’s recently produced Barbie doll, the new project is making traditional Vietnamese outfits for the dolls.  These then are sold to Americans to give to their young relatives, with the proceeds supplying toys and snacks for the Vietnamese children in the local hospital.

Tricia and her husband are in Saigon for only a few months before the escalating combat sends them back to the USA.  During that time there is some threat of violence, but the focus is on the charitable efforts Charlene organizes.  Although Tricia is mostly silent in the action, her narrative describes her indignation at the way the other Americans refer to and treat the civilian population who work as servants.  This is one reason she works with Charlene to help the Vietnamese, even though Charlene often treats Tricia with affectionate condescension.

Woven into the narrative of their projects are issues around doing good works: “looking away from suffering is a small evil.” (pg. 160) These projects are Tricia’s “own silly way of doing good.” (pg. 209).  And for Tricia, a devout Catholic, perhaps they also are ways of seeking absolution for the social and emotional wounds inflicted on the Vietnamese women and children she sees as victims of American superiority and hubris.

This is an absorbing, well-written, and thought-provoking book about the American women who seemed tangential to overseas USA government projects, but whose lives – like the natives of the countries where they served – are overlooked or minimized.

7/23/24

80-year-old friends reunite and look to the future

Wrinkled Rebels, by Laura Katz Olson. Vine Leaves Press, 2024, 281 pages.

Thank you to Vine Leaves Press and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

As a slightly younger constituent of the 80 year olds in Wrinkled Rebels, I appreciate both the history lessons of 1960’s social justice efforts, and the utopian possibility at the book’s end.

The novel brings together six friends who became a “family” when starting City College (New York) in 1963.  Three men and three women, one Black, coming from a range of religious and socio-economic homes, they bond around the Civil Rights Movement.  They remain very close for over a decade, before going their own ways, but still staying in touch.  As they are turning 80, one of them arranges a reunion for the first time in 50 years, and all attend it. 

Their lives cover a range of meaningful roles:  there is a civil rights lawyer, a gynecologist who specializes in safe abortions, an academic who explores social change, an architect who designs people-centered public buildings, an environmental activist and a union organizer.

At first it seems the characters may be more ideas and issues than individuals:  as youth, among them they experience racism, abortion, infertility, lesbianism, sexual liberation, draft dodging, women’s consciousness raising, the folk music world, communal living, social work among the poor, and adoption success and failure; as elders there is widowhood, divorce, purpose after retirement, and age-related illness:  incipient dementia, Parkinson’s, severe arthritis, and heart attacks. 

Fortunately, the writing is strong and clear, and each member of the group emerges as a complicated and interesting individual, with well-drawn experiences and emotions.  Finally, their commitment to social justice and to each other leads to the promise of more of both in their late years.

Despite being a rather idealized group, their experiences and struggles seem authentic, and well-worth sharing with the many others who now make up this first baby-boomer elderly generation.

7/15/24

Once Spies, Now Senior Citizens, Still Sharp

Spy Coast, by  Tess Gerritsen Thomas and Mercer, 2023, 341 pages.

(This was “read” as an audiobook.)

Five former CIA agents in their 60’s and 70’s, friends for over 30 years, have retired to a small town in Maine.  The most recent arrival is Maggie Bird, 62, who now raises chickens and cows.  Though the friends trust in each other – and only each other – they maintain secrets about their individual pasts. 

In this book, Maggie’s turbulent history tracks her down in their quiet community, threatening her life, her friends, and the local people with whom she has become close.

The story moves back and forth between Maggie’s time as an agent and her current predicament.  Clever plotting and strong characters animate this story of older people using hard-earned knowledge, esoteric as it may be.  They have slowed down physically, but are not stopping.  They may be ready to rest, but will do what they must to protect each other and those they’ve come to love.

This was a very engaging audiobook experience.  The story has some bloodshed, but little gore, and time seemed well-spent with robust and resilient people doing well, and doing good, even if somewhat past their prime.  This is the first in a planned series, and my husband and I are looking forward to the next installment.

6/25/24

How the Light Gets In, by Joyce Maynard. William Morrow, June 25, 2024. 430 pages.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

This big novel reads like a fairy tale of fractured relationships and people, dealing with a variety of contemporary personal, social, and political issues.

Covering over 20 years in one woman’s life, from middle age to her 70’s, we see challenges and changes through the eyes of Eleanor, mother of three, living in rural New Hampshire, and, it slowly becomes clear, a very successful author and illustrator of children’s books.  This gives her resources and connections she might not otherwise have had, and affects some key points of the plot.

The novel begins with a heart-pounding prologue of a young family’s rush to the emergency room when their youngest child is found face down in a pond.  It then picks up 25 years later, with the death of Eleanor’s former husband, and follows her as she tries to understand and nurture her three grown children and their loved ones.  The primary plot revolves around the brain-damaged child, Toby, as he grows into a gentle, sweet, if somewhat simple, man, with rare emotional perception and understanding.  However, his older siblings also struggle with their issues:  Al transitions from female to male, marries, and longs for children.  Ursula is implacably angry with her mother, whom she blames for their family’s break up, not wanting to know the real reason:  her father’s wish to be with someone else.

Bringing other characters into Eleanor’s orbit, many issues are covered, from climate change to infertility, from parental neglect to school shootings, homelessness, addiction, cancer and bone marrow transplant, Long Covid, gay marriage, and the elections of 2016, 2020, and the January 6^th attack on Congress.

The messiness and vulnerability of life are filtered through Eleanor’s sensitive but strong feelings and efforts to understand and go on from multiple losses, and to cherish the love she does find.

Though complicated, ultimately, this is a thoughtful and wise book, as Eleanor learns to live with anger and loss, acknowledging the importance of luck as well as choice, and weighs her own decisions between moving on and making peace with where one is.

6/18/24

Sandwich, by Catherine Newman. Harper, June 18, 2024. 236 pages.

Thank you to Harper and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

Motherhood, marriage, and menopause interweave in this book about an annual summer week vacation with a family of four.

The prologue zooms in on Cape Cod as if from a distance, focusing gradually on a car, then the people in it:  “Rocky” (Rachel), her husband, Nick, and their two grown children, Willa, 20 and Jamie, 24, and Jamie’s long-time girlfriend, Maya.  The story continues in Rocky’s voice, the 54-year-old who is halfway – sandwiched – between her adult children and her aging parents, the only other characters who appear in the book.

The week begins with an overflowing toilet, which leads Rocky to jump on the bathtub, only to fall and pull the curtain rod off the wall, which lands in Nick’s face.   There are other mishaps, mostly minor, that continue through the week and the story, emblematic of the clumsiness of body and mind Rocky is experiencing.

As the days go on, the self-searching story unspools, moving back and forth between revisiting the children’s baby- and toddler-hood, Rocky’s anxiety about them throughout their lives, her deep love but ambivalence toward Nick, her lost pregnancies, her beloved parents, and the unexpected rage that menopause seems to be stirring.

Told with humor and deep affection, especially between Rocky and her daughter, the week helps Rocky find some resolution for issues of loss that have plagued her since childhood.  It is a satisfying and enjoyable read, with insights many of us can appreciate.

6/11/24

The Last List of Mabel Beaumont, by Laura Pearson

Boldwood Books, 2023, 314 pages

Arthur, 89, and Mabel, 86, have been married for 62 years.  This novel begins with their peaceful last days together, and moves on to Mabel’s life as a widow.

In her voice, the story describes how she and Arthur came together, his patient and steadfast love for her, and her ambivalence about their marriage.  Because of her wishes, they did not have children, nor friends.  Arthur was sociable; she preferred to keep to herself, but they had a companionable, loving and strong relationship.

To Mabel’s surprise, even after his death, Arthur continues to take care of her in a very real way:  he has arranged – and paid in advance – for a companion to visit her several hours a day, for several months.  Julie, close to 50, is sweet, sympathetic, and eager to be helpful, but she has her own troubles.  She introduces Mabel to Patty, 70, a former model and current dance instructor; Patty brings in her neighbor, Kirsty, 32, and her baby girl, Dotty.  Each has   issues of loss and separation.  And on her own, Mabel befriends Erin, 17, whose coming out as gay has alienated her family.

Together, this small group embark on a quiet quest to find Mabel’s dearest friend, who disappeared from her life over 60 years ago.

The writing is light but strong, and story flows naturally, as Mabel’s life opens up in ways she – and her new friends – never imagined.  She finds purpose, as well as companionship, and learns that she is as good at acting on her feelings as she has been at hiding them.

With its multi-generational cast, and relatable concerns, this is an engaging, lovely, and somehow comforting book.

6/4/24

Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate.  Ballantine Books, June 4, 2024.  349 pages

Thank you to Random House-Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book.

This page-turner of an historical novel takes place in the backwoods of southeastern Oklahoma, in two separate time periods, 1909 and 1990.  Both revolve around the care of the land and the lack of care of children.

In 1909, 11-year-old Olive Augusta runs away from an abusive stepfather, taking her adopted Choctaw sister, Nessa, with her.  Their situation is but an example of the ways in which oil- and land-rich children, especially Native Americans, were used and abused for control of their wealth.  They become part of a small band of children fleeing similar circumstances, and their plight also introduces the heroines of early Oklahoma:  the real women who fought to protect children’s welfare and rights.

In 1990, Valerie Boren-Odell is a widowed mother with one young son, who has taken the position of Law Enforcement Officer at newly opened (fictional) Horsethief Trail National Park, covering the same area as “Ollie Augie” and her friends did.  In this timeframe, the focus is also on missing children and elderly.

Val must deal with on-going issues around women’s capability, especially in the male-dominated National Park Service.  As she learns about the history of her new home, she sees as models the women of early statehood who fought for the rights of the powerless.

Both timelines are suspenseful, some chapters ending in “cliffhangers.” Unfortunately, all chapters begin with quotes from historical documents, and rather than add to the gripping story, these form rather pedestrian distractions from a plot already complicated by the two narratives. 

Despite this, Shelterwood is an absorbing and even exciting book, rich in characters, action, and history.

5/7/24

The Mother of All Things, by Alexis Landau. Pantheon, May, 2024. 336 pages.

Thank you to Pantheon for an advance reader’s copy of this book.

A meditation on motherhood and a manifesto on marriage, this novel explores the physical and emotional pains of womanhood in the present and ancient past.

Ava is 45 years old, the mother of 10-year-old Sam and 13-year-old Margot.  Her husband, Kasper, has finally realized his dream of producing a movie, but will be filming in Bulgaria for 6 months.  For the first three months, Ava was on her own with the children and her adjunct professor role at a small college.  For the second three months, the focus of the story, she and the children go to Bulgaria to be with Kasper – though so preoccupied is he with the film, that he is rarely with them physically, and almost never mentally.  Meeting other women there, including her former thesis advisor, brings both Ava’s anxiety about mothering and her anger at Kasper to a breaking point.

The writing is strong and imaginative, and the ideas captured in the book are intriguing and thought-provoking, but there are too many instances and too many details of them, which dilutes their power. 

The true heart of the book seems to be the sharing of long-suppressed female-centered, mystery religions, aided by mind-enhancing herbal concoctions.  While showing the beauty and power of women bonding and exploring their deepest concerns together, the author also lays out the pitfalls of contemporary feminism.  But there can be a thin line between satire and mockery, and in this book it sometimes seems perforated.

Tighter editing could have made this an excellent book; instead, it is one worth reading for its depiction of female friendship, aging, and the issues faced by anxious mothers of girls maturing into adolescence.

4/20/24

The Evolution of Annabel Craig by Lisa Grunwald. Random House, April 26, 2024, 320 pages.

Thank you to Random House for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Next year will be the 100^th anniversary of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial.  This novel shows it through the appealing, thoughtful voice of 23-year-old Annabel Craig, as she describes her small hometown of Dayton, TN, in 1925, and the circus-like summer when the trial challenged teaching evolution in the public schools.

The book is grounded in facts, but as the title suggests, it is about the fictional   Annabel’s personal growth and change, as she explores her own love, marriage, and faith.  The surrounding characters – Annabel’s husband, who is one of Scopes’ local defense lawyers, her fundamentalist neighbors and friends, and a visiting newspaperwoman – are deftly drawn in both language and mannerisms, and events large and small make the town and its people come to life.

The battles within Annabel, and between her and her husband, mirror those of the trial about Science, God, and the Bible.  Hints suggest a different future for Annabel, and I would enjoy seeing a sequel as she moves on from this pivotal moment in her life and the country’s.

4/7/24

Village Weavers by Myrian JA Chancey

Thank you to Tin House Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This engrossing and lyrical novel traces the interlocking lives of two women from Haiti, Sisi and Gertie, from the age of 7 to close to 70.

Both born in 1934, and fast friends when they start school in 1941, their intense relationship is brief.  Sisi is working class and Gertie comes from the island’s elite.  There also is a family connection, but because of it and the class differences, Gertie’s status-conscious older sisters determine to keep them apart.  It is hard to believe the absolute lack of affection or even interest Gertie’s sisters have for her, or their implacable, life-long animosity toward Sisi.   In contrast to these selfish, mean women, Sisi’s older sister, Margie, is a model for both girls.

From 1941 through 2003, the book moves back and forth between the two girls/women, each with one daughter, highlighting certain years and places, for example:  1950’s, Paris and  Santo Domingo; Ohio and Florida in 1970’s; Phoenix and Miami in the 2000’s.  Throughout, women’s and minorities’ lack of power and agency is a theme.

Between 1942 and 2002 they meet only one time.  However, in their minds they both return again and again to the deep connection they had as children, and the puzzle of why it matters so much to each.

The lore of the Simbi, powerful figures of fate in traditional Haitian belief, winds through the story, as do beautiful images of birds and the sea, the first associated with Sisi, the second with Gertie.  A brief review cannot capture the richness of these visions, or their deep meaning for the women.

Two caveats to the strength of this story:  First, the book can seem slow, with the many shifts in time and place, the overly detailed descriptions of food, and the inclusion of native languages (Haitian Creole, French) before the English counterpart.  Also, the book’s title, Village Weavers, is somewhat obscure.  I thought it had to do with women working together in a village.  In fact, village weavers are bright yellow birds native to the Caribbean islands, known for the beautiful nests the males weave.  The nests hang like globes from trees, and each male may make many in a season.  As one reads this sweet and sad story, the image becomes increasingly meaningful.

3/31/24

Once We Were Home, by Jennifer Rosner.  Flatiron Books, 2023.  280 pages.

This sensitive novel explores a little-known topic:  what happened to the Jewish children hidden in WWII Europe?  Basing her characters on real lives, Rosner presents us with four children, with three different experiences:  Roger was hidden at age 3 in a French Convent; Ana and Oskar were 7 and 3 years-old when put in the care of a childless Polish farm couple; Renata, a Polish child, was kidnapped at an even younger age to be part of the Nazi Germanification Program, raised by a German couple.

The book alternates their stories between 1942 and 1968, in France, Poland, England, and Israel.  It introduces the first three in their “adopted” homes and traces the course of their separations from what they know to the adjustments in identity and self-understanding and the relationships they develop over the years.

Perhaps of most interest to me were the ethical issues and moral ambiguities that abounded:  Who were the real rescuers?  Those who hid and cared for them during the war, or Jewish and UN operatives reclaiming them?  Were they saving or stealing the children?   And how does anyone re-root after a profound rupture in known connections?

Each character is deftly drawn, so the loops back and forth in time and between children provides a tightly knit structure.  A curious fifth character appears intermittently, the smallest of a set of Matryoshka dolls kept by the German-raised girl.  Unfortunately, while these interludes are italicized in both the print and e-book versions, there is no subtitle to explain who this is.  (It is clear in the audiobook version.)  Generally, I found the inclusion of Renata, the German-raised girl, problematic to the book, as her background and experience were so different from the others.

I led a discussion in a Reform Jewish book group of readers 70 years and older, with varying experiences, backgrounds, and political inclinations.  All found it moving and illuminating, bringing new knowledge and questions to light.

Before writing novels, Jennifer Rosner wrote a memoir of raising two deaf daughters.  A review of If A Tree Falls can be found in the Non-Fiction section of this blog.

3/12/24

For Women’s History Month:

Two historical novels about real American heroines

Becoming Madame Secretary, by Stephanie Dray. Berkeley Publishing Group, March 12, 2024. 528 pages.

Thank you to Book Browse and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This vivid novel, told in the first-person voice of Frances Perkins, the first female U.S. Cabinet member, brings to life this forgotten pioneer in the fight against poverty. It communicates Frances Perkins’ sense of mission and of responsibility, as well as the sacrifices she made as a public servant, and re-introduces and re-establishes her as a true American hero.

Frances Perkins (1880-1965) trained in social work and economics, and was part of the original, early 20^th century Progressive Movement in American politics.  She fought for the safety, health, and other rights of children, women, the poor and the elderly.  And she conceived of “social insurance,” the Social Security that became law, with her guidance, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935.  During this time, she had personal losses and tragedies, including the manic-depressive illness and hospitalization of her husband, which were kept from the public with the help of influential women like Eleanor Roosevelt.  Despite this, “Miss Perkins,” as she preferred to be known, became a lightning rod for conservative opponents, and was often vilified in the press and hampered by powerful men in achieving her compassionate yet pragmatic goals.  

This blending of fact and fiction is also enlivened by cameos of people with whom Miss Perkins had close relationships:  President Roosevelt, NY Governor Al Smith, novelist Sinclair Lewis, and Mary Harriman Rumsey, heiress and founder of New York’s Junior League, among other important jurists and social reformers.

A very private person, Miss Perkins did not leave much information about her own emotional life; author Stephanie Dray does a fine job of using what records remain, including love letters and poems, to describe what Miss Perkins may have experienced as she fought against misogyny and elitism to protect vulnerable people at all levels of society. 

Finding Margaret Fuller,  by Allison Pataki. Ballentine Books, to be published on March 19, 2024. 416 pages.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This memoir-as-novel, written in the voice of Margaret Fuller, introduces us to the fascinating 19th-century woman whose words and actions shaped the early women’s movement in America.

As a writer, editor, journalist and speaker, Margaret Fuller was prized by her peers, both male and female.  Her “conversations” in the late 1830’s were a coveted series of discussions with groups of women aimed at opening their minds to more unconventional ways of thinking and sharing their own insights and opinions.  Her travels from her native New England to the Midwest and then to Europe, brought to the public stories of ordinary lives in a time of rapid growth, change, and reform.  She was one of the founders of the Transcendentalist Movement, and wrote of her ponderings on what comes from human nature and what from society, and how individuals could find their full potential.

Her untimely death – with which this book begins – only heightened her mystique, as friends mourned her and searched for her last manuscript, a description of the Roman Revolution of 1849, which she believed to be the best work she had done.

Allison Pataki is a skilled and experienced novelist whose subjects are both real and fictional women from the past.  Her writing is vivid and engaging.  She grounds Margaret’s life in the reality of being a single woman, responsible for supporting herself, her mother, and siblings at a time when this was rare and difficult.  However, I found off-putting her injection of romance into the story, especially at the beginning  – much about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s blue-grey eyes and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s bright green ones – and the suggestions of emotional and sexual tension between Margaret and these and other men.  Despite this, Ms. Pataki leads us to an exceptional but lesser-known woman, and one that I now will want to read about in non-fiction.

2/13/24

Acts of Forgiveness, by Maura Cheeks. Ballentine Books/Random House, February 13, 2024. 304 pages.

Thank you to Ballantine Books/Random House and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book.

Acts of Forgiveness is an original and thought-provoking novel about the thorny issue of reparations to contemporary Black Americans for the injustices of slavery.  It is told through one family’s experience, the Revels, a Black family who has moved from poverty to upper middle-class success in one generation, and focuses on the adult daughter, Willie (Wilhelmina), now 34 and the mother of Paloma, 10.

The story revolves around a proposed federal “Forgiveness Act,” which seeks to apologize for America’s history of slavery by providing $175,000 to every person who can prove their ancestors were slaves.  Both Black and White Americans have mixed reactions to this bill, some of it surfacing as protests and violence on the part of White Americans against Black ones.

As it explores this difficult subject, the book also looks at family and identity issues.  The need to prove ancestry to qualify for reparations raises questions about what one generation owes another (both the old to the young, and the young to the old), and about defining oneself when adopted or simply ignorant of one’s parents’ histories.  

I found the story’s end to be something of a letdown, perhaps too subtle, though it is rescued by the epilog.    There also are many extraneous details, especially in the search through old records (for example, the steps with which microfiche is fed into a viewer).  However, the substance and the fine writing make this a book well worth reading, thinking about, and discussing – a good book club choice.

1/30/24

The Excitements, by C.J. Wray. William Morrow, January 30, 2024. 304 pages.

Thank you to Harper Collins/William Morrow and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book.

Archie Williamson, single, only relative for his eccentric 97 and 98 year-old great aunts, shepherds them through the social engagements they crave and call “excitements.”  The aunts, Penny and Josephine, are two of the remaining women veterans of WWII, and are regularly interviewed and honored for their service.  They often feel in competition with two other elderly female veterans, Davina McKenzie, 101 years old, and Sister Eugenia, 98.  The current “excitement,” in 2022, is their all receiving the French Legion d’honneur, the highest French order of merit, for their work during and immediately after WWII.

At first the aunts seem to be a bit scatterbrained, but as the book travels back to 1939 and through the post-war years, they are shown to have complicated and compelling stories and secrets.  Entries from their early diaries and letters seem pitch perfect to their youthful concerns and escapades, and provide the necessary backdrop to their current adventures.

Much of the action centers on Penny, the younger of the two great-aunts and the one with debatable morals, who through her post-war life plays Robin Hood to orphans of war.  Josephine’s secret is more personal and familiar.  Both are involved and engaged with the contemporary world and with younger generations, and both are able to re-think their pasts and bring insight to their current lives and relationships.

This engaging book is filled with droll humor and twists that are sometimes quite startling, and almost over-the-top.  But it also champions the capacities of women later in life, and how much skill as well as knowledge they can bring from their wells of experience. 

1-7-24

A Change of Pace: Fortune Favors the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood.  Doubleday, 2020, 324 pages.

1940’s post-war NYC.  Two female private investigators.  A case of twists and turns.

Author Spotswood introduces us to Ms.* Lillian Pentecost, preeminent lady private detective, 45, and living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), whose specialty is investigating crimes against women.  Into her life (and saving it) comes Willowjean Parker, 20, an all-round circus assistant, with “quick hands and an even quicker head.”  “Will,” as this tom-boy prefers to be called (attracted by and attractive to beautiful women) becomes Lillian’s apprentice, living and working with her, and writes this memoir of their early years together.

Colorful characters and snappy descriptions (“he sounded like he ate gravel with his grape nuts) move along this engaging mystery.  The main characters have their flaws, but they also are noble:  while most of their clients are quite wealthy, each Saturday they have an “Open House,” when maids, cooks, students, schoolteachers, barmaids and burlesque beauties can come for free advice, food, and instruction in martial arts for their self-protection.

Well plotted and fast moving, this is the first of four books (to date) about the pair.  I’m already reading the second.

*As you may know, though “Ms.” became popular in the 1970’s, it’s been in use since the 17^th century.

12-27-23

The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon.  Doubleday:  December 5, 2023, 420 pages.

This vivid and suspenseful story was inspired by (rather than based on) the 1991 Pultizer Prize-winning history, A Midwife’s Tale:  The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990; reprinted by Vintage Books, 2010.  501 pages).

That fine book brought us the almost lost words of 18^th century midwife and healer Martha Ballard, and provided historical background and context for her life.  Usually, the entries were simple and brief.  For example, “October 1, 1789:  Mrs. Foster has sworn a rape on a number of men, among whom is Judge North” (page 122).  In the actual diary, nothing more is said.

 From that one entry, the novelist Ariel Lawhon has created a world of characters and events, imagining how the accusation and following trials would affect the town of Hallowell, Maine, and its varied inhabitants.  The Frozen River is rich in details and descriptions of early American lives, and the emotions that those living then might have felt.  The plot is fast-paced, full of much love and some lust, and highlights women’s roles, work, and limited options legally, as well as in all other ways.  For those, like myself, who prefer not to read graphic violence, a final, brutal confrontation between Martha and the book’s arrogant villain (pages 387-390) can be skimmed without losing the impact of its climax.

 When the historical account of A Midwife’s Tale was first published in the early 1990’s, I read it with interest and appreciation.  Having now enjoyed the newly-published novel, I would suggest that if one wants to read the history, do so first, as it can seem rather dry after the colorful portraits and actions from The Frozen River.

12-16-23

Suffused with Gratitude:

Hannah Coulter, by by Wendell Berry.  Counterpoint: 2005, 208 pages

In the early 2000’s, at 78 years old, Hannah Coulter is reviewing her life as a rural woman, spent in a Kentucky community of family farms.  Her story is one of 10 novels about the “Port William Membership,” as the group calls itself:  family and friends who do whatever work is needed for each other, and who have helped, wept, and rejoiced together over several generations.  Even the dead are part of this group, for “the Membership keeps the memories.” (pg. 147)

Hannah’s first husband died in WWII, before their only child was born.  She finds love again with Nathan Coulter, another neighbor returned from the war, and together they have two children and raise all three on the farm they build together.  As she says, “Our story is the story of our place,” and she describes the farm and their relationships through the 52 years of their marriage, and then her life after Nathan’s death.

The story is filled with vivid characters, like her Grandmam, whose “intelligence, knowledge and thrift…made the connections that made my life.” (pg. 24), and they all are described with dignity and depth, as well as some humor.

It is also filled with love, as Hannah describes the “room of love,” as another world:

“You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock.  It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than worlds on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together… and you live a little while entirely in a gift.”

There is loss as well as love, and Hannah makes an effort to understand her dearest family as they choose paths different from the one she and Nathan did.    I was moved and soothed by the time spent with “an old woman, sitting by the fire, waiting for sleep, (and making) her reckoning, naming over the names of the dead and the living, which also are the names of her gratitude.”  (p107).   This short, lyrical book is a quiet and reflective read for the end of the year.

11-25-23

Two novels about Early 19^th century women scientists:

The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Riverhead Books, 2013, 501 pages.

Alma Whittaker, born to wealth in 1800 Philadelphia, is the fictional female botanist whose energy and hunger for knowledge enlivens this book.  A tall, big-boned, red-headed woman, she searches for information and experience, including love.  Her birthplace, date and circumstances make her an exact contemporary of the real-life Morris sisters, the focus of Mischievous Creatures, reviewed in the Non-Fiction section of this blog.   But her appetite for life and her adventures make her into a fascinating and almost literally larger than life example of a strong, smart woman in that era.

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier.  Penguin Books, 2010, 320 pages.

While Alma Whittaker is a fictional character, fossil hunter Mary Anning is a real person who lived in the early to mid-19^th century, in England.  This book is a fictional account of Mary’s incredible ability to find and identify marine fossils in the sands around Lyme Regis.  Born in 1799, she, too, is an exact contemporary of the Morris sisters, but from a working class family, so that her fossil-hunting is relegated to times when she is not working in her family store.  However, in real life, she does become known and respected for her work, which helps transform thinking about the origins of the world.

Both these historical novels explore the issues gender and power for women that shaped scientific thinking in early 19^th century America and Britain.  The impact of these attitudes, and their very slow change over time,  are unearthed in the real-life biographies of Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris, in the newly-published Mischievous Creatures (in the Non-Fiction Review section).

11-18-23

North Woods by Daniel Mason. Random House, 2023, 372 pages.

Thank you to Random House for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This book might be subtitled, “What we do for love:” love of place, nature, parents, children, siblings; romantic love and illicit love, platonic and physical.

This remarkable collection of linked stories is told in different voices from different times, with many contemporaneous social and cultural issues explored. These range from colonial settlers in the 17^th century, to apple growers in the 18^th, to the slave catcher in mid-19^th century, the séance in the early 20^th century, and the treatment of mental illness in the mid-20th. There are riddles, ballads, and ghost stories, and writing that seems to come right from the first-hand accounts of captured colonial settlers as well as Victorian authors like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and 1950’s-60’s pulp crime fiction.   Bobcats reappear, real, stuffed, and phantom, as do serving girls with almost identical names: Anne, Annie, and Anneli.

The North Woods gradually comes into view as the dense forests and mountains of western Massachusetts.   Over time the forest is transformed by nature and man, and yet the home site, a yellow house built in the 1700’s, remains, serving as place for varied epiphanies as it is visited by new people and old ghosts.  As the author writes, “The only way to see the world other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

This book captures both loss and change, giving a vivid and thought-provoking perspective on humans and their humanity across time.

10-26-23

The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle.

Grand Central Publishing, May, 2023, 376 pages.

As (mostly) older women, most of us have at least thought about what to do with our “carefully collected trinkets and treasures,” (p. 53) or what to do with cherished items that are left to us by loved ones.

In this gentle, warm novel, the 31-year-old protagonist, Jess, is dealing with her mother’s sudden death, as well as important life-decisions in her relationships and career.  An only child with no father, she takes apart her mother’s home, hoping to do it with the love and care that was poured into putting it together.  She saves only a few items, the largest a much used and loved 1974 encyclopedia set, which has no place in the modern, slick flat she shares with her fiancé.  Then she learns of a place that takes in a jumble of precious items that no longer have homes:  wedding dresses, cookie tins of old photos, workbenches, suitcases holding love letters, odd instruments, a motorcycle side car, and much, much more.

 Touched by the chaotic collection she finds in the back of a used furniture warehouse, she decides to turn it into a museum of ordinary people’s things, testament to lives quietly lived.  It also means that she can finally use her skills as a university-trained museum curator, even while she continues in her long-term “temp” job as a receptionist. 

As she assesses the collection, she also assesses her choices in life.  Bringing together a small group of committed volunteers to help, she begins to question her relationship with her fiancé, who does not appreciate her passion for this project.

Over the course of the story, personal mysteries are resolved, relationships lost or strengthened, and the meaning of ordinary lives is celebrated.  “And although … objects themselves are no replacement for the people we ache for, they are a reminder of the fact that those people were here, and they mattered and will be missed.”  (page 376)

For a practical approach to dealing with our assorted “treasures and trinkets,” please see the Non-Fiction Review of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

10-14-23

Morning In This Broken World, by Katrina Kittle

Lake Union Publishing (September 1, 2023), 283 pages.

With sympathy, but not sentimentality, and a light hand, Katrina Kittle offers a story that encompasses many of the current concerns in our world:  a grieving, elderly widow (the main character); a working poor mother; a physically disabled child; an angry adolescent; gayness; bullying; breast cancer; dementia; and addiction.  And she manages to weave these into a warm and believable plot within the context of the Covid Pandemic.

This absorbing book opens in February 2020, in a living facility with a continuum of care, where 74-year-old Vivian has moved to be near her husband, Jack.  He has dementia, and as the book opens, he has just died, and Vivian is struggling against her wish to end her own life.  She is drawn out of this by the eviction plight of their favorite nursing aid, Luna, the mother of Wren, 11 and wheelchair-bound by cerebral palsy, and Cooper, an angry 15 year-old boy.  Vivian is further galvanized by the start of the pandemic lock-down, which threatens to leave her stranded in the assisted living section of the facility.

Fortunately, Vivian is very well-off, financially, with a large house.  She does not want to live there alone, but convinces Luna and her children to move in with her, just before the lock-down goes into effect.

What follows is a story about people saving and taking care of each other, emotionally as well as physically, across generations and situations.  Told from four perspectives, Vivian’s, Luna’s, Wren’s and Cooper’s, the voices of each sound authentic and appealing.  The changes and challenges they experience seem organic and genuine, and despite facing hard truths, each grows in a credible way.

The story has some weaknesses, particularly in the introduction of two secondary characters, the children’s immature father and Vivian’s estranged daughter, but there is lovely writing and meaningful descriptions of complicated and confused emotions and motives.

The book’s title comes from a poem by Mary Oliver, “The Invitation,” about stopping to notice and enjoy the beauty in the world, wherever and whenever it may be found.   This book, despite all the woes it contains, ultimately focuses on beauty and meaning   both in the natural world and in relationships.

9-28-23

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett, by Annie Lyons. William Morrow, 2020, 400 pages.

Eudora Honeysett, 85 years old, habitually avoids human company.  With no family and a long history of loss and disappointment, she lives alone in the house in which she grew up in Southeast London, with an unfriendly cat.  Her relief is swimming at the community pool, where the water lifts her aching, tired body, and she feels free for a time, and can stop wondering if she ever viewed “life as a joy rather than a chore.” (pg. 84)

Having the needs and demands of others shape her life, she is determined to choose the way in which she will die.  She contacts an organization in Switzerland that will help with voluntary assisted suicide, once she goes through their screening process.

Then into her life rushes 10-year-old Rose Trewidney, the only child of the couple who has moved in next door.  Rose is a force of nature – full of energy and kindness, with brightly colored outfits that are an assault on the senses.  Reluctantly, Eudora lets another neighbor, elderly, widowed Stanley Marcham, become a trio with her and Rose.  Both Rose and Stanley see, and bring out, the warmth behind Eudora’s cool, often off-putting exterior.

With a strong, dry-witted narrative, this engaging book explores attitudes toward life as well as death.  At times it seems like a fairy tale, with Eudora’s saintly, early-departed father, her needy and weak mother, and her wicked younger sister forming her life, to be rescued late in it by a rainbow child and a gallant widower.  But like many well-done fairy tales, as it raises emotions and suspense, it also has important lessons to share, including those about death and dying that too often are hidden.

9-19-23

All You Have To Do Is Call, by Kerri Maher.  Berkley Books, 2023, 364 pages.

Thank you to Book Browse and NetGalley for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book.

This absorbing novel is a reminder of what life was like for women needing abortions before Roe v. Wade, and a warning about how the current anti-abortion movement will impact women today.

“Jane,” the network of lay-women who provided safe abortions as well as reproductive health information, worked in Chicago in the early 1970’s.  This is a fictional account that  revolves around five women involved, all in their late 20’s and early 30’s at the time:  Veronica, a mother and former schoolteacher; Siobhan, a divorced mother and painter; Margaret, single and a new Ph.D.* English professor at the University of Chicago; Phyllis, a single Black woman and Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University; and Patty, mother of three, Catholic, and rather conservative, Veronica’s oldest friend but not a member of the group.

All the women have choices to make in their work and relationships, especially with the men in their lives, around risk-taking, commitment, sexuality, and parenting.  There is suspense as they navigate these choices against the necessity but illegality of their efforts to help other women and grow in their own lives.

Unfortunately, the book is something of a morality play:  the good women are very good; the bad men are very bad.  Veronica and Patty, the long-time friends, show more complexity and growth, but there is a fairy-tale quality to all the women finding satisfying futures that use their personal talents and further their commitment toward recognition of women’s skills and rights.  Also, there is a disconnect between the secrecy the work required, and some of the public meetings to recruit new volunteers.

However, this is an engaging and important book with its messages about limited choices for women not so long ago, and how much work still is left to do today.

*This was amusing to me, because Margaret has just finished her Ph.D. in Victorian Literature at UC Berkeley, where I focused my studies on the same subject at the same time as an undergraduate.

9-5-23

The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves:  the third in the “Two Rivers” series. St. Martin’s Press, 2023. 392 pages.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Ann Cleeves has done it again!  Her third novel with her newest police detective, Matthew Venn, is a clever, complex, yet compassionate exploration of crime in an ordinary setting.  From his location in Southwest England, Venn joins Cleeves’ other long series featuring Vera Stanhope, in Northwest England, and Jimmy Perez, in the Shetlands, all working in isolated and insular communities, where newcomers arrive, but old bonds remain and old wounds fester.   

Matthew Venn, still in his late ‘30’s or early 40’s, is a quiet but complicated man.  Brought up in a Christian community called the Barum Brethren, he has left the rigid religious percepts of that group, where his elderly mother still is involved.  As a gay man, he has found some happiness with his husband, but the limited experiences of his childhood and his guilt about abandoning the Brethren, together with his still not readily accepted sexuality, have made him distant and unsure in his relationships with his colleagues.

The current mystery revolves around the murder of a retired sailing celebrity, who unexpectedly returns to his small village after many years and is killed a few weeks later.  Venn must dig into the victim’s shadowed past, and deal with the current lives of those who knew him.  Vulnerable to his own preconceptions and assumptions about people, he almost misses important connections that finally lead to a suspenseful and successful conclusion.

This book can be read as a stand-alone novel, but it benefits from having the background and insight that come from its earlier companions in the “Two River Series,” beginning with The Long Call and The Heron’s Cry.   This novel ends with a hint of future issues to be explored in Matthew’s life, and I look forward to more in this absorbing series.

8-20-23

Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur. Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2023.  317 pages

Little Monsters offers a slightly different perspective on aging:  that of a man turning 70, desperate to make a final discovery to cap his already successful career as a marine biologist.  The book also explores the psychology of bi-polar disease, and the effects on his children of their father’s unreliability, especially after their mother’s early death.

With Adam Gardner as the book’s roiling center, much of the focus is on his adult children, 38 and 41 years old, as they commit themselves to work, family and love.   Ken, the eldest, was 3 ½ when their mother died shortly after giving birth to Abby.  To complicate their lives further, Steph, also 38, finds them after being diagnosed with a rare, genetic disorder, not in either of her presumed parents’ families.  Steph, as well as Abby, is Adam’s daughter, until now unknown to any of them.

The events of the book take place in Cape Cod, where the protagonists live, during the summer of 2016, and the upcoming presidential election forms part of the story’s backdrop, though the focus is on an intimate portrait of a talented but troubled family.  Successful contractor Ken is considering a candidacy as a left-leaning Republican for the House of Representatives; Abby is about to have her unique art gain public recognition. 

The women are far more sympathetic and stronger than the men, who are angry misogynists and narcissists.  In contrast, sisterhood and motherhood are celebrated in moving ways.  The story ends before the election, so we are left with the hope of a woman stepping forward to lead the world.  Would that it had been so.

8-6-23

Two Novels about Native American Women and their Encounters with the White World:

Crow Mary, by Kathleen Grisson.  Atria Books, 2023, 364 pages

Crow Mary is a novel based on the life of a real woman who lived in late 19^th century Montana and Canada.

The book has much beauty in its simple language reflecting the land and lives of the Crow Indians before their territory was confiscated.  It also has much ugliness, including some scenes of violence against women, as it shows how poorly White men, in particular, treated the Native Americans and anyone who sympathized with them.

Through it, Crow Mary or “Goes First” as her real name is, grows from an idealistic teen to a strong woman, able to glimpse different perspectives through her marriage to a White man, a complex person, with both a kind and weak character.  Misuse of alcohol is a major theme, though it is Crow Mary’s White husband who suffers the most from it in this story.

Some of the content makes parts of this book a difficult read, with so much injustice described, but overall, it paints a vivid portrait of a cherished way of life, and how a young woman finds her strength and moves forward with her beloved family into a new world.

Note:  Although the author is not herself of the Crow people, she worked closely with Crow elders, including Mary’s great-granddaughter, who wrote the Foreword.

A Council of Dolls, by Mona Susan Powers.  Mariner Books:  August 8, 2023, 296 pages

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This tender, heart-rending novel of three generations of Native American girls from North Dakota shows the long-lasting trauma of the children’s being removed from their families to be educated as U.S. “citizens,” trying to erase their traditions and beliefs, often brutally.

Divided into four parts, it begins with the youngest in the family, “Sissy – 1960s” and goes backwards in time to “Lillian – 1930s” and “Cora – 1900s.”  The last section focuses again on Sissy, in the 2010s.

Each young girl has a treasured doll in whom she confides and who provides comfort and counsel, because yes, these dolls can communicate with their girls, often helping them avoid physical if not mental injury.

Going backwards in time gives the story layers and depth.  We first see the effects of their experiences, and then learn the causes, what shaped them into the women they became. 

Each part is written in the first person, but the initial one is in a short period of 1969, told in the child’s voice, which is affecting and effective.  In the later sections the narrators are older, recounting their experiences with some insight.  All have a lyrical, mystical quality, as the dolls try to explain and advise the girls on their experiences in the strange, threatening world of the boarding schools.

The last and longest part, where Sissy appears as a 50-year-old woman, seems more forced.  She is a writer, and on re-discovering the actual dolls, begins writing their stories as they dictate them to her, which strains even willing suspension of disbelief.  There is almost too much emotional insight and growth in a condensed period, and this doesn’t have the impact or verity of the earlier stories.

Several times in the book, the author makes the point that her heritage, and that of her characters, are both Dakhota and Lakhota, using words from both languages.   It would have been helpful to have a glossary and pronunciation guide in order to appreciate the subtleties and nuances she felt were important.

Despite this, the book is a loving look at a national trauma often overlooked, and is well worth reading.  In topic, voice, and literary style, it would make an excellent book club choice.

7-30-23

Is a book the same to all who read it?

No Two Persons, by Erica Bauermeister. St. Martin’s Press, 2023, 320 pages.

These deftly linked, gentle but vivid stories of estrangement and transformation are held together by the writing and reading of a fictional book.

Whether the main character in each story is a homeless teenage girl, a once-famous actor, a frazzled new mother, a grieving widower, an artist, a diver, or a 76-year-old woman at the end of her successful career, each story follows an arc of uncertainty, understanding, and growth. (In fact, perhaps the only flaw is the predictability of this process.)

The stories span 2010-2019, and travel the US coasts, from Maine and New York to California, and from Washington State to Florida. The reader can feel a quiet pleasure as the main character of an earlier story turns up as a small player in a later one.

As the epigraph says, “No two persons may read the same book,” but in this author’s hand, the same book can impact all readers.

7-23-23

More than a place – a Source of Friendship, Love, and Meaning

Fellowship Point, by Alice Elliott Dark. Simon and Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books, 2022,  586 pages.

This compelling, complex novel is about long-time friendship and love – not necessarily romantic, but emotional, selfless, and brave.  It is also about aging and memory, looking back on one’s life and doing what one still can.

The story begins in the year 2000 and ends eight years later.  There are many well-drawn characters, but the focus is on 80-year-old Agnes Lee, author and shareholder in the Maine coastline land called “Fellowship Point,” and her best friend since birth, Polly Hancock Wister, also a shareholder.  Fellowship Point, with its natural beauty and wildlife, was purchased and founded as a summer retreat in the 1870’s by their Philadelphia Quaker great-grandfathers, along with three other men.  There are five homes – and shareholders – descended from these original founders.  Agnes has never married; Polly has a husband of many years, Dick, and three sons.  As Agnes ages, she becomes concerned about maintaining the purity of Fellowship Point into the future, saving it from greedy developers.  To do this, she must have all three current descendants agree to dissolve the original partnership.  Polly’s sons and Agnes’ Cousin Archie are all reluctant to do so.

Agnes, 6 feet tall, rather opinionated, and prickly, has not slowed down with age, still spending five hours a day on her writing, as well as running her Fellowship Point household.  She is the renowned author of a series of children’s books about a nine-year-old girl called Nan, who is a “proto-feminist.”  Agnes also is the successful but anonymous author of a series of satirical novels about five women growing up in Philadelphia society.  However, she has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and so is facing her mortality in a more immediate way than ever before.  Agnes also does not suffer fools, and has inadvertently offended more than a few people (as well as some deliberately).

Polly is “a real Quaker lady,” whose essence is smiling.  Her vocation is attending to her husband, a retired philosophy professor, and, making the world kinder.  She can be rather passive, overly concerned with pleasing people, and even seem a little dim.  Yet Agnes sees the fine intelligence and judgment Polly has, and with encouragement, even late in life helps Polly see it for herself.  In fact, Agnes comes to feel that “Polly’s intelligence in everyday life puts Agnes’ brilliance to shame” (page 427).  A dramatic part of the book focuses on their falling out, at almost the exact middle of the story, and the effects this has on both of them and their plans for the future.

There is some wonderful writing, for example, an ancestor “took a detour that became his destiny” (page 70).  However, despite expert intertwining of many characters and their relationships with each other and the story, there also is an inexplicable subplot around an alleged robbery, and a large dose of coincidence and some predictability that I felt detracted from the otherwise engrossing narrative.

Still, this is a captivating book about women, aging, and relationships with elderly spouses, friends, and grown children, and also about finding meaning and peace in not only reviewing one’s life, but living it fully in the present.

7-3-23

A New Look at an Old Myth

Clytemnestra by Constanza Consati. Sourcebooks Landmark, 2023, 448 pages.

One need not know Greek myths to appreciate this tale of a young Spartan princess, finding her way to political power and control.  The characters’ names may at first seem foreign, but they are so vividly drawn – some noble, others despicable, some a combination of these – that they become real and recognizable players in this mythic story.

Close to her sister, Helen (of Troy), raised as her father’s confidante, married young and for love, Clytemnestra’s world is destroyed when her father betrays her, using her to form an alliance with the powerful King of Mycenae, Agamemnon.  Loving mother to her children, she remains fierce and focused on revenge for her losses and on gaining power over her country and the people who both support her and those who wrong her.

I wonder about endowing ancient people and stories with modern feelings and attitudes, toward love, personal insight, family bonds and more.  However, this does make the novel universal, turning Clytemnestra, a figure who is typically viewed as cruel and vengeful, into a sympathetic and complex person.

The writing is lovely, even when describing distressing scenes and situations, and both drama and pathos emerge, making this book an absorbing and highly recommended read.

6-18-23

Historical Novels/Family Sagas

The Wilderness Series (6 books) and the Waverly Place Series (2 books to date)

When do you wish a 600+ page book wouldn’t end?  For me, it’s when a family saga beginning in post-Revolutionary America follows a line of independent, brave women, and when the relationships, settings and issues are engaging and finely drawn.

Sara Donati delivers all this in her two series following the women in one family over 90 years.  Elizabeth Middleton arrives from England in 1792, in upstate New York, where Native Americans and settlers are still negotiating ways to live together.  Her dream:  to start a school so all can be literate.   Not an easy task for a well-to-do young woman who is expected to marry and enhance her father’s estate.

The next five books in this series cover more of Elizabeth’s life, and then those of her children, through 1824.  In addition to adventure and romance, there are strong issues in each book:  race relations, the effects of war, women’s roles.  Family members travel to Canada, the Caribbean, Scotland, and New Orleans, the family growing and making difficult decisions about work and love.

The second series begins in 1883, giving some background on what has happened in the intervening years.  It focuses on Elizabeth’s descendants, two cousins who are young women doctors living together in Manhattan.  Not only are women’s roles and rights and race relations once again issues, but inter-religious relations, urban poverty and anti-vice crusaders are at the forefront of the story.

Sara Donati (the pen name of Rosina Lippi) tells absorbing stories of people who seem real, with social and cultural insight, and what reviewers say is great historical accuracy.  She has taught linguistics and creative writing, and her book of linked stories, Homestead (2013), published under her own name, is also a wonderful read.

Books in the Wilderness series:

1. Into the Wilderness (1998)
2. Dawn on a Distant Shore (2000)
3. Lake in the Clouds (2002)
4. Fire Along the Sky (2004)
5. The Queen of Swords (2006)
6. The Endless Forest (2010)

Books in the Waverly Place series:

1. The Gilded Hour (2015)

2. Where the Light Enters (2019)

6-2-23

Matrix:  A Novel, by Lauren Groff.  Riverhead Books, 2021, 268 pages.

This is a story of a little-known but real person, Marie de France, a medieval mystic and poet.  While there is not much information about her life, her writings that survive from the 12^th century suggest she was educated, and probably raised in a royal court in France. 

In the novel Groff presents Marie as the half-sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who cannot abide her.  Marie is the product of rape, and is clumsy and homely – and though Marie adores Eleanor, the Queen does not want her nearby.   Instead, she is packed off as prioress to a crumbling, starving, diseased English nunnery.

This fictional Marie has no interest in or calling for religion, and longs for her home. But through her time with the other nuns, she changes – and the novel tells a vivid tale of her growth, maturity, visions, and a success no one dreamed she could achieve.

There is passion and intensity, both violence and deep love, and the writing can be transporting.  It is especially interesting to pair this with the recent non-fiction book, Femina by Janina Ramirez, reviewed in the Non-Fiction section of this blog, which looks at the lives of medieval women through old texts and new archeological tools.

5-26-23

Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine:  Henry Holt and Company, 2023, 257 pages.

“Family is everything.  Everything is a bit much.”  Mamie Kunstler

This wry and charming novel plays out the relationship between 93-year-old Mamie Kunstler and her 24-year-old grandson, Julian.  Mamie has lived in Venice, CA, since emigrating from Vienna with her parents and grandfather in 1939, when she was 12.  They lived the émigré life with other, more successful German-speaking expatriates; young Mamie is at Heinrich Mann’s 75^th birthday (watching from the kitchen), and is mentored in music and tennis by Arnold Schoenberg.  There also is a romantic get-away with Greta Garbo, another émigré, if not German.

Julian has grown up in New York City, where his parents are “lefty-lawyers,” and his older sister also is an attorney, married to a Black physician in Chicago.

Alas, Julian has not found his focus.  He has mastered many languages and other interests, but still does not know what he is doing with his life, which seems to bother his parents more than it does him.

Then in early March 2019, Mamie breaks her wrist, and although Agatha, her loyal, long-time housekeeper/companion is with her, they need more help.  Julian is dispatched to spend two weeks with them.  The Pandemic hits, and Julian, Mamie, and Agatha spend months together in the small but lovely home in Venice, CA.

Mamie, cultured and wise, has many stories, and she wants to share them with Julian.  But she is aware that “stories recorded are not history, but what had settled, like tea leaves in her mind,” … and she questions whether “narrative comfort (is) a bourgeois soporific, or as radical as hope.”      

The book is peopled with the famous, and sometimes the fantastic.  While there is a shadowed side, with her father’s guilt, sadness, and anger at what WWII did to him, his family and friends, there are also laugh-out-loud funny lines, and wonderful debates about words, music, and ideas.  While the Pandemic limits them to where they can go physically, the Kunstlers travel far in their understanding and relationships. 

5-8-23

Septuagenarian Sleuths

Two seasoned British TV writers/performers have created two series featuring elderly British women (and some men) who pool their experiences and talents to solve crimes in their neighborhoods.

“The Thursday Murder Club” series by Richard Osman:

Meeting on Thursdays because that is the only day that the room they want is available, four residents of an up-scale retirement community solve cold cases, and take on fresh ones as well.  All nearing 80, they are led by Elizabeth, a former spy, who works with Ibrahim, a retired psychiatrist, Ron, a former political activist, and newcomer Joyce, a retired nurse and sweet addition to their detective work.  They not only investigate local, but intriguing, cases, they also deal with the indignities of old age – illness, dementia, loneliness.  And they use their elderly status as a screen to confound and confuse both the police and the villains – though they come to have a nice partnership with the local female constable, as well as a very handy handy-man.

All the plots are clever and the characters appealing, and they have solid relationships with each other and important family members.

Note:  I listened to these books on Audible, and they were delightful.  I have seen reviews that criticize the print versions for their changing fonts, so do not know if they are equally enjoyable.

Books in the series all are published by Pamela Dorman Books, and include, in this order:

The Thursday Murder Club, 2020, 368 pages

The Man Who Died Twice, 2021, 368 pages

The Bullet That Missed, 2022, 352 pages

The Last Devil to Die, to be published in September 2023, 352 pages.

“The Marlow Murder Club” series by Robert Thorogood

Book 1 of a Projected 3:  The Marlow Murder Club. Poisoned Pen Press, 2022, 354 pages.

Judith Potts, 77, lives in a crumbling mansion on the Thames near the village of Marlow.  Eccentric Judith is a crossword-puzzle creator, a whiskey connoisseur, and a nude swimmer in the Thames (supposedly unknown to others).  While swimming one hot summer evening, she hears a shout and a gunshot coming from her neighbor’s house across the river.  Given her state of undress, she cannot climb out and see what is happening.  She goes home, calls the police, and starts a tangled investigation that comes to include two new, somewhat younger, friends:  Becks, the Vicar’s wife, in her 40’s, and Suzie, a dogwalker, in her 50’s.

Written by the creator of the TV-series, “Death in Paradise,” this is a lighter read than the Thursday Murder Club series, which is humorous but deals with heavier issues related to aging.  The characters in “Marlow” are less developed, though they do touch on issues related to women’s roles and self-image.

Book 2:  Death Comes to Marlow, is due out at the end of May 2023.

I also “read” this as an audiobook, which was very entertaining.

5-7-23

Lost Sons and New Friends in the Animal Kingdom:

How the Penguins Saved Veronica, by Hazel Prior.  Berkley, 2020, 356 pages.

Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, 2022, 362 pages.

These are not “deep” books that struggle with grief, loss, and love.  But both books and their elderly characters send a message of hope and redemption, even where sadness and loneliness have prevailed in the past.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica introduces us to 86-year-old Veronica McCreedy, a wealthy, eccentric, self-centered and often abrasive woman living in Scotland.  Veronica has no one to inherit her extensive fortune, but after seeing a documentary about penguins in Antarctica, decides they will be her beneficiaries, through a bequest to the research team studying and nurturing them.  However, Veronica, being a rather bossy woman, decides she must see this project for herself.  And so, against the wishes of the research group, she takes herself to their site near the south Atlantic Ocean for a three-week stay.  However, she becomes ill and must stay longer, and while there rescues a baby penguin and becomes part of the “family” of researchers and penguins in their isolated location.  She also is able to face and begin to heal from a very sad history.

Remarkably Bright Creatures takes us almost halfway around the world from Veronica’s Antarctic outpost, to Puget Sound in Washington State, where Tova Sullivan, 70 years old, has a quiet life.  She is well-off, financially, and has a few good friends.  But with no family left, to keep busy she takes a night job cleaning the local aquarium.  Her favorite creature is Marcellus, an octopus, who mourns his own captivity.  In fact, Marcellus is quite intelligent, and is one of the narrators of this quirky, sweet book.  He is fond of Tova, one of the remarkably bright creatures among humans. The story follows both Tova and Marcellus in their lost loves, grief, aging, and resolution of their longings.

Both books are recommended for anyone who enjoys cozy encounters with important issues.

4-14-23

Books about Parents and Adult Children

Late Bloomers, by Deepa Varadarajan

Pub Date May 2, 2023, Random House Publishing Group, 368 pages.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This delightful and insightful novel brings us a fractured family of four, and, in their different voices, shows how adult children and parents can renegotiate new ways of being with and for each other.

Suresh, 59, and Lata, 57, had an arranged marriage in their native India, and have lived in Texas since right after their wedding.  But they were never compatible, and after 36 years, a well-to-do lifestyle, and with two grown children, Lata decides she wants a divorce.  Lata, college-educated in India, now works as a library assistant at a local college, and moves away from their tight-knit Indian community – not far, but enough so that she no longer socializes with old friends.  And given Suresh’s negative, critical, and often tactless comments, neither does he.

Suresh, a retired systems analyst,  did not want the divorce, and it is he who introduces us to the situation, a year later, as he wryly describes his experiences with an Indian-singles dating site, about which Lata knows nothing.  He relies for advice and encouragement on his son, Nikesh, 30 years old, a Harvard-educated attorney living in New York City, married to an older woman (and his boss at the law firm) with whom he has a one-year-old son.

Their grown daughter, Priya, 35, is a tenure-track professor of medieval history, teaching in Austin, about two hours from where she grew up.  She is involved with a married man, about whom her family knows nothing, and this has created emotional distance the others do not understand.

Other well-drawn characters circle these four. 

The book begins several weeks before the first birthday of Suresh’s and Lata’s grandson, Alok, and the various relationships come to a breaking point at the birthday party, where everyone is together, precipitating the need to find a new equilibrium for all.

The book deftly explores the issues of being the parents of adult children, and of the lies (what Suresh calls RDTs, “reasonable deviations from the truth”) and secrets we tell and keep in order to maintain our own self-images.

Highly recommended both for the pleasure of reading the story, and of thinking about the problems raised.

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

Pub Date 09 May 2023, Avon, 336 pages

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This vivid portrait of three grown sisters and their mother pulls the reader into their close circle as family secrets are revealed.

Free-spirited, party-loving Margo will soon turn 60, and she and her daughters – Rachel, Imogene, and Sasha, all in their 30’s – have relationships so close-knit that Rachel’s therapist husband, Gabriel, might call them enmeshed.  (He does not, and enjoys being part of their somewhat tangled web.)

Rachel and Margo live on the Isle of Wight, Rachel in the house where her mother, and then she and her sisters, grew up.  Margo now lives nearby, and Imogene visits frequently.  Sasha does not, and at the book’s start maintains a prickly distance, both physically and emotionally from her mother and sisters.

Margo and all her daughters have successful careers:  Margo is a magazine columnist, Rachel is a lawyer, Imogene a playwright, and Sasha, a physician.  Rachel has a strong marriage and two young daughters; Imogene and Sasha are struggling with their partners.  Margo has had many secret partners, almost all local men with other commitments.

The women were deeply scarred by the abandonment of their husband and father, Richard, when Rachel was 10.  At that time Margo had a “breakdown,” and spent a year sequestered in her bedroom, drinking, sleeping, and relying on Rachel and a few close friends to care for the younger children.  No one has heard from Richard since his disappearance, now 25 years ago.  Or have they?

In fact, each family member has secrets, and through the course of the novel, most are revealed, and relationships are mended or let go. 

All the characters are fully dimensional, and the Isle of Wight is almost another player, with its beaches, water, and winds.  This is a lively and engaging story, with themes of loss and growth, where mistakes and secrets are acknowledged, and resolved or put to rest.

4-9-23 Intergenerational Road Trip

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen Oakley, Berkley: March 2023, 352 pages.

Thanks to BookBrowse for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

What an engaging book!  An improbable pair of women, at different stages of life, but both dealing with physical frailties and past mistakes, go on a sudden, urgent road trip across America, learning from each other.

The author brings to life both the pathos of the young woman whose accidental injury ends her soccer scholarship and her dreams of a professional soccer career, and the feistiness of the elderly woman, recovering from a broken hip and dealing with the physical and mental deterioration of Parkinson’s Disease.

Both have distanced themselves emotionally and hurt loved ones.  Both have secrets they won’t share.  And both come to trust and care about each other as they try to right their wrongs.

The writing is brisk and humorous, capturing both old and young voices and propelling the main characters, Tanner (21) and Louise (84) to an unexpected but satisfying ending.

Note:  Though the book begins with an epigraph from the movie, “Thelma and Louise,” one need not be familiar with that story to enjoy this one.

4-1-23 Books about neighbors later in life:

The Woman Next Door, by Yewande Omotoso, Picador: 2017, ‎ 288 pp., Kindle Edition.

Thanks to Anne Serafin for suggesting and leading the discussion of this book for our Action Africa Giving Circle Book Group.  (For more information on the Action Africa Giving Circle, please go to www.actionafricagivingcircle.org )

In post-apartheid South Africa, two women in their 80’s, one black, one white, have lived next door to each other for 20 years, but neither has ever liked the other.  Both are accomplished in related fields of design and architecture, and both are stubborn and self-righteous.   Both also are recently widowed, and each is struggling with betrayal by her late husband.  Hortensia, the designer, originally from Barbados, married her white husband in England in the 1950’s.  Childless, based on her own actions, she learns after her husband’s death that he had a daughter with another woman.  Further, a condition of his will is that Hortensia reach out to this younger woman.  Marion, born In South Africa to Lithuanian-Jewish refugees, finds that her husband has lost their considerable wealth, and now she must make major changes in her life.  Each woman is struggling with her own actions and regret, and each feels bitter and betrayed.

Through the course of this unsentimental book each “woman next door” learns about herself and her neighbor, and each one works to face her own prejudices, guilt, weaknesses, and strengths. 

Themes include isolation/loneliness and racism and class.  Aging is another theme:  how it feels physically and emotionally; how sexual urges still exist; and perhaps most importantly, how one can still grow and change even later in life.  Location: The story of the two women’s relationship has a universality and could occur possibly anywhere in the world.  But South Africa and its colonial past are critical in the unfolding of the narrative.   There is a parallel between the development of the relationship between the women and their country’s recovery from apartheid:  both raise hope for positive change even in very difficult, entrenched circumstances.

The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, by Beth Morrey.  G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. 339 pp., Hardcover edition.

Beth Morrey’s debut novel brings into our lives Millicent Carmichael, 79, lonely and grieving the loss of her husband, her physical distance from her son and grandson, and her emotional distance from her daughter.  “Missy” as she is known to those closest to her, tentatively steps into the world around her large London home.  With her we move back and forth in her memories, new experiences, and emotional hesitation and growth.

Rather reluctantly, Missy is drawn out of herself by caring neighbors whose interest and concern help her both literally go through her life (exploring an attic rich with photos, clothes, and furniture) and the guilt and pain she has carried with her almost as long as she can remember.  An unexpected but loveable dog pulls her out of her house and into a present where she can forgive herself and others, and move forward.

A similar book:  The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg.  Ballantine Books, 2018, 272 pages, Paperback Edition.  The first in a series, a sweet story of two long-time neighbors, a widower and a single older woman, and the young woman they help.