THE VULNERABLES by Sigrid Nunez

Full of reflections on writing, aging, and a lot of other stuff, the main plot of this novel involves a young man, an older woman, and a parrot, all inhabiting a Manhattan apartment during the Covid lockdown.  The older woman, a writer, is the first-person narrator who is pet-sitting the parrot full-time while a visiting doctor occupies her own apartment.  Then the previous pet-sitter, a young man whose wealthy parents have thrown him out, returns to resume taking care of the parrot.  The narrator is none too happy with this sudden intrusion, as she has developed an affinity for the parrot herself.  This unlikely threesome forms the core of the book, but the narrator’s musings fill the majority of the pages and are full of anecdotes that may or may not support the narrator’s opinions.  The young man has mental health issues but is a kind soul who lives in the present without much concern for the future.  How these two bond with one another—and the parrot—makes for a sweet story in an “uncertain spring,” to quote the first sentence of the book.  Gallows humor is needed in times like these, and here are a couple of examples from this novel that contain more than just a grain of truth:

p. 142:  “I like that Alan Bennett said, For a writer, nothing is ever quite as bad as it is for other people, because, however dreadful, it may be of use.”

p. 143:  “And nutty epitaphs:  I know not everyone is unhappy about this.”

FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE by Walter Mosley

Here’s another convoluted installment in the Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, Los Angeles private investigator, series. Of course, a beautiful woman must be part of the cast, and here it is Easy’s client, Amethystine.  Her ex-husband, Curt, has gone missing, and it doesn’t take long for Easy to find his dead body.  The next question is why was he killed and by whom.  Another missing person is Easy’s cop friend, Melvin, whose disappearance may or may not be linked to Curt’s murder.  As usual, there are so many characters and so many twists and turns that it’s difficult to keep up with who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  Of course, some, like Easy’s longtime friend Mouse, straddle the line, straying into doing bad things for good reasons.  Fearless Jones, who stars in another Mosley series, makes a cameo appearance here as well. Amethystine herself may not be entirely innocent, for that matter.  I would like Mosley’s work a lot more if the plot were not so intricate, but there’s no denying he has a way with words and has his finger on the pulse of the pitfalls that plagued Black people in 1969.  Easy may have escaped Louisiana, but he is still walking a tightrope in order not to piss off the white chief of police in L.A.  And I don’t usually take much note of the dust cover, but the purple lettering is perfect for a title that includes the name Amethystine.

BLONDE FAITH by Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins, private investigator, is back on the job in 1967 Los Angeles.  Life, however, is not easy for Easy as he endures racism everywhere he goes and laments that his ex-girlfriend Bonnie is about to marry someone else.  Three man have gone missing, and Easy sets out to find them.  His longtime nefarious friend Ray “Mouse” Alexander is being sought by the cops for the murder of Pericles Tarr, who is also missing and not necessarily dead.  Christmas Black delivers his eight-year-old daughter to Easy’s care without so much as a note and then vanishes.  In order to locate these three missing persons whose disappearances are certainly linked, Easy calls in a lot of favors from his many colorful acquaintances and banks a few more.  The breezy writing style and dialog belie the seriousness of the subject matter, making it difficult for me to immerse myself in this book.  Easy is at times his own worst enemy, especially when it comes to his relationships with women.  To say that he is depressed is putting it mildly, and his sobriety is constantly challenged by the craving for a drink to drown his sorrows.  I want to root for Easy, and certainly he is a top-notch investigator, but his personal woes make this novel a definite downer.

INLAND by Tea Obreht

As historical fiction, this book is a worthwhile read.  Camels as conveyances for supplies and mail in the mid-nineteenth century?  That was news to me.  One of the two main characters in this book is a camel driver during that time, but he is also a murderer on the run.  His timeline eventually intersects with that of Nora, a wife and mother in Arizona in the 1890s.   Her husband has been missing for three days, leaving her in desperate need of water but at times too proud or embarrassed to ask for it.  For me, Nora is the more intriguing character, but she makes some bad decisions with dire consequences.  She is also a prolific liar, stating at one point that lying is just as easy as saying nothing.  Many of her lies are cover-ups for cowardice, and in one case she admits the truth to her almost-lover, who spills the beans.  Living with her and her three sons is Josie, an orphaned distant relative, who also is harboring a whopper, and, ironically, Nora threatens her with a beating in order to drag the truth out of her.  Nora also berates Josie for her claimed ability to contact the dead, while Nora herself carries on conversations with her dead daughter, who is generally available to offer advice.  In other words, Nora is a supreme hypocrite.  She may be admirable in her strength, referring to herself as a “hard woman,” but I found her exasperating.  I am OK with that type of character in a novel, but here I felt that the storyline moved along a level plane, without enough highs and lows.  This is a pleasant enough read, but suspense is in short supply.

THE MORNINGSIDE by Tea Obreht

Sil and her mother are refugees living on an island that has been partially destroyed by flooding.  News comes in the form of an anonymous radio correspondent called the Drowned City Dispatcher.  When Sil’s Aunt Ena passes away, Sil’s mother slips seamlessly into Ena’s job as their building superintendent for the Morningside, a high-rise whose penthouse is occupied by a mysterious woman with three huge dogs.  Sil’s mother also moonlights as a salvage diver, and there is plenty to salvage.  While Sil’s mother is very secretive about their past life, Ena has regaled Sil with magical tales, and Sil feels compelled to investigate to find out if they are true.  She enlists the help of Mila, another young girl who lives in the building, and Lewis May, a former superintendent of the building who dubs Sil “Snoopy.”  The problem with this book is not the writing, the characters, or the dystopian plot; it just moves along too slowly.  I think I dozed through some important pages and then had to reread them after I finished the novel.  Also, a strand of magical realism permeates the novel, and I am generally not a fan, although some authors handle it better than others.  Here it just robs the climate change warning of the seriousness it deserves.

MY FRIENDS by Hisham Matar

On a lark, Khaled, a Libyan student at the University of Edinburgh, and his friend Mustafa travel to London to participate in an anti-Qaddafi demonstration at the Libyan embassy.  Shots are fired from the embassy into the crowd, and both young men suffer gunshot wounds.  Both survive, but the rest of the book pretty much chronicles the after-effects of this event, which actually did take place in 1984.  Neither Khaled nor Mustafa can return to his studies, because fellow Libyan students will rat them out. Nor can they return to Libya, as their identities may be known to the Qaddafi regime.  Their only choice is to remain in England with asylum status, too fearful of censors to tell their families what has happened.  A third man, Hosam, a writer whom Khaled knows by reputation, joins the storyline after a chance encounter with Khaled at a hotel.  Reading this, I was concerned about the fates of these three men, especially Khaled, who narrates the story in first person, but I would say that this novel is more educational than enjoyable.  The author presents a poignant picture of three men in exile, and it’s especially heartbreaking, given that Khaled is so young—just a teenager--at the beginning.  He navigates his unexpected life courageously and without dwelling too much on the what-ifs.

FIRE EXIT by Morgan Talty

Charles is the adult son of white parents but was raised by his white mother and Penobscot stepfather on a reservation in Maine.   Since he has no Penobscot blood, Charles lives just the other side of the river from the reservation, where he can see the home of his daughter, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth’s mother, Mary, has raised her daughter to believe that she is the daughter of Mary’s Penobscot husband. Charles is obsessed with having his daughter know that he is her biological father.  Mary, on the other hand, is adamant that this knowledge will upset Elizabeth and jeopardize her standing in their Native American community. However, Elizabeth seems to have inherited mental illness—depression—from Charles’s mother, Louise, who now also suffers from dementia.  Unfortunately, there is just not enough here to make for an engrossing novel, and I was not invested in Charles or any of the other characters.  His two friends, Bobby (an alcoholic) and Gizos, whose lie during their childhood made Charles a pariah, are not exactly paragons of virtue.  I would have liked Elizabeth’s story to have been a little more fleshed out, but that is not possible since the book is told from Charles’s perspective, and he is very much in the dark about Elizabeth’s life.  Charles is a good soul; he’s just not very remarkable.