LITTLE by Edward Carey

In the late 1700s in Bern, Switzerland, Marie Groholtz’s father has died, and her mother has taken a housekeeping job with Philippe Curtius.  Dr. Curtius models human organs out of wax, and Marie’s mother cannot abide what she considers to be macabre surroundings.  Marie, on the other hand, assists Dr. Curtius in his work and becomes basically his ward after her mother’s death.  The two move to Paris and take lodging with the Widow Picot and her son Edmond, where Dr. Curtius starts a business enterprise making wax replicas of human heads.  The Widow Picot detests Marie, who eventually has the good fortune to become the sculpting tutor to Louis XVI’s sister at Versailles.  This is a historical novel in every sense of the word, with lots of famous people crossing paths with Marie, including Voltaire, Robespierre, and Napoleon.  Marie, of course, becomes a wax sculptor in her own right—the famous Madame Tussaud.  It’s a great story, although the novel drags at times.  Marie is a spunky kid, and I laughed every time she asks Dr. Curtius if she is going to get paid.  The answer is always “No,” but she finally reaps the monetary rewards of her craft, her ingenuity, her fearlessness, and her ambition.

WHEN ALL IS SAID by Anne Griffin

This is one of those books where each time I picked it up I struggled to remember what it was about.  An Irishman, Maurice, in his 80s, is addressing his son Kevin with the story of his life.  In particular, he is drinking a toast to the important people in his life, four of whom are deceased—his wife Sadie, their stillborn daughter Molly, Sadie’s disturbed sister Noreen, and his beloved older brother Tony.  Not so beloved are the members of the Dollard family, especially Thomas who sliced Maurice’s face while Maurice was employed in the Dollard household.  Maurice seemingly gets his revenge when he has the good fortune to find a rare coin belonging to the Dollard patriarch, Hugh.  The disappearance of this coin has serious unforeseen consequences for the Dollard family and lends a slight air of intrigue to the story.  However, some of the plot just did not seem plausible.  For instance, when Sadie introduces Maurice to her parents for the first time, she fails to inform him that her sister Noreen has been institutionalized.  When Maurice asks why Noreen is not present, he immediately finds that he has stepped into a disastrous quagmire of embarrassment that he could not have possibly anticipated.  Sadie claims that she thought she had told him.  Huh?  I am sure that would have resulted in a conversation that neither party would have been likely to forget.  Plus, I just did not find Maurice’s story all that moving, and I have to blame that fact on the way in which his story is told.  The author just failed to grab me and reel me in.  Also, the ending is disappointing on so many levels, not the least of which is that it is a forgone conclusion from the beginning.  I kept hoping that the trajectory would veer in another direction.

BOWLAWAY by Elizabeth McCracken

At the beginning of the 20th century, in Salford, Mass., Bertha Truitt is apparently beamed out of nowhere into a snow-covered cemetery, with 15 pounds of gold on her person.  Never do we find out how she came to be there nor how she came into possession of so much gold.  We do know that she uses some of that gold to build a candlepin bowling alley, and this establishment is the setting for most of this multi-generational novel.  At first, bowling seems to be a therapeutic release, particularly for the women in the novel.  Later, though, things spiral out of control.  The book is replete with grief-stricken and otherwise troubled characters, but, overall, I found the novel to be basically silly.  I found it impossible to develop any sort of empathy with the cartoonish characters that populate this book.  One character’s demise is as mysterious as Bertha’s origin, and we must assume, for the lack of any other explanation, that he spontaneously combusts.  Perhaps if the book were funnier, I would accept that the plot is not meant to be serious, but, instead, some truly serious things happen, although their treatment is not serious at all.  There are a few moments of delight, as when a new employee of the bowling alley is introduced as “seventeen-year-old Betty Graham, known as Cracker for her last name and because it suited her.”  After reading the book, I discovered that one particularly outlandish event that has a major impact on the storyline actually did occur.  Last year marked the 100th anniversary of a molasses tank explosion in Boston in 1919, which dumped 2.3 million gallons of sticky stuff on the city, destroying all manner of structures in its wake and killing 21 people.  Now that is fascinating.

THE DEARLY BELOVED by Cara Wall

James and Charles become joint pastors and close friends at a Presbyterian church in Greenwich Village.  Although the book addresses their struggles with God and with their calling to the ministry, this is not strictly a book about religion.  It is largely a book about marriage.  James, whose education was made possible financially by an uncle, is the son of an alcoholic.  His main objective early in life is to escape the same fate.  Later, he chooses the ministry as a path toward a life of enacting social change.  Charles, in stark contrast, is an academic who cannot ignore his calling to preach.  Their wives are just as different from one another as the two men are.  James marries Nan, whose father is also a minister.  Lily marries Charles, although she is not certain that she can ever really love him, as she is still grieving the loss of her parents in an accident when she was a teen.  More puzzling is that Charles loves her and marries her, despite the fact that she is an avowed atheist.  Initially, it seemed to me that Lily would have been a better fit for James, especially as she becomes somewhat of an activist, and Nan would have been a better fit for Charles.  If ever there were an example of opposites attracting, these two marriages fit the bill, and in the immortal words of Rocky Balboa, they fill each other’s gaps.  The author gives pretty much equal attention to all four characters, but Lily is the most compelling, in my opinion.  Not only is she a minister’s wife who has no faith in God, but her life becomes infinitely more complicated when children enter the picture.  I found it to be a pleasant read, with characters I could warm up to, especially the two women, who have to struggle just to tolerate one another.