TRUST by Hernan Diaz

When do we get to the good part?  This is the question I asked myself through the first two sections of this novel.  (There are four in total).  The first section is a novel about Benjamin Rask, whose stock market expertise in the early 20^th century made him a very wealthy man.  The second section is an autobiography of Andrew Bevel, including a few placeholders whose details are apparently to be supplied later, whose story sounds quite similar to Rask’s.  Their wives even have similar interests—music, philanthropy—but differ in important ways, although both perish in a Swiss hospital.  The first section is cleverly written in such a way as to mirror Benjamin Rask’s personality—stilted and unemotional, although what happens to his wife is shocking and tragic.  Bevel’s autobiography is a little warmer, but the subject is just as dull, perhaps even more so.  The third section, narrated by a woman, enlightens us as to what is going on in the first two sections and finally gives us a reason to keep reading.  The final section, though, is in the voice of Andrew Bevel’s wife and is quite the eye-opener.  If I had known that this novel would take so long to gain traction, I might have skimmed the first two sections, but now I actually want to reread them.  This book is not a mystery novel nor is there much suspense, but the surprise in the final section definitely explains Bevel’s reticence on the subject of his wife.  This book unfolds in the most clever way possible, and the title’s duality in referring to both finance and to the reliability of the narration is nifty.

CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen

The Hildebrandt family members are basically all at a crossroads, but the title also is the name of a Sunday night youth group at their church in a Chicago suburb.  Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor, and his wife, Marion, have four children, the three oldest of whom figure largely in this book, which takes place in the 1970s.  Russ is in the midst of a midlife crisis and has developed the hots for Frances Cottrell, a comely widow.  Marion, aware that her weight is contributing to Russ’s edging toward adultery, takes up chain-smoking in an effort to slim down to her previously attractive self.  Their oldest son, Clem, is in college and, thanks to a guilt trip initiated by his girlfriend, decides that he should relinquish his college deferment and let the draft board send him to Vietnam.  Becky is a popular teenager who develops a crush on an older singer-songwriter, who has a longtime frumpy girlfriend whose physical traits seem to mirror Marion’s.  Lastly, Perry is gifted intellectually but is secretly partaking of the drugs he’s dealing.  This family is weirdly paired off in terms of allegiance.  Marion indulges Perry, overlooking all of his faults, and is, of course, oblivious to his illegal activities.  Clem and Becky are best friends until Clem’s love life monopolizes their conversations.  These characters are all apparently following in the footsteps of Robert Johnson, who famously wrote and sang “Crossroads,” and according to legend, sold his soul to the devil.  In the case of the Hildebrandts, the devil doesn’t always win, and sometimes the battle with him is a draw.  Russ is left out in the cold, in more ways than one, after he is banned from any leadership role in the Crossroads youth group.  Each year the group makes a bus trip to Arizona to work in a Navajo community, but Russ finds that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  This is my fourth and favorite Franzen novel.  The characters are not particularly lovable, but they all undergo such marked transformations that I didn’t even mind the almost 600-page length of this book.  And Franzen’s writing never disappoints.

THE PROMISE by Damon Galgut

A more appropriate title for this book would be Broken Promises.  Wedding vows are broken.  A priest divulges the details of a woman’s confession to her husband.  A man promises to marry his girlfriend but never does.  A woman promises to end her affair but doesn’t.  Of course, the word “promise” has at least one more meaning, such as when we say that a student shows a lot of promise.  In this novel, Anton, the oldest son in the Swart family, shows promise, but goes off the rails after he shoots a South African Black woman during apartheid.  Anton’s youngest sister, Amor, overhears their father’s promise to grant their mother’s dying wish to give their maid ownership of the house in which she resides.  However, the father denies that such a promise was ever made, and this unfulfilled promise hovers over the entire novel.  Anton and Amor’s middle sister, Astrid, is shallow, stringent, and bulimic, and sides with their father.  The maid herself has no say in the matter, as she did not witness the promise being made.  I would say that this novel is enjoyable but not riveting.  The Swart saga covers about forty years, and the family undergoes a lot of changes, as does South Africa.  There are several sudden and unusual deaths, but these characters are hard to care about.  Struck by lightning as a child, Amor has the most heart, but she is aloof and estranged from the family for most of her adult life.  In the case of this family, though, I can see why.  The writing is a little quirky in a good way.  For example, a homeless man appears in the story, for what purpose I’m not sure, and the author suggests to the reader that we call him Bob.  Quirks such as this are a welcome contrast with the overall gloom that settles over this family.

THE HALF MOON by Mary Beth Keane

Novels about troubled marriages are a dime a dozen, but this one is better than most.  Malcolm is gorgeous and gregarious but is dishonest with Jess, his wife, about his plans for buying the Half Moon--the bar where he has worked for years.  Jess is a lawyer with staggering student loan debt whose fertility treatments have wiped out their savings.  While the bar is failing and they are struggling to make ends meet, Jess moves out.  She then becomes romantically involved with another lawyer who happens to have three kids in his custody.  Malcolm and Jess are two characters who are more than just flawed, but they happen to love each other, blemishes and all.  Malcolm shows his ethical backbone late in the novel, but where was his integrity when he lied to Jess about the terms of his agreement to buy the bar or when he came within an eyelash of having sex with one of his employees?  Plus, for someone who chats with almost everyone in town, he turns out to be completely oblivious to things that are happening right under his nose.  Jess’s moral compass is just as bad, if not worse.  She is a little more realistic about their financial plight, whereas Malcolm hopes their problems will just disappear on their own.  Despite their obvious imperfections, there is something about this estranged couple that drew me in, particularly when Jess starts comparing the faults of her lover to her husband’s and questions what it is she really wants.  Both Jess and Malcolm are intelligent people but extremely unwise, in both money matters and matters of the heart, and I had to keep reading to find out how they would resolve these issues.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.

THE LIONESS by Chris Bohjalian

Superstar actress Katie Barstow, along with her husband, her brother and his pregnant wife, and five other Hollywood A-listers, celebrate Katie’s wedding with a Serengeti safari in 1964.   However, we know from the start that not all will survive after Russian abductors raid their camp and take Katie and company hostage.  Bloodshed is immediate and shocking, and soon we learn who in the group is courageous and who is not.  The many varieties of wildlife provide a nice backdrop, but the hyenas, adders, and jackals are just as dangerous as the Russians.  In other words, escape into the wild is not a particularly desirable option.  I was not really drawn to any of these characters, but the fact that predators, both human and not, lurked everywhere made the setting quite a smart choice on the author’s part.  Although Katie is quite down to earth despite her fame, my favorite character was Carmen, self-anointed “smarty-pants” and Katie’s best friend.  Carmen is a well of knowledge that occasionally comes in handy in Africa but hasn’t enabled her to achieve the same status in Hollywood as Katie.  She is fully aware of both her merits and her shortcomings and is comfortable in her own skin.  Another intriguing character is Terrance Dutton, a Black actor whose kissing scene with Katie was cut from the final version of their movie together, but speculation lingers about their relationship off-screen.  I think his character’s role in this novel could have been broader, given the contrast between him—a successful Black American screen star—and the African porters and guides.  However, the author may have bitten off too many themes here, as is—Western colonialism, bigotry and homophobia in Hollywood, child abuse, killing of animals for trophies, and more.  This novel works pretty well as a thriller, but the mounting body count, although alarming, was not as distressing as it would have been if I had been more attached to the characters.

THE GUEST ROOM by Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian rarely disappoints, and this novel is one of his most gripping.  I am amazed at how prolific he is and how each of his novels is totally different from the last.  In this one, Richard Chapman agrees to host, in his beautiful home, a bachelor party for his despicable younger brother.  Even more despicable is his brother’s friend Spencer, who uses a shady source to hire two strippers for the party.  The strippers are actually prostitutes, accompanied by two large, scary-looking men, who are basically the strippers’ captors.  When one of the women, who may actually be underage, slits the throat of one of the captors, the men at the party are in shock.  Moments later, shots are fired, both captors are dead, and the strippers have disappeared lickety-split into the night.  There’s no hiding this disaster from Richard’s wife and young daughter, as their home becomes a crime scene—trashed and covered in blood.  From here, the plot branches into two storylines—Richard’s and Alexandra’s.  Alexandra is one of the strippers, who was taken from her Armenian home as a young teenager and groomed for prostitution.  Richard’s story is pretty much as you’d expect, as he struggles to repair his marriage, hold on to his job, and regain his self-respect.  Plus, despite the fact that he never actually had sex with either girl, the disgusting Spencer is blackmailing him with an incriminating video.  The storyline, particularly Richard’s, proceeds at a breakneck pace, and I was insanely curious about how he would ultimately fare in all this.  He is not blameless, not only because he got naked with a woman other than his wife, but also in that he should have known what to expect from his brother’s friends, given his brother’s own shortcomings.  Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and Richard is deeply remorseful, wishing he could turn back the clock.   I hate when authors foreshadow the outcome, and Bohjalian gives a very broad hint that I could have done without.  Other than that, this thriller delivers.

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS by Chris Bohjalian

As a history lesson about the Armenian genocide in the early 1900s, this novel is terrific.  The love story, on the other hand, and the discovery of family secrets generations later are not particularly powerful storylines nor are they all that original.  Still, a million and a half people were killed, and that story deserves to be told, even in fiction.  Elizabeth Endicott is a privileged Bostonian who accompanies her father to a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, to administer to the sick and wounded deportees.  Elizabeth sees way more death and suffering than she could have ever imagined and even invites a displaced woman and child to live in the American compound.  Elizabeth falls in love with an Armenian engineer, and it’s obvious that these two are the grandparents of the narrator.  This knowledge from the outset kills any suspense that we might have about their survival, but the fate of the Armenian’s first wife is somewhat of a surprise, although ultimately not a pleasant one.  Another less compelling plotline involves the possible destruction of some photographic plates that document the horrific suffering of the Armenians.  On the plus side, this novel is not as dark as it could be, which is not to say that the author glosses over the massacre of the Armenians in any way.  He gets his point across quite effectively and charms us with the love story to offset the bleak tragedy that has brought the two lovers together.  The title is a mystery to me.  Yes, there is one scene where the women are building a sandcastle, but this scene is not central to the plot, and I have to think the author has some kind of metaphor in mind.  I think of sandcastles as having a fleeting existence, but the love story here is lasting, as is the impact of the genocide on the Armenian survivors.