NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS by Patricia Lockwood

This book might be perfect for readers with a short attention span, but the format turned me off.  The first half of the book is a series of social media witticisms, and, if that’s what I wanted to read, then I would read witticisms on social media.  Granted, the author’s witticisms are way funnier and thought-provoking than those I might find on the internet, but this book was just not cohesive enough for me.  The first-person unnamed narrator is a woman who posts pointed ruminations on “the portal” and travels the world for speaking engagements.  The subject of these speeches was a mystery to me, but I assumed that she was sharing with her audience more comic observations about social media and that people were willing to pay to hear this stuff.  The second half of the book deals with a real-life tragedy that starkly contrasts with the first half’s twitter posts, if that’s what they are.  I foolishly hoped that the format of the novel would become more traditional in the second half, but no such luck, and I felt like the format diluted the content.  I recognize that the author has an important message to deliver about what really matters versus the barrage of trivialities that we consume on the internet.  I just wish that she had stated her case without making me read it as a series of twitter-like snippets.

WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD by Benjamin Labatut

This book makes me wish I had studied Physics.  If you’re a science nerd, don’t miss this blend of fact and fiction, but even if you’re not a science nerd, this book is spellbinding.  The only downside is that I will never remember which scientist made which discovery, particularly in the area of quantum mechanics, in which subatomic entities behave both as particles and as waves.  Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Niels Bohr are bit players here, while Schrodinger (of Schrodinger’s cat fame), Heisenberg, de Broglie, Schwarzschild, Mochizuki, and Grothendieck steal the limelight here.  Unfortunately, the only part of this book that I am likely to remember is the beginning when the author recounts the various drug addictions of Hitler, Goring, and other Nazi bigwigs.  He goes on to talk about cyanide and its original development as a pigment for paint.  Apple seeds contain cyanide (who knew?), and half a cup of them contains enough cyanide to kill a human.  This book is not exactly dripping with little-known facts like that, but fascinating stuff abounds.  One would assume that brilliant scientists would collaborate, but apparently they were just as likely to feud, each convinced that his (no women here) theory offered the truth about the behavior of matter.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

The author here is on a mission to prove that Ted Bundy and other serial killers are not genius masterminds.  In this novel, the Ted Bundy character is known simply as The Defendant, and we learn fairly early in the novel that he murdered two sorority sisters near the end of a killing spree that stretched from Washington State to Florida.  The focus here is on the victims and the two first-person narrators—Pamela and Ruth.  To further complicate matters a bit, Pamela narrates in two different timelines—the immediate aftermath of the murders of two of her FSU sorority sisters and several decades later.  Ruth is a victim whose body is never found.  Pamela also witnesses the escape of the murderer as he exits her sorority house, making her one of the few people who can identify him.  The writing here is good, and the plot is very suspenseful but confusing at times, and not just because of the dual narrators and three timelines.  A journalist named Carl apparently sees himself as the next Truman Capote, but I was unable to follow exactly how he fit into the picture.  Although I realize that the author does not want to give The Defendant too much airtime, I couldn’t follow his various arrests, extraditions, and prison escapes, and my morbid curiosity led me to wonder exactly how he slipped through so many fingers.  Finally, there’s Ruth’s friend and mentor, Tina, who has made it her personal mission to make sure that The Defendant is brought to justice, but various law enforcement officials warn Pamela that Tina is dangerous.  I was never sure if the author’s intent here was to introduce a red herring or simply to highlight the poor judgment and incompetence that allowed so many women to lose their lives even after The Defendant had been taken into custody—multiple times.

THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O'Farrell

Historical fiction is not really my thing, and since I know that Maggie O’Farrell has a very fertile imagination, I would prefer that she stay away from semi-true stories.  I liked this much better than Hamnet, however, as this novel is very creepy--in a good way.  In this version of her life in the sixteenth century, Lucrezia de’Medici is married off to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, when she is only fifteen.  The ultimate insult that she receives from the Duke and his sister is that she is a mere child, but, ironically, her foremost duty is to bear a child, preferably male.  What makes this spooky, though, is that Lucrezia suspects that her husband will murder her in short order if she does not produce an heir, although rumor has it that the Duke is infertile.  I liked the suspense of this novel and especially its sinister Gothic mood, although the ending appeared to be a foregone conclusion.  O’Farrell kept me guessing as to whether she was going to be true to history or deviate. The Duke is handsome, and, at times, charming, but he has a dark side, particularly when it comes to challenges to his authority. Lucrezia is your typical spunky heroine who unwittingly incurs the dastardly Duke’s wrath at times and deserves a better fate.