LUCY BY THE SEA by Elizabeth Strout

This novel takes up where Oh William! left off, but it’s not imperative that you read Oh William! first.  In fact, Strout’s characters from previous novels appear flit from book to book.  This one, though, is narrated by Lucy Barton, who headlines several of Strout’s novels.  Lucy herself is a respected author, who clawed her way out of poverty but still thinks of herself as a coward.  It’s 2020, and we all know what happened, especially in New York.  Lucy is very much in disbelief about the pandemic, but her ex-husband, William, a retired parasitologist, whisks her off to Maine before things get bad.  This is very much a COVID novel, as this pair hunkers down for the duration, all the while trying to ensure that other family members are safe as well.  Adapting to life in lockdown, away from her two adult daughters, is at first a struggle for Lucy, and she doesn’t even feel like writing.  The aforementioned daughters are dealing with challenges of their own, unrelated to but certainly not lessened by the pandemic.  William definitely comes off as a more likeable character in this novel than in the previous one, since he becomes more of a take-charge individual whose mission is to keep Lucy safe.  He also has to fend off pandemic deniers who don’t think steering clear of their asthmatic son is necessary, even though they have continued socializing indoors.  Lucy and William ultimately have to figure out how to put up with each other again while sharing a living space and having limited interaction with other people.  Lucy sometimes narrates whatever comes into her head, such as the fact that William doesn’t like to watch her floss her teeth.  As always, Strout’s prose is rich but simple, and I just can’t get enough of it.

HONEY & SPICE by Bolu Babalola

Kiki, the first person narrator, is in her second year at Whitewell, a fictional English university, where she has a campus radio program called “Brown Sugar” that provides women with empowering advice on dating.  Her audience becomes incensed when she is seen kissing Malakai, a new student whom she dubbed “Wasteman” on one of her recent broadcasts.  The purpose of the kiss was actually to scare off a guy that Kiki was trying to ditch.  She and Malakai then create a plan that involves pretending to date one another in order for her to rebuild respect among the other Black women on campus and keep her viewership intact.  Malakai is something of a player, and Kiki keeps her social interactions to a minimum, but they are both relationship-avoidant in different ways.  They both have to move out of their comfort zone in order to keep up appearances for the sake of their ruse—Kiki becoming more open to social activities and Malakai limiting himself to one woman.  These two predictably fall in love, but their insecurities don’t allow them to admit it, as each is concerned that the other is just faking it.  The plot does not really offer any big surprises, but the two characters have a certain charm that keeps the book from becoming too much of a cliché.  I will warn readers that there is some Yoruba dialog—all translated—and quite a bit of slang that I did not understand—not translated.  Also, the repeated use of “I” where “me” is grammatically correct really grated on me.  Constantly having to read “between Malakai and I” or “leaving Malakai and I” and the like sounded like fingernails on a blackboard to my ears.

SHRINES OF GAIETY by Kate Atkinson

Two teenagers, Freda and Florence, have run away from home in the last 1920s to seek fame and fortune as dancers in London.  Freda has some talent, but Florence—not so much.  After pocketing an unexpected inheritance, Gwendolen Kelling dashes off from her Yorkshire home and her job as a librarian to search for the girls, at the behest of Freda’s half-sister.  Gwendolen and a policeman named Frobisher find that they can help one another out if Gwendolen will do some undercover snooping at the Amethyst, a bar owned by the notorious Nellie Coker, who has recently been released from prison.  Gwendolen proves herself to be calm and capable in an emergency and finds herself managing Nellie’s swankiest watering hole.  Gwendolen may be the heroine of this novel, but Nellie’s six children—2 men and 4 women—are the colorful characters here, particularly the men.  I would say that all six are adults, but several of them don’t really fit that category in terms of their behavior.  London does not come off very well, either, as the police force is mostly corrupt if not downright dangerous to those it is supposed to protect, and the city is rife with pickpockets and purse snatchers.  The author handles all of the characters, plots and subplots with her usual deftness, and her way with words always delights.  One of my favorite passages is on page 147, in a paragraph regarding three of Nellie’s daughters:

“Both Betty and Shirley were excellent dancers, almost professionally spry, unlike Edith, who had two left feet.  (‘Even possible three,’ Betty said.)  They had talked about setting up a dance academy within one of the clubs, where members would pay extra to learn the latest dances or polish up the old ones. Nellie was ruminating on the idea.  They doubted she would ever digest it.”

CANARY GIRLS by Jennifer Chiaverini

Helen’s husband, Arthur Purcell, is managing one of his industrialist family’s manufacturing plants, which has been converted from a sewing machine factory to a munitions arsenal.  World War I has just broken out, and Lucy’s husband, Daniel, an architect and star footballer (soccer player) has joined a British infantry regiment.  April is a former domestic servant who goes to work in the Purcell factory’s Danger Building, loading fuses with TNT.  Lucy obtains a more skilled position at the same factory, and they become teammates on the company’s women’s football team.  Helen, who becomes a liaison between management and the many women working in her husband’s factory, soon discovers that handling TNT is a health hazard for the workers and gives their skin a yellow tint.  Hence, the moniker “canary girls.”  Respiratory issues are an even bigger problem, and Helen does what she can to improve the safety of the workers.  At the top of the hazards list, however, is the risk of an explosion, and no metal objects or incendiary materials are allowed in the building.  This novel follows the lives of these three women in particular but the plight of the canary girls in general.  They bond on the football pitch and share in their concerns for one another’s health and welfare, but they continue to work under these conditions because the money is better than anything they can find anywhere else.  Also, they seem to have a genuine desire to contribute to the war effort and an appreciation for the essential nature of their jobs.  I did not revel in the prose here, but the novel moves at a pretty brisk pace and gave me an in-depth look at the circumstances that kept the canary girls working in an unsafe and unhealthy setting.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Who exactly is the title character in this novel?  There are several candidates, all real historical figures and all men.  Eliza Touchet, however, is the central character here, a widow who resides in the home of her cousin, William Ainsworth, for decades.  Ainsworth is a novelist whose work becomes increasingly ponderous and less popular as the years go by, and as his friend Charles Dickens surpasses him as a celebrated author.  At one point, Smith intimates that Ainsworth may not have been the originator of his early books’ plots, and it is perhaps for this reason that Ainsworth becomes a writer of historical fiction and loses his literary audience.  During this period in England in the 1800s a trial takes place that commands Mrs. Touchet’s attention, as well as that of Ainsworth’s second wife, a former maid named Sarah.  The trial involves a “Claimant’s” insistence that he is Sir Roger Tichborne and that he survived a shipwreck in which all other occupants died.  All evidence indicates that the Claimant is an opportunistic fraud, but a former slave named Andrew Bogle corroborates the Claimant’s unlikely story.  While Sarah joins the ranks of the Claimant’s supporters, Mrs. Touchet seeks out Bogle and elicits his personal history.  The writing here is excellent but does not quite compensate for the dreary, staid storyline and lack of suspense.  Plus, the timeline meanders and isn’t always obvious.  Mrs. Touchet is an intriguing character, in that she adores Ainsworth, feeding his ego with compliments even as her inner voice derides his abysmal later manuscripts.