LOOT by Tania James

Abbas is a teenager who does woodworking in 18^th century India, alongside his brothers and his father.  His talent for making beautiful toys has come to the attention of the local ruler, despite Abbas’s father’s disdain for such trivial pursuits.  Soon Abbas finds himself employed to carve a large tiger that will also roar and play music; a French clockmaker named Du Leze will supply the sound effects.  This collaboration launches Abbas on an unexpected life of adventure that includes a deadly battle, a sea voyage, an attempted heist, and a conflagration.  I devoured this novel that features a variety of settings, an eventful plot, and charming characters.  Who could ask for more?  Plus, although the characters here are fictional, the tiger that was created for a sultan actually does exist and is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  I must add a visit there to my bucket list.

THE GREAT RECLAMATION by Rachel Heng

Is modernization a good thing or a bad thing?  It is certainly disruptive to the ecosystem and a way of life that depends on that ecosystem.  On page 355, the main character, Ah Boon, suggests “… perhaps there was a way for progress and past to coexist.”  Then again, maybe not.  He witnesses—and participates in--the evolution of Singapore, starting with the WWII occupation by the Japanese, and continuing until 1963, when Singapore is on the brink of becoming a burgeoning first-world entity.  At the beginning Ah Boon is a seven-year-old boy in a fishing village, but he is not a hardy youngster like his older brother.  His uncle, who becomes the family patriarch, wants Ah Boon to follow in his father’s footsteps as a fisherman.  The girl whom Ah Boon has grown up with and whom he loves dearly wants him to join the fight for Communism.  Ah Boon soon embarks on a totally different path when a new community center is built nearby.  I liked the historical aspect of this novel and the fact that the changes that Singapore endured are seen through Ah Boon’s eyes.   I also admired the author’s ability to remain neutral and not take sides in the clash between traditional ways and infrastructure improvements.  However, I needed something to hold my attention, and that something was lacking.

THE MIGHTY RED by Louise Erdrich

Kismet Poe is graduating from high school and has two boyfriends.  One of them, Gary, is a popular athlete with a tendency toward recklessness, but he presents Kismet with an engagement ring, and she is too shocked to say no.  Her other boyfriend, Hugo, is planning to find a job in the oil fields so that he can earn enough money to win Kismet’s affection, whether she is married to Gary or not.  As for Kismet, she seems smart and industrious but allows Gary to coax her into a marriage she doesn’t really want.  Why she cannot extricate herself from this plan is somewhat of a mystery.  Her mother, Crystal, is devastated that Kismet is abandoning her college plans to marry Gary, while Gary’s mother is ecstatically planning a lavish wedding.  After Kismet reluctantly and hilariously says her wedding vows, she becomes something of a Cinderella figure, but Gary is no prince.  We, and Kismet, finally become privy to the details of an event that puts Gary in an even worse light, if that is even possible.  Since this book takes place in an agricultural community, Erdrich manages to weave in her concerns about the ecological impact of sugar beet farming, but she also sprinkles in more humor than I recall from her other novels.  In fact, this is my favorite book of hers since The Master Butchers Singing Club.  Crystal and Kismet are the delightful anchors here, and the storyline makes for an entertaining read.  Even Gary, with all his flaws, is more pathetic than despicable.

SAM by Allegra Goodman

The first half of this book made me anxious, but I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.  The title character is a petulant child, and she is the chief anxiety producer.  Her single mother, Courtney, is a saint—working two jobs to make sure that her two children have better opportunities than she had.  Sam’s ability to climb door frames inspires her ne’er-do-well father to take her to a climbing gym, and thus begins Sam’s love/hate relationship with climbing.  The narrative recounts Sam’s life until she is about nineteen or so, making this a true coming-of-age novel.  As difficult as she is as a child, she is worse as a teenager, making some very wrong-headed decisions.  The second half of the book becomes much more palatable, as she falls in with a group of twenty-something-year-old rock climbers.  She may not be their peer age-wise, but she is the best climber, and she seems to be making progress toward figuring out what she wants in life.  Lapses in judgment still plague her, though, as does regret regarding her relationship with her father.  The fact that her mother maintains her sanity through all of Sam’s screw-ups is what gave me hope that Sam would find her way to adulthood with her own sanity intact.  Failures can be learning experiences, and Sam has plenty of those on which to build.  Climbing is almost too obvious a metaphor here.  When Sam falls, she dusts herself off and launches herself right back up the boulder.