THE MORNINGSIDE by Tea Obreht

Sil and her mother are refugees living on an island that has been partially destroyed by flooding.  News comes in the form of an anonymous radio correspondent called the Drowned City Dispatcher.  When Sil’s Aunt Ena passes away, Sil’s mother slips seamlessly into Ena’s job as their building superintendent for the Morningside, a high-rise whose penthouse is occupied by a mysterious woman with three huge dogs.  Sil’s mother also moonlights as a salvage diver, and there is plenty to salvage.  While Sil’s mother is very secretive about their past life, Ena has regaled Sil with magical tales, and Sil feels compelled to investigate to find out if they are true.  She enlists the help of Mila, another young girl who lives in the building, and Lewis May, a former superintendent of the building who dubs Sil “Snoopy.”  The problem with this book is not the writing, the characters, or the dystopian plot; it just moves along too slowly.  I think I dozed through some important pages and then had to reread them after I finished the novel.  Also, a strand of magical realism permeates the novel, and I am generally not a fan, although some authors handle it better than others.  Here it just robs the climate change warning of the seriousness it deserves.

MY FRIENDS by Hisham Matar

On a lark, Khaled, a Libyan student at the University of Edinburgh, and his friend Mustafa travel to London to participate in an anti-Qaddafi demonstration at the Libyan embassy.  Shots are fired from the embassy into the crowd, and both young men suffer gunshot wounds.  Both survive, but the rest of the book pretty much chronicles the after-effects of this event, which actually did take place in 1984.  Neither Khaled nor Mustafa can return to his studies, because fellow Libyan students will rat them out. Nor can they return to Libya, as their identities may be known to the Qaddafi regime.  Their only choice is to remain in England with asylum status, too fearful of censors to tell their families what has happened.  A third man, Hosam, a writer whom Khaled knows by reputation, joins the storyline after a chance encounter with Khaled at a hotel.  Reading this, I was concerned about the fates of these three men, especially Khaled, who narrates the story in first person, but I would say that this novel is more educational than enjoyable.  The author presents a poignant picture of three men in exile, and it’s especially heartbreaking, given that Khaled is so young—just a teenager--at the beginning.  He navigates his unexpected life courageously and without dwelling too much on the what-ifs.

FIRE EXIT by Morgan Talty

Charles is the adult son of white parents but was raised by his white mother and Penobscot stepfather on a reservation in Maine.   Since he has no Penobscot blood, Charles lives just the other side of the river from the reservation, where he can see the home of his daughter, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth’s mother, Mary, has raised her daughter to believe that she is the daughter of Mary’s Penobscot husband. Charles is obsessed with having his daughter know that he is her biological father.  Mary, on the other hand, is adamant that this knowledge will upset Elizabeth and jeopardize her standing in their Native American community. However, Elizabeth seems to have inherited mental illness—depression—from Charles’s mother, Louise, who now also suffers from dementia.  Unfortunately, there is just not enough here to make for an engrossing novel, and I was not invested in Charles or any of the other characters.  His two friends, Bobby (an alcoholic) and Gizos, whose lie during their childhood made Charles a pariah, are not exactly paragons of virtue.  I would have liked Elizabeth’s story to have been a little more fleshed out, but that is not possible since the book is told from Charles’s perspective, and he is very much in the dark about Elizabeth’s life.  Charles is a good soul; he’s just not very remarkable.

ENORMOUS WINGS by Laurie Frankel

A woman becoming pregnant at 77 years old seems far-fetched, but maybe it’s possible if a cancer drug she took in her forties also extended her fertility for a few more decades?  Pepper finds herself in this unlikely position after becoming sexually involved with Moth, a man who lives next door to her in a senior living facility.  What follows is partly a jab at anti-abortionists who won’t make an exception for a septuagenarian.  Pepper makes a valid point that they are obsessed with saving the fetus’s life, whether it is viable or not outside the womb, with no consideration for the mother or even for the baby’s welfare after it is born.  Except for these fanatical right-wingers and the paparazzi, the characters in this book are all good people with Pepper’s best interests at heart, especially a delightfully irreverent Episcopal priest.  The big question here is whether or not Pepper will carry her baby to term, and, if she does, will mother and baby both be healthy.  However, there’s one big unforeseen calamity that throws Pepper into a different sort of jam with potentially disastrous consequences.  Don’t expect great literature here, but some hilarious quips are bound to elicit at least a chuckle.

BEAR by Julia Phillips

Sam and her older sister, Elena, are barely scraping by on San Juan Island with their dying mother.  Sam is serving coffee, soft drinks, and packaged snacks on a ferry that operates between the islands and the Pacific Northwest mainland.  Elena works at the local country club and has been the primary breadwinner for years, especially during Covid, when Sam was unemployed.  Sam lives for the day when they will be able to sell their rundown home, which sits on prime real estate, and move to the mainland.  She basically eschews all relationships except family, while Elena secretly stews with frustration over the role she has had to assume.  Then a grizzly appears at their door and terrifies both of them.  However, Elena sees the bear as a welcome distraction and begins to relish additional encounters, while Sam begs her to recognize the danger.  This is not just about an unhealthy infatuation with a predatory animal, since the bear’s presence drives a wedge between the sisters.  The author does a great job of creating mounting suspense, as Elena becomes increasingly irrational about her enchantment with the bear, while Sam refuses to accept that her sister has gone off the deep end.  Of course, the big overriding question is whether the bear will ultimately be true to his nature or continue to behave as if he were Elena’s pet.

PLAYGROUND by Richard Powers

Todd and Rafi are two very smart guys who meet in high school and bond over chess.  They remain very close friends in college, even after a woman enters the picture.  Then their paths diverge as Todd becomes addicted to software development and later founds a social media company that incorporates an idea provided by Rafi.  Todd becomes fabulously wealthy and begins developing AI, while Rafi’s great love is literature.  A totally separate storyline is that of Evelyne, whose father throws her into a pool with an early aqualung prototype.  This event propels her into oceanography, and her sections of the book are mind-boggling descriptions of the world that exists at the bottom of the sea.  Most of the earth is water, so that we land dwellers have no concept of the vast and mostly unexplored depths of our planet.  This fact is so obvious and yet so underappreciated.  Anyway, the ending of this novel was so puzzling to me that I had to read some other reviews and then reread a portion of the ending.  Todd provides some italicized narration addressed to an unknown entity, and I have to admit that I find italics annoying to read.  However, the difference between Todd’s narrative and the narrative in normal type is important to an understanding of the novel, and I missed that distinction entirely.  This book deserves a reread.

PINK SLIME by Fernanda Trias

The title refers to the nickname of Meatrite, a mystery meat product that is providing sustenance to a region in the midst of a pandemic, caused by red algae on the ocean.  When the wind blows, its deadly spread of the algae forces everyone to stay indoors, including the unnamed narrator who is taking care of a boy named Mauro with an eating disorder.  His syndrome causes him to be eternally hungry, and the narrator cannot leave him alone, as he will eat anything he can get his hands on, including inedible items like cotton balls.  Mauro’s wealthy parents leave him, along with a hefty supply of food, at the narrator’s apartment for months at a time.  Although the narrator tells her mother that she plans to move to the safety of Brazil, she lingers, possibly for the sake of Mauro, possibly in order to continue to visit her ex-husband, Max, who has been exposed to the red wind but had a chronic rather than an acute fatal response to it.  In fact, all three characters are lingering—Mauro in the narrator’s care, Max in the “Clinics” where he is not well enough to leave, and the narrator, who is stuck in a stasis that is not sustainable. This novel belongs to the genre now dubbed “cli-fi” for climate change fiction.  Rain is non-existent, and only when the fog rolls in is it safe to be outside.  Power outages are frequent, and phone service is spotty.  Water doesn’t seem to be an issue, so thank heavens for that, but this is a world that is becoming uninhabitable.  The fish are dead, and the birds have disappeared.  This scenario does not seem that farfetched.

HOW I WON A NOBEL PRIZE by Julius Taranto

The Rubin Institute is a haven for researchers, scientists, and professors with skeletons in their closets.  Helen, a very talented physicist whose specialty if superconductivity, does not have a sketchy past, but her mentor/collaborator is now a persona non grata as far as Cornell is concerned. In order to continue her research, she and her husband, Hew, relocate to the island where the Institute is located.  Hew’s liberal political slant makes this move really distasteful for him, and his and Helen’s marriage becomes somewhat rocky.  Helen suspects him of having an affair with a woman who was raped by one of the Institute’s residents, while she contemplates her own affair with her father’s favorite author.  I am not a physics person, and I found that the narrative having to do with Helen’s work was way over my head, but I learned something in the process.  I enjoyed the marital strife aspect of this book as well, since I could definitely see both sides of their argument.  Hew thinks that Helen should be more appalled about the crimes that the Institute’s residents have committed, whereas Helen contends that she really cannot do anything about it.  In any case, the concept of banishing misbehaving intellectuals to an island where they can continue to be productive without being policed or held accountable is intriguing but also alarming.

BURN by Peter Heller

Jess and Storey, both in their thirties and best friends since childhood, are hunting moose in Maine when they start encountering town after town that has been burned to a crisp.  Their own lives are obviously in danger as they gather snippets of information, from a Canadian radio station no less, about what is going on.  Soon their duo becomes a threesome, and Jess finds that his primary reason to survive is to protect Storey and Collie and get them all to a safe haven.  Fortunately, Jess and Storey are rational, resourceful, and compassionate, but when both factions in a civil war are unwilling to negotiate with strangers, self-preservation becomes their number one objective.  Interleaved within this tale is Jess’s backstory, particularly his relationship with Storey’s family, including an incident that he has never had the courage to share with Storey.  Given that they may not make it home from this trip, Jess is not sure that he wants to carry this burden to his grave, but Storey, too, has secrets of his own.  Their life-and-death journey, however, is the main reason to turn the pages.  No one writes a better adventure thriller than Peter Heller, and this novel is no exception.

THE LAST RANGER by Peter Heller

Ren Hopper is a Yellowstone enforcement ranger with lots of heroic skills and lots of regrets.  He couldn’t prevent his wife’s suicide nor his mother’s alcoholism, and he may have ruined the life of a grieving young man.  The main villain here, though, and the object of Ren’s constant ire, is humanity in general, who largely have no respect for wild animals.  They are either hunting them for their pelts or putting themselves in danger for a photo op with a predator.  Ren does what he can to rescue these latter foolish ones, despite wishing he could just leave them to a grisly fate, but the poachers are a threat to animals of both the two-legged and four-legged variety.  Heller’s The Guide is a better thriller, but this book has more heart and soul, as Ren has to consider the motivations of hunters and vandals before he throws the book at them.  He also has to outsmart them by being one step ahead of them, and that’s sometimes a tall order.  The author may wax eloquent a little too often about the natural beauty of Montana, but these moments of serenity are an occasional respite from the many emergencies Ren has to address.  However, it’s Ren’s vacillation between compassion and rage that makes his story so gripping. 

THE GUIDE by Peter Heller

Twenty-five-year-old Jack is still grieving the death of this best friend when he accepts a job as a fishing guide at a VIP resort.  His first client is a famous singer named Alison, although he has never heard of her.  Soon they become wary of the whole operation, as some of the other clients are not fishing and come to breakfast looking pale and unhealthy, as opposed to how normal they looked the day before.  Spa treatments don’t usually have such a negative effect.  Alison and Jack team up to discover what is going on behind the scenes, particularly at a compound next door whose owner fires shots at trespassers.  Clues abound, and we readers may catch on a little sooner than Jack and Alison do, but once they start stirring the pot, mayhem erupts.  This book is a fast read, particularly since it is difficult to put down and not particularly intricately plotted.  I love Peter Heller thrillers, and this one is no exception, even when he waxes poetic about his love of nature.  I particularly enjoyed the dynamic between Jack and Alison and her ability to hold her own when the going gets tough.  She’s not too shabby with a fly rod, either, so that Jack admires her for all of the above.  She also has a pretty good voice, which Jack barely gets the opportunity to enjoy, what with all the other excitement.

THE ORCHARD by Peter Heller

This is my least favorite Peter Heller book, and it is not his usual adventure story.  In fact, it seems to be three characters in search of a plot, plus a slew of Chinese poetry.  This is just not my thing, although I love Heller’s writing style and his three lovable characters here, unencumbered by a storyline.  Frith and her mother, Hayley, have decamped to a remote Vermont cabin to live off the land and off the grid, although Hayley still translates ancient Chinese poetry as a side hustle to bring in some real money.  Otherwise, they are struggling to make ends meet by selling apples and maple syrup.  Rosie, a neighbor with a phone and the usual conveniences, becomes a welcome fixture at the cabin and sort of an adopted family member.  Firth narrates this story from her adult perspective as she reflects on her unconventional childhood.  I kept waiting for something to blow up this idyll, but what finally happens, although fairly monumental, isn’t sudden or unanticipated and doesn’t really disrupt the calm atmosphere of the novel to a significant degree.  I just needed more—a jolt of some sort or a trajectory toward something unexpected.

THE CEMETERY OF UNTOLD STORIES by Julia Alvarez

Alma Cruz has enjoyed a successful literary career in the U.S., but now she has inherited a piece of land in her homeland—the Dominican Republic.  She returns there with plans to create a cemetery for all of her unfinished stories, and she literally buries the manuscripts.  However, these stories, particularly the ones about her father and about Bienvenida Trujillo, refuse to be silent.  Alma hires a neighbor woman, Filomena, as caretaker and as a listener for the buried stories, which are narrated in this novel alongside those of Alma and Filomena.  I guess this is OK as far as magical realism goes, but it didn’t quite work for me.  Bienvenida Trujillo was the ex-wife of the murderous Dominican dictator, and apparently there is scant info about her life after the marriage ended.  Alvarez paints a complete but obviously somewhat fictional portrait of her that is one of the highlights of the novel, possibly second only to Filomena’s backstory.  Also, there’s a possible link between Filomena and one of the storytellers, but we never find out for sure.  That connection was the nugget that held my attention through the latter part of the book, but the author just left me hanging.  Afterlife is still my favorite Alvarez novel, by far.

¡YO! by Julia Alvarez

I’m not really a fan of novels that are a series of vignettes, but this one works for me.  The stories all revolve around Yolanda García, whose name is often shortened to Yo, which is the pronoun “I” in Spanish, hence the title.  We learn at the beginning that Yo has just published a piece of fiction in which her various family members recognize themselves as characters, and they are not too happy about it.  What follows are basically episodes involving people in Yo’s life, including her three husbands, a landlady whose husband beats her, an English professor who is endlessly writing letters of recommendation for her (“once in a career there comes a student”), a boyfriend posing as a journalist to keep their relationship under wraps, and an assortment of family members.  I found all of these stories captivating, but the most memorable and shocking one is near the end, with the too-benign title of “The Stalker.”  Another surprise is the final story, in which Yo’s father recounts how Yo’s penchant for storytelling as a child placed her entire family in jeopardy.  Yolanda herself is a bit of enigma, kind and caring, but at times regretful, as we all are.

IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES by Julia Alvarez

The Mirabal sisters are fighters, especially Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, who, along with their husbands, join the resistance to Trujillo, murderous dictator of the Dominican Republic from the 1930s until 1961.  A fourth sister, Dede, who was not as involved in the mission to end Trujillo’s reign, stayed home the day her sisters were assassinated on their way home from visiting their husbands in prison. The author blends fact and fiction to construct a novel that looks back on the lives of the four sisters, with each of the chapters focused on one of them.  As the only survivor, Dede’s chapters dominate, but her rather mundane personal story does not. The backstories of the other sisters are not all that thrilling, either, and I was never clear on what motivated them to risk their lives in opposition to Trujillo.   This novel has merit as a history lesson, but I am not a fan of this type of semi-biographical fiction, as the author seems to be constrained by what actually happened.  I have found the same to be true of novels by T.C. Boyle, Alice Hoffman, Zadie Smith and Maggie O’Farrell in which they are fictionalizing the lives of historical figures.  However, I generally love these authors’ novels that spring strictly from their imaginations.  I think that Ariel Lawhon does a better job than most with writing an engrossing novel about a real person.  Perhaps she just chooses subjects whose lives are good fodder for a novel and are obscure enough to allow for some thrilling embellishments.

ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST by Xochitl Gonzalez

Anita de Monte may indeed laugh last, but since it’s beyond the grave, I don’t think it counts.  Here, her defenestration comes at the hands of her husband, a famous artist, but Anita’s life and death closely resemble that of a real woman whose husband was acquitted of her murder.  Obviously, an abundance of magical realism exists in this novel, and I am not really a fan.  Fortunately, another storyline involves Raquel Toro, whose life parallels Anita’s in many ways.  She is sacrificing her agency to a successful artist, and she becomes basically his satellite.  Anita realizes that her identity is in peril but keeps thinking that the problem will go away.  Raquel, on the other hand, despite opinions to the contrary from family and friends, thinks that her relationship with Nick is completely balanced.  This novel just does not really work for me.  It’s too predictable for one thing, and both of these smart, talented women just frustrated the heck out of me.  One positive is the humor, particularly when Anita’s ghost manifests itself as a bat who tortures her husband and his girlfriend.  Even more funny is when Anita mimics a Spanish accent at a dinner party in order to humiliate her husband.  She is much spunkier than Raquel whose cluelessness just annoyed me.

LIKE HAPPINESS by Ursula Villarreal-Moura

Tatum Vega is living a contented life in Chile when an American journalist contacts her about her past relationship with Mateo Dominguez, a successful author.  Another woman has accused Mateo of sexual assault, and, although Tatum did not experience any physical abuse in her relationship with Mateo, she can imagine the possibility of it occurring with someone else.  Tatum and Mateo’s relationship was mostly platonic, even when he spent a month with her in Cape Cod while she was housesitting.  It all began when Tatum sent Mateo a fan letter, and he actually responded.  They became friends, but it was an odd friendship in which he called all the shots.  It’s clear that Tatum loved Mateo, but it’s also clear that his feelings for her were something entirely different.  He paid off most of her student loan, so what exactly did he expect in return?  The answer to that question is not revealed until very late in the novel, but it is not shocking.  In fact, it’s just sad, given that Tatum was pretty much devoted to him for a decade.  This was abuse of an entirely different nature, basically psychological, and for some reason Tatum was blind to it.  I found it very hard to respect her and not just because Mateo’s domination of her life was entirely consensual.  She also had a good education but lacked the impetus to look for a job that matched her qualifications.  On the other hand, she was not entirely spineless, as she did have the gumption to get out of other unhealthy situations, including dumping a lover who developed a drug habit.  The entire narrative is Tatum in first person addressing Mateo, as if telling her story will somehow deliver retribution.  I think not.  Catharsis, maybe.

THE ROAD FROM BELHAVEN by Margot Livesey

I expected more from Margot Livesey than this tired plot.  Scottish teenage farm girl Lizzie falls for city boy Louis and becomes pregnant.  She is at first elated, assuming that Louis will marry her right away.  Wrong.  He wants to finish his apprenticeship as a tailor, and that’s three years away.  I don’t know if Lizzie is naïve or just not very smart, but she has a knack for making really bad judgment calls.  She abandons her daughter to the child’s great-grandparents, as she runs back to Louis after having a vision of him with another woman.  Trying to hold on to her man is obviously more important than the well-being of her child, and I just couldn’t sympathize with Lizzie anymore.  To her credit, she is spunky and a hard worker, but nothing can redeem her, in my opinion, from choosing her lover over her child, and I don’t think that the author makes a good case for us readers to feel that Lizzie deserves a second chance.  Her visions have always proven to predict some unfortunate future event, but these visions seem superfluous to the plot, except in one case in which her vision actually allows for advance preparation to prevent tragedy and loss of life.  I view magical realism such as this as something of a cop-out for the author to solve a plot problem that could be better handled in a realistic manner.

THE DEMON OF UNREST by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has a knack for turning history into a page turner.  Here he tackles the events leading up to the Civil War, chronicling Lincoln’s early presidency and paying particular attention to Fort Sumter, which Lincoln misspelled as “Sumpter.”  The commander of the fort was Major Robert Anderson, a 55-year-old former slave owner from Kentucky who sympathized with the South but whose loyalty lay firmly with the Union Army.  Communication between the fort and Washington, D.C., was unreliable and scarce, so that Anderson and his men were totally in the dark as to if and when they would receive reinforcements or even vital provisions, as they were running out of food.  Meanwhile, the surrounding Confederates were bringing in tons of artillery, all in plain sight of Ft Sumter.  Costly mistakes were made both at the fort and at the White House, to the point that the fall of Ft Sumter was not only unsurprising but basically a forgone conclusion.   It also became increasingly apparent that the two sides did not understand one another at all, and neither side expected or wanted a protracted war.  The South was convinced that cotton was an all-important asset and that slave labor was a requirement for cultivating it, or at least that was their justification for slavery.  Anyone who still believes that the Civil War was caused by any issue other than slavery needs to read this book.

DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson

In typical Erik Larson fashion, two narratives dominate this book—that of the Lusitania and that of the submarine that destroyed it.  However, there are a whole lot of other intriguing stories, particularly the question of why the Lusitania did not have a naval escort and why it entered the U-boat-infested St. George’s Channel in the first place.  British intelligence knew of the danger and either wanted it torpedoed so that the U.S. would enter WWI or didn’t want the Germans to find out that the Brits were intercepting and decoding the German transmissions.  Neither excuse seems very noble, but then the U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, was lovestruck at the time, and Winston Churchill was in France.  The weather and the tide schedule were also uncooperative, so that a whole confluence of bad luck doomed the ship, including a torpedo that was slightly off course.  The book also gives details about a number of passengers, but these backstories are not nearly as compelling as the survival stories.  A couple of women, presumed dead and brought on board rescue ships, rejoined the living.  Nonfiction is not really my thing, but Erik Larson rarely disappoints, and this book kept me engrossed all the way through.  Maybe I gained a little more in-depth knowledge—pun intended—about WWI-generation German submarines than I really needed, but I have to say that I found that more fascinating than the opulence of the Lusitania.