THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY by Amor Towles

Now that 18-year-old Emmett is out of jail, he and his 8-year-old brother, Billy, plan to travel west to start a new life.  However, their plans are quickly defenestrated by Duchess and Woolly, who have escaped from jail as stowaways in the trunk of the warden’s car.  Duchess, who earned that nickname as a child, means well, sort of, but he creates way more problems than he solves, mostly at Emmett’s expense.  In fact, each time Emmett veers off to perform an errand or solve a sticky situation, we know that yet another calamity is on the horizon.  I kept thinking that he would eventually not allow Duchess to hoodwink him, but Emmett’s missteps continue, leaving Billy in the lurch, even when the trap seems obvious.  Billy may seem to be a vulnerable liability at times, but he remembers every piece of advice verbatim, applying these tidbits often with effective, and sometimes humorous, results.  And Duchess is not the only problem.  Billy occasionally finds himself having to rely on the kindness of strangers, but he finds it hard to distinguish which strangers are really kind, and which have darker motives.  Pastor John, who justifies his misdeeds as God’s will, is a threat.  Ulysses, on the other hand, is the foil to Pastor John and has been wandering for years, just like the mythical Greek Ulysses, whose story Billy shares with him.  Ulysses is then inspired to embark on a quest of his own, accompanied by another of Billy’s heroes.  In some ways this is a buddy novel in which Duchess is the instigator of mischief and Emmett is the easy mark, repeatedly caught unawares.  I noticed that the chapters are numbered backwards from 10, like a countdown.  A blast-off to what?  A new journey?

DEACON KING KONG by James McBride

I love the nicknames in this book, especially the men’s, and they make it easy to keep up with who’s who.  (Most of the women are Sister Somebody, and I could not keep them straight at all.)  Sportcoat. living in the projects in Brooklyn and still talking to the ghost of his wife who died a year ago, is a good-hearted drunk.  He makes a living doing odd jobs and has a marvelous green thumb.   However, when he shoots off the ear of the 19-year-old Deems, drug dealer and former star pitcher for the neighborhood baseball team, Sportcoat finds himself in the crosshairs of both the police and the drug kingpin.  Fortunately, he leads a somewhat charmed life, in denial about having shot Deems and about needing to lie low, and one particular pursuer keeps running into mayhem.  The author presents lots of opportunities for romance and redemption in this novel and does not disappoint, although several loose ends are never tied up.  One of the prevailing themes here is a sense of honor that governs even the lives of people like the Elephant, who deals in stolen goods.  Romance springs up in unlikely places, and, in the redemption department, Sportcoat believes that Deems’s salvation lies in his return to baseball.  Of course, Sportcoat has his own problems, not the least of which is his drinking problem.  The characters, plot, and writing style of this novel are all terrific, but occasionally the pace slows to a crawl.

SONG YET SUNG by James McBride

This book is so not your typical slavery novel; it’s much more nuanced, leaving the brutal beatings and separation of families to other writers.  In fact, it’s mostly an adventure story, where the villains are not the punishing landowners but are instead the folks who tracked down escapees and stole slaves so that they could sell them elsewhere.  The most despicable of these slave traders is Patty Cannon, who makes the mistake of imprisoning Liz Spocott, who has mystical powers and becomes known as the Dreamer.  She escapes from Patty’s imprisonment and frees a dozen or so other slaves in the process.  The action all takes place in Eastern Maryland, where oyster beds provide a living for most of the denizens, but Kathleen Sullivan has a farm and three slaves—a man named Amber, his sister, and her 17-year-old son.  All sorts of shenanigans ensue, including the kidnapping of a white child and encounters with the Woolman, a Black man who viewers describe as a ghost or the devil, because of his unkempt appearance and swiftness of movement.  The most ambivalent character is Denwood Long, who has come out of retirement to trace down the Dreamer.  He wants the money that her master will pay, but Denwood also recognizes the injustice of slavery, so that sometimes his humanity interferes with his job.  The only time that this book drags is when the author gets bogged down (pun intended) in a description of the swampy landscape.  Otherwise, the novel moves along at a good clip, with excellent character development, particularly of Amber, who is torn between helping his nephew escape to Pennsylvania, less than 90 miles away and staying on the farm to help Kathleen stay solvent.  Having no wife and children of his own, Amber has become attached to Kathleen’s eight-year-old son, whose father disappeared in a squall.  I particularly liked Kathleen, a strong, no-nonsense woman, who is also conflicted.  She could sell Amber in order to pay off her debts, but in addition to losing his help on the farm, she will not be able to guarantee that his subsequent owner will be as fair-minded as she is.

THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME by Laura Dave

The best thing I can say about this book is that it was a fast read, because it certainly did not live up to the hype surrounding it.  Given its popularity, my expectations were high, but any thriller by Dennis Lehane or Erica Ferencik is a better read.  The author does a good job of building suspense but then drops the ball and moves on to another teaser.  Hannah is a woman in her forties, married for just over a year to Owen, whose 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, lives with them.  Almost immediately, we find that Owen has disappeared in the midst of financial fraud at his company, and a cryptic note from him asks Hannah to protect Bailey.  Enter a U.S. marshal and a couple of FBI agents, but Hannah soon discovers that her husband’s company’s criminal activities are the least of her worries.  She and Bailey jet off to Austin, TX, to jog Bailey’s memory regarding events from her early childhood.  The result is a pot that should not have been stirred, although Bailey’s thawing frostiness toward her stepmother provides a tiny grain of redemption for a character that is otherwise unpleasant, to say the least.  Nothing about the plot is remotely believable, including the ending, but this is fiction, of course.  Would a professor really frame an exam from the “worst student ever” and then not remember his name?  Just as we think we are getting somewhere in solving the mystery of Owen’s life, we reach a roadblock.  Then a previous roadblock is removed, and Hannah’s amateur sleuthing takes another step forward.  What she discovers is not a particularly complicated story, and the resolution is awkward.

THE END OF LONELINESS by Benedict Wells

Jules Moreau, the melancholy narrator of this German novel, is a happy, boisterous 11-year-old until his parents perish in a car accident.  He and his older siblings, Liz and Marty, are shipped off to a public boarding school where they rarely see one another.  The three were already quite different personalities, but their trajectories diverge even further after the tragedy.  Jules becomes fast friends with Alva, who attends the same school but does not board there.  As teenagers, their relationship ends abruptly, but Jules still carries a torch for her and wonders what might have been.  He feels that he has lost his way in life until he resumes contact with Alva and discovers that she has married one of their favorite authors.  As the first-person narrator, Jules is very introspective, and this novel is as much about what he feels and thinks as it is about what happens.  For example, a bullying incident at school becomes a somewhat pivotal event, largely because of how his brother fails to react.  Marty’s friend Toni, however, comes to Jules’s rescue and is perhaps the second loneliest character in the book.  Toni pines for Liz, who strings him along between boyfriends.  Memories also play a large role in this novel, not only because the three Moreaus lost their parents at a young age, but also because Jules feels that Alva was the one true friend his father had advised him to seek.  What struck me most about this novel was how the author reminds us that making memories is not something that we plan.  The best ones are of events that occur unexpectedly.

YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY by Akwaeke Emezi

Feyi is still reeling from the death of her husband five years ago in a car accident.  She has since found it difficult to open herself up to another serious relationship, but she does hook up with a guy at a party.  Limiting her ongoing involvement with him to sex only, she then meets one of his friends, Nasir, who might have more long-term potential.  She insists they take things slowly, but then he offers her a chance to visit his father’s estate on a Caribbean island that also includes a chance to show her paintings at a significant art show.  All of this seems like a dream come true, but when she meets Nasir’s celebrity chef father, Alim, she is instantly smitten.  This book is such a departure from Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji.  It’s a moving and powerful love story, and I just devoured every word with relish.  The author keeps us on edge with barely restrained passion that is bursting at the seams.  Even though neither party is married, this romance is complicated by a sticky family situation.  On the one hand, this book feels like a guilty pleasure, although I don’t know why I should feel guilty about reading something so delicious, and I’m not just talking about all the scrumptious food that Alim dishes up. And just because the male lead is filthy rich doesn’t mean that the story can’t be about other types of struggles.  Grief is the hardship that plagues both Feyi and Alim, and I think that’s enough.  Grief also binds them together, but every good book needs some sort of conflict, and in this case it is the forbidden nature of their relationship.  Thanks to Simon and Schuster for the advance reading copy.

THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI by Akwaeke Emezi

Vivek Oji is a young Nigerian who has blackout spells, which Vivek and cousin Osita hide from both their families.  However, that is not Vivek’s biggest secret.  In fact, I have still not figured out why the blackout spells even merit a mention in the book, since the storyline focuses on Vivek’s sexual identity and the lack of LGBTQ acceptance in Vivek’s family and community.  For a time Vivek is very anti-social, remaining at home and barely eating.  Vivek’s parents describe Vivek’s condition as a “sickness” and allow an exorcism to be performed at Osita’s mother’s church.  This ritual involves a brutal beating, so similar to the one described in The Girl With the Louding Voice that I have to believe such a practice is not that uncommon in Nigeria. In any case, Vivek’s friends draw Vivek out of isolation and provide a safe haven, shielding Vivek temporarily from the judgment of outsiders.  However, this protection is short-lived, and someone leaves Vivek’s naked dead body on the porch for Vivek’s mother to find.  She badgers her friends to tell her what they know, but they are reluctant to share information that they fully expect to be devastating news to the already grieving parents.  Unlike Freshwater, this novel is easy to follow, but it just did not draw me in.  However, a section about Ebenezer, a tire mechanic, is intriguing, and I had to reread his chapter to understand its connection to the rest of the story.  He apparently recognizes Vivek as that “tall girl” and sees her in the market as he is rushing to rescue his wife during a fiery riot.  In this moment, Ebenezer realizes what his closed-mindedness has almost cost him, whereas Vivek’s parents don’t reach that state of enlightenment until it is too late.  For me, though, Ebenezer’s chapter should have been nearer the end of the novel so that its significance would have been more obvious.