THE MOST by Jessica Anthony

Even at fewer than 150 pages, this book does not exactly zip along.  It takes place over the course of one day in 1957, and the main character, Kathleen, spends the entire time in her apartment complex’s swimming pool.  Of course, there is plenty of reflection on her part as to why she’s lingering in the pool.  We also learn about her husband Virgil’s past, and neither wife nor husband is an ideal marriage partner.  In fact, it’s a wonder this marriage has not already been dissolved.  Virgil’s father, oddly enough, is the catalyst that may lead to some soul-baring sharing of past indiscretions.  Now, about the tennis.  Kathleen is a former standout college tennis player who talked herself out of going pro when she had the opportunity.  My problem, though, is that the tennis terminology used here is messed up, especially on page 82.  Players don’t volley from the baseline.  A volley is a type of shot where the ball is hit in the air before it bounces, and it is used primarily at the net.  Players rally from the baseline, meaning that they exchange a series of shots.  Maybe the author meant the service line instead of the baseline, or maybe the players really did volley from the baseline, meaning that the ball never bounced, but that would be weird.  Plus, a slice doesn’t “soar.”  It is an underspin shot, so that it moves slowly.  Sorry to get bogged down in tennis jargon, but this kind of stuff annoys me, just like bad grammar and misspelled words, neither of which are a problem in this book.  The writing here is good, and there’s sort of a magic word, like “Rosebud” in the movie Citizen Kane.  Clever.

PROPHET SONG by Paul Lynch

Unease escalates into an avalanche of chaos when a totalitarian regime takes over Ireland.  Eilish, a microbiologist, is left to manage her three teenagers and an infant after her husband is detained.  Plus, Eilish’s father’s dementia is getting worse, but he refuses to leave his home.  She has her hands full, and then her seventeen-year-old son joins the rebellion after he receives a conscription notice from the regime.  Eilish’s sister lives in Canada, so that it would behoove her to get the rest of her family out, but she stubbornly refuses to believe that things can get any worse, and she holds out hope that her son and husband will return home.  The situation continues to spin out of control, and the breakneck pace of the novel makes it frightening, to say the least.  In fact, this novel may supplant The Exorcist, which I read in 1974, as the scariest book I have ever read, and there is nothing supernatural about this one.  Also, the title is misleading for a book this gripping that feels all too real.

ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

Here we glimpse 24 hours inside an orbiting space station on the day of the first moon landing since the Apollo project.  The six characters—four astronauts and two cosmonauts—are in need of a plot in order to keep this reader engaged and awake.  I liked the message of this book a lot more than the book itself, as the author indulges in quite a bit of philosophizing about Planet Earth as this vessel goes around and around.  Monotonous?  Maybe, but the six characters seem to be eternally in awe, seeing Earth from 250 miles away as what should be a borderless utopia.  However, they also witness the effects of pollution and climate change brought on by Earth’s human inhabitants but don’t seem to dwell on our shortcomings.  The book reminds us that everyone who has ever walked on the moon was an American—a fact that one of the Russian cosmonauts laments.  I was also surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, at how steep a toll weightlessness takes on the human body.  No amount of exercise can compensate for the absence of gravity on a body that is supposed to bear its own weight.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

What a refreshing departure this book is from the not-so-great critically acclaimed books I’ve read this year.  Ok, maybe refreshing is not the best word for a book about the grisly torture and murder of several Black children, but it definitely held my attention.  Titus Crown is the Black sheriff of a Virginia county with its share of Southern white nationalist racists, including some of Titus’s deputies.  The novel opens with a Black school shooter who kills only one person—a beloved white teacher.  Titus’s deputies bring down the shooter, and the county is divided along race lines in its support of the shooter or the victim, who turns out to be a violent pedophile.  The teacher had a partner in his crimes against children, and that sicko is still at large, leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in his wake.  Titus has his hands full not only with this case but also with his hot-headed brother, a deputy on the take, an old girlfriend who materializes, and his current girlfriend, who is not quite the firecracker that the old girlfriend is.  Plus, Titus is still wracked with guilt over a case that spelled his departure from the FBI and desperately wants a better outcome for this one.  He is a good man and a good sheriff, but he is also serving as a detective here, and we are rooting for him to find the clue that will be the linchpin to identifying the monster who is still out there before the body count goes any higher.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

It’s the 1970s, and Ray Carney has retired from fencing stolen goods, but now he needs to score sold-out Jackson Five concert tickets for his daughter.  Really?  Pair that with the “one last job” plot, and I’m not exactly on board.  The author mashes together several other plots, several years apart, and I found the book very difficult to follow.  Ray is not even as prominent a character as his friend Pepper, who serves as security guard, crime solver, and locater of missing persons.  Arson is rampant throughout Harlem during this time period apparently, thanks to firebugs like a movie director named Zippo, for obvious reasons, and corrupt politicians who line their pockets with urban renewal kickbacks.  The cops are all on the take, of course, but when they started murdering each other, I was taken aback.  The setting may be bleak, but Colson Whitehead is still quite a wordsmith, and I marvel at some of the dynamite sentences he creates.  On page 15, he writes, “He conjured the lonely scene awaiting Foster at home. . .hoisting squealing grandchildren all day like barbells.”   Then on page 195, he says, “Then again, Pepper himself had visited ten of these United States—eleven if you count Connecticut. . .   A cup of coffee costs the same all over and the person who serves it is miserable in the same way. . .”.  Still, great sentences do not necessarily make a great novel, and I just prefer something that hangs together a little better.

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.