¡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.