WHAT WE CAN KNOW by Ian McEwan

Critics didn’t dub this author Ian Macabre for nothing, and this book solidifies that reputation.  For the first 150 pages, the highbrow plot treads water as Thomas Metcalfe in 2120 narrates his search for a lost poem from 2014.  Not much has changed in 100 years except that a bunch of landmasses and species of flora and fauna have disappeared, thanks to climate change upheaval and a tsunami caused by a manmade screw-up. The missing poem’s celebrated author read the poem, an homage to his wife, at a dinner party and insisted that there be no other copies.  The poem was a gift, and his wife could do with it as she pleased.  No one has seen it since.  The poet’s wife was a published author herself but abandoned her writing career to become basically a tradwife.  Finally, our first half narrator, Thomas rediscovers a forgotten note in his coat pocket, and things start to get rolling.  His tedious search for the lost poem morphs from an archive search to a more literal hunt for buried treasure.  Part II is something else entirely, but readers will recognize the narrator and the other characters from the 21^st century dinner party.  This is where the storyline indeed becomes macabre, and a lost boy in a train station is just a tiny warmup for what is to come.  Unfortunately, some readers will probably abandon this book before they get to the good stuff.

THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden

Isabel lives alone in her family home in the Netherlands in 1961.  She has a sharp tongue and doesn’t mind using it, even with strangers like her older brother’s new girlfriend, Eva.  When her brother has to leave the country for a month on business, he insists that Eva stay with Isabel.  Isabel can’t really object, although she does try, because she has no claim to the house, which will eventually belong to her brother.  For the first two weeks these two women are like oil and vinegar, but then things change when Isabel comes in from a date and describes her discomfort with the whole evening.  Their détente segues into desire for one another that both view as forbidden, although Isabel’s younger brother lives with his male lover. This development, however, is not the most jaw-dropping aspect of the novel.  A startling disclosure--well past halfway through the novel--changes the whole timbre of the book, rewarding your patience for sticking with it.  This book may not be a thriller, but it definitely has a twist that I did not see coming.  I failed to pick up on several clues that could have prepared me for the unexpected revelation, and I was glad to have an electronic copy so that I could go back and search the pages I had already read.  The manner in which the plot unfolds is exquisite.

BEAUTYLAND by Marie-Helene Bertino

Adina is secretly an extra-terrestrial in a human body, born to a human mother, and has been sent to report on the life of earthlings. She communicates with her alien people by fax surreptitiously.  Her communiques are filled with keen observations, although occasionally she draws an errant but humorous conclusion.  She sends wise reflections on irrational human behaviors, customs, and beliefs to her superiors, but their replies are terse and not exactly encouraging.  Even so, Adina longs to fit in with her human counterparts but is an alien in numerous ways.  When asked to report on a sporting event, she describes the grass, the players, their interactions with the coaches, but nothing about the outcome.  Her response to her exasperated editor is that everyone knows the outcome, and her readers surprisingly agree.  Adina eventually discovers that her missives to another world are of interest to her fellow humans on Earth, and she receives a more positive response from her human audience than she ever received via fax. One thing that I did not like about this book is the format.  I prefer traditional chapter breaks, but this novel, although the timeline is sequential, has a break every few paragraphs, making it feel a little choppy to me.  Still, I found Adina’s story tender and hopeful about humankind in a way that Theo of Golden is not.  It also does what Orbital failed to do, which is move you.

BAD BAD GIRL by Gish Jen

If you think that Gish Jen’s novel about her mother will be a loving homage, guess again.  Her mother endured the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during WWII, then emigrated, by herself, to the U.S. after college, and obtained her master’s degree.  She then got married before completing her dissertation for her PhD and raised five children, with Gish being the second, following her brother Reuben.  However, Gish’s memories of her mother, who died in her 90s during Covid, are anything but fond.  While Gish was a child, her mother beat her regularly.  Even as an adult, Gish was constantly seeking attagirls from her mother, but none were forthcoming.  Gish’s mantra seems to be “Look what I did for you, and you didn’t even thank me.”  Then there’s Gish’s “beloved father,” also Chinese, who beat her with a metal stake to the point that the injuries kept her out of gym class for three months.  I cannot fathom why she adored him.  There was one humorous anecdote where Gish and a female classmate lobbied to be allowed to take shop in school.  They were granted the concession of being able to use the shop after class, and the shop teacher is a riot.  However, this one incident does not salvage this otherwise very depressing novel.  I suppose that writing this novel was cathartic and validating for the author, but reading it was not a pleasant experience.

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Like The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, this novel takes place at a Florida reform school for boys.  It’s 1950, and the KKK terrorizes Black people, and their children can land in the notorious Gracetown School, based on the real Dozier School, for minor scuffles, like kicking a white boy.  Robert Stephens is 12 years old and has been in the care of his 16-year-old sister since their father, a union organizer and civil rights activist, has had to flee to Chicago.  Young Robert’s sentence at the reformatory is supposed to be only six months, but his father’s reputation marks him for bullying by both the other students and the administration.  His ability to see the ghosts of the boys who have died there earns him a potential reprieve, but “catching haints” has its own set of consequences.  If he fails to deliver, he will be whipped, left in a shed overnight, and be raped by the headmaster, but Robert feels a kinship with the ghosts, who don’t want to be turned to dust and collected in the headmaster’s jar.  His dilemma drives him to a dangerous decision that drives the most gripping part of the book.  The gruesome tortures that the boys endure are not recounted in such a way as to give the reader nightmares, but they certainly left me hoping that the evil men would get their due. Sadly, the administrators of the real Dozier School never paid a price for their cruelty and for the deaths of the boys whose lives they cut short.

GODWIN by Joseph O'Neill

An elusive African soccer phenom, dubbed Godwin, barely appears in the novel, other than in black and white soundless video.  In fact, the first section of the novel is about a cooperative of technical writers in Pittsburgh with two women as co-leads, Annie and Lakesha.  Mark, a member of the co-op, gets into a scuffle with office security, and takes some accrued time off.  Timing is everything, ass his half-brother, Geoff, hoodwinks Mark into coming to Europe to help with a business opportunity.  Why not?  Except that Geoff is sleazy and unreliable, not to mention broke.  Mark is obviously being taken for a ride at his own expense.  This is where the soccer video surfaces, as Geoff wants to find Godwin and become his agent.  This tale morphs into a wild goose chase of epic proportions with a side dish of dirty office politics involving a proxy fight at the co-op.  These two storylines are equally compelling, although a French soccer agent’s longwinded account of the quest to find Godwin is a little too detailed.  Do we care that Godwin’s hunting skills are just as astonishing as his soccer skills?  How the co-op and soccer plotlines converge at the end is a very pleasant surprise.  I found this book to be a refreshing break from the usual family drama and romantic liaisons.  There actually is some family drama here, but not in the usual sense and not as the main attraction.

LONG ISLAND by Colm Tóibín

You don’t have to have read Brooklyn to enjoy this novel, but it helps.  This novel takes place two decades later, and Eilis’s husband, Tony, has fathered a child with another woman.  That woman’s husband intends to leave the baby on Eilis’s doorstep after it is born.  Eilis is having none of it, vowing never to raise that child, and makes plans to visit Ireland for her mother’s 80^th birthday.  On her previous visit two decades ago, Eilis and Jim Farrell fell in love, but Eilis left abruptly because she was already secretly married to Tony.  Now the tables are turned, because Jim is secretly engaged to the widow Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s former best friend, while Eilis’s marriage is on the rocks.  Talk about star-crossed lovers!  These two just cannot get their timing right, and their secrets are not helping, either.  All would be well with Eilis and Jim, but Nancy is the fly in the ointment who is already making big plans for after her wedding.  I enjoyed everything about this love triangle, or quadrangle maybe. I supposed the reader could choose to be on team Tony or team Jim, but there’s really no contest.  I would put Nancy in the role of villain, but she really isn’t, until she becomes aware that Jim and Eilis still have a thing for each other.  What I did not enjoy was how the plot eventually just fizzles.