INLAND by Tea Obreht

As historical fiction, this book is a worthwhile read.  Camels as conveyances for supplies and mail in the mid-nineteenth century?  That was news to me.  One of the two main characters in this book is a camel driver during that time, but he is also a murderer on the run.  His timeline eventually intersects with that of Nora, a wife and mother in Arizona in the 1890s.   Her husband has been missing for three days, leaving her in desperate need of water but at times too proud or embarrassed to ask for it.  For me, Nora is the more intriguing character, but she makes some bad decisions with dire consequences.  She is also a prolific liar, stating at one point that lying is just as easy as saying nothing.  Many of her lies are cover-ups for cowardice, and in one case she admits the truth to her almost-lover, who spills the beans.  Living with her and her three sons is Josie, an orphaned distant relative, who also is harboring a whopper, and, ironically, Nora threatens her with a beating in order to drag the truth out of her.  Nora also berates Josie for her claimed ability to contact the dead, while Nora herself carries on conversations with her dead daughter, who is generally available to offer advice.  In other words, Nora is a supreme hypocrite.  She may be admirable in her strength, referring to herself as a “hard woman,” but I found her exasperating.  I am OK with that type of character in a novel, but here I felt that the storyline moved along a level plane, without enough highs and lows.  This is a pleasant enough read, but suspense is in short supply.

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.