BEAUTIFUL BOY by David Sheff

David Sheff writes this memoir from the perspective of a father going through hell.  His smart and charismatic son Nic becomes addicted to meth, but both father and son are in denial about the seriousness of Nic’s drug habit. Bouncing from rehab to relapse over and over again, ad infinitum, Nic’s problems become his father David’s problems, and David’s obsession with Nic’s life has a profoundly detrimental effect on the rest of the family, including Nic’s much younger half-siblings.  At one point, thanks to a comment from another Al-Anon member, David realizes that if Nic were in jail, at least David would know where he is.  David’s life is basically an endless rollercoaster that parallels Nic’s progress and regression.  At some point he has to accept the fact that Nic’s recovery is in Nic’s hands. This book may be recommended reading for parents and family members of addicts, but I am neither, and I still found it to be riveting.  I also liked the fact this book is not a tearjerker at all, and I am someone who cries over rom-coms.  It is told in a clear-eyed fashion with many musings on what happened to Nic to cause him to become an addict and what David and his family could have done differently.  The bottom line is that no one really knows the cause or the solution.  I found it interesting that bootcamp-type rehab facilities are among the least effective.  The AA philosophies seem to be the most effective, but no addict is ever cured, so that the possibility of relapse looms threateningly for the rest of his or her life.  As hopeless as all this sounds, I found this to be a beautiful book.

THE ALICE NETWORK by Kate Quinn

This novel bounces between WWI and the aftermath of WWII, with a young female protagonist in both time periods.  Eve Gardner is prominent in both, but particularly in the WWI sections, in which she works as a spy against the Germans.  She reappears in the later sections as an old, jaded, alcoholic who reawakens when young Charlie (short for Charlotte) enters her life, looking for a long lost cousin, Rose.  The two women, plus Eve’s dashing driver Finn, embark on a quest to find Rose and to put Eve’s demons to rest.  Their travels through France lead them to the diabolical René, who employed Eve as a waitress and unknowingly gave her the opportunity to eavesdrop on his German patrons.  This book may not be great, because there are a few too many convenient coincidences.  There are some brutal sections as well, and some tragedies that are told so matter-of-factly that I wasn’t sure whether to believe them or not.  In fact, the author leads us to believe there will be more fairy-tale endings than there actually are.  Not that I have a problem with that, but I kept getting my hopes up, only to have them dashed.  Perhaps the best thing about this novel is that some of it is true.  In fact, after reading the author’s notes at the end, I was very impressed with the amount of research she did for this novel and the way she blended fact with fiction.  Some of the facts are truly heartbreaking, but I so admired the women in this novel who actually were part of this network in the early 1900s and whose cover was largely based on the fact that they were women.  I was stunned to find out that, in at least one case, significant bloodshed could have been avoided if only the generals had believed the information the women provided.  Some things never change.

THE FEMALE PERSUASION by Meg Wolitzer

This novel may be about feminism in the 21^st century or about mentors, but I got something else out of it.  For me, it’s about good people doing good work but still making very serious mistakes with major consequences for their relationships.  Greer, a college freshman, meets Faith Frank, the renowned publisher of the feminist magazine Bloomer, at the urging of her lesbian friend, Zee.  After Bloomer’s demise, Greer goes to work for Faith in another feminist venture called Loci, which has venture capital backing that may tilt the company away from its original premise.  In the meantime, Greer’s longtime boyfriend, Cory, who is really a more admirable character in the novel than any of the women, experiences the worst family tragedy imaginable.  His only fault, that I can see, is his inability to include Greer as part of his healing process.  Greer commits one very egregious sin, but Faith, larger than life throughout the book, shows that she is capable of inflicting pain in the interest of vengeance.  Faith also realizes that compromise may be required in order to champion her cause of equality for women.  In other words, I think she feels that the end justifies the means, even if she loses a few supporters along the way.  I thought the conflicts in this book were thought-provoking, particularly the life-changing decision that Cory has to make.  However, I think shaving 100 pages would make this a better novel.  On the plus side, the author does an excellent job of presenting the perspectives of Greer, Zee, Faith, and Cory, without making the novel choppy or hard to follow.  Ultimately, each character has a story worth telling, and each of them faces a life-defining crossroads.

THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer

What a disappointment.   Joe Castleman and his wife Joan are on their way to Helsinki so that Joe can accept a literary prize that is a notch or so below the Nobel.   Joan is not exactly basking in the glow of her husband’s success and decides on the flight over that she is finally ready to divorce him.  He has cheated on her more times than she can count, and I have to ask, “What has taken her so long?”  She abandoned her life as a coed at Smith College to be with Joe, her married English professor who recognized that she had talent as a writer.  Unfortunately, Wolitzer telegraphs the wife’s long-held “secret” way too often and too obviously.  The “revelation” at the end is not a surprise at all and basically robs Joan of all respect from this reader.  I just have a problem with a smart woman subjugating herself to her husband as she did.  I get it that in the 1950s a woman’s career options were more limited than they are today, but still, for me, Joan is totally lacking in gumption.  Every time she has a chance to spill the beans, she chickens out, erasing any shred of credibility she ever had with her children and everyone else, except Joe’s devoted fans.  Wolitzer is an excellent writer, but in this case I found the storyline to be excruciatingly painful and frustrating. 

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT by Chris Bohjalian

Lately it seems that all novels have a drunken female protagonist.  In this book, Cassie’s drinking is the reason that she’s unsure if she’s responsible for a murder.  She wakes up in a hotel room in Dubai with a corpse whose throat has been slashed.  She does remember most of the previous evening, including a meeting the man had with a woman named Miranda.  Rather than risk being arrested in a foreign country, she flees without notifying anyone about the death and heads back to the States.  She’s smarter than her drinking habits might indicate, though, and retains a good lawyer to help her navigate the FBI investigation that follows.  This novel may be a departure for Bohjalian, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I can’t resist a thriller in the hands of an excellent writer, and he even throws in a nice twist at the end.  I did keep hoping that Cassie would curb her drinking, so that she wouldn’t become the dangerous alcoholic that her father was and so that she would stop making really huge errors of judgment.  As in many novels in which characters want to exonerate themselves of crimes, she does some of her own sleuthing, with an ineptitude that endangers both her safety and her legal case.  I will undoubtedly look at my flight attendants a little differently the next time I board a plane, especially to see if they appear to be hungover.

BEFORE YOU KNOW KINDNESS by Chris Bohjalian

Spencer, an animal rights activist, is accidentally shot by his own daughter, Charlotte, using his brother-in-law's hunting rifle.  The irony of this incident overwhelms both families.  Spencer’s wife Catherine had been seriously contemplating divorce before the accident and now is stuck helping Spencer with everyday tasks like buttoning his shirt.  This novel is certainly not a mystery, but it is suspenseful in its own way, as the press conference announcing a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer looms, making everyone but Spencer nervous about how the publicity is going to shame Charlotte and John, his brother-in-law, even more.  I love the way Bohjalian has woven the guilt into this family drama, along with the controversy over whether hunting is a good thing, from a population control standpoint, or a bad thing.  He presents both sides of the argument, and I was curious as to how he would ultimately resolve this issue that divides the family.  His neutrality may be the most exasperating aspect of the novel, but I think it’s vital to keeping the family conflict balanced.  Some readers may think he leans too far one way or the other, but I think he does a good job of not alienating anyone.   Others may think his sitting on the fence is cowardly, but I think it’s just smart.

CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang

This is the first novel I’ve read in a while in just one day.  In fact, I read most of it in one sitting, but it’s even shorter than the page count indicates.  The unnamed Chinese-born female narrator in Boston has gone off the rails while working on her PhD chemistry project that she fears she will never be able to finish.  Her adviser recommends that she pursue a different topic, but instead she just abandons school and takes up tutoring.  Her long-suffering, always optimistic, live-in boyfriend Eric is way too patient with her but eventually accepts a job at Oberlin College in Ohio.  The narrator seeks the help of a therapist and pours out all of her resentment against her over-achieving father and unreliable mother, both unaffectionate and constantly fighting, whom she can’t bring herself to tell that she has dropped out of school.  Her best friend, also unnamed, lives in New York with her very successful husband and newborn baby, living the married life that the narrator is not sure that she wants for herself, especially when the husband moves out to live with another woman.  My take on this is that the narrator is trying to find her way in life and isn’t sure that she has what it takes to be a true scientist.  The specter of her parents’ bitter marriage has stood in the way of her commitment to Eric, so that now she is basically committed to nothing.  My favorite thing about this novel is that there are more scientific nuggets of information than I can even remember, but they are all fascinating.  The narrator spends one entire tutoring session talking about color.  In another session, she describes how radium was originally used to paint glow-in-the-dark watches.  The painters would rinse their brushes by putting them in their mouths!  Needless to say, radium is very toxic, even in dead bodies.