ASK AGAIN, YES by Mary Beth Keane

Brian and Anne Stanhope live next door to Francis and Lena Gleeson.  Soon it becomes apparent that Anne is unstable.  Her son Peter and the Gleeson’s youngest daughter Kate are playmates who begin to consider becoming more than just friends as they grow older.  However, a tragic event throws both families into turmoil, with the result that Kate and Peter do not meet again until college.  I became engrossed in this story though not immersed, if that makes sense.  The characters are all flawed to varying degrees and undergoing circumstances that at times resulted from a lack of communication, among other things.  Late in the novel Kate knows she has to confront Peter and initiate a frank and painful conversation with him but finds herself constantly backpedaling.  For me, this section is the most moving, and Kate’s uncertainty is very vivid.  Anne is a singularly unlikeable character, but I had to keep reminding myself that she is mentally ill and that I should not hold that against her.  I would say that maintaining an open mind about Anne was a challenge, and Kate’s missteps and coping mechanisms were quite exasperating.  The struggles of these two women are the heart of the book.  The main male character is Peter, and I found him to be completely enigmatic.  His career decision comes out of nowhere, and his transformation over the course of the book left me scratching my head.  There are hints that he has psychological issues himself, though not on a par with his mom, and I was disappointed that the author never really elaborated on what these issues were or how they manifested themselves.  All of these characters need therapy for PTSD, and that suggestion comes up at the end of the novel.

THE SON by Philipp Meyer

I would classify this book as a western but more in the vein of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian than Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.  For me, it lacks heart.  Each chapter is devoted to one of three characters, all in the McCullough family but generations apart.  Eli is the patriarch who lives 100 years, including three years with the Comanches.  After a raiding party murders his mother and siblings, he becomes their captive.  A young member of their band wisely advises him to be less passive, enabling Eli to progress from slave to apprentice, learning to launch arrows from horseback.  His son Peter’s chapters are diary entries in which Peter describes his family’s vengeful assault on a Mexican neighbor’s home—an event which haunts Peter with guilt for the rest of his life.  Peter is the conscience of the family, but the rest of the McCulloughs view him as a pariah.  The third protagonist is Jeannie, Peter’s granddaughter, who transforms the family’s struggling cattle business into an oil empire.   What stands out about this novel is the stark realism.  The author does not pull any punches when describing “how the West was won.”  That victory cost thousands of lives on all sides and decimated countless native American populations.  If the thought of reading about scalping makes you squeamish, skip this book.  However, my favorite passage in the novel is about a different aspect of human behavior that is still true today:  “The poor man prefers to associate, in mind if not in body, with the rich and successful.  He rarely allows himself to consider that his poverty and his neighbor’s riches are inextricably linked….”  It’s baffling to me that people in poverty cozy up to rich people without grasping that those riches are often gained at poor people’s expense.

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY by P. D. James

I am not sure that Pride and Prejudice needs a sequel, but P.D. James has undertaken to write one, and I am all in.  Darcy and Elizabeth are all settled at Pemberley with two sons, and Bingley and Jane live nearby.  All seems smooth and cozy, but there is still the matter of Lydia, married to troublemaker Wickham.  Lydia decides to crash the annual ball at Pemberley, although Wickham is unwelcome.  They sneak upon the estate by way of the woodland, but Wickham and his friend Captain Denny exit the coach after an argument.  When Lydia and the driver hear gunshots, they hurry on to Pemberley, where a hysterical Lydia fears that her husband has been shot.  In fact, Denny is dead, and Wickham cries that he has killed him, although he may not have meant his confession to be taken literally.   The ensuing investigation is not exactly thorough, and the trial is somewhat speedy.  I kept wondering why no one questioned Lydia, and by the end I was even more puzzled as to why she apparently did not know the substance of the two men’s quarrel.  Let’s face it:  Jane Austen would never have written a murder mystery.  However, the style of this book is so Austen-like, you will almost feel that a posthumous thriller has somehow surfaced.  Darcy takes center stage throughout most of this book, rather than Elizabeth, particularly as he wrestles with mixed feelings about Wickham’s plight.  He strives to strike just the right unbiased balance in his testimony but then laments that he may have sealed Wickham’s fate.  Honestly, if P. D. James were to write another Pemberley installment, I would be on board in a heartbeat.

NORTHANGER ABBEY by Jane Austen

Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland joins a childless couple for a month in the town of Bath.  There she soon attracts two suitors—the delightful and handsome Henry Tilney and the loathsome and boring John Thorpe.  She tolerates Thorpe when she is desperate for a dance partner or eager for a visit to a castle she wants to tour, but her heart belongs to Tinley.  Thorpe turns out to be even more dastardly than we thought and puts Catherine, more than once, in a difficult spot.  Catherine has no experience of treachery the likes of which Thorpe is capable and thus is slow to comprehend that someone could be so intentionally deceitful.  I liked this book so much more than Mansfield Park, which took me on a long and arduous journey that at times challenged my attention span.  This novel, on the other hand, I read in two days and enjoyed every minute.  Granted, there may not be a lot of substance here, but no matter.  There are several particularly humorous sections, including one in which the author takes lighthearted potshots at readers and writers of fiction as being frivolous, even as we discover that Catherine and Tinley both love gothic novels.  This shared interest later leads Tinley to describe his family home to Catherine as a mysterious place with dark, scary passageways.  Catherine hangs on every word of his depiction, knowing it to be in jest, but then when she actually goes to Northanger Abbey, her imagination goes wild.  I can’t help wondering if Charlotte Brontë, stole part of the storyline for Jane Eyre from Jane Austen.

LONGBOURN by Jo Baker

Longbourn is the name of the Bennet estate in Pride and Prejudice.  Jo Baker’s novel has the same setting but focuses on the servants, particularly Sarah, a teenage housemaid.  The novel opens with Sarah doing laundry, and it’s an unpleasant task, making Sarah’s hands raw.  From my perspective, this was not an auspicious beginning, but the storyline does improve, although the pace is pokey at times.  Besides Sarah, the cast of characters includes Mrs. Hill, who manages to gain Mr. Bennet’s ear from time to time, and Polly, a child who is sort of Sarah’s apprentice.  A mysterious new footman named James Smith arrives on the scene, and his backstory, although pertinent to the plot, occupies a few too many pages that particularly drag.  However, he provides the necessary spark to a novel that is mostly about women, including the five Bennet daughters.  This novel feels very Jane Austen-like, although I suppose it never would have occurred to Jane to write about the personal lives of the servants, even though their problems have much more heft than those of the Bennet family.  Not that the Bennets are unkind to the servants; they are, like Jane, just oblivious.  The novel also emphasizes what few options and freedoms the servants really had.  The particularly slimy Wickham preys on Polly, who basks in his attention, even as Sarah is constantly vigilant to make sure that Wickham doesn’t “interfere with” Polly.  Basically, though, this novel is a love story that in some ways parallels that of Lizzie and Darcy.  Not everything is fully resolved at the end, leaving me to wonder if the author expected the reader to draw a particular conclusion.  She chooses to flesh out Polly’s future in some detail but left everyone else’s somewhat unsettled.

MANSFIELD PARK by Jane Austen

I like Jane Austen, but, honestly, the flowery nineteenth-century language causes me to have to reread too many passages.  There are those passages, however, that are worth reading multiple times.  Early in the book, Mary Crawford says, “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”  What??!  I think the speaker is serious, but the author is not.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  The protagonist of this novel is Fanny Price, who comes to live with her well-to-do aunt and uncle, Lord Bertram, at Mansfield Park when Fanny’s poor mother bears her ninth child.  Fanny becomes sort of the Cinderella of this story, although her new family is not particularly wicked.  Her most trusted friend and ally is her cousin Edmund, who is destined for the clergy.  By the time Fanny becomes a teenager, all of the young characters are pairing off, although they may change partners from time to time, especially when they decide to put on a play while Lord Bertram is out of the country.  The assignment of roles becomes sticky and certainly telling with regard to budding relationships.  Fanny herself is smart and pretty but very introverted and carries a torch for Edmund, who only has eyes for Mary Crawford.  As in other Austen novels, I kept wondering if some of the characters would ever come to their senses, but then ultimately I usually find that their judgment is better than mine.

ELIGIBLE by Curtis Sittenfeld

When I first began reading this book, I found it to be frivolous and concluded that perhaps transporting Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to 21^st century America was not such a great idea.  However, I soon changed my mind and became completely engrossed in this guilty pleasure.  The five Bennett sisters, all unmarried, have come home to the family Tudor mansion in Cincinnati to help out during their father’s recovery from heart surgery.  Actually, only the two oldest—Jane and Liz—have come home, because Mary, Lydia, and Kitty already live there.  Jane and Liz live and work in New York, while the other three have failed to launch.  Liz soon discovers that her family’s fortune has now been replaced by a mountain of debt.  Mrs. Bennett, whose lack of good sense is appalling, secures an invitation to a party at which Jane meets and eventually falls for Chip Bingley, a doctor who has just appeared on a reality TV show in which he was expected to choose a wife.  Also at the party is Chip’s friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a neurosurgeon.  Liz overhears Darcy making snide remarks about the women in Cincinnati, and the two soon become verbal sparring partners and more, especially since they seem destined to keep running into each other.  Their relationship is juicy, delicious, and sexy, and they are too busy insulting one another to realize how much they really enjoy one another’s company.  I would love to see a movie based on this version of a story we’ve seen time and again on film.  It would be so fresh and fun.

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett

My expectations for this book were too high.  I know it’s probably not PC to say this, but I thought Phillip Roth’s similarly themed The Human Stain was better.  It is also about a character passing as white, but Roth’s book is dripping with irony, as a college professor sacrifices his career for his secret, whereas owning up to his heritage would have gained him a pardon for a seemingly racist comment.  Here we have a woman, Stella, who, along with her twin sister Desiree, grow up in a Louisiana town populated with light-skinned black residents. The twins run off to New Orleans, where Stella gets a job as a secretary.  Everyone in the company, including her boss, whom she marries, assumes that she is white.  Desiree, in contrast, marries a very dark-skinned man and bears a daughter, Jude, whose coloring is like her father’s.  The novel eventually focuses more on Jude’s story, alongside that of Stella’s privileged daughter Kennedy.  It’s no surprise that Desiree and Jude are more grounded, comfortable in their own skin.  Stella, on the other hand, has completely divorced herself from her family and actually fears that black people will recognize her for who she is.  Kennedy is the stereotypical vacuous blonde whose strained relationship with her emotionally distant mother renders her a little unmoored.  I think that all of these characters could have benefited from a little more depth.  My favorite character is Early Jones, who hunts missing persons and has been carrying a torch for Desiree for years.  When he finds her, he has to decide whether to convey her whereabouts to her abusive husband or tarnish his perfect record on the job.  Finding Stella is an even more difficult task, but Jude manages to do that without even trying. Their meeting is such a far-fetched coincidence that it threw the whole authenticity of the book into question for me.

FINN by Jon Clinch

I liked the idea of this novel a lot more than I liked the novel itself.  I even reread Huckleberry Finn so that the storyline would be familiar.  The author here builds a colorful but violent backstory for Huck’s father.  However, I had several problems with this book.  First of all, it’s hard to improve upon Mark Twain.  Although the author seems to know his subject matter, the flavor is so much darker than that of Huckleberry Finn.  Secondly, the timeline is not sequential, and I really did not understand the need for this.  The author periodically alerts the reader as to where we are in the saga of the life of Huck Finn’s father, but I still managed to get confused and have to flip back to find out when the current action was taking place.  I’m glad I was reading a physical book, because this rereading would have been too annoying to attempt in an ebook.  Except for knowing from the beginning the fate of the despicable main character, I think that a more sequential timeline would have made for a better read.  Also, the author fails to explain why Finn adopts the lifestyle that he does, given his genteel upbringing.  Is he just a sociopathic alcoholic?  I couldn’t feel sympathy for him at all, but perhaps a little more insight into what makes him tick would have helped.  The author does introduce one significant wrinkle into the Huck Finn story that I have mixed feelings about.  The story of Huck’s mother here is plausible, I suppose, and gives this novel its raison d’etre.  Mark Twain might have raised an eyebrow, or applauded, in response to Clinich’s take on Huck’s birth, which leads to a lie that is as poignant as it is understandable for the time.

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

The Southern dialect dialog keeps this picaresque classic from being a fast read, and I think now it might work better as an audiobook.  Still, I plodded my way through and enjoyed the irony, humor, and adventure that his book offers.  Why on earth did we read this as kids, aside from the fact that the title character is a 14-year-old boy?  Jim, a runaway slave, has in his head a gazillion superstitions, and Huck seems to run afoul of all of them, courting bad luck at every turn and never knowing when the bad luck has ended.  The escapades of Huck, Tom, Jim, and two despicable con men are often silly, but sometimes the results are dire.  This novel has quite a bit of violence, including a murder in cold blood and a family feud that practically wipes out both sides, with neither family really sure about the origin of their disagreement.  After a particularly deadly encounter, the families attend a church service in which the sermon’s message is brotherly love!  Their animosity, juxtaposed with their fundamentalist religion, would seem ridiculously hypocritical if it didn’t hit so close to home for so many disputes today and throughout history.  On the lighter side, Hamlet’s soliloquy is hilariously misquoted and interleaved with passages from Macbeth and possibly other works, for all I know.  Ultimately, though, this is a story of the bond that develops between Huck and Jim.  Huck’s sense of right and wrong is constantly challenged, due to his misguided conviction that the right thing to do is to return Jim to his owner.  However, his loyalty to Jim and his doubt that he is destined for heaven anyway cause him to act on Jim’s behalf time and again.  These two naïve souls have each other’s back, protecting one another both physically and emotionally.

THE GUEST BOOK by Sarah Blake

One thing that annoyed me about this novel was the author’s overuse of the word “ranged” or “ranging.”  She uses “range” as a verb twenty times, and not in the way I would use it, such as in “a number ranging from one to a hundred.”  Perhaps this word usage is common to people who come from old money, and that’s why it seemed so odd to me.  This novel is indeed about old money, as in buying an island off the coast of Maine during the Great Depression.  Three generations of the Milton family have enjoyed summers on this island, with varying levels of attachment to it.  Evie is the modern-day character who wants to hold on to the island, not matter what the cost, but not all of her cousins agree.  As in many fictional family sagas, secrets abound, and even after I finished the novel I was unsure what Evie knew about her family’s past and what she didn’t.  For example, her grandmother Kitty’s firstborn son plunges through the window from the 14^th floor of their apartment early in the book, but I was never sure whether subsequent generations knew about this accident.  They were, however, certainly aware that Kitty’s second son, Moss, died in his 20s in 1959, and the circumstances of his death are not revealed until the end of the novel.  Besides the fact that I could not relate to these people and their problems at all, I felt that the author was particularly hard on the characters of her own gender.  The women are mostly buttoned up and resistant to change, overly concerned with wallpaper and upholstery fabric, whereas the men are more open-minded, despite some unsavory business alliances.  At almost 500 pages, this novel spends way too much time describing the contents of the island house, and I just wanted to get on with the story.  Things do pick up in the last 100 pages, but not enough for me to declare that reading the first 400 pages was time well spent.

RED CLOCKS by Leni Zumas

Teenage girls who seek abortions are imprisoned, and abortionists face the death penalty.  This novel gives us a glimpse into the lives of four women in the not so distant future after Roe v. Wade has been overturned.  The characters are the wife (Susan), the biographer (Ro), the daughter (Mattie—no relation to Susan), and the mender (Gin).  A law school dropout, Susan loves her two small children but hates her life to the point that she contemplates driving off a cliff.  She would like a divorce, partly so that her husband can take the kids on weekends, but she does not want to initiate it.  Ro, on the other hand, envies Susan’s life and, at 42, is trying to have a child via artificial insemination.  She would settle for adoption, but as a single parent, her chances are slim, and soon such adoptions will be illegal.  Mattie is 16, herself adopted, and pregnant, and would like to have the fetus ripped from her body by any means possible.  Gin is a purveyor of herbal remedies and is Mattie’s biological mother, although Mattie is unaware of their relationship.  These women each command their own chapters, which are interleaved with the journal entries of a female arctic explorer—the subject of the biography that Ro is writing.  I did not grasp the significance of these interruptions, which I felt disturbed the continuity of the book.  Other than that, I loved it, especially the contrast between Ro’s and Susan’s lives.  Both are on the brink of total despair and want what the other has.  What I found so scary about this novel is how these women’s lives seemed pretty familiar, except for Gin’s, since she lives in a cabin in the woods.  Then the stark reality of how much these strict parenthood laws have cost them becomes apparent and extremely frightening.

THE WATER DANCER by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Hiram Walker is a young slave on a Virginia tobacco plantation in the mid-1800s.  His white father owns the plantation and positions Hiram to be the manservant of Hiram’s white half-brother Maynard.  While being groomed for this job, Hiram learns to read and to take advantage of and exhibit his photographic memory.  Hiram has another talent, known as “conduction” in the novel, which allows him to teleport himself from one place to another.  I have to say that this magical realism aspect of the novel does not really add any particular value.  It seems very Harry Potter-like for what is undoubtedly a very serious novel.  It takes some time for Hiram to fully corral this ability, and, in the meantime, he has a number of adventures, both pleasant and terrifying.  The problem with this book is that, despite all of Hiram’s ups and downs, it drags.  This author has a reputation for non-fiction and perhaps needs to hone his ability to engage the reader with suspense and concern for the fate of the characters.  I did care what happened to Hiram, but I was not inspired to pick up the book and find out.  I trudged through it, delighted by the Harriet Tubman cameo, and worried for Hiram’s safety from start to finish.  However, we know from his first-person narrative that Hiram survives into old age, and I found that knowledge comforting but not exactly conducive to a nail-biting experience.  Still, there’s a lot of good stuff here, including a love story, a massive betrayal, and a heartwarming reunification.  Then there’s the ugly truth of slavery that we get to witness through the eyes of a young man who gains and shares a wide-angle perspective.

HOUSE ON ENDLESS WATERS by Emuna Elon

Yoel Blum is a well-known Israeli writer who returns to Amsterdam, the city of his birth, to research a novel about his past.  We know that his mother Sonia escaped the Holocaust with her daughter Nettie, and Yoel, who has discovered that Sonia apparently left another child behind.  Some reviewers have called this a family mystery, but the mystery is not so much about what happened, as that seemed obvious to me, but how it happens.  Yoel has prodded his sister for details after his mother’s death, and her explanation fuels Yoel’s imagination in the writing of his novel, although we readers are enlightened only by the text of Yoel’s novel as it progresses.  He rents a small hotel room in the neighborhood where Sonia lived so that he can immerse himself both physically and emotionally in her story.  This book, then, is actually two stories—Sonia’s and Yoel’s—with almost seamless switching between the two.  Sonia’s life deteriorates little by little into a harrowing existence as she endeavors to save her family from a demise that she can hardly believe is coming.   A revelation at the end explains why Yoel’s mother was so secretive about the past, but that was not particularly surprising, either.  What makes this book special is how personal the story feels.  Sonia’s heartbreak as she wrestles with impossible decisions is palpable and so gut-wrenching that I was immensely glad to know from the beginning that she survives.  This book is a true reminder that the experiences of Sonia’s family, grappling with life and death choices regarding the welfare of themselves and their children, were not unique.  I cannot begin to imagine what their lives were like, but this book provides a small window into that horror.

THE PERFECT NANNY by Leila Slimani

Myriam, has returned to work as a lawyer for the usual reason: her two small children have totally usurped her life.  Now she has gone to the opposite extreme, in which she works late hours, as does her husband Paul, who is a music producer.  The title character is Louise, whose job as their nanny is her life.  She lives alone in a small Paris apartment where the shower no longer works.  She spends so little time there, though, that it doesn’t really matter, as she has established herself as vital to her employers. She is more than a nanny; she cooks and cleans and organizes way beyond the point of mere fastidiousness.  Eventually Paul and Myriam come to the conclusion that Louise may be wired a little too tightly, but they have become so dependent on her that they procrastinate taking any action.  I kept expecting some sort of twist that never materialized.  After finishing the novel, I had to reread the beginning, in which the children have been murdered in rather grisly fashion, and the nanny is hanging on by a thread after having slashed her own wrists.  The rest of the novel is an absorbing backstory, primarily Louise’s, and I do have one question.  I don’t know how much it costs to hire a full time nanny in the U.S., but we learn at the beginning that all of Myriam’s salary will be used to pay Louise, but Paul considers the tradeoff to be worthwhile if it will make Myriam happy.  My question is why, if Louise is making as much money as an attorney, has she not been able to pay off some of her late husband’s debts?  I wasn’t sure if the debts were contributing to Louise’s mental deterioration or if her mental state rendered her too immobile to make strides toward resolving her financial problems.  In any case, I would not recommend this book for working mothers.

UNCIVIL SEASONS by Michael Malone

Justin Savile is a police detective in the town of Hillston, NC.  He also has a law degree, is a descendant of the family who owns the local textile mill, and has done two tours of duty in rehab for alcoholism.  The fact that he still drinks is a red flag, but his partner, Cuddy Mangum, has enough common sense for both of them and a very witty gift of gab.  In fact, all of my favorite passages in the book are Cuddy’s remarks and nicknames for other people, including Justin’s married girlfriend, who Cuddy refers to, somewhat accurately, as Lunchbreak.  The plot’s focus is on the death of Cloris Cadmean, who was murdered in her home, possibly as collateral damage to a robbery, but Justin doesn’t think so.  He also begins investigating the accidental death of her former husband as a possible homicide and enlists the help of a renowned psychic.  Honestly, I’ve read better whodunits as far as the plot is concerned, but this book’s strong suit is the two main characters.  Cuddy and Justin are so much fun that I found it hard to take their detective work very seriously.  There are no super nail-biting moments, but Southern charm and kidding around more than make up for the plot deficiencies.  This is my first Michael Malone detective novel, but I am sure that I will seek him out again when I’m in the market for some suspense, peppered with a bit of good-natured ribbing.  Malone even throws in some old-fashioned romance for good measure.

HANDLING SIN by Michael Malone

Books that are supposed to be funny often strike me as not that funny, or, at the other extreme, just plain silly.  This book falls into the latter category and came across to me as almost a more sober version of On the Road.  At his dying father’s behest, Raleigh Hayes, life insurance salesman, embarks on an odyssey that involves stealing a bust from the library, reuniting with his wild and crazy brother, and finding a stranger named Jubal Rogers.  Much to his frustration, he picks up a mixed bag of fellow travelers, including his obese neighbor Mingo, a pregnant woman, an escaped convict, and a saxophone player.  Raleigh’s quest takes him to Charleston, Atlanta, and eventually New Orleans, where his father has promised to meet him and endow him with a passel of money.  I can’t begin to name all of the ridiculous circumstances that this motley crew encounters along the way, but each one seems more preposterous than the last.  Despite the fact that this book was really not my thing at all and there were 650+ pages of this nonsense, it has a decent message.  On this road trip Raleigh has no choice but to leave his ordered life behind and embrace a more freewheeling existence, at least for the two-week duration of the trip.  I am sure I would have gone berserk in that length of time, but this is more of a buddy story anyway, since all of the characters of any consequence are men.  Raleigh’s delightful wife Aura is mostly on the sidelines, back home in North Carolina, but magnanimously encourages Raleigh, knowing more than he does about how desperately he needs to break out of his routine.

RIDING THE RAP by Elmore Leonard

This is my favorite of Elmore Leonard’s books featuring Raylan Givens, and it is basically a sequel to Pronto.  Harry Arno, retired bookie, is back in this one, as is Harry’s old girlfriend Joyce, who is now with Raylan.  Harry’s debt collector, Bobby Deo, decides to join forces with Chip Ganz, who owes Harry money, and Chip’s friend, Louis Lewis, to turn the tables on Harry.  They enlist Dawn, a young psychic and my favorite character, to help them corral Harry so that they can hold him hostage until he gives them 3 million dollars.  This is basically a kidnapping where the person being kidnapped has to pay the ransom.  Harry finds himself blindfolded and locked in a room of Chip’s house, but Joyce, concerned about Harry’s whereabouts, encourages Raylan to find him.  Raylan proves that his intuition is almost equal to Dawn’s psychic skills, as he tracks down Harry and the no-goods who have absconded with him.  Elmore Leonard’s books are always entertaining, but they are not as dark and sinister as most crime novels.  The criminals are violent but inept and not keen on playing nice with each other.  In other words, their trust in each other wears thin eventually, and it’s every man for himself when the going gets tough.  Raylan, on the other hand, is almost too loyal, standing by Joyce even though she is obviously more concerned about Harry’s welfare than Raylan’s.

PRONTO by Elmore Leonard

Harry Arno, a Miami Beach bookie, has given Raylan Givens, U.S. Marshall, the slip twice.  Raylan makes a deal with Harry’s bail bondsman and follows Harry to Italy with the intention of bringing him back to the States to face a grand jury for murder.  However, some other gangsters want Harry dead, and Raylan becomes more Harry’s protector than his pursuer.  Elmore Leonard always entertains with snappy dialog and the occasional bad guy, like Harry, who is not completely bad, and good guys, like Raylan, who are occasionally and frustratingly outwitted by the bad guys.  Leonard tends to err on the side of being a little theatrical, but he still tells a good yarn.  There’s even a fair maiden in this novel—Harry’s girlfriend Joyce, a former stripper who catches Raylan’s eye and vice versa.  Raylan, of course, is the main character in the now-defunct FX series Justified.  His physical description here does not quite match that of actor Timothy Olyphant, who plays Raylan, but it’s close enough—just as laidback as Olyphant but not quite as handsome.  His boots and ever-present Stetson, even in Italy, definitely match the TV show. 

MAXIMUM BOB by Elmore Leonard

This is not my favorite Elmore Leonard novel, but it was a fast read, fast-paced, and not intellectually demanding.  The title character is Bob Gibbs, a smarmy Circuit Court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida, who is politically incorrect in every category.  The main character is a female heroine this time—Kathy Baker, an attractive probation office who catches the judge’s wandering eye.  Among the dozens of guys in her caseload are Dale Crowe, Jr., and his uncle Elvin Crowe.  Dale is a small-time offender who can’t keep his mouth shut in court, but Elvin is way crazier and more dangerous than he seems.  Judge Gibbs sentenced both men.  When a large alligator busts into the judge’s home, the general consensus is that someone is trying to kill Maximum Bob.  This incident gives Elvin the idea of cutting a deal with a doctor in an ankle monitor to bump off the judge.  Things go haywire from there, and Kathy, accustomed to tracking down parole violators, becomes more of an investigator, alongside handsome, preppie cop Gary Hammond.  As always with Leonard’s novels, the dialog is terrific, and the bad guys are really bad and often inept.  Leonard does not pull any punches in the violence department, but he balances it out with humor and oddball characters.  The ending left me feeling a little deflated, but there are lots more of his novels to offer a pick-me-up.

GLITZ by Elmore Leonard

An Elmore Leonard novel never fails to entertain, and this is no exception.  You can savor the clever dialog or just race through to the finish like I did.  Vincent Mora is a Miami cop on medical leave in San Juan, Puerto Rico, recovering from a bullet wound.  While he is being watched by an ex-con that he sent to prison, Vincent has taken up with Iris, a beautiful call girl who has been promised a job as a hostess in Atlantic City.  The ex-con, Teddy Magyk, wants to kill Vincent but in just the right way.  He has no qualms about murder, but Teddy squanders opportunities throughout the novel to take Vincent out, and somehow Vincent manages not to become aware of Teddy’s intentions.  The action soon moves to Atlantic City, where Vincent uncovers a whole host of illegal activities and mobster-like characters, with equally mobster-like names, such as Jackie Garbo, Moose Johnson, and Tommy Donovan.  Some thrillers are full of twists and turns, but this novel is surprisingly free of all that, and the plot is very easy to follow, as Vincent eliminates suspects one by one, and I don’t mean that he kills them off.  Many novels these days leave a lot of loose ends, but everything here is nice and tidy at the end, leaving you ready for the next Elmore Leonard adventure but not puzzled about how this one ended.  One of my favorite images in this novel is where Vincent, carrying a gun and wearing nothing but his tighty-whities, chases his would-be assailant outside his hotel.  The only person who seems to notice is a drunk, who makes a hilarious remark about Vincent’s lack of apparel.  Only in Atlantic City, I guess.

GREENWOOD by Michael Christie

If you draw a line through the center of a tree stump, your trajectory will basically match the timeline of this book, from the present, then back by decades into the past, then coming back through those same time periods to the present again.  In this book, the “present” is actually our future—year 2038.  Deforestation and blight have left the world dustier than the Midwest was in the 1930s and almost uninhabitable.  Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood is a tour guide on an island off Canada’s western coast where an old-growth forest still stands.  A man she knew in college comes to tell her that she may not be as destitute as she thinks she is, nor may she actually be who she thinks she is.  Now we drop back several decades at a time to become acquainted with Jake’s grandmother, Willow, who also cherishes trees, despite the fact that her blind father, Harris Greenwood, runs a multi-million-dollar logging company.  My two favorite characters in this saga are Harris’s brother Everett, who spends half his life in prison, and Liam Feeney, Harris’s lover and “describer” of surroundings that Harris cannot see.  Both men sacrifice everything for their principles.  The subject matter is similar to that of Richard Powers’s The Overstory, but this novel is easier to follow, despite the V-shaped timeline.  The writing here has a calm and soothing quality, just as a quiet moment in an old-growth forest would.  This novel could have been suspenseful, but it really isn’t, despite a manhunt, a shootout, a frozen corpse, and a tragic fall.

SACRED GAMES by Vikram Chandra

This book is just too long.  Even if its length were halved, it would still be 450 pages, and I might be OK with that.  It reminds me a lot of Shantaram, another too-long book set in Mumbai.  In this one we have two main characters—a gangster and a policeman.  The gangster is Ganesh Gaitonde, who dies early in the novel, but his first person narration gives his backstory and occupies a large portion of the book.   Sartaj Singh is the policeman who is the heart and soul of the story, however.  He and his fellow officers are unabashedly on the take.  Their illegal earnings constitute a hefty percentage of their income, and everyone involved seems to think that graft is perfectly acceptable.  The poverty and crowded, squalid living conditions described here are not surprising, but the level of corruption is astonishing.  Still, Santaj is doing his best to juggle several cases, knowing that he cannot completely quash the gang violence.  Numerous lengthy chapters are devoted to other tangential characters, such as Santaj’s mother, and sometimes we don’t discover their relationship to other events and/or characters until later.  In other words, the structure of the novel is a little annoying, as is the inclusion of numerous words that need translating.  I found the glossary at the end to be beneficial for reading the first few chapters, but as I got deeper into the novel, the foreign (Hindi?) words were not defined.  I suppose I should have read with my phone handy so that I could look them up, but, honestly, I just wanted to get to the end.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE by Kevin Wilson

Lillian is going to work for her rich friend Madison as a sort of governess to Madison’s two 10-year-old twin stepchildren—a boy and a girl. Their mother has died (her death is a story in and of itself), and their father, Madison’s husband, wants nothing to do with them. They pose a very real liability to his political career in the U.S. Senate. The kids have been living with their grandparents without any sort of discipline, because, if they get agitated, they get hot, and I don’t mean that they develop a fever. They burst into flames and torch everything around them except their own bodies. Lillian, with no child-rearing experience whatsoever, sees these kids as afflicted children who are desperately in need of love and attention. This is the second Kevin Wilson book I’ve read with a female protagonist, and she is once again authentic and funny and relatable. My only beef with Lillian, or perhaps with the storyline, is that she adores Madison, who comes across as a spoiled brat, who carelessly throws Lillian into the line of fire, pun intended, because Madison herself just can’t be bothered with such a task while supporting her husband’s political ambitions and raising a small child of her own. Lillian admits to being in love with Madison, but Madison’s physical beauty seems to be all that she has to offer, and Lillian does not strike me as being that shallow. Then there’s the boarding school incident, which I found completely unforgiveable, in which Madison screwed Lillian over and wrecked her life. Madison is the perfect foil for Lillian’s good intentions but turns out not to be quite as witchy as I thought, following a blockbuster plot twist. It’s a “Whoa! What just happened?” moment that turns Madison’s household on its ear. I particularly love the title, which probably has even more implications than I picked up on. When Lillian decides to take the “fire” children to the library, she soothes their anxiety by calmly telling them that they will be indistinguishable from other kids there; there’s “nothing to see here.” The unfortunate alternate interpretation of that statement is that their father makes every effort to ensure that they are invisible to his constituency and therefore unable to tarnish his squeaky-clean public image. No wonder the kids start heating up whenever they see him.

PERFECT LITTLE WORLD by Kevin Wilson

Izzy is a pregnant teenager, and the father of her unborn child is the high school art teacher, Hal.  Izzy wants to have the baby, with or without Hal’s support, and she comes to the attention of a scientific study involving communal child raising.  Dr. Preston Grind, who is in charge of the project, claims that the living conditions for the 10-year duration of the study do not represent a commune, but he’s basically splitting hairs on that question.  Still, Izzy signs up, as she figures raising her son in a closed environment with nine couples and their newborns is preferable to having to work two jobs just to make ends meet. The kids, of course, don’t realize that they are guinea pigs, but the parents create an unpredictable family dynamic.  Izzy is the only single parent, and, in many ways, she is an observer, but she also has more common sense than the rest of the collective family, despite a few lapses in judgment—understandable for someone so young.  Whether or not the project is successful as a child-raising alternative is almost beside the point, since the parents are the real wild cards here.  Unfortunately, I felt that the author painted them with overly broad strokes, so that we never really get a clear delineation of who’s who.  His focus is Dr. Grind, whose own childhood was a nightmare, and on Izzy, and, granted, she is the character we care about the most—strong, intelligent, compassionate.  Oddly, the author has chosen not to make her ambitious, and I was frustrated that she was not motivated to make better use of her smarts.  I finally realized that one of Izzy’s many gifts is that she is not restless or impatient, nor is she particularly concerned with what comes after the 10-year project is complete.  She is mostly content to let things run their course and then take it from there.  On the other hand, she is diligent in her pursuits and goes after what she wants.  As for the group parenting project, I am curious as to what inspired the author to come up with this idea.  He has certainly given us something to contemplate with regard to what constitutes a family and that families can devolve into mayhem, even without the influence of outside forces.

LADY IN THE LAKE by Laura Lippman

Maddie Schwartz is ready to leave her husband in 1966.  To her surprise, her teenage son elects to live with his dad.  Maddie charges on, though, and strikes out on her own.  When she and a friend find the body of a girl who disappeared, Maddie finagles her way into a clerical job in a newspaper office.  Then another body is discovered.  This time it’s a young black woman named Cleo, discovered near the fountain in a lake after the body interferes with the lighting system.  Maddie gets caught up in this murder as well, as she is the one who reports the electrical issue, as a result of a letter to the newspaper.  Cleo’s life parallels Maddie’s in many ways, but Maddie is very much alive—more so than ever actually.  She pulls a stunt early in the novel that did not endear her to me, but her fearlessness, ambition, and ineptitude in interviewing family members and possible perpetrators related to the two murders definitely got my attention.  I sincerely wanted her to succeed, but she takes no prisoners along the way.  Her flaws, though, are what make her such a compelling character.  I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the format of this book.  Several first-person (italicized) chapters are narrated by the murder victims.   The voices of a number of other chapters, also in first-person, belong to characters just introduced in the previous chapter, and sometimes these characters are very tangential.  Whether this chain of narrators has some purpose or whether it is just a gimmick, I’m not sure, but the author manages to keep the storyline on track.  Sometimes I found the diversion welcome and sometimes not.  Most of the chapters, however, are third-person and follow Maddie’s unwavering efforts to build an independent and fulfilling life for herself.  Although she does not intentionally trample people close to her, sometimes there’s collateral damage.

THE LAST PLACE by Laura Lippman

Tess Monaghan is not the most talented fictional private investigator.  In this case she has a lot of help from a former Toll Facilities cop named Carl Dewitt, who had the misfortune of discovering a head without a body in the middle of a highway bridge.  Carl then became obsessed with the murder of Lucy Fancher.  Tess is actually investigating five cold murder cases, including Lucy Fancher’s.  She has no inkling that these cases are anything but random.  However, as a reader, I thought the first two cases seemed eerily similar, even if Tess didn’t pick up on that fact until quite a bit later in the book.  This was a fast and enjoyable read but certainly not special.  It has the usual twists and turns and red herrings, but I thought Carl was a much more compelling character than Tess.  Tess may be tenacious, but she is not in Carl’s league in that department.  Also, with five more or less disparate victims, I thought the connections between the cases were a bit contrived.  The author does intersperse throughout the novel a few pages devoted to the musings and activities of the killer, so that we know he has his eye on Tess.  Does he intend for her to be his next victim?  No doubt.  I found these interruptions, distinguished by a different typeface so that I could groan each time I encountered one, to be annoying and not really that informative, other than, of course, his focus on Tess.  I found her to be a bit elusive, and her investigating skills seemed mediocre at best.  This book does build on some events from previous novels in the series, but this is the first one I’ve read.  Perhaps The Last Place is not the ideal starting place.

LONG BRIGHT RIVER by Liz Moore

Mickey Fitzpatrick is a Philadelphia cop who shutters each time she gets a call to the scene of a dead woman.  It could be her missing sister, Kacey, who has struggled with drug addiction for years, swatting in abandoned buildings.  Mickey’s life is not an easy one.  Her new partner talks too much, and her boss doesn’t like her.  Mickey’s biggest joy is her young son whose father, also a cop, contributes no support, and whose babysitter routinely falls asleep on the job.  Mickey and Kacey lost their parents when the two girls were children, and their grandmother Gee reluctantly took over the job of raising them.  Gee is emotionally abusive and has to be one of the more despicable grandmothers in modern literature.  Given her lack of parental nurturing, it’s no wonder that Kacey has ended up on the streets.  Mickey is mostly a victim of her own poor judgment of character.  As for the dead women, apparently a serial killer is preying upon prostitutes and junkies.  His identity was fairly obvious to me early in the story, but the big revelation that comes later in the book is not about him.  Let’s just say it’s more of a family matter, and this is primarily a story of a family, rather than a murder mystery.  Mickey’s search for Kacey is admirable, except that she sacrifices almost everything to that quest.  Again, I questioned her judgment and her priorities.  This book is well-written, but it is very dark and gritty.  There is one scene in the neonatal unit of a hospital that is absolutely heartbreaking and almost a little too vivid.  This novel has its uplifting moments, but don’t hold your breath.

WHEN WE BELIEVED IN MERMAIDS by Barbara O'Neal

Kit’s sister Josie has been dead for fifteen years.  Or at least that’s what Kit thinks until she sees Josie on a news clip from New Zealand.  Kit takes off for Auckland, where she almost instantly meets Javier, a hunky Spanish musician.  Josie has a hunky man, too—her husband Simon—and two children.  There’s no mystery here, really, except perhaps what caused Josie to fake her own death and change her name.  The premise and the plot are pretty lame, and this book is definitely not high quality literature.  It’s an Amazon imprint, and it shows.  It has a little of everything—betrayal, multiple types of abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, a drowning and a near-drowning, earthquakes, and a fair amount of sex.  It’s mindless entertainment, kind of like a daytime soap opera.  This is not a book that you can sink your teeth into, although the descriptions of food are mouth-watering, as it does not require much thinking.  Still, I didn’t find it a chore to read, as it held my attention, and the writing was not a distraction.  One oddity is that both Josie, whose new name is Mari, and Kit are first person narrators.  However, the author does not make you guess who is talking, as each chapter bears the narrator’s name.  I did not expect to like this book, but, honestly, I can’t complain.  It’s cheesy women’s lit, but sometimes frothy and frivolous fun is just fine.

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS by Luis Alberto Urrea

Big Angel and Little Angel are half-brothers, and they are together in San Diego for Big Angel’s mother’s funeral.  Big Angel is planning to have a 70^th birthday party the next day while all of his family members are in town for the funeral.  He is dying of cancer and doesn’t expect to live out the week.  His father left Big Angel and the rest of his family to starve in Mexico while he moved to the U.S. to marry an American woman.  Although most of the story takes place over a few days, we become privy to Big Angel’s big secret and meet his siblings, offspring, cousins, etc.  I read this book in electronic format, and finally at the end I discovered a hand-drawn family tree of sorts that would have been really helpful at the beginning.  Not only could I not keep straight the generations, but some characters have nicknames, and I could not keep track of which nickname went with which person, although ultimately I’m not sure that it mattered.  The vast majority of the book seems to be an introduction to this vast array of characters, both living and dead, and the real action takes place mostly in the last quarter of the novel.  It’s one thing to become immersed in a culture that is completely different from mine, and I love having the opportunity to do that, but I still want and expect that story to hold my attention, and this one just didn’t.

SACRED by Dennis Lehane

Angie Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie are back in action as private investigators.   A beautiful woman named Desiree Stone, daughter of mega-wealthy Trevor Stone, has gone missing.  Her father kidnaps our intrepid pair in order to get their attention and is willing to pay a boatload of money for Desiree’s return.  Also missing is the private investigator he had previously hired, who happens to be Patrick’s friend and mentor, Jay Becker.  As Angie remarks, nothing is as it seems.  Angie and Patrick soon find themselves in Tampa, along with a couple of Stone’s goons, as they try to trace the whereabouts of Jay and Desiree. Lots of hair-raising adventures and close calls ensue for our intrepid pair.  I don’t think this novel lives up to the standard of A Drink Before the War, but it’s still pretty good stuff.  Lehane’s dialog and clever banter never disappoint, and this book has enough twists to keep you guessing and whipping through the pages.  What’s sacred is the relationship between our two heroes who realize that no one matters more to them than each other; they have each other’s back even as almost everyone else betrays their trust.  Angie and Patrick are really the reason to read this book, regardless of what shenanigans their clients are up to.

DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND by Dennis Lehane

There is no such thing as a bad Dennis Lehane novel, although I did like its predecessor, ADrink Before the War, better than this one.  Angie and Patrick are called into action again when a psychiatrist receives a photo of her son in the mail.  Recognizing this as a possible mob threat, Angie and Patrick begin surveillance of this young man whose regularly patterned college life yields no clues.  Actually, there is one clue in an event outside the norm, but it is such a blip on their radar that it doesn’t warrant immediate attention.  Soon, though, all hell breaks loose, as people start turning up dead, in very grisly fashion.  Similar murders that took place decades earlier offer a trail back to Patrick’s father, a man who, according to Patrick, was capable of anything, including murder.  (This is also not the first novel with scary clowns, nor is it likely to be the last.)  Lehane just has a way with words, with crisp dialog, and he endows his intrepid duo with traits and emotions that cause us to become attached to them, despite the violence that they can’t seem to shake.  The author doesn’t shy away from really dark stuff and recognizes how it can affect the personal relationships of those who have to face such evil on a regular basis.

EVERYTHING UNDER by Daisy Johnson

If you pay attention to the chapter headings, you can easily keep up with the three timelines in this novel, but I still found the content to be a little hazy.  The three main characters are Sarah, her daughter Gretel, and a runaway transgender adolescent, formerly named Margot but self-identifying as Marcus.  It turns out that Marcus has abandoned his adoptive home after another transgender character, Fiona, informs him that he will have sex with his mother and kill his father.  I figured out before he did what this prediction meant, but that was only one problem that I had with this novel.  Gretel works as a lexicographer, but mostly she searches for her mother, who abandoned her sixteen years earlier.  We know from the first chapter that she finds her but that her mother suffers from dementia and is becoming more and more of a handful.  The novel fails to fill in long time gaps in the lives of all three characters, leaving me puzzled and frustrated.  Mostly, though, nothing in the novel is particularly straightforward, partly because of the three timelines, and partly because the atmosphere leans toward the supernatural, particularly with regard to a river monster known as the Bonak.  When all is said and done, this book was just as muddy and murky as the river that plays a central role in it.  I’m so glad it was short so that I could minimize the amount of time I had to spend being dragged down into the confusion of abandoned and runaway children who are sometimes reunited with their parents without either party even realizing it.

CHANCES ARE... by Richard Russo

This may not be a mystery novel, but the storyline does revolve around Jacy’s disappearance in 1971.  She and three guys, all head-over-heels in love with her—Mickey, Teddy, and Lincoln—had just graduated from an exclusive New England college.  The Vietnam War was raging, and the draft lottery dealt each guy a different hand.  Now the three men, in their late sixties, have reunited for a long weekend, and it was all too obvious to me what happened to Jacy, more or less.  The first half of the novel was much more engrossing than the second half, which is largely Jacy’s story, and, for me, she did not leap off the page as well as the men did in the first half.  I’ll spare you the details that made her whereabouts obvious, and some parts of her story did not make sense to me.  My biggest beef with this book is that Russo failed to make me appreciate Jacy’s charisma.  Why exactly did all three guys adore her?  I understand why none of them made a play for her; they would probably have sacrificed their friendship with the other two.   Plus, she was engaged, but her fiancé attended a different school.  The three guys all worked in the dining hall of Jacy’s sorority house and were not in her same league financially.  (I loved the comment in the book that only the wealthy use the word “summer” as a verb.)  Still, there was certainly more to Jacy than her elevated social standing.  She came across as free-spirited and compassionate and perhaps a bit elusive.  For me, the most intriguing character is Teddy, who struggles with both mental and physical issues, but he is not a particularly appealing character.  That distinction belongs to Lincoln, who is the main character, but I wish his wife Anita, an attorney who passed up an opportunity to attend Stanford law school, had appeared on the page more frequently.  Her wisdom far exceeds that of any of the other characters.

MOHAWK by Richard Russo

Annie is a divorced thirty-something in the small town of Mohawk, NY.  Her son Randall is as smart as a whip but finds that he is more popular if he doesn’t make straight A’s.  In a town where mediocrity is obviously prized, Annie’s father, Mather Grouse, is one of the few denizens who values integrity.  Annie’s ex, Dallas, is a personable guy but totally unreliable, and Annie is in love with her cousin’s husband Dan, who is in a wheelchair.  There are some villains as well, mostly in the person of Rory Gaffney, but a small town novel would not be complete without some school bullies.  This novel is basically a character study of people who wish their lives had taken a different path, except for Dallas, who contentedly wears shirts with someone else’s name that he accidentally retrieves from the laundromat dryer.  A plot finally develops in the last 100 pages or so, but it was almost too little too late.  The writing is superb, and the characters are vivid, but except for a nearly lethal building demolition, nothing much happens for around 300 pages.  I can survive on sparkling dialog for only so long.  The final quarter of the book does make it worth reading, but I think Russo’s more recent stuff may be a better use of my time.

THE LITTLE FRIEND by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt crafts each sentence so meticulously that it’s no wonder she writes only one book every ten years.  This novel takes place in the fictional town of Alexandria, Mississippi, not far from my home town of Memphis, in the 1970s.  Reminiscent of Faulkner in its setting and its subject matter, this story takes place during one summer in which precocious 12-year-old Harriet sets out to avenge the hanging of her brother when Harriet was an infant.  Harriet has to rely on her elderly aunts, her grandmother, and her household’s black maid for adult role models and supervision, since her mother has never recovered emotionally from her son’s death.  Harriet’s nemesis is Danny Ratliff, who may or may not have murdered her brother, and his family is dysfunctional in a completely different way.  One brother, Eugene, is intent on becoming a snake-handling preacher, and the other, Farish, is cooking crystal meth, with a taxidermy business on the side as a cover.  Some reviewers have deemed this a coming-of-age story, but I see it as an adventure that gets out of hand.  Harriet and her partner-in-crime, a boy named Hely, get in way over their heads by threatening the Ratliff brothers, particularly since Eugene and Farish are completely whacked out on their own product.  I really felt sorry for these ne’er-do-well Ratliff men whose grandmother constantly warns them that they will never escape their impoverished roots.  For me, this psychological beating is almost more devastating than a physical assault.  It just seems so much more difficult to overcome.  My biggest disappointment in this book was the ending.  The suspense and excitement grow right up until the last page with no clear resolution.  After reading 600+ pages, I was expecting a more satisfying conclusion.  The author leaves us with clues about what will happen next, but I wasn’t really sure if all of the clues were reliable.

THE GIVER OF STARS by Jojo Moyes

It’s the 1930s, and Alice’s marriage is a sham.  She and her husband Bennett live in the same house as Bennett’s father, who owns a coal mine in rural Kentucky.  The community has begun a library service that delivers books to families who live in the wooded hills nearby.  Alice seizes the opportunity to escape her unfulfilled life by volunteering as one of the packhorse librarians.  She is an accomplished horsewoman from England, and soon finds that this job basically gives her a whole new family.  The other three librarians have their own reasons for joining the group, but the most independent of these is Margery, their defacto leader.  After having cried my way through Me Before You, I was not enthusiastic about reading another JoJo Moyes novel, but I found myself racing through this book and, yes, stopping at intervals to wipe the tears from my eyes, particularly as I neared the end.  It’s formulaic and melodramatic, and the writing is so-so, but I can’t deny that Moyes has a knack for eliciting emotion from the reader, in a manipulative sort of way.  Alice is the main character, but Margery as her mentor is the book’s heart and soul and is as ornery as her mule, Charley.  The book has conflict galore but mainly in the person of Alice’s father-in-law.  He is rotten to the core with his disregard for the safety of the miners and their families, and he’s as mean as a snake when it comes to his expectations of women in general and the packhorse librarians in particular, especially Alice and Margery.  He is about as one-dimensional a character as they come, and Bennett cowers in his father’s shadow.  There are a few good men as well, and they are just as one-dimensional in the opposite direction.  This may not be great literature, but I unabashedly enjoyed my hours with these strong women who are even stronger together.

THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE by Erik Larson

This book may not be as great as its main character, but it is still pretty great.  I am not a history buff, but Erik Larson always makes historical narratives enthralling by adding personal insight into the daily lives of people—Churchill in this case—whose impact on the world is immeasurable.  Here Larson covers a year of Churchill’s life and work, beginning with his appointment as Prime Minister in 1940.  The book is an intimate portrait of his family and his closest friends and advisers.  Much of the information comes from the diary of one of his secretaries, John Colville, who apparently comments on Churchill’s family at least as much as his own personal life.  Although this is Churchill’s story, the book also contains a decent amount of information about the inner workings and strategies of the Nazi government.  Hitler’s chief propagandist, Goebbels, makes the staggering assessment in his diary that “If he [Churchill] had come to power in 1933, we [the Germans] would not be where we are today.”  On the British side, much credit also goes to Lord Beaverbrook, who miraculously whips the disorganized British aircraft industry into shape.  Churchill’s oratory gifts are basically what keeps the country afloat, boosting morale even as German bombs are exploding all over England.  His words also target another audience—Roosevelt and the American people.  Desperate for help from the U.S., Churchill walks a fine line between depicting Britain as fighting a losing battle and being fine on its own.  Finally, Pearl Harbor changes everything.

ISAAC'S STORM by Erik Larson

Isaac Cline is the Isaac in the title of this terrific book about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.  His hubris makes him an anti-hero, but he is not half as bad as his superiors in the Weather Bureau in Washington.  It’s one thing to underestimate the impact of a storm, but to blatantly deny those who have first-hand information the ability to disseminate that information is criminally corrupt.  Isaac is foolhardy in his confidence that a hurricane can never hit Galveston and that his house can withstand any storm that nature might send its way.  Granted, there were no satellites in 1900, and meteorologists had scant information as to where a storm was at any given time, especially if the storm was currently over water.  Still, the assumptions they made were not only deadly, but they seemed to have no basis in reality whatsoever.  This book should serve as a warning to any leader that downplays Mother Nature’s power.  This story is gripping, especially as the author introduces us to various people in the town, as well as those who found themselves in transit via railway to Galveston as the storm hit.  Larson tells us of human losses in a very human way and leaves us with images that we are not likely to forget, such as a group of children strung together to an adult with clothesline, only to drown when the line gets caught in the myriad debris.  This book has lessons galore but also stories of survival under devastating and dangerous circumstances.  It also has a few surprises.  Who knew that some people died from snakebites? 

THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett

Danny Conroy may be the first-person narrator of this book (I’m always little thrown off by male first-person narrators of books penned by female authors), but the house in the title carries more influence than many of the human characters.  Danny and his older sister Maeve grow up in this house, mostly without the presence of their do-gooder mother, who is appalled by the ostentatious structure that feels to her more like a museum than a home.  She abandons her children to help the poor in India, and her husband carelessly marries a pretty golddigger, who morphs into a wicked stepmother in no time.  This premise may not sound very original, but in the hands of a great writer like Patchett, it doesn’t have to be.  I will say that I had no difficulty putting the book down, until a revelation about halfway through the book grabbed my attention temporarily.  My excitement quickly fizzled, but no matter.  This is basically a sibling story where the older sister becomes the surrogate mother, and although I realize that’s not very original, either, Maeve and Danny’s relationship is the glue that holds this novel together.  One of my favorite passages in the book is Danny’s comparison of a hospital’s layout to a cancer that grows willy-nilly, as wings are bequeathed and added to the building in haphazard fashion.  How true.  I like a number of Patchett’s novels more (Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, State of Wonder, Bel Canto), but I still found this to be a satisfying and enjoyable read, though possibly not memorable.

THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT by Ann Patchett

This book was such a delight that it made me want to downgrade all the other books I’ve read lately.  It also made me want to hug my loved ones as close to me as possible.  “Parsifal is dead.”  That’s the first sentence of the novel, and it sets everything in motion.  The book is about his widow, Sabine, who also served as Parsifal’s assistant in his magic acts, including an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and performances in Las Vegas.  Parsifal, however, was gay, and was preceded in death by his true love, Phan.  For estate purposes, Parsifal marries Sabine after Phan’s death.  If this sounds like an odd triangle, it really is not.  Sabine was in love with Parsifal but understood that her feelings would never be reciprocated, although the two were extremely close.  After Parsifal’s death, Sabine discovers that almost everything she knew about Parsifal’s childhood is a lie.  This is a story of grief and love and family struggles and a whole lot more, including a few rather scary moments.  An aura of sadness hangs over the book but in a beautiful way rather than a depressing or melodramatic way, as Sabine immerses herself in Parsifal’s past, by way of the family she never knew he had.  There is also one scene in the book that made me laugh so hard that it brought tears to my eyes.  A particularly turbulent commuter flight has a pilot coming out of the cockpit to reprimand a panicked flight attendant.  I know this may not sound like a funny event, but I could hardly read this passage aloud to my husband without cracking up.