PEACE LIKE A RIVER by Leif Enger

I know that life is a miracle and that life is full of miracles, but this book goes way beyond that. Jeremiah Land can walk on air and heal with his touch, but for some reason he has not healed his severely asthmatic son Reuben. There's also a loaves-and-fishes-type incident, and frankly, this is too much hocus-pocus for me; I'm reminded of Richard Bach's Illusions. When Jeremiah's older son Davy busts out of prison for murdering the town bullies, his father and siblings set out for the Badlands to look for Davy in an Airstream that was bequeathed to them. They encounter a Fed who's also on Davy's trail, and Roxanna, a widow who shelters the family during a snowstorm. It wasn't clear to me whether Jeremiah was divorced from his first wife, who abandoned him and the kids when Jeremiah chucked med school in favor of becoming a janitor, due to, you guessed it, a miracle. Anyway, it's no surprise that Roxanna becomes Jeremiah's love interest and a surrogate mother to his children. My favorite thing in the book, by far, is Jeremiah's daughter Swede's epic poem about a man named Sundown who is chasing a bandit named Valdez. It seemed to me to be a bit beyond the capability of a 9-year-old, but that's just a small miracle, compared to all the rest. Given that her brother becomes an outlaw himself, she starts to sympathize with Valdez. The poetry dwindles, though, as the book goes on, and I was disappointed about that. Several people had recommended this book to me, but it was just too predictable and mushy for my taste.

Amazon: 4.5 stars (448 reviews)

Barnes & Noble: 4 stars (146 reviews)

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson

As with many translations, the unfamiliar, unpronounceable proper names interrupt the flow of the prose. For example, the main character's name in this Swedish novel is Blomkvist, which doesn't exactly roll smoothly off my English-speaking tongue. His female business partner and frequent lover is often referred to by her last name of Berger, but there is also a male character whose first name is Birger. The names of places are even more inscrutable. Still, the storyline is quite addictive, although it becomes somewhat gruesome and less engrossing in the second half. It's a good, old-fashioned mystery that reads like it was inspired by Dashiell Hammett. It also reminded me of the game of Clue, because the crime was committed on an unreachable island with a limited group of suspects. Blomkvist is a journalist whose reputation has been tarnished by a conviction for libel. Eighty-something-year-old Henrik Vanger has hired Blomkvist during his self-imposed sabbatical to investigate the disappearance of Harriett, Vanger's brother's granddaughter. The plot also made me think of the movie Blow-Up, because a photo becomes key to the investigation. Blomkvist hires Lisbeth Salander, an anti-social computer hacker with a photographic memory, as his assistant. Lisbeth has skeletons in her own closet and a personal vendetta against men who abuse women. In my imagination, she looks like the main character in the movie Run Lola Run. Perhaps this is part of the reason that this book is so popular; it conjures up striking visuals of the characters and the chilly Nordic landscape. Plus, there are enough evildoers—Nazis, rapists, corporate sleazeballs, etc.—to fill several novels.

THE 19TH WIFE by David Ebershoff

It doesn't take much to convince me that a religious sect is wacky, but Ebershoff does much more than that. He interleaves a fictionally-enhanced version of the life of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's last wives, with that of Jordan Scott, one of the many adolescent boys thrown out of modern-day Mesaland, which houses a Mormon spin-off group that still practices polygamy. What with the elders of the community snapping up all the young girls as wives, there just aren't enough women to go around, and the boys are evicted for the slightest transgression. Ironically, Jordan was left by the side of the road at 14 years old for holding a girl's hand, when he is, in fact, gay. Jordan's first person account of how he returns to Mesaland to solve the mystery of his father's murder has a much lighter tone than the overwhelmingly depressing story of the early Mormons in the 1800s. The author focuses on the subject of plural marriage in both storylines, which was not only encouraged but virtually required until the Mormons put out a manifesto banning the practice, partly because of the bad press Ann Eliza Young gave it and partly to ensure Utah's statehood. How the Latter-Day Saints justified the fact that something as fundamental to their faith as polygamy went from being sanctioned to being prohibited is a mystery to me, but it's even more puzzling why the women thought that allowing their husbands as many sex partners as they wanted was a ticket to heaven. Maybe the women felt they earned it with their suffering.

THE LOST CITY OF Z by David Grann

What would possess a middle-aged, out-of-shape journalist to trek deep into one of the world's most unforgiving environments to search for an explorer who vanished 80+ years ago? When David Grann reviews Percy Fawcett's secret charts, it's as though he's consulting a treasure map, and his enthusiasm would be contagious if he hadn't already told us several horror stories from other quests into the Amazon valley. The author borrows a popular technique from fiction writers by pairing a current day storyline with one from the past. I think, too, that he wanted to see the Amazon region first-hand so that he could describe the jungle with clarity, although much had been denuded since Fawcett's disappearance. Fortunately, the author had the benefit of a satellite phone, a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and a boat with an outboard motor. In 1925, Percy Fawcett had none of these luxuries and set out on foot with his inexperienced team--son Jack and Jack's buddy Raleigh--on a quest to discover a possibly fictitious lost city. In fact, most anthropologists believed that the likelihood of a civilization being able to flourish in such a hostile environment was nil. Fawcett, however, was obsessed with finding it and convinced of his own invincibility—two factors that probably contributed to his demise and that of his young cohorts. Actually, one can only speculate as to what happened to them, but the most likely scenario is that they were killed by a violent native tribe. It's also possible that they succumbed to starvation, snake bite, infection, injury, or worst of all, infestation by any number of deadly creepy-crawly things. Grann himself has a day from hell in which he's been abandoned by his guide and forced to wade through waist-high water and tall reeds to reach a village, and he's not even sure if he's headed in the right direction. At least we know he survived to tell the tale.

ANGELICA by Arthur Phillips

Things are not always what they seem. Angelica is the four-year-old daughter of Constance and Joseph and still sleeps in her parents' bedroom. When Joseph demands that Angelica be moved to her own room, Constance starts seeing a belligerent ghost who seems to threaten her and her daughter. She consults a spiritualist, Anne Montague, to eradicate the ghost. First, we get the entire tale from Constance's perspective, then Anne's, then Joseph's, and finally Angelica's. Perspective is obviously key, as the first three accounts differ wildly from each other, with each subsequent account making the previous one seem ludicrous. Constance's fears and suspicions are tainted by a tormented childhood, and Anne draws her own conclusions, based on what she observes and hears from Constance. Joseph's story is the most tragic, as he describes his bewilderment at his wife's actions and tries to gain some sort of grip on a household in disarray. Angelica is like a pendulum, contributing to the general sense of distrust between her parents, swinging her affections from one parent to another. In this case, truth is in the eye of the beholder. I wonder if my sense of what happened would be altered if I had read the sections in a different order.

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery

Renee is the frumpy 54-year-old concierge in a posh Paris residential high-rise. Paloma is an ultra-precocious 12-year-old who resides in the building with her wealthy, educated, superficial family. These two narrators ultimately find themselves kindred spirits, joined by new resident Monsieur Ozu, a Japanese gentleman who has aroused the curiosity of everyone else in the building. Both Renee and Paloma are leading a clandestine life, but Monsieur Ozu recognizes almost immediately that Renee, despite her impoverished upbringing, is a closet intellectual with a finely-honed appreciation for the arts. She quotes Proust and Kant, recognizes Mozart's Reqiuem when it is blasted from Ozu's bathroom, and prefers Dutch painters over French. Paloma's chapters are journal entries of "Profound Thoughts." She is the top student in her school but keeps her smarts in check so as not to draw too much attention to herself. She is also matter-of-factly planning suicide, unless something to live for appears in the meantime. At times, both Renee and Paloma wax philosophical, making the book a bit of a snoozer in the beginning. However, after the three main characters discover each other, I became hooked. Will Renee overcome her reticence and break out of the shackles of her class and position? Will her new friendships give Paloma the raison d'etre that she's seeking? Renee is the Cinderella character that we're hoping has found her prince, and Paloma provides her own brand of cynical humor. Her mother immediately carts her off to the family psychiatrist when Paloma tells the family that she hears voices, just to get them off her case. The scene where she cuts a deal with the shrink is priceless.

LARK & TERMITE by Jayne Anne Phillips

I had to read the first ten pages of this book three times, but after that it grew on me, to the point that the characters became people I could hardly let go of. The book takes place over four days in 1959 in Winfield, WV, and gives the perspective of three characters. A fourth character, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is in Korea during the same four days in 1950. Back in WV, though, we have half-siblings Termite, a disabled nine-year-old, and Lark, a beautiful teenage girl whose top priority is Termite's care. They live with their aunt Nonie, who has raised both her sister Lola's children since they were toddlers. Lola was married to Leavitt, and Termite is his son. It becomes obvious to the reader who Lark's father is, but she doesn't find out until the end. I'm not sure why his identity is hidden from her or why her mother's fate is a secret. Lark's narration is the only one in first person, and her voice is certainly the heart of the novel. A peripheral character is the mysterious albino Robert Stamble, the new rep from Social Services, who seems to connect with Termite and doesn't seem bent on removing him to a group home. (Hint: His name is significant.) The pivotal event is a flood, during which Lark makes some discoveries about her family and realizes that their lives are all going to change. Perhaps the flood is a metaphor for washing away the past, but tunnels seem to be a bigger symbol. Leavitt and a crowd of refugees crowd together in a tunnel, seeking cover from American fire. There's also a tunnel in the train yard where Lark frequently takes Termite, because he enjoys the noise and vibration. The train represents escape for Lark, with light at the end of the tunnel, I suppose.