THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI by Jennifer Cody Epstein

I am not enough of an art lover to recognize the name of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang.  This fictionalized account of her life begins with her “adoption” by a brothel madam at the tender age of fourteen.  After a customs official secures her freedom, she battles starvation and misogyny to pursue her craft, but her real enemy is the stifling Chinese culture that frowns on artwork involving nudes.  In Yuliang’s case, many of her paintings are self-portraits, drawing even more prudish backlash.  This book does not pack a lot of punch, but the storyline proceeds at a decent pace, as we follow Yuliang’s gradual development from an illiterate and naïve girl to an outspoken and accomplished woman.  The author blends a bit of Chinese history into the storyline, especially when it helps illuminate the cultural sentiment of the time.  The author’s writing style is clear and not overly dramatic, but there are moments when I wondered if she was embellishing the storyline with too much emotional strife, especially with regard to the resistance of Yuliang’s husband to his wife’s chosen field of study.  In any case, Yuliang certainly negotiated more than her share of roadblocks in her lifetime, paving the way for women and artists in China and around the world.

LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE by Valeria Luiselli

I always admire a writer who can evoke a mood so flawlessly.  In this case, the feat is especially amazing, since this is Luiselli’s first novel written in English.  A haunting melancholy pervades this entire novel, and not just because it is about the disintegration of a marriage, the deportation of children, and the defeat of the Apaches.  Yes, the subject matter is devastatingly sad, but the mood is relentless and heightened by the fact that the four main characters—Ma, Pa, the girl, and the boy—are never named.  The story takes place during a cross-country road trip, and everyone, except the 5-year-old girl, knows that the two adults will split up at the end, each taking along the child s/he brought into the marriage.  The 10-year-old boy is the one most resistant to the break-up and at some point begins to chronicle, both in words and photos, the events of the trip for his stepsister who will undoubtedly forget the journey as she grows older.  He also concocts a dangerous plan in an attempt to keep the family together, the results of which are somewhat preposterous and detract a bit from the believability of other aspects of the story.   A twenty-page sentence doesn’t really float my boat, either, but here it conveys a sense of urgency very effectively.  However, looking for a stopping point at bedtime, midsentence, is virtually impossible, so that I had to keep reading anyway, in endless anticipation of that elusive ending punctuation.  Comic relief is just as elusive, although the image of a 5-year-old shouting “Jesus F***ing Christ” did crack me up, almost as much as her asking her parents if a painting of Elvis was Jesus F***ing Christ.  The resemblance is striking, right?  Well, who really knows?

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd

I like that Sue Monk Kidd tackles some sticky subjects.  Here she surmises that Jesus had a wife named Ana, who was the stepsister of Judas.  In Kidd’s imagining, Ana does not participate in Jesus’s ministry but her “longings” lie with having her own voice manifested through her writings.  I applaud the idea of this book much more than the actuality.  Kidd’s writing style does not turn me on, and by the end of this book I was tired of living in the world of the first century A.D.  I also admire the prodigious research that certainly went into the writing of this novel, and perhaps the historical nature of the book is partly what made reading it somewhat of a chore.  Ana moves from a privileged but unloving household to a completely different life as a carpenter’s wife, where she has to learn how to milk goats and make bread.  Yawn.  Plus, we all know how Jesus’s life ends, so there is no suspense there.  The author steers clear of miracles—no mention of turning water into wine or the loaves and fishes that fed a multitude or the resurrection, for that matter.  I think this was a wise choice, as it allows us to see Jesus as a loving husband who happens to have a calling from God.  This novel, however, is Ana’s story, and Kidd comes up with some adventures for her, as Ana seems to be constantly fleeing the authorities, along with her beloved aunt, who herself has spent years in exile.  And heaven forbid that women should travel alone.  Therefore, Kidd has had to insert a loyal servant into the story to help with evasive maneuvers and other such activities.  These were not easy times for independent women, but the consequences were even more dire for men preaching love and humility.

FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

The breezy writing style and frenetic pace of this novel captivated me.  Toby Fleishman is having to juggle his hospital work as a liver specialist with childcare duties, since his estranged wife, Rachel, deposited their two kids in his apartment in the middle of the night, ostensibly just for the weekend.  However, Rachel is still a no-show after several weeks, and Toby has had to fire the regular babysitter after discovering that his nine-year-old son spent hours looking at online porn during her watch.  The irony of his son’s infraction is that Toby has discovered the sexual benefits of online dating apps, in which women frequently send him revealing and erotic photos of themselves.  The first-person narrator of this novel, however, is neither Toby nor Rachel; it’s Toby’s old friend Libby, whose role in the story grows as the novel progresses.  The main source of suspense in this novel is the vanishing of Rachel, not only because she has abandoned her children, but because she has also checked out completely from her very successful career as a talent agent.  I finally realized that the title applies to both Toby and Rachel, perhaps even more so to Rachel, although this is clearly Toby’s story.  He has evolved from a too short, too fat boy to a man with lots of relationship potential, despite never having experienced the growth spurt everyone promised in his youth.  He is quick-witted, smart, and reasonably successful, although his career has been stunted by family responsibilities, since Rachel’s demanding job prohibits her from participating in any such tasks.  Clearly, raising children is not part of her agenda, and Toby is a willing partner, until he becomes overwhelmed and mystified by the disappearance of a wife whom he chose, by his own admission, because she was not crazy.  Think again, Toby.

THE SEARCHER by Tana French

Former Chicago PD officer Cal Hooper has moved to a small Irish town to decompress.  Fat chance.  No sooner has he started working on his fixer-upper than a 13-year-old named Trey is hounding him to do some detective work.  The kid’s beloved 19-year-old brother disappeared suddenly a few months ago, and although Cal at first resists getting involved, he soon starts asking questions around town just to get the kid off his back.  The townspeople are a tight-lipped bunch, especially when an outsider becomes a little too curious about their personal business, and Cal finds that he has crossed a line.  There’s also the matter of some sheep being savagely butchered in the dead of night.  I personally was more interested in Cal’s future, particularly with regard to his love life and whether he chooses to stay put or return to the U.S., after all the mysteries have been put to rest.  Certainly there are enough dirty secrets among his skittish neighbors to send him packing.  One minute they’re offering him moonshine, and the next minute they’re regaling him with the story of an Englishman whom they apparently forced out of town after he ratted them out for baiting badgers.  About halfway through the book, Cal’s neighbor reveals an important nugget regarding Trey that somewhat complicates Cal’s and Trey’s relationship, and I did not see this twist coming.  It’s not all that central to the plot, but it does reward us with more interaction between Cal and Lena, whose role thus far has been just to tempt Cal into adopting one of her dog’s puppies.  This book may fit squarely into the mystery genre, but the character development is superb, as is the ambience of the Irish countryside that the author so hauntingly creates.  One thing that particularly struck me is how the town is gradually disintegrating, according to Lena.  Many of Cal’s neighbors are bachelors, because the women, who are unlikely to inherit the land, generally move away.  The ones who stay, like Trey’s mother, often find themselves abandoned in poverty with a house full of children.  Trey, Lena, and Cal are bright spots in an otherwise dreary landscape, but they are more than enough to make this book a standout.

ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrik Backman

I hate to pan any book with a central theme of suicide, but the writing style of this book seems intended for a sixth grade audience.  The prose is choppy, and the plot, aside from the suicide ten years earlier, is silly, sappy, juvenile, repetitive, and replete with slapstick humor.  I totally fail to grasp why this author is so popular.  The main action takes place during an apartment viewing in which a not-very-threatening bank robber shows up after a failed heist.  During the course of this “hostage” situation, a man in a rabbit head appears, pizza is delivered, and fireworks are requested in lieu of a ransom.  The timeline seesaws between the apartment viewing and the aftermath in which a father and son police team interview the hostages in an effort to locate the bank robber, who has inexplicably disappeared.  Along the way we discover the personal problems of the apartment viewers—an elderly woman, a retired couple, a lesbian couple, and a wealthy banker--as well as why they are attending the viewing.  The book title applies to every character, including the banker’s therapist, and all of them sound like the type of people whose troubles appear in advice columns.  This book has elements in common with a cozy mystery, but those books, though equally convoluted and G-rated, are not generally this wacky.  If you want to read something humorous, go with Jonathan Tropper instead.  Don’t waste your time on something this frivolous and asinine.

THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE by Abi Daré

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old girl in rural Nigeria.  Her mother’s death basically robs Adunni of her education and her independence, as her alcoholic father sees her brideprice as a way to pay the bills.   Thus Adunni become the unwilling third wife of a man who is determined that she will bear him a son.  Adunni’s only objective in life, however, is to finish her schooling so that she will have a “louding” voice and can enable other girls in her country to do the same.  Her friendship with her husband’s second wife leads to a disastrous and tragic event that results in her becoming a housemaid in the capital city of Lagos.  Adunni is basically a slave there, as the man who secured her employment now pockets her entire salary.  Adding insult to injury, the woman of the house beats Adunni regularly, and the patriarch, such as he is, repeatedly tries to rape her.  The mysterious disappearance of her predecessor makes Adunni wary and even more resolute in her goal of completing her education.  Unaccustomed to having to observe class distinctions, Adunni’s speaks her mind and does so in English that is vivid and distinctive but not grammatically correct.  At first I thought her odd language would make the book slow-going and annoying, but that was not the case.  In fact, I soon found that her dialog had a sort of lyrical rhythm that seemed appropriate for her compassionate and spunky personality.  Some chapters open with a surprising fact about Nigeria, and some of these facts seem paradoxical.  For example, despite crushing poverty and political corruption, most of the people are unfailingly optimistic.  I certainly cannot explain why that is, but it did seem that for most of Adunni’s fourteen years, she experiences a close sense of community with her family and the people in her village, until circumstances propel her into a sort of premature adulthood, dominated by worry and fear, but never completely obliterating her hope for the future.