The After Effects of World War II

The Great Fire     Shirley Hazzard     (2003)  In 1947, the post-war world is an unsettled place, with bombed cites not yet rebuilt and countless humans left wounded, in body and in spirit. Aldred Leith, a British war hero still in uniform, is traveling in Asia, compiling information for a book about the effects of the global conflict. In occupied Japan, he meets two extraordinarily bright young Australian siblings, Benedict and Helen Driscoll. Benedict is slowly dying from a rare disease, and Helen tends to him. Meanwhile, a friend of Leith’s, military lawyer Peter Exley, is in Hong Kong, prosecuting war crimes. The novelist follows these characters, and many lesser characters whom they interact with, over an eventful and fateful year. Be warned: the prose here is dense, with many multisyllabic abstract nouns to make you stop to reread. But the slog will be well worth your time. Shirley Hazzard vividly illuminates the period and the people, while skewering some Australians for their brashness and some New Zealanders for their provinciality. What of the “great fire” of the title, which recurs in sentences throughout the book? I took it mainly as referring to the cruel destructiveness of war, particularly the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A God in Ruins     Kate Atkinson     (2015)  In Atkinson’s expansive Life After Life (reviewed here), the novelist plays out the many possible life choices of Ursula Todd, with speculative scenarios that are set against the tumultuous history of the twentieth century in Europe. The sequel to Life After Life is A God in Ruins, a novel in much more conventional form but no less mesmerizing, telling the story of Teddy Todd, Ursula’s beloved younger brother. Teddy is a gifted man and a steadying presence to his family. As an RAF pilot during World War II, he fully expects to die on one of his many air raids on the European continent. When, miraculously, he survives being shot down and being imprisoned in Germany, he has to confront the rest of his life. Atkinson reveals the brutal impact of war on one person’s psyche, as well as the wide repercussions of war on his family and friends.

Back in 2017, I posted about The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. This is another powerful novel, about three German widows in the time right after World War II. Read my full review here.

"All Flourishing Is Mutual"

Despite its title, this book not a gardening manual but rather an inspiring reimagination of what our life on Earth could be.  

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World     Robin Wall Kimmerer, Illustrations by John Burgoyne    (2024) 

The serviceberry tree—scientific name, Amelanchier—comes in thirty-plus different species, almost all native to North America. Serviceberries are wide-branching trees, growing very slowly to only 15 or 20 feet high. They go by several names, including Juneberry, Saskatoon, and Shadblow. In the spring they’re covered with silvery leaves and white or light pink flowers that attract many pollinators. Then, in early summer, the leaves become green and the trees produce clusters of tiny fruits that turn deep-red to purple when ripe. These edible berries have a taste that I place somewhere between cranberry and blueberry. Birds and squirrels love the berries, but there are so many that I can often pick several quarts for my family from the half-dozen small serviceberry trees in my yard. We eat the berries on cereal, in muffins, and in multi-berry desserts. In autumn, the serviceberry leaves turn to brilliant red or orange, enlivening the yard, and in winter, I pull out my bags of frozen serviceberries for adding to baked goods and fruit salads.

Obviously, I love the four-season gifts of serviceberry trees, so I find Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book a delight. Kimmerer, who is a professor of environmental biology at SUNY, is also a member of the Potawatomi Nation; she brings to her argument both scientific insights and a deep sense of the human interconnectedness with the rest of the Earth. She uses the serviceberry tree as a exemplar, in the natural world, of what we as humans might do in our economic world, in our built environment. Her appeal to community and sharing and gratitude is radical in this era of authoritarianism and revenge and greed. It’s an appeal that is both rational and heartfelt.

Some brief excerpts:

“The Serviceberries show us . . . [a] model . . .based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” (72)

“Serviceberries are networked not only aboveground with partners for pollination and dispersal but belowground with webs of mycorrhizal fungi and other microbial communities that are exchanging resources.” (78)

“We have the power to . . .develop the local, reciprocal economies that serve community rather than undermine it.” (93)

“All flourishing is mutual.” (back cover)

The physical attributes of this book contribute to its message. Exquisite line drawings by John Burgoyne perfectly complement the text and merit examination on their own. The cover of the book, in a textured matte paper, is pleasing to the touch. The entire volume is very small, fitting into the palms of the reader’s hands, like a handful of serviceberries in June. It is truly a treasure.    

Many thanks to Vera Schwankl and Brian Neau for giving me Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry for Christmas 2024!

Novels about Elderly People

The Thursday Murder Club     Richard Osman     (2020)  In a posh retirement community in present-day England, four residents meet every Thursday to discuss cold cases from the local police department. When a contractor who has worked on the site where they live is found murdered, they jump into the investigation, to the chagrin of the police. The characters in this cozy mystery are almost caricatures of themselves:  the firebrand retired union organizer, the arrogant real estate developer, the brash and fearless ex-spy, the greedy builder, the cautious former nurse, the ambitious police constable, and so on. Each of them is a hoot. The narrative starts out slowly but then rapidly picks up the pace, for a rollicking, witty murder investigation. (A movie version of this novel is due out on Netflix in 2025.)

Frankie     Graham Norton     (2024)  Crusty octogenarian Frances (“Frankie”) Howe, who lives in London, has broken her ankle. Her friend Norah hires Damien, a young home-health aide (“carer” in Brit-speak), for the night shift at Frankie’s apartment. Frankie and Damien begin to bond when they learn that they both grew up in County Cork, Ireland. Gradually, Frankie tells Damien the story of her eventful life, including a restaurant career in New York City from the 1960s into the 1980s. Well, put several gay characters in NYC in the 1980s and you get a devastating inside look at the AIDS epidemic. But this novel is primarily about Frankie, whose resilience and strength help her to survive the nasty machinations of the people she encounters over the decades. Author Graham Norton has previously worked in the genres of memoir and mystery (see my review of his mystery Holding, one of my favorite books of 2018). With Frankie, Norton has ventured successfully into historical fiction, producing a sweet and sensitive novel that kept me turning the pages with anticipation.

And here are two novels about the elderly that I’ve previously reviewed and put on my “favorites” list:

Our Souls at Night     Kent Haruf     (2015)  A widow and a widower, neighbors in a small Midwestern town, carve out their own version of happiness in spite of setbacks. Readers can tuck this story away as a tutorial in how to cope with the inevitability of mortality. (The 2017 movie of the same name starred Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.) Click here for my full review.

Henry, Himself     Stewart O’Nan     (2019)  This is a quiet, introspective portrait of a year in the life of Henry Maxwell, a retired engineer who lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Emily. The novelist is able to turn everyday events into drama that drives his narrative in a highly effective way. Click here for my full review.

Author Spotlight: Elizabeth Strout

Long-time followers of this blog will have read several reviews of the fiction of Elizabeth Strout over the past eight years. In this post, I offer an overview of all of her books, focusing on the two main strands: books about the character Olive Kitteridge and books about the character Lucy Barton. I include a new review of Strout’s 2024 novel, Tell Me Everything, in which these two strands are braided together.

In my opinion, you can read anything by Elizabeth Strout and you won’t be disappointed. But for maximum enjoyment of the character development, read in the order of publication.

THE OLIVE KITTERIDGE BOOKS

Olive Kitteridge  (2008)  In a Pulitzer-winning collection of linked short stories, Strout introduced an indomitable retired schoolteacher from the fictional rural town of Crosby, Maine. This book was turned into a four-part HBO miniseries in 2014.

Olive, Again  (2019)  The sequel to Olive Kitteridge comes in the form of thirteen more stories that unpeel life in small-town New England. The cranky, candid Olive, who weaves in and out of the tales, is sometimes intolerant but often kind. When her kindness is awkwardly expressed and causes offense, she’s surprised, and she tries to rectify her behavior. The other characters in Olive, Again are townspeople whom Olive interacts with in some way. Their lives are intertwined with each other and with the inevitable sadnesses and transgressions and occasional triumphs of living on this Earth. The surroundings of the town can reflect the despair of the inhabitants, yet it’s not all bleakness. Strout's characters can also connect with the natural world in a way that lifts their spirits, if only briefly.

Three other novels by Strout have characters connected to Olive Kitteridge or rural Maine:  Amy and Isabelle (1998), Abide with Me (2006), and The Burgess Boys (2013).

THE LUCY BARTON BOOKS

My Name is Lucy Barton  (2016)  The titular Lucy is a writer in New York City in the 1980s, with a husband and two young daughters. When Lucy is hospitalized for many weeks with a mysterious illness, her estranged mother travels from Illinois to her bedside. The two women reach an uneasy peace with each other, especially as they tell stories about the folks back home, in the (fictional) Amgash, the depressed rural town where Lucy grew up in extreme poverty.

Anything Is Possible  (2017)  In these linked short stories, the character Lucy Barton has become an acclaimed writer. Chicago is one of the stops on Lucy’s book-promotion tour, so she visits her home town of Amgash, Illinois, to see her siblings. We get much more detail about the childhood suffering of the Barton kids—details that were glossed over and somewhat sanitized in My Name is Lucy Barton. Strout toys with the vagaries of memory in both books, and the power of money emerges as another theme. Lucy has lived the up-by-her-bootstraps version of the American dream—getting into college and building a successful career. Others in her small town remain impoverished, with their share of miseries, including sexual abuse and mental illness. The prose is this book is spare, with every word well chosen. The emotions are raw but presented with subtle empathy.

Oh William! (2021) is another book in the Lucy Barton series, about Lucy’s first husband, whom she reconnects with after the death of her second husband.

Lucy by the Sea  (2022)  In this novel, it’s now early March 2020, and Lucy’s ex-husband, William, insists that they leave New York City for a rental house on the coast of Maine. (He’s a scientist who recognizes how dangerous the coronavirus is.) This town in Maine happens to be Crosby, where the character Olive Kitteridge, from Strout’s other books, lives. In first-person narrative, Lucy details the interactions she has with some of the residents of Crosby during 2020 and early 2021. Strout excels in examining the complexities of the human condition, and Lucy by the Sea is the first discussion of the pandemic I’ve read that truly captures the sense of desperation and loneliness that the pandemic wrought.

OLIVE FINALLY MEETS LUCY!

Tell Me Everything  (2024)  We’re back in Crosby, Maine, in 2022-2023, and Strout’s two strong female characters, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, come face to face at last. Olive, now in an assisted living facility, regales Lucy with odd tales from her long life. Meanwhile, attorney Bob Burgess (from Strout’s 2013 novel The Burgess Boys) agrees to represent a local man who is suspected of murdering his mother. This murder mystery threads through the book and involves even more characters from Strout’s previous fiction. Some national reviewers of Tell Me Everything have complained that it’s rambling and unfocused. I disagree. I took it as a genre-cross between a novel and a collection of short stories and found it so riveting that I read it in one long afternoon. The clear theme is enunciated on page 292: “’What is the point of anyone’s life?’” Strout challenges her readers to think hard on this question.

Not My Usual Fare

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet     David Mitchell     (2010)  This is not a novel that I would have thought I’d like at all. Most of the characters are venal, vulgar schemers. There are numerous scenes of violence. Women characters in particular are targets of horrific crimes. And yet . . .  Jacob de Zoet is a clerk—a kind of accountant—serving with the Dutch East India Company in Japan, starting in 1799. Japan at this time is still closed to the outside world, but the authorities allow a very limited amount of trading with the Dutch through the port of Nagasaki, where a few foreigners are allowed to reside in a gated compound. Jacob is trying to make enough money in five years to win the hand of his wealthy girlfriend back in the Netherlands. He’s an honest and devout soul in an outpost of corruption. I wanted to find out how he fared. I also wanted to learn the fate of a Japanese midwife, Orito Aibagawa, who is introduced in the opening scene of the novel and whose story becomes intertwined with Jacob’s. Another motivation for me to keep reading all 479 pages of this book was the luminescent prose on every single page. Here are a few examples:  “The clock’s pendulum scrapes at time like a sexton’s shovel.” (150) “A gibbous moon is grubby. Stars are bubbles, trapped in ice. The old pine is gnarled and malign.” (258-9) “Fallen red leaves drift over a smeared sun held in dark water.” (447) See what I mean?

Life after Life     Kate Atkinson     (2013)  Another novel that I would not ordinarily select based on the dust jacket description, this speculative narrative goes in multiple directions, depending on the random vagaries of human existence. Ursula Todd, the main protagonist, may have died at her birth in England in 1910, or she may have been saved just in time. She may have killed Hitler in 1930, or she may never have encountered the Führer. And so on . . . The novelist lets Ursula’s story play out in many different directions, over the course of the first half of the twentieth century. This time period in Europe had many calamitous episodes (the trenches, the bread lines, the Blitz), during which chance happenstances could take a person one way or another. Although I usually prefer a straightforward narrative rooted in reality, I was sucked in to the 525 pages of Life after Life by the extraordinary cast of characters and the way these characters interacted with the historic events that they bumped up against. To keep track of it all, note the date that the author provides at the head of each chapter. For another novel that presents alternate views of reality, see my review of Paul Auster’s 4321 from 2017, or check out Penelope Lively’s How It All Began from 2011.

Three Mysteries

Close to Death     Anthony Horowitz     (2024)  Novelist Horowitz is a master of the metafictional mystery, in which he deliberately draws attention to the artificiality of his story, separating the mystery itself from his own act of creating the mystery. (For my fuller discussions of Horowitz’s metafiction, click here and here.) In Close to Death, there’s a very traditional Agatha-Christie-style murder: London financier Giles Kenworthy is shot through the neck with a crossbow at his home in a small, exclusive gated community, Riverview Close. All the other residents of the Close come under suspicion of committing the crime. Interleaved with this murder story is another story—that of an author called Anthony Horowitz who is trying to write a novel based on the investigation of the Kenworthy murder by a secretive private detective named Daniel Hawthorne. Readers have to follow both intricate layers until the two collide in a joint solution. Horowitz (the real-life person!) is devilishly clever, his prose is slick, and his mysteries are ingenious.

Still Life     Louise Penny     (2005)  Although I swore off reading more of Louise Penny’s mysteries back in 2017, I recently went back to this debut novel in her series of 19 novels centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Québec’s homicide unit. (Sentence fragments in later novels of the series had driven me batty, but Still Life has fewer of these.) I did find some rough edges in Still Life—for example, the sometimes inscrutable dialogue and the unresolved issue of an insubordinate junior officer. However, the descriptions of small-town Québec are superb, the plot is sophisticated, and Gamache is an engaging lead. I understand why Louise Penny has such a faithful following among mystery readers.

Eleven Pipers Piping     C C Benison     (2012)  Each year in January, the bagpipe-playing males of the fictional English village of Thornford Regis commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns with a special catered supper. The new vicar at the local St Nicholas Church, named (I kid you not) Tom Christmas, is obliged to say a prayer at this event, though he can’t abide either bagpipe music or haggis. When a death occurs after the meal, Father Christmas is pulled into the investigation, and we’re off and running with a twisty-turny, red-herring-laden classic British mystery. The roster of characters is large (consult the chart at the front of the book); the British slang is laid on heavy (although the author is Canadian); and the incidence of questionable paternity is frequent. But the plot is worked out meticulously, and the characters are quite endearing. This is the second in a series of three related mysteries—the others being, of course, Twelve Drummers Drumming and Ten Lords A-Leaping. C C Benison is the pen name of Douglas Whiteway.

Novels Set in 21st-Century America

All three of these novels have to do with money, which seems to be a central theme of our current century.

The Mighty Red     Louise Erdrich     (2024)  The surface story of The Mighty Red centers on Kismet Poe, a Native American teenager living near the Red River in North Dakota (where the novelist herself grew up). Two very different young men, Gary Geist and Hugo Dumach, are in romantic pursuit of Kismet; her mother, Crystal Frechette, tries to advise her. A side mystery arises when Kismet’s father, Martin, disappears, along with all trace of more than a million dollars in funds that have been raised for a church renovation. Meanwhile, dark secrets about Gary and the Red River swirl around, not revealed until late in the tale. The river actually underpins the entire narrative here. For generations, its springtime floods have deposited rich soil for farmers’ crops, but chemical overuse has poisoned much of the land. The profits of agribusiness are a powerful draw in the economic recession of 2008, when the main action of this sly and sparkling novel takes place. I want to confess that this is the first of Erdrich’s novels that I’ve read, although I have read her poems. The author herself gave me an autographed copy of her poetry collection Baptism of Desire when I had dinner with her in 1994. Louise Erdrich is the only literary rock star that I’ve ever met, and I can report that she is gracious as well as brilliant.

Entitlement     Rumann Alam     (2024)  Money, money, money! Billionaire Asher Jeffries (age 83) has plenty, and he wants to give it away through his New York foundation. One of his foundation employees, Brooke Orr (age 33), becomes his protégé and confidante. At first, Brooke is committed to the task of finding worthy recipients for Jeffries’ money, but gradually she comes to feel entitled to more and more of that money for herself. The tension builds as readers watch Brooke’s greed grow. The author’s shifting narrative voices are sometimes too abrupt for my reading style, but his character development and his depiction of Manhattan in 2014 ring true. Most of all, he fearlessly lays bare the corrupting power of money, while not shying away from issues of race and gender.

The Wedding People     Alison Espach     (2024)  For years, Phoebe has endured painful fertility treatments that have been unsuccessful. Her husband has deserted her for another woman and then divorced her. Her work as an adjunct academic is unfulfilling and unrewarded. So she travels to an expensive hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, determined to take pills and end it all. But she stumbles into a week-long wedding celebration that was supposed to have exclusive reservations for the entire hotel, and the bride is not happy to have an interloper. Phoebe gets drawn into the wedding drama—one character calls it “the goddamned most elaborate wedding possible.” If, like me, you are baffled by the current American obsession with over-the-top weddings, you’ll find the satire here quite satisfying. The writing, heavy on dialog to carry the plot, is sharp and witty. But, in the end, the novel is less about weddings and more about surviving depression and finding your true self. 

From the Top 100, Part Two

In this second installment about books from the New York Times list of the best books published since the year 2000, I offer condensed versions of reviews that I’ve posted on this blog over the past seven years. These titles have won numerous national and international literary prizes.

The Goldfinch     Donna Tartt     (2013)  A young man named Theodore Decker loses his mother in a terrible explosion. What follows is at once a bildungsroman, a mystery, a thriller, and a wild drug-fueled ride through a speculative alternate history of New York City. But you can read its nearly 800 pages solely for Tartt’s extraordinarily lush vocabulary and sympathetically drawn characters.

Pachinko     Min Jin Lee     (2017)  In this novel about Korean immigrant families in Japan during the twentieth century, Lee lays out the Japanese discrimination against Koreans clearly. But she also includes both Koreans and Japanese who are deceitful and honest, talented and mediocre, wise and foolish, lazy and hardworking, compassionate and heartless, selfish and generous, prejudiced and open-minded. Subplots touch on issues such as the status of minority Christians and the evolving attitude toward the place of women in Japan. Above all, though, this is a universal story about the immigrant experience. Immigrants enter a game of chance, stacked against them, much like people who play pachinko, the popular Japanese slot-machine game.

Exit West     Mohsin Hamid     (2017)  Hamid is known for his experimental prose, but Exit West can appear to be a more conventional novel—that is, until you hit the magical doors. These doors whisk Hamid’s characters to another country, with some similarities to the door through which CS Lewis takes his characters to Narnia. But Hamid’s characters definitely do not end up in Narnia. They’re refugees, fleeing their unnamed native land, where “militants” cause increasing upheaval and danger. This prescient novel personalizes the plight of refugees—ordinary people who through no fault of their own are caught up in war and terrorism, who flee with great reluctance, leaving behind virtually all their possessions, clinging to the few family members who have not perished.

The Overstory     Richard Powers     (2018)  The Overstory is massive in scope, sophisticated in descriptive power, and disturbing in message.  Instead of framing his book as a nonfiction exposé of the sins of the logging industry, Powers has chosen to show the diverse motivations of fictional “tree huggers” from all walks of life. This approach is much more effective in getting across his message that the human destruction of forests will eventually, and pretty soon, make our planet unlivable.

Small Things Like These     Claire Keegan     (2021)  With haunting prose that’s reminiscent of the early work of James Joyce, this novella fictionalizes a piece of the well-documented history of the Irish “laundries,” where unwed pregnant women were basically imprisoned by the Catholic Church until as recently as 1996. Author Keegan takes us to rural Ireland at Christmastime in 1985, when a middle-aged family man stumbles upon evidence of such human rights abuses at a local convent. I read everything that Claire Keegan publishes, and I’ve never been disappointed.

Trust     Hernan Diaz     (2022)  Diaz explores the trustworthiness of narrative through four different takes on the same story, about a fictional early-twentieth-century Wall Street financier. First, a novella captures the style of Edith Wharton, and next, an unfinished autobiography reveals its author’s vanity and arrogance. A memoir by the autobiography’s ghost writer gives another perspective, and finally the diary of the financier’s wife provides a new twist to the tale. Diaz navigates these disparate genres with stylistic ease, as he asks, Whom do you trust to tell you the truth? 

From the Top 100, Part One

The New York Times has issued a list of 100 books that are considered by many literary authorities to be the best that have been published since the year 2000. I had read several of the titles before I started this blog in 2017, so they don’t appear in my archive of reviews. But I can recommend them heartily.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon transports readers to mid-20th-century New York with a pair of successful creators of comics. This novel was a Pulitzer Prize winner, but everything Chabon produces is golden. I reviewed one of his later books, Moonglow, here.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich is a hard-hitting nonfiction look at poverty in the United States. The issues haven’t gone away in the past two decades.  

Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey Eugenides is a Pulitzer Prize fiction winner that explored complex gender issues long before the broader society began to. It’s well-plotted, with highly relatable characters.

Olive Kittredge (2008) by Elizabeth Strout, a series of linked short stories about the indomitable Maine-dwelling Olive, also won the Pulitzer Prize. Click here to read my review of the sequel, Olive, Again. Strout captures family and community dynamics like no one else.

Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012) by Hilary Mantel vividly portray the turbulent reign of Britain’s Henry VIII. I preferred Wolf Hall over its more violent sequel, but these two justifiably top the lists of historical fiction. Both books won the Booker prize, among other honors.

In my next post, I’ll revisit some of the 21st-century novels from that New York Times list that I’ve reviewed on this blog.  

Four 20th-Century Historical Novels

These novels vary greatly in style, but all are set in the 1900s, from the aftermath of World War I through to the end of the century.

The Paying Guests     Sarah Waters     (2014)  Mrs Wray and her unmarried daughter, Frances, live in genteel poverty in 1922 London. Having lost her two brothers in the World War and her father to sadness and bad debts, Frances convinces her mother to take in lodgers. They reconfigure their house and rent rooms to a young married couple, Lilian and Leonard Barber. What starts out as a slow burn of a narrative—describing in detail the constraints of this joint tenancy arrangement—turns into an explosive crime novel. Readers witness a murder and know who the murderer is. But will this criminal be caught? Will the romance that has blossomed in the house be uncovered? Are the British barriers of class insurmountable? Can the miseries of wartime be alleviated? Over the course of 564 pages, there are some dips into melodrama, but the novelist kept my attention to the very end, for the resolutions to these questions.

This Strange Eventful History     Claire Messud     (2024)  The title of this superb historical novel is taken from a soliloquy in Shakespeare’s As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages . . .      

. . . Last scene of all                                                                   
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion . . .

This soliloquy about the “seven ages” often comes to mind as Claire Messud recounts seven decades of the lives of the members of the Cassar family (from 1940 to 2010, plus an epilogue back in 1927). The Cassars were originally French Algerians, having dwelt for generations in the North African land that was controlled by France from 1830 to 1962. When Algeria won its independence after a lengthy war, the colonizers were forced to leave the country. They were not warmly welcomed back in France. Many of the Cassar family long for a return to Algeria but have to consider career opportunities elsewhere. They end up all over the globe—Toronto, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Paris, Connecticut, the south of France. No matter where they live, love of family binds them: Gaston and Lucienne; their children, François and Denise; their grandchildren, Chloe and Loulou. The novelist based This Strange Eventful History on her own family’s story, as recounted by her grandfather in a handwritten memoir, and the truth of the story shines throughout, with deeply perceptive probings of each character and striking evocations of each setting and time period. Many reviewers have pronounced this novel Messud’s masterpiece.

The Two Hotel Francforts     David Leavitt     (2013)  In the summer of 1940, Lisbon is about the only port in Europe from which those fleeing the advance of Hitler’s armies can hope to board a ship sailing away from the Continent. It’s a crazy place, full of desperate people waiting for passage out of Portugal. At a café, Pete and Julia Winters meet another couple, Edward and Iris Freleng, and sparks fly. Pete is the first-person narrator of this novel that slowly reveals the state of his marriage and of the Frelengs’ marriage: the compromises, the secrets, the love/hate. Always in the background is the looming threat of the war, which, of course, modern readers know the outcome of. Leavitt’s prose is steamy and sometimes seamy; his plot is propulsive.

The Most Fun We Ever Had     Claire Lombardo     (2019)  I always read the Acknowledgments section of a book before I start on the actual text, and I was surprised to find that when Claire Lombardo submitted this novel to her agents it “meandered beyond the nine-hundred-page marker.”  Whew. I found the published version of The Most Fun We Ever Had to be overly long at 532 pages. But, to be fair, this saga of the Sorensen family is complex, with lots of births and deaths, betrayals and lies, successes and defeats. David and Marilyn are the parents of four daughters, each with her own set of neuroses. The narrative skips back and forth between the 1970s, when David and Marilyn meet and marry, and the intervening years between then and 2017. The Sorensen house is also a character, in a way, with much of the action taking place there, on an actual street in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The dust jacket asserts that the author has joined the ranks of novelists Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathan Franzen in her chronicling of modern life. I’d say that Lombardo comes close to these three greats.  

The Latest Installments

In 2024, new novels by Allison Montclair and Alexander McCall Smith were published, and I hopped on the waitlist for them at my local library. If you are weary of my many reviews of novels by these two authors, please click on another post!

Murder at the White Palace     Allison Montclair     (2024)  In the sixth installment of the Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge Mystery Series, it’s 1946 in London, with rationing still in place and many buildings damaged by the Blitz. Iris was a spy during World War II, but she can’t talk about that because of the Official Secrets Act. She has a complicated romantic life and is currently dating a gangster. Gwen, who became severely depressed after the death of her husband in the war, has finally been released from her court-ordered designation as a “lunatic.” She’s just getting back into the dating scene. The two women are business partners in The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, and they plan to hold a New Year’s Eve party for their clients at an abandoned, bomb-damaged club called The White Palace. When a body is found behind a wall that’s being repaired, we’re off and running, with sprightly dialog and a fast-moving plot. As I’ve explained in a previous post, I think it’s essential that you read the Sparks and Bainbridge novels in order. As I’ve raced through the books, I’ve become very fond of these two plucky women—and of Montclair’s recreation of post-WWII Britain.

The Conditions of Unconditional Love     Alexander McCall Smith     (2024)  McCall Smith is an extremely prolific writer, and I follow several of his series. This novel is the fifteenth in the Isabel Dalhousie Series (reviewed at length here), which relates the adventures of a philosopher in Edinburgh, Scotland, who edits an ethics journal. Isabel is a hoot. She gets herself involved in adjudicating disputes and difficulties that arise among her friends and neighbors, pondering quite deeply the ethical implications of various courses of action. In this novel, the cases include a suspect academic conference and the relationship problems of a woman who is a guest in Isabel’s attic. The admittedly thin plots of the novels are enlivened by Isabel’s domestic situation: she’s married to Jamie, a handsome musician who is fourteen years her junior and with whom she has two young children. Isabel never ceases to appreciate her life with the doting Jamie as she unravels one little problem after another.

For Indigenous Peoples Day

The Berry Pickers     Amanda Peters     (2023)  In 1962, a group of Indigenous Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, Canada, cross the border to Maine as summer migrant workers. When a 4-year-old Mi’kmaq girl, Ruthie, disappears from the berry fields one August day, her family is devastated. Her 6-year-old brother, Joe, is the last to see her; guilt and regret will shape his entire life. Meanwhile, in a town in Maine, a girl named Norma has recurrent dreams that she thinks may in fact be memories of people she once knew. Over the ensuing decades, the novel shifts back and forth between Joe’s life and Norma’s, until their two stories collide. The injustices visited upon Indigenous peoples are woven into the narrative of their existence—the repressive boarding schools, the employment discrimination. But what struck me even more was the author’s portrayal of the contrast between the Mi’kmaq community and the white community—laughter and light versus gloom and closed curtains. Prepare to weep by the end of this moving novel.

For another take on the Native American experience, here’s a reprise of a review that I posted earlier this year:

The River We Remember     William Kent Krueger     (2023)  “In a town where the hatred from wars long past and wars more recent still had hooks set in so many hearts, was anyone safe?” (341) This sentence from Krueger’s latest mystery novel points to the broader themes underlying his text: the untreated trauma inflicted on millions of soldiers by combat, the racism endured by Japanese Americans after World War II, and the racism endured by Native Americans ever since colonizers arrived in North America. And yet, this novel is still a solid mystery, with many twists and turns. It’s set in the fictional small town of Jewel, in southern Minnesota, in 1958, and starts with the discovery of the body of Jimmy Quinn in the Alabaster River. The dead man had numerous enemies, so the job of the sheriff, Brody Dern, is complicated. The novelist takes us deep into the lives of many of the inhabitants of the town, deftly building character through dialog. A warning for the squeamish, among whom I count myself: the concluding chapters have some gory scenes.

Finally, the relation of Indigenous peoples to the forests of the North American continent is beautifully presented in Annie Proulx’s Barkskins (2016), reviewed here.

Farewell, Nantucket

We’ve reached the autumnal equinox and the official end of summer, but you can keep the sand between your toes with these Beach Reads.

Swan Song     Elin Hilderbrand     (2024)

With this appropriately named romance novel, the rock-star author Elin Hilderbrand is ending her series set on the island of Nantucket. Hilderbrand says that she’s run out of plot ideas for her characters, but she doesn’t close the door totally on possible future Nantucket tales. Meanwhile, Swan Song tells the story of the final case taken on by retiring police chief Ed Kapenash. The $22-million home of island newcomers Bull and Leslee Richardson has burned to the ground, and Coco Coyle, personal assistant to the Richardsons, is missing and is suspected of the arson. In lengthy flashbacks, we learn that Coco has been befriended by Ed’s daughter, Kacy, and is entangled with other islanders. Hilderbrand liberally peppers this mystery/romance narrative with her usual pop culture references to music, fashion, and cuisine. When she takes readers, for example, to an extravagant party at the Richardson’s mansion, she paints the scene expertly.

Nobody does a Beach Read like Hilderbrand, as I’ve noted in my reviews of several other offerings in her thirty-book Nantucket series. Here are recaps of some of those reviews.

The Five-Star Weekend     Elin Hilderbrand     (2023)  In this gossipy escapade, fifty-something Hollis Shaw gathers four friends (one from each phase of her life) for a weekend of companionship and gourmet dining, to help her move through her grief from the recent death of her husband. All the friends have their own back stories and secrets, and their lives have intersected with Hollis’s life in surprising ways. As usual, prepare to be inundated with references to designer clothes, fine wines, and Nantucket restaurants.

28 Summers    Erin Hilderbrand (2020)  For chick lit escapism, it doesn’t get better than this Hilderbrand novel, which borrows its structure from Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year. Two lovers meet secretly each summer, starting in 1993, on Nantucket Island. You can take lots of breezy seaside vacations with them.

Summer of ’69     Elin Hilderbrand     (2019)  In the Author’s Note at the back of Summer of ’69, Elin Hilderbrand explains that she was born on July 17, 1969. Fifty years on, she revisits the momentous events of that summer, including in her fictional narrative such actual occurrences as the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick that derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes, the rock ‘n’ roll encampment at Woodstock, and the continuing slaughter of troops and civilians in Vietnam. Hilderbrand’s main characters are the Foley-Levin family, who summer on Nantucket. Blair, the eldest of the offspring, is recently married and discovers late in pregnancy that she’s carrying twins. Kirby, the rebel sister, takes a job on the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard, where she is almost a witness in the Kopechne/Kennedy case. Tiger, the only son, is off fighting in Vietnam, driving his mother to drink. And 13-year-old Jessie, the youngest, gets invited to Woodstock. Through the experiences of this family, Hilderbrand takes us back to 1969 in all its glory and horror. Some of the plot twists will be obvious to any avid reader of mystery novels, and a few anachronisms crop up. But, despite the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Summer of ’69 is mostly brisk and cheerful, with wrap-ups of most of the plot lines by the final pages. You can have that second margarita and still be able to follow the story.

Endless Summer     Elin Hilderbrand     (2022)  This collection of nine short prequels and sequels to several of Hilderbrand’s novels is for her diehard followers. Of special note are the sequel novellas, Summer of ’79 and Summer of ’89, that are included. These novellas follow the Foley-Levin clan ten years out and then twenty years out from the novel Summer of ’69, with emphasis on various romantic entanglements that play out in sometimes unexpected ways as the decades unfold. The pop culture references that Hilderbrand uses to set the decade can be heavy at times, but I love epilogues, and these two novellas are, in a way, highly extended epilogues.

If you need a novel set on a different island off the East Coast of the United States, hop over to Martha’s Vineyard:

The Lost Letters from Martha’s Vineyard     Michael Callahan     (2024)  This story toggles between 1959, when actor Mercy Welles disappears from Hollywood on the cusp of stardom, and 2018, when NYC television producer Kit O’Neill discovers some letters of her recently deceased grandmother. The mystery unfolds on Martha’s Vineyard in both time periods, and it’s a pretty good mystery, with a couple of romances for extra spice. (Callahan did need a better editor, though, who might have stopped him from using the word “ensconced” so many times.)

Books Set in Michigan

Funny Story     Emily Henry     (2024)  I had missed Emily Henry’s bestseller boat until I picked up this romance novel that some reviewers say is her best yet. The plot of Funny Story revolves around two tropes of the romance genre: fake dating and friends-to-lovers. Daphne’s fiancé, Peter, dumps her right before their wedding, and Daphne has to find a place to live quickly. Peter’s new girlfriend has also dumped her boyfriend, Miles, who has a spare room in his apartment that he offers to Daphne. She pegs Miles as a scruffy pothead, but she takes the room, since she knows little about (the fictional) Waning Bay, Michigan, where she relocated at the insistence of Peter. Got it? The one good thing in Daphne’s life is that she loves her work as a children’s librarian. And then Miles introduces her to the summertime grandeur of their lakeside town and its environs. The Daphne/Miles plot plays out with glittery dialogue (how could ordinary people come up with so many one-liners?) and some explicit sex scenes. Along the way, readers get a tour of the area around Traverse City, Michigan—the pristine Lake Michigan beaches, the sand dunes, the wineries, the farmers’ markets, the festivals. The characters tend to overanalyze themselves, but I raced through all 384 pages of Funny Story, inhaling the Michigan charm.

On this website I’ve reviewed many other books set in Michigan. Here are brief recaps of some of those reviews.

Tom Lake     Ann Patchett     (2023)  In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, three young adult daughters of a family are hunkered down at their childhood home, a cherry and apple farm in Michigan, helping harvest the crops. They beg their mother to tell the full story of her summer romance with movie star Peter Duke, which took place back in 1988 when Duke was a struggling young actor. The mother obliges, and the novel toggles between 1988 and 2020. Novelist Patchett could ask for compensation from the Michigan Travel Commission, given her glowing descriptions of the state’s natural beauty, especially the area around Traverse City.

Adventures of a Girl Architect     Hazel Harzinger     (2018)  Smart and hardworking Elena Troye is determined to become a practicing architect. In this witty, fast-paced novel, she recounts the ups and downs of breaking into a male-dominated profession. After a disastrous studio review at the University of Michigan, there's the seeming triumph of landing a job in glitzy, booming Las Vegas in 2006. When the national recession deepens in 2009, Elena returns to the Midwest for grad school and then the grueling architecture licensing exams. Along the way, she balances the professional with the personal—boyfriends, family ties, friendships. And she maintains her interest in fashion, even if that seems “girly.” In the workplace world of 2011-2014, Elena battles harassment from her superiors and mud on construction sites. She never gives up her dream of designing beautiful, functional buildings—and finding romantic happiness. Elena calls herself a “Girl Architect” with ironic self-mockery as she defies gender stereotypes. Click here to order Adventures of a Girl Architect by Michigan author Hazel Harzinger.

Hunter’s Moon     Philip Caputo     (2019)  In seven linked short stories, Caputo summons up the wild allure of the far northern regions of the United States. Six of the stories take place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which hovers around the 46th parallel of latitude, and the seventh is set even farther north, in Alaska. Each story revolves in some way around hunting or fishing: the appeal of rugged terrain, the terror of getting lost, and the reality of weapons violence. I don’t hunt, and I don’t understand the technicalities of rifles, but as you read Hunter’s Moon you can set those components aside and revel in Caputo’s descriptions of the natural world.

Mysteries by Aaron Stander (2000-2020)  The sand dunes, the sunsets, the resiny scent of pine forests: Michiganders will recognize that Stander’s eleven murder mysteries are set in the northwest section of the Lower Peninsula. The main detective is Sheriff Ray Elkins, a rumpled middle-aged former professor of criminal justice from downstate who has retreated to the North Woods where he was raised. He’s surrounded by a distinctive cast of year-round residents, who disdain the vacationers renting beach houses during the glorious warm months. The many state references will tickle those who, like me, cherish our nation’s third (Great Lakes) coast. Small Michigan details drop in on almost every page. Click here for more of my reviews of books in this series.

We Hope for Better Things     Erin Bartels     (2019)  Interracial relationships are the theme of Erin Bartels’ multi-century historical novel. In the present-day chapters, white Detroit journalist Elizabeth Balsam, following up on a lead about unpublished photos of the 1967 Detroit riots, ends up at her great-aunt Nora’s farmhouse in Lapeer, about an hour’s drive north of the city. A different layer of Elizabeth’s family history is revealed in chapters set in Lapeer in 1861, when the farmhouse was a stop for slaves fleeing on the Underground Railroad. That title? It’s from the motto for the city of Detroit: Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus. “We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.”

Beautiful Music      Michael Zadoorian     (2018)  This is the touching story of a high school freshman at Redford High School, on Detroit’s far northwest side, in the early 1970s—a period of increasing racial tension and violence in the city. Danny Yzemski is a sweet, shy kid who’s bullied in school and beleaguered at home. His coming-of-age is aided by his discovery of the transformative power of hard rock music. The detailed descriptions of Danny’s neighborhood along the Grand River corridor—the routes he took, the stores he frequented—re-create the era precisely. Even the breakfast cereals that Danny eats are authentic to the period. For vintage Detroit flavor, tune in to Beautiful Music.

There’s nonfiction set in Michigan, also, as in this dual biography:

The Kelloggs:  The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek     Howard Markel     (2017)  In the small southwestern Michigan city of Battle Creek, two brothers distinguished themselves in separate but related arenas. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), a physician and author, established the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1878, treating thousands of patients and promoting some surprisingly prescient wellness regimens on both dietary and exercise fronts. In 1906, Will Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, now the Kellogg Company, revolutionizing breakfast foods through manipulation of ingredients and industrial mass production. Click here for my full review.

Three Intertwined Novels by Colm Tóibín

The Irish author Colm Tóibín has an uncanny ability to get inside the heads of his characters, especially the female characters. The three historical novels reviewed here highlight this talent of his, as well as his plot-driven explorations of everyday life in the later twentieth century, both in rural Ireland and in New York City.

Brooklyn     Colm Tóibín     (2009)  Eilis Lacey is a young woman in 1950s Ireland who is persuaded to set off to work in the United States, landing in Brooklyn. The contrast between the straightlaced, hidebound Irish town of Enniscorthy, where she grew up, and vibrant, pulsating New York could not be greater. At a dance, she meets a handsome plumber from a rollicking Italian American family and falls in love. How Eilis then becomes trapped in a heartbreaking love triangle is intricately plotted to the last page of the novel. (The film version of Brooklyn stars Saoirse Ronan as a pitch-perfect Eilis, and the cinematography is stunning.)

Nora Webster     Colm Tóibín     (2014)  For this novel, Tóibín takes us back to Enniscorthy, in rural southeast Ireland. It’s now the late 1960s, and the title character is a recently widowed woman with four children. Having lost her beloved husband, Nora Webster has to make many decisions on her own over the next few years. Tóibín probes her deliberations. Should she sell the family’s summer cottage? Should she get a full-time job or try to rely on her widow’s pension? How should she deal with her grieving children, who range in age from early teens to early twenties? Nora’s daily life is set against the backdrop of The Troubles, the very violent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, primarily in Northern Ireland but also spilling over into the Republic of Ireland. (I lived in Dublin in this period and found Tóibín’s local color highly accurate.) Tantalizingly, he mentions in passing Eilis and other characters from his novels Brooklyn and Long Island, and the novel Nora Webster fills in much of the community background for those two novels. Some reviewers consider Nora Webster to be Tóibín’s masterpiece. I didn’t want her story to end.

Long Island     Colm Tóibín     (2024)  It’s now 1976, and Eilis is living fairly contentedly with her husband and two teenaged children in a middle-class neighborhood on Long Island. In the opening chapter of the novel, a man comes to her door and announces that his wife is pregnant with a child fathered by Eilis’s husband. The man vows that when the child is born he will drop it on her doorstep. Eilis struggles mightily with this news, deciding to travel to Ireland at the time of the expected birth. This visit, ostensibly for her mother’s eightieth birthday, is her first trip to her homeland in twenty years. Meanwhile, back in Enniscorthy, the characters introduced in the novels Brooklyn and Nora Webster have evolved in their own Irish way. The return of Eilis to Ireland resurrects many secrets and sets in motion a distressing chain of events.

For the most reader satisfaction, do read these novels in chronological order. I hope you enjoy the work of Colm Tóibín as much as I did!

Politics. Sigh.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation     Kristin Kobes Du Mez     (2020)  The title encapsulates the author’s argument: that an iconic 20th-century actor who portrayed heroic soldiers and cowboys epitomizes the societal goals of the segment of white American society that identifies as evangelical. Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a respected historian at Calvin University, which is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church in North America, so she writes with the authority of one who knows religion from within. Her meticulously researched and footnoted book traces 75 years of expanding white evangelical embrace of a hyper-masculine political vision that subjugates women and immigrants and elevates authoritarianism and aggression. The presidency of Donald Trump, she posits, did not come about just because evangelicals held their noses and voted for a libertine because he would stack the courts with anti-abortion judges. They voted for him primarily because he embodied their goals of “Christian nationalism.” Many self-described American evangelicals know little about theology. Their beliefs are instead cultural and political, based in what Kobes Du Mez calls a “bunker mentality” and a “persecution narrative” that only a badass autocrat can alleviate. This New York Times bestseller-list book is both enlightening and scary.

The evangelical movement in the United States has long been an interest of mine. Back in 2017, I read Frances FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, and I summed it up this way:

The Evangelicals disentangles the many strands of a movement that now includes about 25% of the population of the United States. FitzGerald pulls data from the histories of religion, culture, and politics with ease, showing how evangelicals developed their stances on issues such as slavery, segregation, labor unions, the Vietnam War, communism, abortion, immigration, and gay rights. If you are bemused by the phenomenon of evangelicalism in America, or if you just want some background on a powerful segment of our society, this is the book to read. (You can see my entire review here.)

Also in 2017, I reviewed JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, concluding with this paragraph:

Vance treasures his hillbilly background and yet despises it. He hasn’t quite figured out where he stands, though he aligns himself politically with conservative Republicans. Hillbilly Elegy is an imperfect book, with far too many contradictions and generalizations and cherry-picked citations. But you may want to read it because it’s become highly influential in our present-day political climate of angry polarization. (You can read my entire review here.)

In early 2018, my guest reviewer, Paul Schwankl, assessed One Nation after Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not Yet Deported, by E. J. Dionne Jr, Norman J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann. Click here to read his review.

In my next post, I’ll be back to fiction!

Gentle Reads

Longtime followers of this blog know that I don’t select thrillers or horror novels or apocalyptic dystopian fiction for my reading or for my reviews. If an author slips a car crash or a ghost into a good family saga, I’m fine, but if I hit detailed descriptions of World War I trench warfare, I close the book.

In the novels that I call Gentle Reads, the emphasis is on the interactions of well-constructed characters, and the endings are mostly happy. The best of the Gentle Reads avoid sentimentality and have some racy elements.

Thanks to Dorothy Devin for recommending this Gentle Read:

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting     Clare Pooley     (2022)  On a commuter train in London, a well-dressed businessman chokes on a grape in his breakfast fruit salad. Although the British rarely speak with strangers on public transit, passengers do come to the man’s aid, and a nurse performs the Heimlich Maneuver, saving his life. From this interaction springs a friendship among Londoners from very different stages and walks of life. Iona Iverson, a flamboyant magazine advice columnist, is the catalyst and the central figure in the group, as they navigate major life changes with each other’s help. The story is sweet but not saccharine, offering the possibility of societal healing through friendship and mutual help. A quote from a chapter highlighting Iona: “They were joined together, like it or not, by a brush with death. So, what were the rules now? God, it was difficult being British sometimes.” (35) If you like this one, try Clare Pooley’s previously published Gentle Read, The Authenticity Project (2020), which has a similar message of the transformative power of friendship. And check out my review of a novel with a similar feel:  Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017).  

On a far end of the Gentle Reads spectrum, at the gentlest end, is this recent pick:

The Stellar Debut of Galactica MacFee     Alexander McCall Smith     (2023)  Clocking in at #17 in McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series is another of his wacky and delightful explorations of the lives of those who live (or used to live) on Scotland Street in Edinburgh. Among the many characters, my favorite is Bertie Pollock, who starts out as five years old and very, very slowly ages to seven years old over the course of the novels. The titular Galactica MacFee is an obnoxious little girl who joins Bertie’s school class and torments poor Bertie. If you haven’t read any of the previous 44 Scotland Street books, my lengthy post about #11 in the series, The Bertie Project, can help you with background. In this latest installment, McCall Smith’s authorial musings on society and politics do seem to have become more crochety, but his underlying message about the importance of kindness in the world shines through. For additional reviews of McCall Smith’s novels, click here and here and here.

On the other end of the Gentle Reads spectrum, with some intense scenes in its fast-moving concluding chapters, is this one:

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club     Helen Simonson     (2024)  In 1919, the British are celebrating the end of World War I but also mourning the immense loss of life, both in combat and from the influenza pandemic. (Contemporary readers who are emerging from the COVID pandemic will be able to relate to the sense of having years stolen from one’s life because of a world-wide catastrophe.) In Simonson’s novel, Constance Haverhill is a young woman at loose ends. She’s spending the summer at a seaside hotel as the companion and assistant to an elderly woman, but she needs to find permanent employment, preferably in the field of accounting, in which she has experience from her job during the war. Also at the hotel is the Wirrall family: the matriarch, a former actress; the daughter, Poppy, who runs a motorcycle club for women; and the son, Harris, a former pilot who lost a leg in the war. Simonson’s drawing-room dialogues may sometimes seem old fashioned, but they build the characters. And hang on for that whiz-bang conclusion.

You may have noticed that all these titles are by British/Scottish authors. While American authors have cornered the market on Beach Reads (click here and here and here), the United Kingdom seems to generate quite a few Gentle Reads!

Pandemic Stories

First, a review of the most recent pandemic story I’ve read. But then, scroll down . . .

Day     Michael Cunningham     (2023)  This poignant novel takes us into the life of a family in New York City on three specific days:  April 5, 2019; April 5, 2020; and April 5, 2021. Of course, the pandemic is a major feature of the narrative, but readers are reminded that, in every family, many other factors were at play in those years. Isabel and Dan are struggling with their careers and their marriage. Their young children, Nathan and Violet, can’t help but notice. Dan’s brother, Garth, is trying to figure out his relationship with his friend Chess, who is the mother of their son. But the emotional support for the family resides in Robbie, Isabel’s brother. Robbie has been living with Dan and Isabel, but in 2019 the apartment has become too cramped, and he has to move on. He’s also been dumped by his latest boyfriend, finding consolation in an Instagram alter-ego named Wolfe. With deft, subtle strokes, novelist Cunningham delineates these characters, both the adults and the children, creating a rich portrait.

More Pandemic Stories

A world-changing event such as a pandemic is certainly a plot generator. If you are still trying to get your head around what happened, here are reprises of some of my previous posts.

The Pandemic of the 2020s

Lucy by the Sea     Elizabeth Strout     (2022) Pulitzer-Prize winner Strout looks at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through the eyes of Lucy Barton (a character she’s developed in My Name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible, and Oh William). Lucy’s ex-husband, William, is a scientist who sees how dangerous the coronavirus is. In early March 2020, he insists that Lucy leave New York City for a rental house on the coast of Maine. In first-person narrative, Lucy details the interactions she has with family and friends during 2020 and early 2021. Lucy by the Sea truly captures the sense of desperation and loneliness that the pandemic wrought.

Happy-Go-Lucky     David Sedaris     (2022)  For fans of David Sedaris (count me in), every new collection of his essays means a couple of evenings of sure-fire good reading, unveiling the vagaries of family relationships. Happy-Go-Lucky focuses quite a bit on the last years of David’s nonagenarian father, Lou, and on the impact of the COVID pandemic. The stories are honest, touching, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes disturbing. There is simply no other essayist who is as irreverent and candid and downright funny as David Sedaris.

Wish You Were Here     Jodi Picoult     (2021)  Picoult sets this novel in New York City and Galápagos in 2020, right when the coronavirus pandemic breaks out. The societal details are all too familiar, but the story takes unexpected turns, yanking the reader along. The disjointedness of alternate realities reflects our times.

Joan is Okay     Weike Wang     (2022)  All of us know what’s going to happen in the intensive care units of hospitals in New York City in the spring of 2020. We know that ICU physicians like Joan are going to be in the thick of the COVID pandemic. But in 2019, Joan can’t predict this. She’s dealing instead with the expectations of her boss (who rewards her workaholism) as well as the expectations of her Chinese American family (who want her to get married and have kids). She also has a strangely intrusive neighbor and an oddball work colleague. Still, Joan is okay, even when COVID hits. This short novel packs a punch.

Romantic Comedy     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2023) Go behind the scenes in 2018 at The Night Owls, a not-very-disguised version of Saturday Night Live, to meet Sally Milz, a comedy writer in her late thirties who has often been disappointed in love. Meet a guest host of the show, pop star Noah Brewster. Watch Sally develop a crush on Noah and then accidentally insult him so that their light flirtation ends. Next, skip to the year 2020, in the depths of the COVID pandemic, and read emails between Noah and Sally. Speculate on whether this romance will re-blossom. As befits a late-night comedy show, the scripts that Sally writes can be raunchy, but Sittenfeld’s depiction of modern America is spot on.

Tom Lake     Ann Patchett     (2023)  In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, three young adult daughters of a family are hunkered down at their childhood home, an orchard in Michigan, helping harvest the crops. They beg their mother to tell the full story of her summer romance with movie star Peter Duke, which took place back in 1988 when Duke was a struggling young actor. The mother obliges, and the novel toggles between 1988 and 2020. Much of the plot centers on stage productions of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, so if you haven’t read or seen the play in a while, it will help if you brush up before starting Tom Lake. That said, the unfolding of the mother’s tale and its connection to the family’s status more than 30 years later are engrossing, with small and large revelations along the way. Novelist Patchett should ask for compensation from the Michigan Travel Commission, given her glowing descriptions of the state’s natural beauty, especially the area around Traverse City, in the northwest quadrant of the Lower Peninsula.

The Pandemic of 1918-1920

The Pull of the Stars     Emma Donoghue  (2020)  Julia Power is a nurse working in a maternity ward in Dublin during the 1918 flu pandemic. She contends not only with an invisible virus but also with lack of supplies, women oppressed by the strictures of the Catholic Church, and her own sexual awakening.

The Pandemics of Both the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Violeta     Isabel Allende     (2022)  Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle. The fictional Violeta Del Valle tells her captivating life story in first person, from her birth in 1920 during one pandemic to her death in 2020 during another pandemic. The backdrop is the political upheaval in the history of an unnamed South American country that is very much like Chile.

The Plague in the Time of Shakespeare

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague     Maggie O’Farrell     (2020) There’s actually not an emphasis on contagion in this fictional imagining of William Shakespeare’s domestic travails. The title character is William’s son, Hamnet, whose name is an alternate spelling of Hamlet; you can make connections to the play of that name. And the writing in this novel . . . it’s just magical.  

Author Spotlight: Carys Davies

Yes, I know that this author’s given name is a variant spelling of my given name, but that’s not why I’m putting her in the spotlight for this post! Her novels are short, punchy, imaginative, and . . . strange. Her main characters are loners in lonely places or loners who have embarked on problematic journeys. She can set the scene with a few deft sentences, conjuring up the most outlandish sites. Oh, and she’s garnered a number of literary prizes.

Davies’ first novel, West, was published in 2018.

The plot is preposterous, the characters are peculiar, and the language is spare. Yet this book made my post “Favorite Reads of 2018.” Here’s a slightly condensed reprint of my review from that year:

Davies spins a tale that’s akin to ancient myth, set on the North American continent in about 1815. This was an era when the lure of the western frontier was irresistible to some people living in the East. One of these people is Cy Bellman, a mule breeder in central Pennsylvania, who reads in a newspaper about the discovery in Kentucky of the bones of gigantic animals. Cy convinces himself that living exemplars of these animals still roam in the farthest reaches of the continent, driven west by settlement. Cy, who is a widower, leaves his young daughter, Bess, in the care of his unmarried sister and sets off to the west. He hopes to find some amazing creatures if he ventures a ways off the paths that Lewis and Clark traversed in their 1804-06 expedition through the Louisiana Purchase.

The narrative of West alternates between the experiences of Cy in the wilderness (perils: hunger, animal attack, Indian attack, winter) and the experiences of Bess in Pennsylvania (perils: predatory men, clueless aunt, lack of education). Davies builds tension artfully. She pauses in her rapid narrative sweep for descriptions at moments that capture the extremity of the threats to both Cy and Bess. Here is Cy at the end of his first winter on the road: 

“One night he heard the ice booming and cracking in the river, and in the morning bright jewels of melting snow dripped from the feathery branches of the pines onto his cracked and blistered face, his blackened nose.” (21)

Despite the harsh conditions, Cy continues to be obsessed with getting a sighting of monstrous animals. But there’s also a general wanderlust at work. A central theme of European and American literature has always been the journey, the pilgrimage, the hero’s voyage. Cy’s trip is set against the dangers for stay-at-home Bess. And uniting these two stories is a third key character, who signs on as a guide for Cy: “An ill-favored, narrow-shouldered Shawnee boy who bore the unpromising name of Old Woman From A Distance.” (27)

I was hesitant to dip into this little novel because I was suspicious of a Brit writing about early America. Such foolish prejudice I displayed! Carys Davies has produced an amazing portrait of frontier life circa 1815, but that’s only the backdrop to her exploration of ambition, fear, lust, weariness, greed, and familial affection.

Davies’ next novel was The Mission House, in 2020.

The Mission House is set in contemporary India and features more of Davies’ unconventional characters:  a disabled orphan, a barber who aspires to be a country-Western singer, and a depressive British librarian taking a rest-cure. The Briton, Hilary Byrd, takes up temporary residence with a missionary in a remote hill station and interacts with locals in the household and in the neighborhood. The modern independent India becomes blurred with the old India, under the former British imperialist rule. Hilary seeks to escape England and yet ends up in a place with many British trappings. Beneath the surface, politics seethe.

Davies’ most recent novel is Clear, which came out in 2024.

For this one, I recommend reading the Author’s Note at the end of the book before starting the fiction. Davies explains the “Clearances” of the 18th and 19th centuries in Scotland: “Whole communities of the rural poor were forcibly removed from their homes by landowners in a relentless program of coercive and systematic dispossession to make way for crops, cattle, and—increasingly as time went on—sheep.”

The novel is set in the year 1843, when the Clearances coincided with a major upheaval in the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. A middle-aged clergyman, John Ferguson, unemployed and desperate, takes a fee-for-service job: evicting a lone tenant from a (fictitious) remote Scottish island in the North Sea, as part of the Clearances. The tenant, Ivar, is an unlettered recluse who speaks only Norn, a Germanic language nearly extinct at the time. Soon after being dropped off by a ship passing by the island, John falls down a cliff and is seriously injured. Ivar finds John and cares for him while he recovers, and the two form an uneasy bond, as John struggles with his assignment to remove Ivar from the island.

Meanwhile, back in mainland Scotland, John’s wife, Mary, who was never too keen on his taking the job, gets more and more uneasy. As with Davies’ other two novels, Clear comes rushing to a startling conclusion.

All of Carys Davies’ novels are best read in one sitting, so set aside a few hours to be swept away.