Every week, the fiction that I check out from the Ann Arbor District Library gets ruthlessly culled. By the time I’ve read twenty or thirty pages, I know if the story is too violent, the prose too banal, or the characters too obnoxious for my taste. Less than a quarter of my weekly haul ends up being reviewed on this website; reviews of three novels that passed my tests are below.

In this post I also offer three nonfiction titles. I read less nonfiction, and it’s usually in the categories of biography, memoir, cultural studies, or cooking. Here I’m branching out with a book on gardening, one of my passions. Happy reading!

Fiction

Matrix     Lauren Groff     (2021)     In the second half of the 12th century, in England, the bastard daughter of royalty is banished to an impoverished convent. Groff conjures up this life story for Marie de France, about whom very little is actually known—except that she is the author of highly influential surviving medieval poems. The constructed milieu of this novel is believable, the tale mesmerizing, the language incandescent. See also my review of Groff’s Fates and Furies.

The Other Bennet Sister     Janice Hadlow     (2020)  Plucking Mary, the middle of the five Bennet sisters, out of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Hadlow imagines how her adult life might have played out. The probings of Mary’s emotional struggles are beautifully rendered, and tone is totally Austenesque. But you don’t need to be an Austen fan to enjoy this gentle, lovely story.

The Vanishing Half     Brit Bennett     (2020)  In this complex exploration of connectedness and concealment in late 20th-century America, light-skinned Black twins go their separate ways as teenagers. The twist here is that one twin decides to pass for white and marries a white man, while the other marries a Black man and remains within the Black community. Each has a daughter, and the paths of these cousins cross in unexpected ways.  

Nonfiction

Bloom’s Best Perennials and Grasses:  Expert Plant Choices and Dramatic Combinations for Year-Round Gardens     Adrian Bloom     (2010)  The title says it all, and the photos are magnificent. This is the book for the gardener who wants to move from ordinary garden-center plants to the next level of gardening, selecting specific varieties based on growing conditions and design preferences.

Hidden Valley Road:  Inside the Mind of an American Family     Robert Kolker     (2020)  Between 1945 and 1965, Don and Mimi Galvin produced twelve children, six of whom were eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic. This exhaustive chronicle of their family life in Colorado, against the backdrop of shifting treatments for schizophrenia, is both heartbreaking and riveting.

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet     John Green     (2021)  These essays, adapted from the acclaimed podcast of the same title, explore and rate wildly diverse aspects of our geological era, the Anthropocene, including teddy bears, sunsets, Indianapolis, plague, and sycamore trees. John Green bares his soul with humor, intelligence, and compassion. Thanks to Vera Schwankl for recommending this extraordinary book!