Just Fiction

A Town Called Solace     Mary Lawson     (2021)  Step back in time to 1972, and head to a small town in northern Ontario, Canada, for a tender story of loss, loneliness, and hope, told from the perspectives of three characters: a hospitalized elderly woman, an eight-year-old girl whose older sister has run away, and a thirty-something man facing divorce and joblessness.

Five Tuesdays in Winter     Lily King     (2021)  I usually prefer the expansiveness of the novel format, but each of these ten stories creates a universe of characters and life experiences. Settings range from New England to the North Sea, from the 1960s to the present. See also my review of King’s novel Writers and Lovers. 

Crossroads     Jonathan Franzen     (2021)  In 1971-72 Chicago, middle-aged clergyman Russ Hildebrandt and his wife and four children come under the microscope as they struggle with faith, sex, drugs, Vietnam, and rock ‘n’ roll for 580 detail-heavy pages. This is classic Franzen, with unforgettable characters, and it’s the first book of a projected trilogy.

Small Things Like These     Claire Keegan     (2021)  With prose reminiscent of the early work of James Joyce, Keegan’s novella fictionalizes a piece of the history of the Irish “laundries,” where unwed pregnant women were enslaved by the Catholic Church until 1996. In rural Ireland at Christmastime in 1985, a middle-aged family man stumbles upon evidence of such abuse at a local convent.

Fresh Water for Flowers     Valérie Perrin     Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle     (2020)  This European bestseller is part mystery, part romance, part memento mori. Violette Toussaint, a cemetery keeper in a small town in Burgundy, provides informal grief counselling to mourners as she looks back on her own life and tries to fashion a future for herself. The translation is awkward at points, especially because of the British slang, but the meandering story is heartwarming.

Wish You Were Here     Jodi Picoult     (2021)  Are you ready for a novel set 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.

Pandemic Reads, Part Two

In my last post, I reviewed historical fiction and mysteries that I’ve read during the pandemic. I’d also like to recommend some non-mystery novels about contemporary life.

Monogamy    Sue Miller (2020) When the gregarious owner of an independent bookstore dies, his widow accidentally discovers his infidelity. Sue Miller explores the complex ties of marriage, family, friendship, and career with great subtlety.

Indelicacy    Amina Cain (2020) This short novel (almost a novella) tells the story of a young woman who is lifted out of poverty by marriage to a wealthy man. Although it seems that her dreams of having the leisure to become a writer have come true, the reality of her everyday life is quite different from her expectations.

Writers and Lovers    Lily King (2020) And here’s another woman with authorial ambitions: Casey, a 31-year-old server at a restaurant in Harvard Square who lives frugally and spends every spare moment writing a novel. She also meets some pretty wacky boyfriends. As a former server myself, I loved the restaurant scenes.

Christmas in Austin    Benjamin Markovits (2019) Three generations of the Essinger family gather in Texas for the holidays, and all the usual Christmas traditions and stresses become manifest. You may find yourself identifying with one of the fourteen members of this ensemble cast. (This book is a sequel to A Weekend in New York but stands alone just fine.)

28 Summers    Erin Hilderbrand (2020) For chick lit escapism, it doesn’t get better than Erin Hilderbrand. This offering borrows its structure from Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year, with the two lovers meeting secretly each summer, starting in 1993, on Hilderbrand’s beloved Nantucket Island. You can take lots of breezy seaside vacations with them. I’ve also reviewed Hilderbrand’s Summer of ‘69.

The Geometry of Holding Hands    Alexander McCall Smith (2020)

This 13th entry in the Isabel Dalhousie series finds the Edinburgh-based philosopher again trying to solve ethical questions among her friends and family, all the while editing an academic journal. The interactions of Isabel and her husband, Jamie, are, as usual, unabashedly romantic. Check out my review of the series as a whole and of the 12th entry specifically.