The Cue Card

Hi all. I hope you’re having a pleasant fall. It’s been nice here and warm conditions make it feel like it’s an Indian summer, but I know others far away are on the run from Hurricane Milton so hopefully they can get out of its path in Florida. What’s being predicted doesn’t look good. What a worry for the state’s Gulf side.

Meanwhile next week the city’s book festival is going on here along with a Challenger pro-tennis tournament, so I’ll be driving back and forth to those events. At the festival, I’ll be seeing authors Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Robyn Harding, and Rachel Kushner speak about their new novels. I sort of want to see Nita Prose and Alice Winn too, but I’m not sure I will get there since we live a ways away. I will report back on what happens.

Also my husband and I recently saw British nonfiction author Ben Macintyre talk about his recent book The Siege, which gives a suspenseful account of the 1980 hostage crisis that took place at the Iranian Embassy in London.

Whoa, I don’t recall much about it at the time — perhaps since the other Iranian hostage crisis was going on and I was in high school — but it was a very tense, dangerous situation. Macintyre’s books are all very good, especially his 2014 book A Spy Among Friends about British spy Kim Philby. It was great to see him and he gave a great talk about his new book, which sounds like a page-turner.

Now let’s check out the various books I picked up from the library recently. Here’s my library loot at left. Have you read any of these? They all look pretty good, but I might not get to many this time around, since I signed up for Ti’s October read-along of Of Human Bondage, which I need to start pronto. I just finished a novel for PW, so that distracted me for a bit. Now I’m back to pick up Somerset Maugham’s 1915 classic, which seems like it’ll be terrific. Yay.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of novels that I finished lately.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger / Grove / 336 pages / 2024

4 stars. It’s been years since I read author Leif Enger back when he wrote his lovely debut Peace Like a River, which actually was published on 9/11/2001 — not a good pub date! But here I was 20 years later reading his newest tale, which I couldn’t resist —set along Lake Superior in the not so distant future, where much has closed, violence is out there, and people are barely getting by. Groups of people have been opting out by taking a suicide drug known as Willow.

But bar-band bass guitarist Rainy is doing his best with his beloved wife Lark, who owns the bookstore in town and seems like the coolest, poetic person on earth. But when a boarder (Kellan) comes to stay at their place — little do they know that he’s being pursued by bad guys who want the drug stash he stole from them. As Kellan flees, the bad guys descend upon the house while Rainy is out and cause heartbreak for him to find.

Rainy takes to a sailboat to escape and to try to find Lark’s spirit amid the Slate Islands where they once sailed together. Along the way he stops in various coastal towns for supplies and finds he’s being shot at and pursued. Meanwhile out on the lake, he meanders his grief and learns how to manage the boat under tough storm and lake conditions. It’s dicey trying to stay alive out there on so little rations and he meets one couple onshore that help. Later at another stop, he helps a young girl (Sol, age 12) get out of her harsh predicament and she becomes a passenger on his boat. Eventually the bad guys catch up and things play out on a large medicine ship.

Much of the story is vividly and movingly rendered like the misty fog on the lake and Rainy’s feelings onboard, and other parts get a bit slow, weighed down and long. But still you keep on to see how it will play out and how Rainy will fare. The ending with the bad guys gets a bit suspenseful — and afterwards I felt like I had been through the ordeal and I thought about the book for quite a while. Kudos to Enger for this dystopian tale and its chilly lake setting.

The Women by Kristin Hannah / St. Martin’s / 471 pages / 2024

4+ stars. The first half of this novel I liked best about young American nurse Frankie McGrath’s time helping the wounded in Vietnam circa 1966-1969 and the friends (Barb, Ethel, and doc Jaime) she meets while there. She follows in her brother’s path to Vietnam. The first half is fast paced and really details how tough it was and the contributions the nurses made, and how young they were. Innocent Frankie comes into her own there as time goes on and she finds she’s good at being a nurse and helping save the lives of soldiers torn apart.

Along the way, I didn’t doubt Frankie made close friends and fell for a couple men over there during such intensity. But when she gets back to the States after her service, so much goes wrong at each turn that it’s a heavy dose of drama. Though I don’t underestimate that Veterans struggled to acclimatize when they returned from the war and were looked down upon by a society that had turned against the war. Many did and became dependent on drugs and alcohol to ease their nightmares and pain.

Frankie’s struggles with her parents and how the country perceived Vietnam nurses as pretty much invisible and like non-veterans seems well described. But later the twists that come with the relationships she has (one in particular with a Navy officer) goes sort of overboard. It gets a bit drippy. Yet still all the research the author obviously did into the Vietnam War and the vet nurses comes through and makes it a worthy respectful story of their contributions and perhaps is her best book yet … though I have only read her novel The Nightingale. I listened to The Women on audio narrated movingly by Julia Whelan.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?

Hi all. Happy first day of fall. It’s going to be a beautiful and warm week here … though we already had one morning of frost on Saturday and we had to pick some vegetables the night before and tarp the rest. We saved most of the plants, while a few got shriveled. It’s hard to believe we’re already at this point. Meanwhile, I had a fun birthday on Friday with tennis doubles during the day and a dinner out with my husband and a cake afterwards, lol. You know you’re far, far along when one candle represents a decade, right? Oh well.

Lately we’ve been watching and liking the mystery/crime series The Emperor of Ocean Park based on the novel by Stephen L. Carter (on Crave in Canada) and also the mystery drama The Perfect Couple (on Netflix), based on the book by Elin Hilderbrand. Both of these shows are fun suspense and not too heavy. We’ll probably watch Season 4 of Slow Horses (on AppleTV+) next, and I’m curious whether to try to get the historical drama series Shogun especially since it won like 18 Emmy awards recently. Apparently you can view it in Japanese with English subtitles, or in an English dub version. Have you tried it?

In book news, I see that the longlist for the National Book Award came out last week, which included these 10 fiction titles:

All Fours by Miranda July
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
The Most by Jessica Anthony
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
James by Percival Everett
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Yr Dead by Sam Sax
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda

The Finalists will be announced Oct. 1. You can see there’s two that overlap with two titles on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, which includes:

Held by Anne Michaels
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Orbital by Samatha Harvey
James by Percival Everett
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

I was surprised that novels by Richard Powers (Playground), Hisham Matar (My Friends), and Sarah Perry (Enlightenment) did not make the cut for the Booker’s shortlist. Are all these above stronger? I still want to read The Safekeep. I’ve been on the library wait list for it as long as it’s been on the Booker list, ha.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman / Harper / 240 pages / 2024

I guess since a lot of people read and talked about this summer-set story that I’ll pick it for the popular novel of the 2024 summer. So get out the sunscreen if you haven’t read it yet. I listened to the audio version narrated entertainingly by Nan McNamara.

What it’s about: Mid-fifty-ish Rachel or Rocky as she’s called is really going through something — menopause and internal struggles — the week she and her family are at their usual old Cape Cod rental place, which they’ve been going to since their two kids were young. Now they’re older and almost leaving the nest. But yet here they all are together again: with Rocky, her husband Nick, her elderly parents, son Jaime (and girlfriend Maya), and daughter Willa under one small roof. Rocky’s grateful for them all but also nostalgic about the past years when the kids were young. Then she begins to remember sorrowful and secret things that happened back then, which start unfolding as the week goes on.

Rocky’s dealing with her kids’ changes and her parents’ on top of her own. It’s not a story with much action or activity, but it’s more of a domestic, dialogue-imbued plot with internal meanderings.

The author does a good job describing the beach cottage environs, household banter, and things going on with Rocky. Though I almost put it down early on — thinking it was hard to grasp onto much — but it gets a bit better further in, so I kept going. I did laugh at various funny things Rocky says as well as others in the book. Though if you have trouble with loose talk of “vaginas” in many chapters, then be a bit forewarned. Quite a bit of the humor is like that. Towards the latter half the story becomes a bit more heartwarming with the family’s bonds.

Despite her dramas, I thought Rocky seemed lucky to me, especially with her low-key, gracious husband who seems a bit like a saint facing Rocky with her inner turmoils, and the kids have a sweetness about them. Her parents are funny too — though they face challenges. It might not exactly be your family experience, but a slice of it was entertaining and at times warm like a mojito on an engaging summer evening.

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster / Penguin Classics / 1912

I remember my mother reading this book to me as a youngster and now I’ve returned to it these many years later. I recall being awe-struck as a kid that this orphan girl was now at college and writing all these open candid letters to the anonymous benefactor who sent her there … and that she was learning all sorts of things and having a wonderful time at college and setting her sights on becoming an author, which her benefactor wants her to do.

I could picture Jerusha (Judy) and her life there and I sort of wanted to be there too. Judy is a positive girl with a can-do spirit and has some perky, fun wit about her. It felt very interesting to listen to this epistolary novel published in 1912 and to get a glimpse of the world then and to see what Judy thought of such writers as the Brontes, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Shakespeare and to hear of her classes and writing process.

I enjoyed the audio version narrated by Kate Forbes. It’s a sweet story and maybe it’s a tad sentimental but that’s okay. I give her permission. Judy goes through quite an intellectual and emotional awakening in her coming-of-age journey from college freshman to graduate and story writer, which gives her confidence, happiness, and ultimately love. In some ways the novel reminded me slightly of Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen because of its journey of a young person’s learned awakening through school and books, though Judy’s is a secular awakening in contrast.

I have never read and didn’t even know about the sequel Dear Enemy, which was published in 1915 three years later. Sadly author Jean Webster lived only to age 39 and died giving birth to a daughter in 1916. How sad. Her days at Vassar College (class of 1901) apparently gave her material for this book. Returning to Daddy-Long-Legs reminded me too of my mother who passed in April. Such books are good to keep passing along to the generations after. You can still find plenty in Daddy-Long-Legs to treasure, including Jean Webster’s voice of a young precocious girl getting ready to meet the world.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?

Hi all. I hope everyone is well. We’re already flying through this month it seems. Our Labrador dogs had a nice swim in the river a couple nights ago when it was around 85/90 degrees. They really love swimming and retrieving the ball. Stella is 12 now and swimming gives her some much-needed physio for her arthritis and weak hind legs. Willow, in the foreground, is three years old and can swim very fast. She’s a turbo charger and retrieves the ball lickety-split. 

Now today a rainstorm has moved in and the temps have dropped to 50F. I’m sort of wondering if the high heat is behind us here as we get closer to fall. Just a few weeks ago I was in SoCal visiting my Dad and now it’s being besieged by three wildfires there. I’m keeping a close eye on those from this map. They’ve actually arrested someone for arson in the Line Fire in San Bernardino County. Good grief. How awful to intentionally do this — it’s hard to imagine the malevolence. Meanwhile on the other side of the country, I hope those who endured the deluge from Tropical Storm Francine are okay and will get their power back soon.

Let’s turn to book news now. I see that the Booker Prize shortlist will be announced this coming Monday Sept. 16, so look for that. The 13 novels on the longlist will be whittled down to six. I don’t think I will guess which ones will make it since I’ve only read Percival Everett’s James, but I’m quite certain that James will be on the shortlist and has a shot to win the grand prize in November. Will you be reading any of the nominees?

Also I wanted to review how I did on my Summer Reading List challenge. When all was said and done I completed 10 of 15 novels on my list. I’ll go for 10 next year — as usually other reads slip in. Here are the ones on my list I finished in order of those I read first:

• The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring  (4.2 stars)
• River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (4.3 stars)
• Kindred by Octavia Butler (3.5 stars)
• Clear by Carys Davies (3.75 stars) 
• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (near 5 stars)
• Long Island by Colm Toibin (4 stars)
• A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (3.75 stars)
• James by Percival Everett (near 5 stars)
• The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (4.5 stars)
• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (3 stars) this was an alternate pick

Here are the ones I didn’t get to but might some other time:

• My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar
• The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
• The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
• The Women by Kristin Hannah
• How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
• My Friends by Hisham Matar (I tried this but put it down after 5%) 

I enjoyed most of them quite a bit. And here are a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore / Riverhead / 496 pages / 2024

3 – 3.5 stars. This drama/crime novel is about a teenage girl (Barbara Van Laar) who vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp in 1975. The disappearance lays bare the pain and troubles of her wealthy family who own the camp and who lost a son (Bear) similarly fourteen years earlier. As a panicked search begins, various suspects and secrets eventually come to light and a young, unproven assistant investigator Judy Luptack tries get to the bottom of what happened in the past and present cases. 

This widely touted crime novel, which received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus among others and made Obama’s summer list, reminded me slightly of Rebecca Makkai’s 2023 novel I Have Some Questions for You. That one is set at a boarding school and this one is at a camp, but in both unsettling truths about the cases come to light that have affected those on the periphery for decades. Both, too, swirl around with various suspects and motives for a good long time. This novel, which I listened to as an audiobook, is 496 pages in print!

Eeeek. I wanted to really like it — as I had liked Moore’s novels Long Bright River and Heft quite a lot, but this one not so much. In fact I almost DNF’d it early on, but I struggled to continue on … trying to care about the case and the characters … trying to give it a pulse and thinking it would revive amid the woods, but the pacing and length felt sort of agonizing to me. 

It’s a bad sign when I wanted the female investigator Judy Luptack (the most favorable character) to figure it out about 150+ pages earlier. I realize it’s a slowburn kind of crime novel that tries to delve deep into its large cast of mostly unlikable characters … the main ones from the wealthy troubled family that owns the camp — with the alcoholic mom and the unresponsive father, but man this felt like an eon. I felt the suspense was muted and thought I probably could return to summer camp by the time anything came of it. (For camp, I went only one summer as a youngster to Bob Mathias camp in the mountains east of Fresno, Calif. No persons disappeared there to my recollection, but it might have been around 1975, gulp.) Some of Moore’s writing was evocative and well done, but the pacing … and the ending needed a lifeline to me by then.

Still I seem to be in the minority on this novel, which has a 4.27 rating on Goodreads. So check it out if you think it might appeal to you. 

A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama / St. Martin’s / 288 pages / 2012

4 stars. A family is rocked when one of them — the man, a history teacher and an intellectual named Sheng Ying — is taken away to a reeducation camp in 1958 Maoist China. Told thru those left behind — who include his wife Kai Ying, who struggles to keep the family going; his elderly retired father Wei, who feels guilty his son was taken; his 12-year-old son Tao, who suffers a scary fall at the beginning and is taken to the hospital; his Aunt Song, an avid gardener; and a homeless pregnant teen named Suyin, who comes to take refuge with them.

The story took on a kind of slice-of-life look of those living under a repressive regime and trying to cope with the loss of a family member and the uncertainty of whether or not he will return. 

Midway through you learn how Sheng came to be taken and what it was for … which leads to friction within the family and you wonder if they can forgive each other and be healed. Then late in the story, the elderly father of Sheng makes a cross-country trek to try to locate him and you have to wait to see what happens. 

This was my first Gail Tsukiyama novel — found at a library book sale — and I thought she wrote simply and movingly about each member in the household and what they’re experiencing and have been through. I’ve read several books about China during the Maoist regime and each has given me a fuller picture of the terror during that time. Perhaps the best to me is the 1987 memoir Life & Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. 

That’s all for now.  What about you — have you read these books and if so, what did you think?

Hi. How are your late summer days going? These past couple weeks I’ve had a nice visit with my Dad in Southern California and tomorrow I head back home. He lives inland, but we also spent two lovely Sundays at the beach. There were hardly any waves, but it was enjoyable for swimming, and my brother and a friend joined us too. Summer wouldn’t be complete without some time at the beach, right?

It’s crazy that Labor Day weekend is coming up and that it’s almost September, holy smokes. I guess I will do my preview post next week on what’s new releasing. Till then I’m looking over my summer reading list to see what’s left that I want to finish. I’ve read nine out of 15 and it’d be nice if I finish at least one or two more before putting an end to my summer list. What about you — have you finished your list yet? How are you doing with your goal?

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of two that were on mine.

James by Percival Everett / Doubleday / 320 pages / 2024

4.5+ stars. Whoa this retelling of the Mark Twain classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is darker and more scary than the original, but it’s quite a worthy take on the Twain classic.

Enslaved Jim, who secretly can read and write, tells the story this time and I was captivated to hear what he says and thinks. The beginning and first half seem to follow the original fairly closely. Thinking he’s going to be sold, Jim runs to Jackson Island to hide, there he later is joined by young Huck who’s faked his own death to get away from his abusive father. The two make to escape on a raft on the river looking for freedom, but Jim also hopes to earn money to buy freedom for his family who are left behind.

Along the river they have various adventures and close encounters where they’re almost apprehended and killed. Interestingly Jim employs slave dialect when he’s around whites who like to think they’re superior, but he uses regular language when he’s alone talking with other slaves or blacks who also speak normally. There’s a few secrets like this that you learn along the way — the biggest of all comes towards the end — that’ll make you sit up and spin your head around.

It is a dark and suspenseful journey as Jim becomes a wanted runaway slave accused of theft and murder. The con men the Duke and King, who I didn’t like in the original, are apart of this one too. They are bad news … as is a ministerial troupe — that Jim comes along — in a different kind of way. Huck and Jim get separated a couple times for a good long while, and you wonder if they will get back together … and find a way to escape and be free.

I liked how this telling puts you right into the shoes of Jim and makes you feel his scary predicament and what slavery means and is like in all its violence, inhumanity, and ugliness. It’s gruesome. Jim makes for a perceptive hero and you cling to him along the way. Percival Everett is able to do a lot in this retelling of the classic tale while paying tribute to it too.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng / Bloomsbury / 320 pages / 2023

4.5 stars. There’s some beautiful storytelling in this and the audio is wonderful. The novel has a bit of a longing, haunting quality to it … and is atmospheric about a time where things collided in Penang, Malaysia for a white colonialist couple Lesley and her ailing husband Robert Hamlin who have guests come stay with them in 1921. The guests are famous British author Somerset “Willie” Maugham and his young secretary and love interest Gerald. Willie’s just learned that he’s lost everything in a bad investment, but he doesn’t want to go back to England to his wife and debt, so he’s looking for more to write about quickly to earn money.

Lesley’s marriage too she learns is on the fritz, and she becomes involved with a Chinese revolutionary in 1910 … as well as a murder trial in Kuala Lumpur when she hears her good friend Ethel Proudlock has been charged with a man’s death. Ethel says he was trying to rape her. Lesley tries to help Ethel and advises her to tell the truth about how she knows the man, but you have to wait to near the end to see how it all plays out.

The story is abuzz with infidelities, relationship triangles, expat feelings of place, and a good portion is spent over the murder trial. It seems like a Somerset Maugham story — indeed Willie is writing about the secrets among them and the trial for a book that comes out at the end. The plot winds on in its own good time, alternating between Lesley’s perspective and Willie’s during a time and place with people close to them who they can’t hold onto nor forget. It’s an intricate story. This is my first novel by Tan Twan Eng and makes me want to read his two others. The House of Doors kept me intrigued.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think? Enjoy your long weekend ahead.

Well it seems our summer days are dwindling quickly. I made it to SoCal on Friday for a visit with my Dad and came through Palm Springs airport. You might recognize the lovely San Jacinto Mountains. I was having lunch with a friend nearby where I took these photos. It’s been pretty toasty and is expected to be 114+ degrees in the desert this week. Luckily we’re about 45 minutes west of Palm Springs, so we’re aiming for only 100, lol. I’ve been doing my bike riding and activities in the early morning, and the good news is we’re headed to the beach for a couple days where it will be cooler and I’ll take a dip in the ocean, woohoo. My brother in Pasadena will meet us there.

In book news, I’ve noticed that fall book lists are starting to roll out. As usual, there’s quite an array of top books coming out over the next few months. It’s a bit exciting, but I haven’t really looked just yet, since the truth is I’m still working on my summer list. We still have some time left, and I have a few going this week. I’m midway into a hardback copy of Percival Everett’s novel James which I’m quite enjoying. I’m glad I read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the spring since it follows it pretty closely. I also have a print copy of Hisham Matar’s novel My Friends and the audio of Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng’s novel The House of Doors, which I’m liking a lot too. He seems a talent and I must read his two other novels sometime in the future. 

Also what did you think of Obama’s list of summer reads, which he recently put out? Have you read any of these? I’ve read two: Wide Wide Sea and Help Wanted and I’m reading James now. I’m looking forward to Liz Moore’s novel The God of the Woods. And I’ll probably read Martyr sometime. Obama’s got a pretty good list but there’s always room for others, right? Is there anything that surprises you? Hmm.

So there you have it. And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately. 

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda / Mariner Books / 256 pages / 2024 

3.75 stars. The life of an immigrant Indian family is rocked after the 12-year-old son is arrested for flying a drone near Orange County Airport. The kid Ajay, who’s on the autistic spectrum, is pretty clueless what all the fuss is about but he tries to evade police and they tackle and book him thinking he was trying to do something terrorist-related. 

The parents had just moved the family (of their kids Ajay, Maya, and Deepa) out of their middle-class Irvine, Calif. neighborhood to a loftier area called Pacific Hills (I thought of it as Laguna Niguel) and all are adjusting to their new neighborhood. But then the media gets a hold of Ajay’s arrest, and protestors erupt believing the police are guilty of racial profiling and abuse of power for roughing him up. Will his case move forward? And will his family be able to handle what’s happening?

The story, which I listened to on audio, at first reminded me slightly of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities in the premise’s setup. Granted that was long time ago and I don’t remember it as well now. But Gowda’s storytelling is quite engaging and fast-paced. The three kids and parents all have their views and different backstories … each having some trouble going on: Deepa is a socially conscious teen who gets caught up in her friend Pacho’s undocumented family’s plight; and Maya is caught up detrimentally in trying to gain a rich boy’s attention. The parents don’t really realize all the things going on with their kids until it snowballs and they fear losing all what they worked decades for. 

The author raises some good issues — exploring the differences in our society, the various cultures, and how we exist together — in an engaging plot. My only drawback is that it was a bit heavy-handed at times and not too subtle. It could be on purpose though. There’s also a couple coincidences in the plot that make it a bit of a stretch and the resolution is quite tidy. But still it’s also well done at getting into the heads of the various characters and moves quickly and was pretty enjoyable. I was drawn to it since it’s set in Orange County California. I will watch to see what the author puts out next. 

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of summer. Happy reading.

Have you read any of these books — and if so, what did you think?

Greetings all. How is your summer going? Can you believe Thursday is August? Oh my. And unfortunately I’m late with my monthly preview post so I will do that next week. Things have been busy. I’m just now getting back on the blog after I was away last week reffing the junior provincial tennis tournament a couple hours north of us. It was a long week of 10+ hour days. Luckily it’s over now, and I look forward to visiting your blogs soon to see what you’re reading and what’s up in your world.

Have you been watching the Olympics? Crazy to see the triathletes swimming in the Seine. I hope it’s clean enough now. I have enjoyed seeing the pool swimming races and I’m looking forward to the track and field too … and maybe some of the beach volleyball and the cycling road race. I’m game for whatever looks good.

In book news, we had a good discussion last post about the New York Times’ recent list of the Best Books of the 21st Century. You all made astute observations about what you thought about it and what was on the list and how many you’ve read. And now I see that the Booker Prize longlist is out for 2024, which includes six novels by U.S. authors among the 13 titles nominated. Here are the nominees:

Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
Percival Everett, James
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
Hisham Matar, My Friends
Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History
Anne Michaels, Held
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars
Sarah Perry, Enlightenment
Richard Powers, Playground
Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep
Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

Two of these novels — James and My Friends — were on my summer reading list and still need to be read. Besides those I’m curious about The Safekeep, which explores the legacy of WWII and is about two women in the Dutch countryside in 1961. Hmm, I don’t know too much more about it than that, but it’s said to be good. Though perhaps Percival Everett’s James might be the Booker favorite. What do you think? Which books look good to you on the longlist? The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 16 and the winner in November, so get cracking.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of books that I finished lately. Coincidentally both novels below feature protagonists who rekindle a love interest/affair from their long ago past. This plot seems to be coming up for me lately — I think I’ve had three books like this — but it’s okay as I seem to be a bit of a sucker for it regardless.

Long Island by Colm Toibin / Scribner / 304 pages / 2024

4 stars. I had recently rewatched the 2015 movie Brooklyn starring Saoirse Ronan so I felt ready to get to the sequel novel. Long Island follows the Irish immigrant Eilis, 20 years later after her marriage to Tony Fiorello, a plumber, along with their two teenage kids, and his large Italian American family of three brothers and parents all living on Long Island in the 1970s.

From the start we learn (along with Eilish) that Tony’s been unfaithful to her and fathered a child with one of his customers and that the baby will be left with them to raise. Eilis is none too pleased and decides to return to Ireland on a trip to visit her 80-year-old mother and to think things over with Tony.

It’s all pretty claustrophobic on Long Island with Tony and his family, so it’s a good thing once the story turns to Ireland where Eilis hasn’t been since she left so many years ago. Back in her hometown, Eilis runs into her old beau from her youth Jim Farrell, a pub owner, whom she left to marry Tony. Still unmarried, Jim has secretly been involved recently with Eilis’s old friend Nancy, a widow who maintains the family chip shop. Nancy has a son and is a good and sympathetic character.

But it comes down to: what will happen amid the old heart strings when Eilis and Jim come across one another. Will they try to go back and rewrite the past … and try to get back together? Or will Nancy be on to that, and Tony still be in the cards for Eilis? You have to meander your way through quite a bit to find out.

The novel seemed slow-going in parts … but otherwise I was into the tale of unfulfilled love, second chances, and new and old places in one’s life. The way it ends it seems like there’s room for more sequels ahead. This was my first Toibin novel, which I listened to as an audiobook performed well by Irish actress Jessie Buckley. There’s various characters in it — family and otherwise — and Jessie captured each one pretty effectively. Eilis’s Irish mother, for example, is quite the character … she’s much more grumpy in the book than in the movie Brooklyn. And I hope she finally settles for having a fridge and washing machine courtesy of Eilis, but I’m not sure she didn’t send them back.

All and all the sequel kept me attentive to what would unfold and how the characters would deal with it. Eilis and Jim delve into a situation with no easy options.

Leaving by Roxana Robinson / Norton / 344 pages / 2024

3.75 stars. I was interested to see where this story would go … about a chance meet-up later in life of two ex-college lovers — Warren and Sarah — who went on to marry others and now have grown children. Warren is still married and has a daughter Katrina, while Sarah, a grandmother, is divorced and has a son and daughter who has kids.

Early in the book, Warren and Sarah start an affair … after seeing each other at the opera in NYC … and rekindle much of what they had together so long ago. They fall in love and start to make plans … but not everyone in their families is happy when things emerge, and there is pressure to break it off.

The story details their work — Sarah is a museum curator and Warren an architect — and their lives with their grown kids, which throws some complexities into the situation. You feel what they’re going thru as they try to navigate their previous families to be together in life. Sarah feels quite real though Warren feels a bit more wooden and tense as he tries to hang onto his adult daughter in their future. It’s like a divorce story that gets a bit ugly. And the story, a bit dark, plays out sort of like the operas both Warren and Sarah enjoy watching. I was interested to see this drama through.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?

Hi. How is everyone doing? Surviving the heat? It’s been busy here so I’ve been AWOL off the blog for a while. Summer will do that. July means gathering hay bales and we got eleven round bales this year on our property, which was better than last year’s smaller amount of four due to the big drought and record-setting temperatures in 2023. Usually our neighbor the baler pays us for the bales and takes them for his own horses or distributes them to other farms in the area, though this year there is a glut of bales around here so their value is much less. But they are pretty to see all over the countryside.

My reading is moving along steady but slowly lately. Did you happen to see the New York Times’ list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century according to authors and critics? It’s a bit interesting to look at. I thought they should’ve separated the nonfiction and fiction books … but they combined them onto one list.

You might be a bit surprised that Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend, which came out in 2012, is #1 of the Best Books, and #2 is Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns from 2010. Though I know much about these books, I have yet to read them. I still plan to. One of my favorites in their Top 10 is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go at #9 from 2005.

The New York Times has since put out a second list of Readers’ Picks of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I sort of think this list overall might be better, and it has Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Demon Copperhead as #1. Whether you agree with that or not, the readers’ list has a good mix of top reads over the past twenty plus years.

But looking over the lists it does make you wonder what does Best Book of the Century actually mean? Is it the most memorable book? Or the most literary or creative work? Or the most enjoyable? Or the one that makes the biggest impact on the world? Whatever it means exactly the lists are sort of interesting to look over and maybe to use to add to one’s To Be Read files.

I plan to add some books. What about you — do you place any value on these kinds of Best Of lists, or are they not relevant to your reading? I guess I sort of like such lists, but I don’t get to backlist books too frequently, since I’m often filling up on recently released stuff. Still I want to go back and read the good ones I’ve missed.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch /Atlantic Monthly / 320 pages / 2023

Wow 5 stars. This chilling Booker Prize-winning novel lives up to the hype. The story snuck up on me as I listened to it as an audiobook while doing yard work. I’m glad I went with the audio since the novel has hardly any paragraph breaks (or quotation marks), which makes it seem more dense than it really is. And the audio’s narration by Irish actor Gerry O’Brien is well done.

I found Lynch’s tale to be: powerful, scary, and timely … about a regular Irish family going about their daily lives when a new ruling party in Ireland takes over the government and the secret police come to interrogate the husband Larry Stack, a trade unionist. Eilish Stack, the wife and a mother of four, wants to cooperate with whatever it’s about … but they both don’t seem overly concerned until Larry disappears after participating in a teachers’ march.

Eilish, the main protagonist who works for a biotech company, is left trying to manage the house with an infant; a son Bailey, age 11; a daughter Molly; and a son Mark who’s nearly 18 … as well as to see to her aging father Simon whose mind is slipping from dementia. She has a lot on her platter. Then her son Mark is called up for military service and she tries to hide him in a neighbor’s outbuilding. As more disappear and the country begins to unravel … war breaks out between the regime’s forces and a rebel group. A bombardment begins with dire consequences that leaves the family scrambling for survival (no spoilers here). It’s a tale that feels all too real and harrowing … as a totalitarian state shutters a democracy.

The writing in it is very good, and Eilish Stack is a strong flawed heroine who makes some mistakes but faces very hard choices. She reminded me slightly of the character Mary Pat Fennessy in Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies. She is not as tough as Mary Pat, but she is a character you won’t forget anytime soon.

Apparently when Paul Lynch started writing the book in 2018 he was reacting to the Syrian Civil War and the refugee crisis … and he was still writing it during the pandemic and a case of long covid. But he doesn’t really think of it as a dystopian tale since he says such scary things are going on in the world today. Read it and see.

Fresh Waters for Flowers by Valerie Perrin / Europa / 304 pages / 2020

3.5 stars. I know so many readers on Goodreads loved this one, so I’m a bit in the minority about this bestselling French novel translated into English about a young poor orphan girl Violette who comes to marry a guy named Phillipe Toussaint and becomes a cemetery keeper in Burgundy … for sad reasons that become clear as the story unfolds.

Phillipe is a philanderer who later doesn’t return one day, so Violette carries on with her job and the likable staff at the cemetery. Then she meets detective Julien Seul who’s there to bury his mother next to a grave of a man she requested to be near. Various threads of the story ensue thereafter: of Violette and her failing marriage and the sad loss they suffer; her relations with Julien who wants to find out more about her; and Julien’s mother Irene and the secret affair she had. The story snowballs into an epic engagement of the various components.

I thought the tale has some nice storytelling parts and side characters to it, but the story wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. The saga of the various affairs and the great tragedy that comes to befall Violette and Phillipe seems a bit over-cooked … as they try to get to the bottom of how it happened and who was responsible. It just felt a bit overstuffed and maybe bit redundant in places … and like a saga that wasn’t in my wheelhouse for whatever reason. Was it the writing, or the meandering style, or just the story of intense trauma that I didn’t cling to? Still I liked it well enough to find out what happens and to make it to the drawn-out end.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?