The Cue Card

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?

Hi All. I hope your summer is going well. It seems June went by in a blink of an eye and July is almost here. I’ll have my Preview post out next week as to what’s coming out ahead, but I’m not ready just yet. We’re headed into Canada Day long weekend here and it looks like big thunderstorms are looming. At least, it’ll help to get a bit of rain for the plants. And luckily we don’t have any big plans other than to enjoy ourselves in the countryside and maybe get out the bikes, the golf clubs, and the yard work equipment for whenever it’s not thundering down. What about you — do you have big plans or travel for the Independence Day ahead? Most of the continent is frying right now, so what more do you need than to take a dip in the nearest ocean, lake, river, or pool. Otherwise stay in the A/C and enjoy a fun beach read or two. 

And now I’ll leave you with what I finished lately. 

Clear by Carys Davies / Scribner / 208 pages / 2024

3.75 stars. It didn’t take too long for this story to capture my imagination … of a lone occupant left to his animals on a remote island in the North Sea circa 1843 and the Scottish Reverend (John Ferguson) who is sent some 400 miles by boat to evict him. Impoverished John is doing the bidding of a wealthy landowner who wants the man gone … as part of the forced evictions known as the Highland Clearances to sweep away unwanted tenants. 

But John’s wife Mary has misgivings that it won’t be an easy job, and after weeks she sets off to see if she can bring John back. In the meantime John has had an accident on the island and is found and taken in by the lone man, Ivar. As they get to know one another, even with different languages, it is unclear if John will tell the man why he’s there, or whether he will end up using his gun to convince him. The man Ivar is at home there on his beloved island among his animals and knows no other life. 

The writing is sparse but with keen observations of the rugged, wet, and windy terrain. It’s very atmospheric and you can feel the remote isolation, the unkempt man, the cliffs, and the crashing waves that make boats unwelcome. It’s a short book and one whose arresting ending comes soon enough like the big cresting waves to the shore.

I’ve Tried Being Nice: Essays by Ann Leary /Simon & Schuster /240 pgs /2024

4+ stars. Ann Leary’s essays came to me at the right time. I had just finished Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, which is quite a grim read and I needed a big palate cleanser and this proved to be the perfect audiobook, which Ann narrates herself.

Several of the essays are pretty humorous, including about Doodle lady, who lets her dog roam on the Learys’ property; or Ann’s funny incidences dealing with her actor husband Dennis Leary’s fans and fame and her diaries from the Red Carpet; or her tennis doubles partners; or the time a brown furry bat attached to her pajamas at their country house. Ann has some fun banter and self-deprecating humor … often over her suffering from being a constant people pleaser — which is most welcomed in this entertaining collection of essays. 

Not all the essays are funny, but the other ones are often poignant looks into her life: about her writing; or how her family moved around a lot as a kid; her hearing problems; her alcohol relapse; her family life with Dennis and their two kids and becoming an empty nester; her taking up tennis in her 40s and becoming an EMT; their downsizing and move to New York; their travels; and the dogs in her life. Wow there’s so many enlightening glimpses into Ann.

Of course, I had no idea about her much before. I had read Leary’s 2013 novel The Good House and saw the movie too, which I had liked. So I thought this one might be enjoyable and thankfully it was, yay. Especially so, since I’m a dog lover and a tennis player — both of which she talks about being herself in a couple chapters. She also writes about being a person who’s avoided confrontations throughout her life (me too, alas) and seems to be trying to train herself not always to be such a people pleaser.

This book seems a bit different than Ann Patchett’s 2021 book of essays These Precious Days, which I also liked. Maybe that one has an earnest, searching look back on life, while this one has a bit more banter to it. But this one also seems quite open and genuine and has some great lines in it. So thanks to Ann for getting me back onto a more positive track and reading space with this entertaining book. I can go back now to my summer reading list filled with novels of despair and angst, lol. 

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

Hi. I hope all is well and you’re not living under a heat dome presently, or hopefully it will leave soon. Try to stay cool and hang in there. I think we’ve had the opposite here lately with rainy weather and a few mornings with frost advisories. Strange how it can be so different. The dogs sure like the cooler temps. Willow, our young girl is on the left, and Stella, our senior girl is on the right. They like sitting out on the grass when the weather is nice. And I think when summer temps return this weekend, they will be ready to go to the river for a swim. They’re avid swimmers.

In book news, I see that author V.V. Ganeshananthan’s second novel Brotherless Night, about a family fractured by the Sri Lankan civil war, has won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Wow was it a surprise or no? I think those who read it said it was a frontrunner all along. But this author is new to me, so I will put her book on my library list. The novel also won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in May, so the author has taken both awards recently, woohoo. Apparently she is an American author born to Sri Lankan immigrants who teaches at the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. Congrats to her on the two wins. 

And now I will leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. All three are from my summer reading list. 

River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure / Morrow / 352 pages / 2024

(4.4 stars) This doesn’t read like a debut novel. Wow Aube Rey Lescure pretty much hits it out of the park on her first go-around. The novel was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction for good reason. Set in Shanghai, it peers into the life of a Chinese-American family and alternates perspectives between mixed race 14-year-old Alva and rich landlord Lu Fang, 58, who becomes her stepfather after marrying her white American mother Sloan. 

At first sulky Alva (who dreams of coming to America) wants to change from her public school to the Shanghai American School and schemes to get her new stepfather, whom she doesn’t think much of, to pay for it. He sympathizes a bit since he once wanted to study at a university abroad but got waylaid during the Cultural Revolution and ended up as a lowly shipping clerk. 

As their timelines go along, Alva finds herself losing control with drinking and rebelling teen behavior among the lives of the rich expats at her new school circa 2008, while Lu Fang’s life goes back in time to when he first met Alva’s mother (Sloan) and they started an affair when he had a Chinese wife and child on the way. Years later he pushes his son to get strong grades to go to university in the States.

Then something happens, and Lu Fang comes to reconnect with Sloan over many years. Each person in the family is going through stuff and trying to reinvent themselves in Shanghai. Teenage Alva and Lu Fang who are far apart at the beginning come to understand more about each other over time and get closer. This is a perceptive story of a family caught between cultures that captured me with its characters’ stories and its Shanghai setting along the way. 

Apparently the author grew up in Northern China and Shanghai and graduated from Yale in 2015. This is her debut!

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring / Europa / 250 pages / 2023

(4.2 stars) I really enjoyed this novel, which I listened to on audio, about a handful of inhabitants in a small town in Northern Maine. Its various characters are all equally enticing and I found the storytelling rather seamless. It felt like these people were just out your doorstep with their connections and problems and all felt quite real, along with their dialogue among one another. 

There’s Rose, who has bruises from her fiance Tommy; clinic doctor Richard Haskell who treats people in town and is married to librarian Trudy; even though Trudy’s more interested in her best friend Bev Theroux, married to Bill. Their son Nate, a cop, is married to Bridget who’s struggling unbeknownst to anyone with postpartum depression after having baby Sophie; and teenager Greg, who’s sort of rotund and pals around with classmates Angela and Henry but struggles with low self-esteem.

The chapters switch around among these characters, all of whom are interesting, likable, and easy to follow. I especially was drawn to Nate, the cop, who gets most of the attention when he endures heartbreak midway into the novel. The story about these characters went down as easy as ice cream on a summer day and I eagerly wanted more. Which is good because Bowring’s sequel Where the Forest Meets the River will be coming out in September. I’ll be waiting.

The book’s storytelling among a group in a small northern town reminded me a bit of Canadian author Mary Lawson’s novels. If you like her, you’ll probably like this one too.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler / Beacon Press / 288 pages / 1979

(4 stars) This — my first Octavia Butler novel read for my book club — is a pretty intense time travel story that transports the black protagonist Dana Franklin, age 26, from her home in California in 1976 to a plantation in Easton, Maryland circa 1815. At the time she’s married to her white husband Kevin, who like her is also a writer. She can’t seem to stop her time travel, which at first is just for short periods of time to apparently protect the white plantation owner’s son Rufus (for reasons she comes to learn), but as it goes on Dana becomes entangled to the lives on the plantation for longer periods. 

And it’s a brutal place. Slaves she comes to know are whipped, raped, and their children sold at whim. Dana herself a free woman is subjected to a gruesome beating when she’s caught teaching a young slave to read. Her husband too gets caught in the loop of time travel there that separates them for five years. On and on the brutality goes as Dana tries to gauge the evil plantation owner and reason with his erratic son Rufus, whom she tries to make a pact with that they can help each other, but little good that does since he’s too unreliable and cruel. 

Along the way Butler’s novel shows and teaches about slavery and its legacy … of what it was like and what happened on plantations. She puts you right at the scene and writes it like a novel resembling a first-person slave narrative. It’s a violent, savage, and dehumanizing undergoing. Dana has trouble getting back to her real home in 1976, but she comes to figure out how to manipulate the time travel. The ending, which takes a good while getting to, comes crashing down like I knew it had too. I thought this was less sci-fi and more slave narrative with a little time travel thrown in. It’s still a rattling look at nineteenth-century plantation life these many years later from when the author wrote it in 1979.

I listened to the audio book of it read by actress Kim Staunton who does a superb job getting through some disturbing and harrowing scenes. Apparently there was a TV series of the novel that ran for one season on FX and Hulu in late 2022 before being canceled. 

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

Hi all. I hope you’ve had a good week. I’ve been busy with yard work and officiating a junior tennis tournament lately, so things have gone by in a whoosh. But now I’m back to chat about books. Last week’s post about my summer reading list drew great thoughts and input. I agree with those who said it’s a pretty ambitious list. I’m not sure I realized that many books I picked were over 400 pages. What was I thinking? Especially since I have Publishers Weekly reading to do too. But it will give me perhaps some focus and direction of what I want to read.

This week I have a slew of reviews to post since I haven’t in awhile. These are ones I read or listened to before my summer picks. Let me know if you know any of these, or have any thoughts about them.

Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen / Harper / 224 pages / 2023

3.5 stars. The protagonist of this novel divorced 53-year-old Rachel Calloway is a bit of a hard-nosed piece of work. Still she’s a bit sympathetic too when things start to fall apart. She’s worked like heck for decades as a science journalist to get where she is at her D.C. job … but when she’s called back to her hometown of Portland, Maine after her estranged mother dies, leaving her her townhouse, things begin to combust.

Rachel hasn’t returned home in 10 years, even while her mother, an attention-seeking alcoholic, was ill and dying. Her sister Celeste took care of her and holds resentments that she did all the work. Now as the two sisters reconnect with Rachel back in town … they find themselves mostly fighting rather than getting along. While there, Rachel must deal with old memories of her mother who she wasn’t close to; her hometown boyfriend who’s just been married; as well as her sister Celeste, her brother in law who’s turned alcoholic and their kids. Meanwhile her ex in D.C. is terminally ill and she’s being pushed out of her beloved job.

Independent Rachel, who seems to eschew her working-class digs, begins to feel a snowball effect upon her. Will she be able to pull it together and turn over a new leaf? There was some good writing in this, though I was at times at odds with the tempestuous characters and yet still I rooted for them to iron things out. This was my first novel by this author and another Maine novel whose setting I seem to be reading this year with other novels such as The Road to Dalton and Beyond That, the Sea.

The General and Julia by Jon Clinch / Atria / 272 pages / 2023

3.75 stars. I quite enjoyed the audio of this historical novel narrated by Gibson Frazier, which captures significant moments in the life of Ulysses S. Grant while he comes to write his memoirs at the end of his life in 1885. It took me awhile at the beginning to get accustomed to the narrative and the jumps it takes here and there in time (chapters seem a bit like vignettes). But as it went on I found it a fascinating look into the man whom the Confederacy surrendered to at Appomattox and who held the presidency twice. I learned quite a bit more about him than I knew before.

The prose is well done and it captures Grant’s mind-set, the times, and how his thoughts changed about slavery. It also tells about how he met his wife Julia (and later having a family of four kids), his meeting with Lee at Appomattox, his time as a St. Louis farmer at his farm Hardscrabble, his move to New York and his turn to business, his massive financial loss in a swindle, and his friendship with Mark Twain who helped Grant with his memoirs and offered to publish it.

Grant’s life was full of hard work, loss, and hardship. I had no idea he struggled so financially before the Civil War as a farmer, and later when he lost most of his money in an epic business scheme. I also didn’t know much about his friendship with Twain or his relations with slaves. Who knew he was such an interesting figure — pivotal yes, but also with such a variety of opposite aspects about him. I finished the novel wanting to know more about Grant. Should I read his memoirs, or the 1,100 page tome Grant by Ron Chernow? Ha. It could be a desert island book someday.

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl / Milkweed / 248 pages / 2019

3.5 stars. The chapters altered between lyrical nature writing and poignant essays about her family. I liked both quite a bit, though they were often quite brief and I sort of wanted the essays to go on longer … or the book to be written as an ongoing memoir. Though it has aspects of that.

Renkl, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, talks much about the cycle of life and death in nature and caring for her elderly parents and their sad passings, which were tough on her. The parts about her loving parents really spoke to me and I found them touching. The joys of nature and family resound in the book … as well as growing up in a rural spot in Alabama before they moved to the city.

I think when I picked it up I didn’t realize it’d be short essays instead of a memoir, which isn’t my preferred reading format, but I liked her sensibilities and her honesty in thoughts about herself and her life. She is a keen observer of the natural world and the ties that bind family.

The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen / Harper / 352 pages / 2023

3.2 stars. When a man named Eric working as a weapons technician for a defense firm in Egypt is found dead fallen from his balcony and it’s ruled a suicide, his sister Cate in New York begins poking around sure that her brother didn’t commit suicide. She flies to Cairo and enlists the friend of a friend — Omar — who’s hiding his life as a gay man from the oppressive regime. The two work together uncovering some leads about the nefarious firm Polestar, which offers a settlement of $4 mil to Eric’s parents back in Massachusetts.

Around and around the plot goes as Cate tries to make headway in finding out the truth about her brother’s death … trying to discover: what he was involved in and who he was associating with. Some of the threads are interesting in Egypt and others go round and round and I lost momentum caring too much about what was what. But then it gets dangerous for Cate and Omar and the ending was a bit of a surprise and a little shocking so it came to a head in a direct way. I listened to this on audio while I was weeding the yard.

King Nyx by Kirsten Bakis / Liveright / 320 pages / 2024

3 stars. I wanted to really like this one since I remember liking the author’s first novel Lives of the Monster Dogs long ago, but I could not stomach this one the same. Basically it’s about Anna Fort who in 1918 accompanies her husband Charles, a crypto-scientist, to an isolated island off northern New York state where Charles can finish his book at his benefactor’s island mansion. Soon we’re alerted that Anna has bouts of hysteria and had been in a sanitarium for awhile.

She was a maid when she met her husband and stands by her man since he helped her and is trying to earn a living with his book. But when they get to the island weird stuff begins to happen as they’re put in quarantine (since it’s the days of the Spanish flu), such as seeing foragers in the woods, having an oddly absent benefactor, and Anna’s being put under hypnosis by another guest who uses a machine. Then later dead bodies begin popping up.

It seemed a bit like goth on steroids … with life-size human dolls to boot. But did it really make any sense? Around and around it goes with its happenings and feminist themes. It wasn’t really for me — but it might be for you. Others on Goodreads liked it. I liked some of the Upstate New York locales it mentions such as Clayton and Alexandria Bay, where I’ve visited before. Otherwise I was ready to leave the island early on.

That’s all for now. What about you — do any of these ring a bell? And what are you reading these days?