Category: General Fiction

Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Literary Fiction — Humor)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4/5 Humor: 5++/5

Ok, this book is just flat out funny. I snorted, giggled, and guffawed my way through it with only occasional pauses. But while it gets top top grades for humor, it has plenty of depth, too. Ostensibly about a week at the beach with an extended (and all adult) family, it’s a study of functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) family dynamics. Many readers seem to want intense drama, with earth shattering impact, but I love these close looks at how real people work and learn and connect. The themes are family, love, and life with plenty of personality, philosophy, and interaction thrown in and a strong focus on parenting, pregnancy, and reproduction. Also the (new to me) phrase “anticipatory grief.” Wow — I should have learned that one a long time ago…

I loved the characters and the way they interacted. Our first person narrator is Rocky (Rachel) — a mother so full of emotion and worry and menopausal heat she is constantly threatening to (metaphorically) explode. I liked the way husband Nick — even as told through her eyes — is depicted so completely and not just a bit player in Rocky’s drama. Without giving anything away, I thought he was masterfully written. I loved the multifaceted views of all of the characters — both as themselves and also as they were in relationship with each other. I also appreciated the way Newman dealt with daughter Willa — the requisite lesbian through whom plenty of social commentary on LGBTQ+ issues was included in a nice relaxed, off key way that both made me laugh and made me think.

I also loved the dialog — it was written the way I wish people would speak — fast, humorous, and with a high signal to noise ratio. General banter and friendly family squabbling throughout but always overlaid on clear, honest, and trusting communication. I could be laughing at the (over-the-top-of the-top menopause complaints and then be tearing up at the essential humanity and love concisely tucked into an honest exchange. Kind of a combination of Nora Ephron (humor), Matthew Norman (human exchange), and Anne Lamott (parenting and reflection).

I will say that the inside of Rocky’s head is a fun, but very tiring place to be and I’m glad I don’t live there permanently.

Quotes:

“Ugh, my voice! You can actually hear the estrogen plummeting inside my larynx.”

“… I say quietly, but my veins are flooded with the lava that’s spewing our of my bad-mood volcano. If menopause were an actual substance, it would be spraying from my eyeballs, searing the word ugh across Nick’s cute face.”

“People who insist that you should be grateful instead of complaining? They maybe don’t understand how much gratitude one might feel about the opportunity to complain.”

“I’m always Sherlock Holmesing around them all with my emotional magnifying glass, trying to figure out if anybody has any actual feelings and what those might be.”

“Also he will get out the innocuous-sounding foam roller that is actually a complex pain device designed by people who hate everybody. I’ve seen enough videos of cats terrorized by cucumbers to know what my face looks like when I suddenly see the foam roller.”

“Nick’s curiosity about feelings and the people who have them is fleeting at best.”

“Forty percent of my waking thoughts were about the children dying — the other sixty about sleep. I was ashamed of this demented pie chart.”

“A conversation like this might be a wolf in clown’s clothing, and he knows it. My rage is like a pen leaking in his pocket, and before long there will be ink on his hands, his lips.”

“I mince down the spiral staircase in my memory-foam slippers, all of my joints clacking like the witch in a marionette performance of Hansel and Gretel.”

“All of the names of everything have oozed out and away from the drainage holes menopause has punched into my memory storage.”

“My ancient father actually swimming in the ocean feels like a bridge too far in terms of what I can handle fretting about.”

Thank you to Harper and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 18th, 2024.

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett (Fiction — audio book)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5+/5 Plot: 5/5

Loved this book and absolutely loved the audio book reader (Katie Schorr) who added an extra authenticity in her outstanding rendition.

Freedom, Alabama. Ten-year old Elvis (a girl, named after Presley) is working her way through the 18 months of grief as defined by the school guidance counselor after the “accidental” death of her sleepwalking mother. In the meantime, her older sister Lizzie (15) has begun her own escalating experiences with sleepwalking which is (understandably) terrifying the family.

Despite the subject matter, this was in no way a depressing book. It’s an odd coming of age story of an unusual but absolutely relatable (to me) girl who loves her family, has no friends, is whip smart, and whose main objective (at this point) is to find out what really happened to her mother and to finish her mother’s book on the sleep patterns in animals. Think Flavia DeLuce.

The 10 (and later 11) year old voice is utterly believable and the portrait of the other characters — in particular the deceased mother — as seen only through a child’s perspective is startling in that the reader is faced with the stark notion that we are all interpreted differently depending on the interpreter! While I am focusing on Elvis, all of the characters were well-drawn, interesting, and didn’t have a stereotyped trait within 50 miles of their personalities. There was also a non traditional exploration of what constitutes mental illness — and how to make it through life in light of what is thrown at you — uncontrollable events, intractable people, or your own genetic predispositions.

This book reminded me of how much I like Southern Fiction — the quirkiness coupled with individualistic depth, utter nonconformity of thought, and the uniqueness of each family.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 5/5

Thanksgiving 1954. Washington, DC. A women’s boarding house. A body. And blood — lots of blood. That’s how Kate Quinn’s latest book gets started. And yes, once I started, I never put it down as per usual with her books. She can really write!

Backing up from the Thanksgiving turmoil, the book starts in June 1950 and shifts the POV from boarder to boarder as the timeline makes its inexorable crawl towards the “exciting” date. This is an excellent device as not only do we get the events leading up to the end from different perspectives, we also get the stories of the women — all from different backgrounds and with different goals which together comprise a compendium of women’s lives at that time. An injured female baseball player from the short-lived women’s leagues; an older immigrant from Hungary; a young mother whose doctor husband has been overseas for two years; a secretary for the (real life) female Maine senator who goes up against McCarthy when nobody else has the guts; a secretary for HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee); a woman working for the National Archives in love with a gangster despite her best intentions; and the elusive Grace Marsh who brings them all together. These are just hints! Quinn does meticulous research and is able to bring so much of the McCarthy era to the surface — especially around the societal expectations of women. It felt like I was living it.

The book is non-stop action — but — I realized it is the kind of action I care about. Things change, people and their prejudices, fears, and disappointments have to be dealt with and some individuals actually use their experiences to shift their perspectives. Opportunities come up and people learn about themselves (for better and worse) when they choose a reaction. Action does not have to be long (and very dull) car chase scenes or long battles of any kind. Epiphany! Absolutely captivating characters — a couple of “bad men” with no real depth but plenty of men and women (and kids) who are each real in their own way. FYI two of the (fictional) characters were named after people who won the “name-a-character” raffle — what fun! Some impressive twists — do not read the end or the notes first. In addition to being a gripping read, I’m still thinking about it many days later. Always a good sign.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 9th, 2024.

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 3.5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 4.5/5

A chronicle of glass making in Murano (still known as the center of glass!) as told through the life of Orsola Rosso — the eldest daughter of a glass blowing family. Orsola wants to work with glass herself, but it’s 1486 and the Renaissance hasn’t quite reached the stage of promoting social changes for women. The story uses the (very) unusual contrivance of allowing Orsola and those in her immediate orbit to age slowly while time for the world at large gallops by. While the “action” starts in 1486 and ends in the present day, Orsola only ages from nine to her late sixties. While this device is explained (poetically) in the prolog, I didn’t really get it so I’m hoping that I can help you avoid bafflement by stating it here with less skill but more clarity 🙂

Orsola’s life embodies the personal (love, marriage, and children in a large extended family rife with personalities), the political (Venice shifting from commercial center to Austrian occupied territory to part of a United Italy to tourist center) , and the business (Guild control to competitive pressures to tourist-driven). She and her family go through the Plague (and later Covid!), two world wars, and the changing mores of an evolving Europe as the Renaissance gave way to the Age of Enlightenment followed by whatever our current age is destined to be called. I learned a lot about Italian history — details that I had learned in the past now integrated and brought to life in this story of artisans buffeted by the constantly shifting trends over time. The history became so much more real to me told through the lens of this particular family.

I give this a four star rating because for my taste there was a little more description than I like, though that same description may fascinate others.

Thank you to Viking and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 18th, 2024.

Family Family by Laurie Frankel (audio book – Literary Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5+/5 Plot: 4/5

I loved absolutely everything about this audio book — the story, the writing, the characters, and last but definitely not least, the audio book reader.

The book follows India Allwood along two intersecting timelines: from precocious and unintentionally pregnant teen to TV super star; and the weeks following a media storm raining down on India following her truthful comments about her recent movie’s position on adoption. You see, India has quite a personal relationship with adoption, having placed her baby with a family she specifically selected. On the other hand, the movie she stars in (and most of the way she sees adoption portrayed in the media) focuses only on the negatives: trauma, regret, and pain. When she admits in an interview that she doesn’t think the movie got it right — that adoption can (and usually is) a very good experience for all involved, it seems like everyone on the planet has nasty things to say about her. When her ten-year old twins see what she is going through, they decide that finding Rebecca — the baby 16-year old India delivered and placed — is the answer to all of their problems…

This book is incredibly well-written and covers all sorts of issues pertaining to families, relationships, aspirations, values, and, well, life with balanced and exceptionally articulate interactions, reflections, introspection and dialog. I cannot stress enough how happy I am with high quality dialog like the kind I found in these pages. As an aside, I found it interesting that I really did not take to 16-year old India. I found her to be a pain in the butt. But she grew on me as she grew on herself, figuring more things out, always striving to understand her own motivations and make good decisions, until by the time she was current day India I was ready to be her best friend.

I’m trying hard not to give away the many surprises that pop out along the way — suffice it to say that the pacing is excellent, the revelations are eye-opening and well-integrated in the plot, and I liked every single character in the book (and there are many). While covering adoption from many angles, the author (through the voice of India) is also very clearly pro-choice, with a great scene between India and some right-to-lifers camped out on her driveway seeking a mascot for their cause. The author also shows strong support for non-traditional family units — but again, I don’t want to give anything away… Lastly, some very in depth and illuminating commentary on the life of an actor!

Highly recommended.

Return to Wyldcliffe Heights by Carol Goodman (Fiction)

Agnes Corey — junior editor at Gatehouse Publishing — has managed to convince the reclusive author of a wildly popular book (The Secret of Wyldcliff Hall — think Jane Eyre style) to write a sequel. What’s more, as the author was blinded in a terrible fire shortly after the first book — Agnes is to move in to the crumbling estate (once a psychiatric hospital for wayward women) and serve as the author’s amanuensis. It’s clear that the original book, and the one that will follow, are more autobiographical than not, but whose autobiography exactly?

I was pulled in from page one and am in awe of just how many truly convoluted plot twists I read by the end, although I shouldn’t be too surprised as Goodman is a master storyteller and strange and twisted plots are her forte. (I’m pretty sure I have read all 25 of her books so I should know!) Stories within stories, fluid identities, and three distinct timelines that are recalled through memories, anecdotes, letters, and scraps of papers found in odd places. It would not hurt to take notes while reading! One consistent theme: women committed to various types of institutions and the very nasty men who kept them there. But this is by no means a depressing tale of oppression — our characters are strong, learn how to become effectively wary, and forge solid friendships that survive against some pretty terrible odds.

In summary: Creepy! Gothic! Twisted! One-sitting reading! Great for fans of Kate Morton and Diane Setterfield.

Thank you to William Morrow Paperbacks and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 30th, 2024.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)

Another powerhouse from Kate Quinn — propulsive (my new favorite word for books like this where one page practically forces you to turn to the next quickly) and intriguing at multiple levels. Parenthetically, I listened to this on audio and cannot stress enough how fantastic the reader (Saskia Maarleveld) was. I generally prefer reading to listening, but I’m fairly certain that her reading made this book significantly better than it would have been without (and that starts from a high rating to begin with!)

Three intertwined timelines racing towards the identification, location, and capture of the Nazi war criminal called die Jagerin — the Huntress. This is the woman who engaged in murder as Nazi sport, including the killing of children in cold blood towards the end of the war. The timelines: 1946 — Jordan — a 17-year old girl who passionately wants to be a photojournalist a la Margaret Bourke-White; 1950 — Ian Graham — world-weary British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter with an almost desperate need to see die Jagerin caught and tried; 1941 — Nina Markova — born in the frozen wastelands of Siberia whose sheer force of will gets her into the legendary (and historically accurate) Night Witches — an all female bomber squad that marked the beginning of Soviet acceptance of women in combat.

The writing is excellent, with perfect pacing. The characters are detailed and completely believable (to me). Tons of little details that make me feel as though I really know these people and made me miss them when the story was over. Plenty of reflection on life for each of the characters — threads of trust, context, truth without sensationalism (always my favorite), what it means to find a community, the importance of friendship and of having a purpose, and how someone can both love another person and be horrified by them at the same time. Additional details about groups as well — attitudes toward the war and the criminals it produced five years later. I really couldn’t stop reading (listening).

My only negatives — it felt just a little too long — especially listening to an audio book; and I had a hard time knowing who die Jagerin was (this is pretty obvious to the reader from the beginning) but I had to watch the characters NOT FIGURE IT OUT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME!

Highly recommended — especially the audio book.

The Girl with the Louding Voice  by Abi Dare (Multicultural Fiction)

14-year old Adunni has grown up rural Nigeria with a drive to be educated that is foiled by her family’s lack of money for school fees and a father who thinks “a girl-child is a wasted waste, a thing with no voice, no dreams, no brain.” Married off at 14 as a third wife with a cruel elder wife and later sold into domestic slavery with a cruel mistress, she somehow never gives up hope — she has dreams of being a teacher and having a real voice — a Louding voice — that people will have to listen to.

The book is easy to read — the unique pidgin english (developed specifically for our fictional protagonist) wasn’t a problem, though I expected it to be. It was consistent and I found I adapted to its rhythm very quickly. There is no faulting the main message — that girls born into cultures where they are not educated, are married off at young ages into often polygamous households, or sold into domestic slavery — are still human, important, and valuable. Who wants to argue with that?

Adunni is a special character. She has real drive and an unquenchable curiosity despite the vicissitudes to which she is subjected. I loved the way she absorbed an education wherever she could find it. She read scraps of books when dusting in the library, she asked questions of everybody (despite receiving beatings for the impudence) and was constantly updating her understanding as a result. However, I did not enjoy reading it, and I’m trying to understand why.

First of all, it’s frustrating to read about such primitive conditions in the modern world with no real path to change. Although not explicitly stated, this story must take place in the Muslim Northern regions of Nigeria. While (civil marriage) polygamy is prohibited federally in Nigeria, polygamy is allowed in the twelve northern, Muslim-majority states as Islamic or customary marriages. And while the literacy rates hover between 80-90% (boys and girls) in the Southern part of Nigeria, the Northern regions show a 20% differential between boys and girls, with the boys at only 50-60% (source statista.com). So what exactly should I be doing with this information about how rural girls in Muslim Nigeria are living? I just find it depressing. The answers in this book are fictional and rely on help for one individual girl that came from a variety outsiders. One tiny drop in a giant bucket and I wasn’t left with the feeling that this kind of help would be easy to find.

Also, despite the fact that the (negative) practices and beliefs described are still in play today, it feels like the book is feeding right into Western stereotypes of Africans — uneducated, primitive, and holding beliefs anathema to our Western ideals of equality for all. And yet, Nigeria has the largest population and strongest economy in Africa, and leads the continent in literature, music, cinema and drama — surely there are other more nuanced worlds and characters who could populate a story. I much prefer the novels of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie where each character is painted with the depth of an individual regardless of his or her identity and background.

So … well-written with an upbeat ending and some appealing characters, but I certainly didn’t feel inspired, nor did I feel like I learned anything new.

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

A new offering from Alexander McCall Smith — possibly the beginning of a new series. Katie has taken on management of the Perfect Passion Company — a matchmaking service with the personal touch. She is aided by the knitwear-designing, gorgeous but unavailable, William next door. Together they face a number of difficult-to-place candidates and manage to find matches for all in a typical McCall Smith simplistic, but effective and empathetic, approach to every day human problems (very reminiscent of Mma Ramtoswe’s style in the Number One Ladies Detective series).

I completely enjoyed reading this book with its emphasis on kindness and making a positive difference in people’s lives, though I admit to being slightly more annoyed than usual by some of the principles that inform his characters. Some are kind and empathic but also (IMO) weak, allowing themselves to be taken advantage of and turning the other cheek (they happen to be rich which I guess helps). There is also some not-too-subtle demonizing of the Right with, for example, some (very negative) descriptions of “libertarians” that don’t map to any of the libertarians I’ve ever met. However, as always I loved his ability to see people from different viewpoints and (except for the libertarian) accept people for who they are and acknowledge that they can still find happiness and love despite some very annoying (and pretty humorous) characteristics.

Thank you to Vintage and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on February 13th, 2024.

The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukinaya (Historical Literary Fiction)

A quiet, thoughtful, and utterly absorbing book about a young man from Hong Kong sent to a small, Japanese fishing village to recover from tuberculosis on the eve of the second Sino-Japanese war (Fall, 1937). Twenty-year old Stephen is a student and a painter. The year he spends in Tarumi is told through a set of journal entries which are equal parts descriptive and reflective. There is the distant war, with the radio intoning massive Chinese casualties along side propagandist calls for the enemy to “simply surrender to the kindness of the Japanese army, and all will be well.” There is the slow unraveling of his parent’s marriage as his father’s business interests keep him in Japan. And there is the burgeoning friendship with the older Matsu — caretaker and master gardener — and Sachi — whose life was abruptly shattered when leprosy swept the village decades before. Throughout the year, Stephen — feeling deeply but never loudly or dramatically — is slowly developing his own philosophy of living based on the lessons the world is teaching him.

The writing is exquisite — shifting between culture, character, and the natural (and unnatural) world. There is a recurring theme of beauty — sometimes found in the most unlikely places — and yet, once found, inevitable rather than surprising. Throughout all — war, destruction, disease, grief, and the ever tragic profusion of human contradictions — the focus is always on how to move forward — recognizing the fragility of life and finding your own peace and contentment within it. I liked the way the author made it clear that this was not an easy task. And I loved the fact that throughout this story teeming with essential truths, there was neither a cliche nor a saccharine sentiment to be found anywhere in the pages. Some beautiful descriptions of gardens and natural landscapes along with an artist’s way of engaging with the world as well.

Highly recommended.

Quotes:
“ It’s harder than I imagined, to be alone. I suppose I might get used to it, like an empty canvas, you slowly begin to fill.”

“All over Japan they were celebrating the dead, even as more and more Chinese were being slaughtered. There would be no one left to celebrate them. I looked around at all the smiling faces, at Matsu and Fumiko who moved slowly beside me, and wished that one of them could explain to me what was going to happen.”

“Ever since I had come to Tarumi, I’d seen more deaths than in all of my life in Hong Kong. Everything before me was changing. I knew I would never be able to step back into my comfortable past, Ahead of me lurked the violent prospect of war, perhaps bringing the deaths of people I knew and loved, along with the end of my parent’s marriage. These were the terrors I’d somehow escaped until now. And as I sat among the white deutzia blossoms, I felt a strange sensation of growing pains surge through my body, the dull ache of being pulled in other directions.”

“I’ve tried to capture this ghostly beauty on canvas, but like anything too beautiful, it becomes hard to re-create its reality. There’s something about being too perfect, that, even this, which at times appears stiff, almost boring. I finally gave up after several tries.”

“She wasn’t beautiful, not in the way that Tomoko must’ve been, nor did she have the roughness of Matsu. Her attraction wasn’t in the form of perfect features, but from the deep, wrinkles, age spots, and eyes that have seen much of what life has to offer. Fumiko had a face that had been enriched through time.”

“I was old enough to understand everything he said, but as his mouth softly formed the words, I knew the sense of integrity I had long admired in him had died, and then I was already grieving for its loss.”

“He learns how to do art with the stones in her garden: it was a strange feeling, much different from working with the fluidity of brush and paint, or water and earth. The weight of the stones pulled against each stroke and left a distinct feeling of strength and permanence.”