Category: literary fiction

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.

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.”

A Painted House by John Grisham (Historical Fiction — audio book)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4/5
This book is unlike any other book Grisham has written — no courtrooms, not a lot of official justice, and not a thriller — but I found it utterly enthralling. It drew me into a world I knew nothing about and brought it to full sensory life. At least part of this was due to the audio book reader (David Lansbury) who captured the mood perfectly with his tone, pacing, and wide range of voices. Not every book (IMHO) is improved by listening to it — but this one certainly was.

The story is apparently somewhat autobiographical and takes us through one picking season on an Arkansas Delta cotton farm in 1952. Told from the perspective of seven year old Luke Chandler, the clarity of his reflections as he learns about life, morality, and people during this period is priceless. The family hires itinerant help in the form of ten Mexicans and a family of hill people. As with most farmers of the time, they are in debt from one season to the next, on the edge of ruin with every storm, flood, broken truck, or the transitory nature of picking labor. Luke is part of it all — the picking, the worrying, and the witnessing. He becomes the holder of too many secrets, and we feel the potential bursting and sickness he takes on with the keeping.

I’d forgotten how good Grisham’s writing is because I’m not that interested in legal thrillers but I was rapt throughout. His characters are such real people — each struggling in his or her own way with constant questions of both survival and morality. Making do in a rough world with little in the way of legal support — people have to figure out how to handle their own problems. Bittersweet and poignant, the narrative spans the Korean war, the movies of the day, the newness (and rareness) of television sets, flooding and tornados, farming economics, and the tension between the old ways and new possibilities.

Loved it.

Reunion by Elise Juska (Literary Fiction)

June 2021 — Three friends anticipate a Covid postponed college reunion at the Maine campus. Hope — a stay at home mom with an increasingly distant husband — is desperate to return to what she remembers as her happiest time; Adam looks forward to reconnecting but feels guilt at leaving his perpetually sad wife with the twins in the house that she hasn’t left in a very long time; and NYC based single-mom Polly who doesn’t share her friends fond memories, but is persuaded to attend by her reclusive son who wants to visit a nearby friend.

This character-driven novel explores friendships and personal growth against the backdrop of lock down parenting and recovery alongside some pretty intense environmental anxiety. With every relationship comes inevitable clashes and this story covers quite a few. I particularly “enjoyed” the generational clashes — some familiar and some brand new to me as successive generations bear less and less in common with my own. Well written probes into the evolution of friendships
— what connects people with little in common and what decisions can impact the closeness over time. I really liked that the ending for all of our protagonists had a closure that was more about understanding the nature of their issues, thereby clarifying a path towards closure, rather than any kind of quick solution to the problem itself — because there really are no quick solutions to relationship issues…

One kind of funny (to me) quote as Hope thinks about her teenage daughter Izzy: “Meanwhile, Izzy was skeptical of all things where Hope was concerned. Her Spotify list. Her low-carb bread. Her Facebook posts — too frequent, too obviously curated — why was she even on Facebook? Her overuse of exclamation points. Her leather tote. Sometimes Hope secretly wondered if Izzy had become a vegan primarily to get on her nerves.”

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 May 11th, 2024.

Next of Kin by Samantha Jayne Allen

Number three in Allen’s Annie McIntyre / Garrett, Texas series. Nice and complicated, full of atmosphere, and I really like the way Annie is developing. In my review of the last book, I said, “Annie suffers from occasional bouts of self-doubt which I hope she has less often in the future (I like to see characters grow!)” and guess what? She really has grown into the role, and her bouts of self-doubt have largely disappeared. Made me happy!

This deliciously convoluted plot includes long lost relative discoveries on Ancestry.com with a heavy dose of bad guy blood mixed in. Social services, group homes, drug dealing, bank robbers — they pop up in unexpected places and through it all Annie keeps her cool, pursues justice like a tenacious bulldog, and treats us to her ongoing reflections, many of a philosophical and moral nature (my cup of tea). The regular characters — her 85 year grandfather retired sheriff Leroy, his investigative partner of many years Mary Kate, Annie’s newly married cousin Nikki, and increasingly serious boyfriend Wyatt — all get better and more interesting with each book.

This is the best book so far — tighter plot, better balance of “novel” and “mystery,” and a well-developed (and continuously developing) set of characters.

A couple of quotes:

“He let information sit before speculating, enough time to regulate his own emotions, square them off, and keep them sealed.”

“Though I knew myself to be a believer in redemption, it was hard to overlook the universe’s uneven distribution of such favors.”

Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 23rd, 2024.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Speculative Fiction)

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

A surprisingly fun ride about the use of time travel to bring historical figures forward in time as part of a (very) complicated plot to ward off a severely climate damaged future. Our narrator (who I now realize is never given a name) is a civil servant who is offered an exciting new job as a “bridge” to one of these “expats from history.” A bridge’s function is to help the refugees from time accommodate to the present.

Our narrator is paired with Graham Gore — a Royal Navy officer and polar explorer from the early 19th century who is brought to the present just before his death as part of the ill fated 1845 Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. (This is a real historical person and his character and experiences are faithfully drawn from historical records — look him up!). Four other “expats” include the unpleasant Lieutenant Thomas Cardingham from 1645; the lesbian Margaret Kemble from 1665 rescued from the Plague; a woman from Robespierre era Paris (1793); and the closeted homosexual Captain Arthur Reginald-Smythe extracted from the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (he wasn’t going to make it).

The plot is crazy, the characters are well-drawn and time-appropriate. I loved the interactions among all the possible permutations of expats and bridges with what felt like very real reactions and learning curves — most taking to technological advances more easily than the great shifts in social mores and expectations. I found the depth and believability of these interactions and the personal reflections fascinating. Plenty of insight (which I always love) and a great new phrase for me: “ethically sparse” to explain how our narrator felt about certain policies and decisions made by her corporate overlords in the Ministry.

Bradley is an excellent writer — her phrasing and comic overlays are top notch. I found the plot confusing at times — but it feels like this was somewhat intentional as the events were certainly confusing to the people living through them, and we are sharing their experience. Our narrator is part Cambodian, and another bridge is Black. Add to this our historical lesbian and homosexual characters, and there is plenty of opportunity for some pithy and insightful identity issues as well. She even managed to work a theremin (weird musical instrument — look it up) into the plot as well. Impressive!

Some fun Quotes (sorry there are so many but I couldn’t pick):

“I finally had a savings account that looked like it might withstand a life emergency rather than crumple at a dentistry bill.”

“All the emotions I normally watched her puree into professionalism were churning on her face.”

“This was one of my first lessons in how you make the future: moment by moment, you seal the doors of possibility behind you.”

“When Graham got online, as he did not call it, and learned to peck at the keyboard with the elegance and speed of a badly burned amphibian …”

“But my mother never described herself as a refugee. It was a narrative imposition, along with ‘stateless’ and ‘survivor’.”

‘Stop hand-wringing,’ said Simellia, still smiling, though increasingly looking as if the smile was being operated by winches inside her skill. ‘God, Ministry bias training has a lot to answer for,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to drop a piano on your head but believe it or not, I already know I’m Black. You don’t have to roll over and show me your belly about it.’

“It was another dank toothache of a day, barely qualifying in its chromatic dullness for ‘grey‘.”

“Quentin treated me with an impatient familiarity, as if we were both were leaving streaks on one another.”

“We settled back, if ‘settle’ is the right word for the stiff, wary way we offset one another’s weight on the cushions.”

“That night, I slept with unpleasant lightness, my brain balanced on unconsciousness like an insect’s foot on the meniscus of a pond. I didn’t so much wake up as give up on sleep.”

“We separated and spent the fading day bobbing shyly around one another like clots in a lava lamp.”

“I launched into a preplanned speech about class mobility and domestic labor, touching on the minimum wage, the size of an average household, and women in the workforce. I took a full five minutes of talking and by the end I’d moved into the same tremulous liquid register I used to use for pleading with my parents for a curfew extension.”

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 7th, 2024.

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar (Literary Fiction — Audio book)

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

A beautifully written (with fantastic audio reader) story about an Indian immigrant woman who attempts suicide (in the first chapter — this is not a spoiler) and the black therapist who is assigned her case. Their stories form an interlocking spiral as themes of betrayal, grief, and loneliness play out in both of their lives as the two become more connected than a typical therapeutic relationship warrants.

Lakshmi — the immigrant — is a complex character in a tired body with the loneliness incumbent with an uncaring husband and being cut off from her family home in India. Maggie — the therapist — is a black woman on the verge of an (ill advised) affair, married to a loving and caring Indian professor. Both have complex and well-articulated, deeply considered backstories that have a surprising amount of commonality.

The book is a study in interpersonal engagements of all sorts — the urges, the mistakes, the trust, the quest for redemption, forgiveness and for happiness and intimacy. Incredible breadth and depth. I liked every one of the characters and yet frequently grew angry with them for their all too human errors of judgement. At the very end, there is no specific resolution — highlighting the fact that life is not lived as a novel with a consistent narrative arc and closure.

I was completely engaged and could not stop reading, but there was a lot of pain to share, and I will need something light and happy to read before I venture back into another like it.

The Last Devil To Die by Richard Osman (Literary Mystery)

Number four in Richard Osman’s deservedly popular comic mystery series. Four retirement village pensioners tackle a Romance Fraud, some missing heroin, and the professional looking murder of an elderly antiques dealer who happens to be a friend. A reminder on the four pensioners from my previous reviews: Elizabeth, with the mysterious background and friends in high and low places who all seem to owe her favors; Ibrahim, the retired psychiatrist, who pores over the cases he failed; Ron, the former trade union leader who loves a chance to get back on the stage; and Joyce, who has the often under appreciated skill of bringing everyone together while remaining invisible herself.

While the book has all the hallmarks of Osman’s previous work — tight, content rich prose, laugh out loud moments every few pages, and irreverent mystery solving — this title is different. With one of the regular characters progressing steadily into ever increasing dementia, there is a philosophical turn and one of the most poignant scenes I’ve ever read. I was honestly weeping (correct term) for quite some time. Osman shows a different side of his prodigious writing abilities in blending this very real, and yet unfortunately very ordinary, experience to an otherwise fun, comic, and artfully written romp celebrating friendship and the purposeful embrace of old age.

Some quotes:
“Friendship, and Joyce flirting unsuccessfully with a Welshman who appears to be the subject of a fairly serious international fraud. Elizabeth could think of worse ways to spend the holidays.”

“Mervyn is not one of lifes hand-takers. He lives life at a safe distance.”

“The easiest way to make a small fortune in antiques is to start with a big fortune and lose it.”

“In my business you hear a thing or two about love. I find it easy to replicate. It is largely a willing abandonment of logic.”

“There comes a point when you look at your photograph albums more often than you watch the news.”

“ That’s the thing about Coopers Chase. You’d imagine it was quiet and sedate, like a village pond on a summer day. But in truth, it never stops moving, it’s always in motion. And that motion is aging, and death, and love, and grief, and final snatched moments and opportunities grasped. The urgency of old age. There’s nothing that makes you feel more alive than the certainty of death.”

Habitations by Sheila Sundar (Literary Fiction)

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

A deeply thoughtful book about Vega Gopalan — an Indian academic (Sociology) who immigrates to the U.S. and shares her introspective take on all her observations of life for herself and the people she meets. Pervading her experiences is the memory of her sister who died at 14 from a disease that would have been easily detectable (and treatable) had she been born in the U.S.

The writing is beautiful, with a talent for capturing complex feelings and thoughts in a few apt phrases. It read like a memoir to me — no foreshadowing, no clearly defined narrative arc — more the development of a life with the actions and events paralleled by Vega’s internal commentary and awareness of self-discovery as it occurs. It was interesting that I didn’t really like Vega — she is not the type of person I would befriend. This is not because she was in any way an unpleasant character, but because she is a deeply interior person who does not always show (or feel?) the empathy and interest in others that I personally like in friends. One of her friends says (appropriately) at one point: “… but sometimes, when we talk, I feel as though I’m interrupting your thoughts.” I usually need to really like a character to enjoy reading about her, but in this case I found myself relating to her intellectually, if not emotionally, so perhaps I would have enjoyed her friendship after all. 🙂

I was impressed by all of the topics discussed in the pages — none with heavy agendas and all with the kind of verbal interactions that show several individuals tackling a topic from multiple personal contexts rather than pulling the latest PC verbiage from a shelf. Vega spends her time in her (American) university keeping company with a wide variety of people — almost all immigrants themselves (from East Africa, Pakistan, Jamaica, etc.). There are a lot of discussions of cultures, advantages, and a realistic depiction of choices that have to be made in order to be allowed to stay or to study. All were treated as facts of life for which you needed to adopt strategies, rather than focussing on the unfairness.

Vega experiences racism at various points but doesn’t let it define her — it’s just more of the expanding context that provides the soundtrack for her developing life. I loved the fact that she was irritated by the “inclusive educational models” at her daughter’s school which featured simplistic math sheets and overly exclamation pointed reading guides, but at the same time had the awareness that if one of her colleagues had written a paper on such models she would have applauded the theories. The book referred to some fascinating academic studies about topics I couldn’t have imagined myself — opening me up to new worlds of thoughts and experiences. Also some lovely references to some of my favorite (and not that well-known) books such as Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions.”

I enjoyed reading the book, but it was one of those books that I found become more interesting the more I thought about it after I finished it. I felt exposed to the multi-faceted reality behind the academic reports, news coverage, and general stereotypes through a stream of social commentary that pertained to individuals in groups, rather than groups as a whole. And lots of stereotype smashing roles — her characters were all influenced by their cultures and backgrounds, but never defined by them. Every time I assumed it would go in a predictable direction it didn’t. Definitely worth reading.

A few good quotes:

“She has long had the sense that there were two types of men: spectacularly bad choices, and interchangeably mediocre ones. She only realized, now, how far she had come from that impression. There was such a thing as a happy marriage. Easy and generous love.”

“She found the veneer of friendship lonelier than being alone.”

“I just grew up with so many people like that. People who lived privileged lives in India, but the moment they travel abroad or talk to foreigners, they want to establish themselves as experts as poverty.”

“There was something broken in her. She knew how to desire a person, but not to care for them.”

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 12th, 2023.