The Correspondent

This epistolary novel by Virginia Evans was a engaging read with it's slow evolution of secrets and relationships. It would be a spoiler to name all the characters with whom our 73-year-old protagonist exchanges a voluminous number of letters and emails, but they include a best friend, a neighbor, numerous famous authors, a stalker and her ex-husband. Sybil is going blind from a hereditary disease and fears losing the ability to continue her correspondence as well as the sense of permanence the letters gave her. She never knew her real mother, who put her up for adoption when Sybil was 14 months old. Her adoptive parents also adopted a boy, Felix, who Sybil considers her brother. Sybil pursued a career in law, both privately as a distinguished attorney and as a lowly clerk to her law partner when he was appointed as a federal judge, because the law was orderly, "black and white." That's also part of why she writes letters, to put her thoughts in order and be absolutely clear about what she wants to say. But it is also how she develops her relationships, finds her place in the world, comes to terms with her past, and discovers an unexpected future. 

Publishers Weekly calls the book a "charming debut" and concludes, "As the years go on, Sybil's relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama."

 Kirkus writes this summary and review "A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character. Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters ... Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth. An affecting portrait of a prickly woman."

Mother-Daughter Murder Night

The title of this book by Nina Simon refers to a tradition, held by single mom Beth and teen daughter Jack, to sit down and watch a mystery show on TV every Thursday night. They live on Elkhorn Slough just off the coast of central California. Beth's mother, Lana, a formidable and well-respected commercial real estate broker in Los Angeles, was so appalled when Beth got pregnant at age 17 that they parted ways and now only see each other on Jewish high holidays. Beth has managed to support herself and Jack, becoming a geriatric nurse, while Jack is a child of the water, who paddles out into the slough every morning before going to school. She is so skilled and knowledgeable that she has become the youngest certified kayaking guide at the Kayak Shack nearby, taking groups of tourists and nature lovers on tours of the slough on weekends.

When Lana is unexpectedly diagnosed with metastasizing cancer, she requires extended treatment and care. And so, the two strong and wildly different women are forced to share Beth's tiny 2-bedroom house for months while Jack is turfed to sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room.  On one of Jack's morning tours, a father and son drift away from the group and discover a dead body floating in the mud flats. Of course Jack is traumatized by this and things go from bad to worse when a belligerent and bullying detective initially targets Jack as the likeliest suspect in what turns out to be a murder. Lana decides--to keep from dying of boredom and to protect her granddaughter--that she will figure out who the real killer is.

I wholeheartedly agree with Library Journal's glowing review: Simon's dazzling debut delivers everything a mystery fan could crave, including a realistically nuanced cast of characters, a vividly evoked coastal California setting, writing imbued with a deliciously desiccated sense of wit, and a perfectly plotted murder with enough red herrings deftly dropped in to confound the most experienced mystery reader. ...Insightful and frequently funny analysis of family dynamics wrapped up in a cleverly crafted cozy crime novel." Booklist concludes, " On the cozy side, this debut mystery is woven around family rifts and redemption, and will leave readers with warm fuzzies." Publishers Weekly concurs: "Simon stocks her layered plot with plausibly motivated suspects and convincing red herrings, but it’s her indomitable female characters and their nuanced relationships that give this mystery its spark. Readers will be delighted." Likewise, Kirkus praises, "Simon knows how to build an intriguing plot with lots of suspects, plenty of red herrings, and a handful of jaw-clenching attacks on the Rubicons designed to stop their investigation. Nancy Drew meets Columbo in this feisty-female–driven whodunit."

Sanctuary

I thought this book by V.V. James was really well-done, keeping me up late into the morning hours to finish. The small Connecticut town of Sanctuary got it's name when the local populace successfully drove all the witches out at the height of the mass hysteria about witches in the late 17th and early 18th century. But in this book, in more modern times, witches are licensed and more or less accepted and many in the town's population have taken advantage of Sarah Fenn's magic--their resident witch. Sarah's daughter, Harper, is 17 and graduating from high school. Sarah was devastated when she learned, on Harper's 13th birthday, that she did not have the "gift."

At the high school graduation party in a rented house, Daniel Whitman, the school's promising quarter back, falls from the 2nd floor landing and the house catches fire. Student flee the burning building and Daniel is left behind. His mother goes mad with grief and then rage. A detective from the state polic, Maggie Knight, who was assigned to this town once before in years past, is brought in for the investigation and, initially, everyone thinks this is a tragic accident. But then Jake, Dan's sycophantic friend and also the son of Sanctuary's chief of police, shows his father a video clip and swears that ex-girlfriend Harper killed Dan with magic. Everyone swears Harper has no magic abilities, but Harper has made herself scarce in town--understandably--so Maggie tries to keep the lid on emotions in town until more evidence is obtained. She brings in a witch investigator who verifies that magic was used. Sarah is the only registered witch in town and she swears her daughter has no power and, she was at a dinner party with her three closest friends, who include Dan's mother, at the time the fall and fire happened. But the witch hunt is on and people who have relied on Sarah begin to turn on her and she is no longer safe in Sanctuary.

The ending was not at all what I expected. Publishers Weekly gave the book a glowing review, calling it a "riveting mystery," and concluding that author James' "Assured prose and a tight plot lift this tale ...[and]  is off to a fine start."

Here is an interview with author Vic James about the writing of Sanctuary and the TV series that was made from it.

 

Tom Lake

You might think the title of Anne Patchett's 9th and newest novel (2023) would refer to a man with that name, but, in fact, it refers to a summer stock theatre in Michigan that has played a pivotal role in the life of narrator/protagonist Lara Nelson, nee Kenison. I have read 4 of Patchett's books and this would probably be my favorite. (See my posts on These Precious Days and The Dutch House; I also read Bel Canto long ago.) The reviews of this work are numerous and uniformly favorable, although a few did more elegantly express than I could a sense that this family/setting/dynamics were a little too perfect. Here is a short summary from Patchett's website:

"In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today."

Here are selections from and links to additional reviews: 

Kirkus: "Patchett expertly handles her layered plot, embedding one charming revelation and one brutal (but in retrospect inevitable) betrayal into a dual narrative that deftly maintains readers’ interest in both the pastand present action. These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists."

The Guardian: "Patchett’s new novel, in which a mother tells her daughters about her early romance with a famous actor, is a gentle but revealing meditation on lost love and destiny."

The New York Times: "This author is such a decorated and beloved figure in American letters — spinning out novels, memoirs and essays like so many multicolored silks; ... — that I sometimes think of her as Aunt Patchett...With 'Tom Lake,' she treats us — and perhaps herself — to a vision of a family beautifully, bucolically simple: nuclear, in its pre-bomb meaning...'Tom Lake' is a quiet and reassuring book" 

The New Yorker: "In these scenes, the source of Lara’s contentment is sweetly obvious. When Nell laments the celebrity Lara could perhaps have been, she exclaims, “Look at this! Look at the three of you! You think my life would have been better spent making commercials for lobster rolls?” The pandemic portions of the book conjure an adult world of trade-offs and compromise, in which family offers abundant recompense for lacklustre Google search results. The girls themselves are delicious creations." 

The Washington Post: "So many books about love are actually about heartbreak. Ann Patchett’s new novel, 'Tom Lake,' is not. 'Tom Lake' is about romantic love, marital love and maternal love, but also the love of animals, the love of stories, love of the land and trees and the tiny, red, cordiform object that is a cherry. Not that a heart is not broken at some point, but it breaks without affecting the remarkable warmth of the book, set in summer’s fullest bloom...Ann Patchett’s wisdom about love has run though all of her novels and nonfiction books.. As soon as you finish 'Tom Lake,' you should go back and read them all." 

Publishers Weekly: "Patchett ... unspools a masterly family drama set in the early months of Covid-19...'There's a lot you don't know,' Lara tells Emily, Maisie, and Nell at the novel's opening, and as Patchett's slow-burn narrative gathers dramatic steam, she blends past and present with dexterity and aplomb, as the daughters come to learn more of the truth about Lara's Duke stories, causing them to reshape their understanding of their mother. Patchett is at the top of her game." 

Booklist: "Lara's three twentysomething daughters are back home in northern Michigan, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, just in time to harvest the cherries. Emily has already committed herself to the family orchard and farm and her other great love, neighbor Benny. Maisie discovers that she can continue her veterinarian studies by caring for their neighbors' animals. Only Nell, an aspiring actor, is distraught because of their isolation, but all are ravenous for distraction as they work long hours handpicking cherries, so they insist that their mother tell them, in lavish detail, the story of her romance with a future megawatt movie star. Lara strategically fashions an edited version for her daughters, while sharing the full, heartbreaking tale with the reader. "

Sunburn

Although I have not read any other of Laura Lippman's books, she is a prolific writer, notably of the "Tess Monaghan" series, as well as several stand-alone thrillers. She routinely gets positive reviews for everything she writes and this book is certainly worth the read. It is a modern-day take on the noir genre, with a "bad girl"--maybe-- meets "good boy" plot line. Polly has recently abandoned her second husband and their daughter while on a beach vacation, with plans to head to Reno and get a quickie divorce. She gets as far as a small town called Belleville, Delaware. At the High-Ho diner, a handsome man sits a couple of stools away from her at the bar and initiates a conversaation, but this is not a chance encounter. They both play it cool, claiming that each is just passing through. But Adam is attracted to beautiful sunburned shoulders and red hair, so when she gets a waitressing job at the bar/diner, he applies for the vacant cook's position. Over the course of that miserably hot summer, after a lot of calculated dancing around on both their parts, they realize that the passionate affair they began is turning into real love--something neither of them wanted to happen. Polly and Adam can't seem to walk away from one another, even though Polly wants to settle down and Adam want to continue exploring the world. Throughout, Polly and Adam lie to each other, and throughout they each know that. Adam is actually a PI hired to investigate Polly and she is running a long game, the extent of which the reader will not know until the last chapter. Lippman parcels out the secrets and the solutions a piece at a time, keeping the suspense level high.

Library Journal says of Lippman's characters that "Lippman's complicated femme fatale heroine and conflicted hero are more layered than one would expect from noir protagonists, and her nuanced characterizations extend beyond the couple at the center of the story. With an economy of words, she creates three--dimensional characters... Lippman's minute observations about modern life, human foibles, and the many faces of love are lagniappes to this tasty feast of a novel." Publishers Weekly effuses, "Lippman ratchets up the suspense the way the mercury in a thermometer creeps up on a hot August day, until everything-Polly's carefully laid plans of revenge and redemption, Adam's part in her potential downfall-comes to a boiling point. This is Lippman at her observant, fiercest best, a force to be reckoned with in crime fiction." I also love this review from Kirkus which begins, "A redheaded waitress, a good-looking private eye, insurance fraud, arson, rough sex, and a long hot summer: some like it noir." And their conclusion, "Plotty, page-turning pleasure plus instructions on how to make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and how to stab a man in the heart."

Leaving Time

I have not been an avid reader of Jodi Picoult like so many are, but I absolutely loved this book. Chapters shift narrating perspectives amongst several different characters including Alice, an elephant researcher in Africa who married a man with an elephant sanctuary in New Hampshire and with whom she had a daughter, Jenna. But ever since the night when one of the elephant caretakers was found dead and Alice was found unconscious and taken to the hospital, Alice has been missing--for over 10 years now. Thirteen-year-old Jenna has been raised by a curmudgeonly grandmother who won't talk about Alice, even though Jenna desperately wants to know more about her. More than that, Jenna wants to find her mother and ask the really big question,  "Did her mother abandon her or is she dead?" Seeking some closure Jenna does her own research and saves up her money from babysitting. She tracks down and implores the two people she thinks might be able to help her: Virgil, the disgraced police officer who investigated the death at the sanctuary, and Serenity, a disgraced celebrity psychic who has lost her powers. 

Publishers Weekly opens their review with "Picoult's ... novel explores grief, memory, and motherhood through the unlikely lens of elephant behavior," and concludes by saying, "The pachyderms are as complex as the humans, making the journey memorable and poignant." Library Journal offers this verdict, "A truly engaging read that crosses through the genres of mystery and the supernatural." Booklist praises, "Picoult's newest multifaceted novel is redolent with elephant lore that explores the animals' behavior when faced with death and grief, and combines a poignant tale of human loss with a perplexing crime story that delivers a powerhouse ending." The New York Journal of Books also offered a glowing review which ended with "Even for someone who is not usually a fan of ghost stories and mysticism, the writing and storytelling compelled the suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the unimaginable. And in the end an amazed and admiring gasp—'I did not see that coming.'" I totally agreed with that! 

There is an interesting interview with Picoult in The New York Times.

The Familiar Dark

This book by Amy Engel is indeed dark and the darkness to which it refers is the darkness within each of us. In the case of our protagonist, 30-year-old Eve Taggert, that darkness runs deep thanks to an abusive and drug dealing, mother. But Eve has kept it in check these last 12 years for the sake of her daughter, the light of her life, Junie. When Junie and her BFF, Izzy, are brutally murdered in the wretched town park of Barren Springs, Missouri. Eve no longer cares what others think of her. And she turns to the mother she determinedly turned her back on for lessons on vengeance; for when her mother wasn't dealing out physical or emotional abuse, she was fiercely protective of her two children, Eve and older brother Cal. No one ever bothered either child due to her reputation for swift and terrible retaliation. Now all Eve wants to do is find the person who murdered her daughter and do the same thing. She feels no need to work with the corrupt sheriff or the parents of the other dead girl, Zach and Jenny Logan, who come from a different social class and, therefore, different world than Eve. She is emotionally supported by her brother and the cook and waitress at the cafe where she has waited tables since she was in high school. Her brother Cal is a cop, and a fair one by all accounts, but consistently warns Eve away from her inquiries. So Eve finds out on her own, through an informal network, that Izzy was seeing an older man, Matt. Matt is a key member of a drug selling operation run by Eve's physically abusive ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Ray. Eve will even turn to him to get what she wants. But it is none of the really dangerous people she confronts who finally, ultimately betray her.
This not a happy ending book. Kirkus says it is "a bleak drama of rural America that offers grim lessons but minimal hope."  Publishers' Weekly refers to the genre as "rural noir." But it is well-written with loving descriptions of the hidden green hollers and rolling rivers of the Missouri Ozarks. The Daily Herald offers a good succinct review of the plot as well as a glowing review.

Little Fires Everywhere

This book by Celeste Ng has received so much press that I am not sure what I can add. Among other things, this is about a collision of cultures, as embodied by the two main female characters: affluent suburbanite Mrs. Elena Richardson, who has always followed the rules and believes good planning can prevent catastrophes, and unconventional artist Mia Warren, who makes up her own rules and has a child but has never had a sexual relationship. Reading the book felt like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The book starts with the culmination, i.e, the Richardsons' house in Shaker Heights burns to the ground. The rest of the book tells us how this came to happen. According to the New York Times, this is a literary device Ng employed in her first book as well. Kirkus enthuses, "This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright." While an advertisement for the first planned community of Shaker Heights offered "protection forever against depreciation and unwelcome change," when Mrs. Richardson rents a small duplex she inherited from her parents to artist Mia and her teenage daughter Pearl, change will overrun the rules. As Kirkus summarizes, "Mia and Pearl live a markedly different life from the Richardsons, ...making art instead of money ...; rooted in each other rather than a particular place ...; and assembling a hodgepodge home from creatively repurposed, scavenged castoffs and love rather than gathering around them the symbols of a successful life in the American suburbs..." Several reviewers have said the book's central theme is motherhood, for example, the Huffington Post asserts, "This story does a deep dive into what it means to be a mother, what qualifies as competency, who gets to decide, and raises so many more questions around the essential role of being a mother. " (see also: The Independent, The Guardian). I would disagree. Although I think the issues surrounding motherhood motivated many of the characters' actions, they are still not the core of the story. Rather it seems to be more about the relativism of right and wrong or the ambiguity of morality.
One of the aspects I found most striking about the story was the vivid visual imagery and examples of creativity Ng employed when describing Mia's work. One has to imagine Ng must be somewhat of a visual artist herself, or at least an avid afficionado, to provide such detail.
 Like the review in the Washington Post, the review from The Guardian was decidedly lukewarm. I am singling it out for a couple of reasons. It pretty much echoed my own reaction, which was, this is beautifully written, but the characters did not engage me. Also because, when the reviewer says, "After all, my experience of reading this book was perfectly pleasant. But the world in which I read it would be indistinguishable from the one in which I didn’t. This is a variety of novel that unnerves me, because it’s extremely well done and yet I didn’t warm to it. So what’s my problem?"--I was reminded of my reaction to Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See--I was the only person in my book group who did not absolutely love it. Additional reviews of Ng's book in The LA Times, The Times (UK), Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Seattle Times.
There is an interview with Ng and some questions to consider for the book group on Ng's website.

Beloved

Not sure what I am left with after reading this multi-award winning classic by Toni Morrison. Her writing and characters are compelling...painfully so, oftentimes.
     Sethe, an escaped slave living outside Cincinnati in post-Civil War Ohio, is at the center of the story. Having been the slave of a somewhat more benevolent pair of owners, the Garners, she has actually been allowed to "marry" her partner, Halle, and keep her children with her on the farm--unusual in slave holding country where women were often "bred" to produce new slaves for sale. When Mr. Garner dies, Mrs. Garner brings her brother-in-law, Schoolteacher, to run the farm, Sweet Home, and life takes a decidedly downhill turn with his much more cruel and all too common practices for slave management. As a result, the slaves at Sweet Home for the first time begin to plan for escape. Sethe ends up sending her 3 oldest children, 2 boys and an infant girl, on ahead with plans to run with husband Halle a day later. But before that can happen, 6-months-pregnant Sethe is raped and beaten senseless by Schoolteacher's "pupils" while he "records" the events on paper, and Halle, who is trapped in an observer's position in the barn's loft, loses his mind. Sethe does not know what has become of Sethe until years later.
      Sethe escapes to Cincinnati and finds Halle's mother, who the Garners allowed to go free after Halle worked to "buy" her from them. Sethe has delivered her newborn with the help of fugitive white girl named Denver while on the road to Cincinnati and so names the baby after her. Sethe is re-united with her children and beginning her physical recovery when Schoolteacher shows up with the sheriff to take her and her children back to Sweet Home. In desperation, she grabs her children, runs to the tool shed and tries to kill them--to "keep them safe." She only succeeds with the older baby girl and is then taken to jail as Schoolteacher now realizes she is broken beyond repair or utility.
      When Sethe gets out of jail, she buys a headstone, through bartering sex, for her murdered daughter, but can only "afford" to have the word "Beloved" chiseled into it. The house now becomes haunted with a spiteful ghost that everyone believes to belong to the murdered girl. Mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, who had achieved fame in the local community for her lay preaching, takes to her bed and dies. The community shuns Sethe, and Denver has become so fearful that she never leaves the house. The ghost drives the two sons to run away when they are only 13 and they are never heard from again. Sethe gets work as a cook at a local restaurant to support herself and Denver.
    Enter Paul D., apparently the only other slave to survive and escape Sweet Home. He has always loved Sethe and seems to banish the ghost from the house with his arrival. But within a short time, a young black woman appears on their doorstep and is taken in. She says her name is Beloved. Denver is the first to recognize her sister and Paul D. begins to have suspicions, but is eventually driven from the house, both by the supernatural manipulations of Beloved, and by finding out from someone about Sethe's murder of her daughter.
    Life at this point spins out of control with Beloved and Sethe in a guilt-induced cycle of decline--Sethe fading away physically and psychologically, while Beloved grows ever larger and more demanding and unpredictable. Denver now fears Beloved's murderous intentions more than her mother's and goes out into the community to seek help. The women in town come to exorcise the haunting presence, Sethe is stopped from a disastrous murder of her white benefactor, and Paul D. re-enters the picture to care for Sethe.
    I do not usually write such detailed story lines and not sure why I did here, except in an attempt to understand better what this book was about. The immediate impact is a renewed and expanded understanding of the destruction--short- and long-term--wrought by the institution of slavery. The former slaves in this book have lost their sense of self-identity, a loss even greater than losing family members or never being allowed to have a family. Escaping to freedom is only the initial step on a long road to recovery. I did totally understand the horror and despair that drove Sethe to murder and attempted murder. Having been allowed to be a mother, unlike many slave women, Sethe was driven to protect her children from the evil perpetrated on black slaves by many white owners (mostly men presumably).  What I don't understand is the unforgiving and annihilating character of Beloved.
   

Where's You Go, Bernadette?

Maria Semple takes aim at many of the pretensions of Microsoft and Seattle in general in this tale of a family that has gone rather significantly off course. Bernadette, once a rising star in the architectural world, has been transformed by a series of miscarriages and the serious health issues of her daughter's early years. She has become reclusive and intolerant of people and of going out in public. In fact she has hired a virtual assistant in India to do everything for her; only the virtual assistant is actually a front for a Russian mafia scam to get credit card and financial information. Not only does Bernadette fail to exercise the most rudimentary cautions online, she has also stopped attending to even the most basic maintenance of her house and marriage, leaving both to fall apart. Husband Elgin, on the other hand, has become a major rock star at Microsoft and is spending all his time where he is idolized. When her adored daughter Bee gets straight A's for her final year in middle school and claims her promised reward in the form of asking for a family trip to Antarctica, things really begin to unravel. Told in a somewhat epistolary form through e-mails, reports from various players like a psychiatrist and the FBI, letters, and even magazine articles, this is certainly a quirky novel. The sadness of Bernadette's disintegration is offset somewhat by her wicked wit, and the whole situation is retrieved in the beautifully written last 30 pages. This book has received rave reviews. I was somewhat lukewarm, however.