All in Fiction
Because I thought Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers was such a great read (read review here), I couldn’t wait to read I Have Some Questions for You. Although the two books are very different, I Have Some Questions triumphs as well. Where The Great Believers uses historical fiction to develop a story about the AIDS epidemic and its effects on a network of friends, I Have Some Questions falls somewhere between a psychological thriller and a mystery.
Thinking about my favorite kind of novels, I must admit that mysteries fall towards the bottom of my list. I feel like I’m not good at keeping track of all the clues that should lead me to figure out “who done it” before the writer actually reveals the killer. I know I’ve said this before, but this is one of the reasons why I love being in a book club. We make our book selections and inevitably some of those books I would never have read on my own. And guess what? Sometimes I really enjoy the books. Louise Penny’s Still Life is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
I love reading a book that has been on my 'to read' list for so long that I can't remember how it got there. Although I wish I could go tell the recommender how much I loved it, it feels like a small gift when a great book like this just appears. Sorrow and Bliss is definitely a gift–a funny, weird, sad and heartbreakingly truthful gift.
I will start by saying this is a strange little book, and yet I want everyone to read it. I don’t remember who or how this book came to be on my list, but when it came in from the library it felt like fate. I had just finished purchasing tickets to a brand new play called Mad Madge by Rose Napoli and the subject is the same woman. Margaret Cavendish was an aristocrat from the early 17th century who was one of the first women to publish her own writing. And she wrote seven books!
I’m not sure how I happened to pick up this book. I hadn’t read Kim’s previous book Miracle Creek, but I’m definitely going to read it now. Happiness Falls is one of the best psychological thrillers that I can remember reading—ever. Written at a suitably fast clip, Kim had me exclaiming out loud several times, as well as rereading previous pages to make sure that what I thought had just happened had actually happened.
I was late to the party in reading North Woods by Daniel Mason. Having received a rave review from my friend Jane and positive comments from my husband, something caused me to put off reading it. I hate to admit it, because we all know that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but the cover of this book made me think it was going to be a Young Adult kind of book. Ridiculous, I know. But there you have it.
Many of you will remember the glowing review my mother wrote of Edugyan’s novel Washington Black (read review here), which was one of my favorite books that year as well. So when I saw that an earlier book of hers had won the Giller prize, I scooped it up from the library immediately. A similarly sweeping historical drama dealing with race across several continents, Half-Blood Blues did not disappoint.
I’ve mentioned before the odd coincidence when I feel that a theme or time period is suddenly everywhere in my life. Right now all of my media seems to be World War II related. Not the most uplifting moment in history, and sometimes downright traumatic. But even though I am feeling a bit inundated, Obasan stood out as a truly remarkable piece of writing.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes you start to sense the building presence of a book in the zeitgeist before you actually register it as something to put on your reading list? For months my brain was half-aware of “that book with an octopus on the cover.” And then one morning in a mad book-buying spree in Target, I bought it and brought it home. Who can resist those 30% off stickers?
am particularly drawn to books that transport me to a different place and make me feel like I become one with the story. Both books that I’ve chosen to review this month are exceptionally atmospheric and did carry me away. Intimacies, relates the story of a young woman living in the Hague with a job as an interpreter at the Court.
In all honesty, I must admit that I read Gilead years ago and couldn’t really understand its appeal. But, I decided to give it another read when I realized that it had won the Pulitzer Prize and President Obama awarded Robinson the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Also, Oprah chose the Gilead tetralogy as four consecutive book club selections. I can’t say for sure why this time through I loved it so much. But there is definitely something to be said for reading certain books at certain times in one’s life.
As I turned the last page of Five Little Indians, I honestly felt a sense of relief. My first instinct was to put it in one of the little free libraries near my house and be done. But over the next few days, I found myself thinking about the characters often and realizing that although their stories were brutal at times, they were also deeply affecting. Perhaps the book held more than I initially experienced.
Although this is only the second book I’ve read by Kristin Hannah, please consider me officially a Hannah fan-girl. (Read my review of The Great Alone here and Liz’s review of The Four Winds here.) In the last week, reading this book managed to make me feel excited when my 300th cold of the winter woke me up at 5am; I made a cup of tea and read for an hour before even my earliest riser got up.
Every year when the Giller Prize, one of Canada’s top literary awards, is announced, I buy the book. I finally got around to reading the 2022 winner, The Sleeping Car Porter. This book was engrossing and beautiful and I would never have discovered it if not for the Prize.
It seems December and January have been my months to read Irish authors. Thinking about the books, however, I realized that as large and exuberant as I found The Bee Sting to be in terms of character, plotline and themes, This Is Happiness is quiet and subtle. But in some ways, This Is Happiness may end up staying with me for even longer than The Bee Sting. It is a perfectly gorgeous read.
The Bee Sting amazes in so many ways that I want to ensure that this review does it justice. Paul Murray has created a big, exuberant book filled with a score of likeable characters, multiple plot points, heart-wrenching revelations and a good dose of humor.
Jonathan Franzen is one of a very few authors of whom I would say that I am not a big fan. I think I am still scarred from the bizarre and disgusting scene in The Corrections where the protagonist talks to his own feces for 25 pages. However, people love him and so after a long interval, I decided to give Purity a try. Overall, I’m glad I did.
I first heard about Caitlin Shetterly’s debut novel when listening to an episode of Elin Hilderbrand’s Books, Beach & Beyond podcast (which I highly recommend). One of the questions Elin puts to each interviewee is what good books they’ve read recently. She and the author were both raving about how much they had enjoyed Pete and Alice in Maine. Well, I totally agree that it is a powerhouse novel!
Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my go-to authors. When I see she’s got a new book out, I pretty much buy it and read it right off. And my admiration for her writing continues with Romantic Comedy. Main character, Sally Milz, writes for a weekly Saturday night comedy show, “The Night Owls.” Burned by past relationships with men, she has mostly given up on finding love. In fact, she becomes so cynical, that she writes a sketch for Night Owls about what she has dubbed “The Danny Horst Rule.”
I’ll admit, I’m drawn to authors who know how to tell a realistic, compelling story about families and the many relationships that exist between the two parents, each parent and child, and between siblings. Jean Hanff Korelitz tells an absolutely masterful story of one such family’s intricately complex relationships in The Latecomer. From the moment I read that Salo and Johanna first met at the funeral of Salo’s girlfriend who died in a car he had been driving, I realized this story would be riveting.
