When the Cranes Fly South

Hi all. I hope you are well and hanging in there. It was a brutal past week in news and hard not to doomscroll. In that regard, it’s not been a good year’s start, but we will persevere and not to give in or give up to any corrupt regime telling lies and making threats.

It’s just infuriating and worrisome to follow what’s happening, but I will post some pink skies here — photographed on Dec. 30 — as some kind of salve. This coming week we are forecasted to have a windy, wild switch in temps with highs in the 50s that will melt our snow. I’ve been walking the dogs with my new replaced knee, though I have a ways to go still with my recovery.

In book news, I signed up for a “class” on Edith Wharton’s 1905 classic The House of Mirth through the D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. It includes four online lecture/discussion sessions and starts at the end of January, so I need to start reading the novel pretty soon.

I first became interested in Wharton after reading her 1911 novel Ethan Frome and from seeing the movie adaptation of her novel The Age of Innocence in 1993. And since I didn’t read any classics last year (with the exception of a Ferrante modern classic), I’m game to check out Wharton’s epic debut novel. If you’re interested in the variety of classes or book discussions from P & P, you can look here.

I’m also signing up for the 2026 Nonfiction Challenge hosted by Shellyrae at the blog Book’d Out, which you can sign up for here. My goal is to be a Nonfiction Grazer … reviewing and sharing any nonfiction books I read. I’m not going to set an amount to be read, but I’m sure it will entice me to read more than just 10 nonfiction books, which I completed last year. I’m usually a big fiction fan and reader, but I’d like to pick up a bit more nonfiction too.

And now I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately.

Flesh by David Szalay / Scribner / 368 pages / 2025

4.5 stars. This Booker Prize winner, which was my last read of 2025, was a buddy read with Tina over at the blog Turn the Page. We read it pretty quickly since the style is direct and concise with a lot of dialogue and you’re led to follow this young Hungarian man’s life to see where it’ll go after some harsh beginnings.

Istvan’s story starts out quite rough and lurid as a teenager, age 15, who has a secret liaison with an older next door neighbor, which takes his life in a hard direction. He’s not an easy character to fall into as his conversation is pretty terse and monosyllabic and he has no real friends. He and his mother live in a small apartment and are poor.

Still he perseveres and you get more into his story … as he endures prison time and joins the army … before moving to London to work as a lowly bouncer and getting into security and a job as a private driver. Along the way he has relations with women who seem drawn to his “primitive form of masculinity.”

And by a fluke, his life takes a turn when he starts a relationship with a well-off married woman … though you’re never too sure if it will last or how it will end. I don’t want to say too much … other than I felt the story and writing were strong. That it seemed to hit hard and leave an impression. I’m still thinking how Istvan’s life came around … and how those around him either let him down or held him up. The occurrences he faces are not for the light of heart.

I was surprised this Booker winner was not dense but a quick read. I find the cover pictured the better of the three since it depicts more of what’s involved, lol.

Heart the Lover by Lily King / Grove Press / 256 pages / 2025

3.75 stars. I almost forgot to review this novel, which I finished on Christmas Eve. It entails a friendship among three friends at college that becomes a bit of a love triangle. The boys are star students — Sam and Yash — who the female narrator they call “Jordan” meets in her 17-century Lit class. They begin spending a lot of time together at Sam and Yash’s off campus house, where they study, talk about classes and teachers, and Jordan begins dating one of them.

Then as graduation nears things happen and she starts secretly seeing the other and he visits her as she’s studying abroad in Paris. Things seem happy and close between them, but they are young and get separated starting their adult lives.

The novel’s second half finds them as a adults later in life living in different situations and places. But when one comes to visit Jordan, it starts a bittersweet collision of their prior lives and stuff they’ve long needed to discuss and revisit … about why things went down the way they did. The ending turns very sad and it’s not a book to finish on Christmas Eve, lol. But you will flip the pages quickly to find out what happens to the three close friends.

It’s a book I liked for being a college campus, young love kind of read and for looking back on one’s youth and the decisions made then and the heartbreaks not recovered from … but for whatever reason I wanted a bit more depth to it and didn’t love love the novel. Still by the end, it’ll leave you with a Kleenex box and some waterworks.

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzen /Vintage / 320 pages / 2024

3.7 stars. Told from 89-year-old Bo’s point of view, the novel’s about his life with in-and-out home care help. Bo has a beloved elkhound named Sixten who his son Hans, age 57, thinks should be placed with another home, but Bo is not happy about that idea. Still Bo’s trying to make good with his son, who’s much different from him, before he gets too far gone. And he doesn’t want to be like his own harsh father was to him.

While Bo lives in the present trying to get by with his health, his thoughts and dreams also slip back to the past growing up with his parents and the days with his wife who is now living in a dementia care facility. The story dips back and forth from present to past as his health oscillates.

It gives an insightful look into what it’s like at his late stage in life — being cared for and having no real power to make decisions about his own life. It also shows his various caregivers’ contributions, as well as the hard choices Bo’s son has to make about his care, and the moving effects his granddaughter and best friend Ture have on him. It’s a touching tale and a bit sad but also feels real. I could relate a bit since I recently went through similar issues with my own beloved parents.

This was my first read of 2026 and I was pleased it was a translated novel (from Swedish by Alice Menzies), which will count in my push to read more of these.

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