Where the Forest Meets the River

Hi bookworms, I hope you are well. Ugh, we’ve had our first smoky weekend of the season here from wildfires in the north of Alberta and other provinces. I know others in the States are getting plumes of smoke as well. It gives me a headache so we close the windows and turn on the air, and Willow takes a nap next to my desk. When I first started coming to Canada in the summer of 2006, wildfires and smoke weren’t a big problem but just in the past eight to ten years it seems to have become more of a constant. Most of the fires start by lightening in the forests but some are man-made … all spurred on by climate change. It’s sad to see the planet burning … hopefully the world leaders can discuss it when they come for the G7 Summit in the mountains here in Alberta next weekend. It’s going to be an important meeting of various issues but will anything come of it? I’m not sure with the current White House occupant attending and his detrimental tariffs.

Meanwhile I have quite a great library book haul here that I haven’t been able to get to yet as I’m finishing a review for Publishers Weekly and nearing the end of Elena Ferrante’s epic The Story of a New Name. Yesterday I finished the audiobook of Roisin O’Donnell’s novel Nesting, which is my first book on my summer reading list. Whoa, it’s quite a powerful and tense story about a mother of three in Dublin trying to get out of an emotionally abusive marriage. More on that book in my next post. But first, what do you think of these pictured? Have you read any? I’m eager start a few, but I need to clear my slate this week. Last week was a whirlwind with painters at the house and a slew of golf and tennis activities and summer yard work. Things are in high gear, lol.

And now here are a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Where the Forest Meets the River by Shannon Bowring / Europa / 2024

4.5 stars. I really enjoyed returning to these characters who live in Dalton, Maine, that takes place five years after what happens in her first novel The Road to Dalton. Sadly a suicide in that story leaves a wake on the close-knit residents here in Book 2. Sexually conflicted Greg is in college now and has thinned his fat self down through running but has to work up to telling his father that he’s not interested in working at the hardware store. Nate has stopped being a cop and is working at the lumber mill while caring for daughter Sophie. He and Rose, who’s broken up with abusive Tommy, seem to be edging a bit closer since arranging playdates for their kids. While Nate’s mother Bev and Trudy’s relations hit some bumps after Trudy’s husband Richard, the town’s doctor, suffers a health scare.

Bowring seems like a disciple of Elizabeth Strout in that her handful of cast interconnect with one another and live in a small town in Maine. It doesn’t seem as dark as Strout’s books. The details and bits of small humor make it warm and the townspeople come to life with Bowring’s wondrous storytelling. Is it a bit sentimental? Perhaps a bit but she is a lovely writer and I really look forward to Book 3 titled In a Distant Valley, which is due to be released Oct. 7 this year. I think it will end in a trilogy, so we must see what will happen to these beloved characters. I thought Book 2 was equally as good as Book 1, and I especially loved the little bits of humor sprinkled in. I listened to both read by Patricia Shade who narrates the books wonderfully.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood / Riverhead / 304 pages / 2024

3.5 stars. This novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize so I was eager to get to it. I found the book grim and strange. When I first picked it up, I thought I would like it a lot more — it’s about a secular woman who goes to a cloister in rural Australia to find some solace and refuge from her life and marriage. But the story is full of a mice plague that occurs and her grim musings about bad things that have happened in the past. She’s never gotten over the death of her parents, which is sad, and she comes across a woman she knew in her youth who was bullied mercilessly at her school and she feels guilty to have being involved in.

While there, a nun, who was killed abroad, has bones returned to the cloister. There’s much about the bones, the mice, her lost parents, and the bullied woman. I would’ve backed up the car in the driveway and zoomed outta there when the furry creatures started scurrying all over the landscape… then the woman would’ve saved herself various dark feelings about all the other things she was fretting about. Despite my misgivings, there are some scattered nicely written passages throughout the book, so I’ll give her that.

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