The Cue Card

Hi all. I’ve been away this past week visiting my parents at their senior community in Southern California. And just my luck, we’re in the path of  Tropical Storm Hilary, yikes. I guess a tropical storm hasn’t happened here in like 84 years. So we’ll hunker down and stay put for awhile and see how bad it gets. I’m a little unsure if the route to Palm Springs, which is prone to flash-flooding will be passable later. I’m supposed to fly out of there on Tuesday back to Canada, so I’ll have to play it by ear.  Will I need a raft in the desert? 

Meanwhile it’s been good to see my parents and we’ve been busy with activities, such as daily golf putting contests with my Dad, medical appointments, and going to the beach for a day. I’ve also enjoyed some bike rides. So I am behind on books and visiting blogs, but I hope to see what you all are reading soon. I know some others who are traveling right now too. 

Next week my reviews will likely feature Claudia Cravens’s debut novel Lucky Red, which I’m almost done with. It’s a Western set on the American frontier about a young woman’s coming of age in a Dodge City brothel and the revenge she seeks on a few who come to betray her. It’s been pretty good and the pages have flown by. I’ll pair that with a review of Canadian author Gil Adamson’s novel The Outlander from 2007, which I’m reading for my book club in September. It’s not the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series but instead a novel about a young mysterious woman in 1903 who’s alone in the Western mountains fleeing two twin brothers who are tracking her for reasons you learn in due time. Little by little you come to know and root for this woman’s escape but various dangers lurk. I’m liking this one as well. 

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished before I left. 

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane / Harper / 320 pages / 2023 

4.5 stars bumped up. Mary Pat Fennessy, 42, is a heck of a protagonist in Dennis Lehane’s latest. She’s one tough Southie (Boston) broad and if you mess with her family, then you are foolishly mistaken. She grew up in a fight-prone family and could take a licken and hold her own too. Her sister once hit her with a brick as a kid and she was able to return a punch before the ambulance came. 

But when Mary Pat’s daughter Jules doesn’t come home one night, she is beside herself with worry. Then it turns out Jules might have been involved in an incident with a group of youths down on the subway tracks where a black man is found dead … which happens during the summer months of the controversial busing desegregation plan of 1974. Uh-oh. Jules is all Mary Pat has left in her life after two divorces and her son’s overdose. So Jules is her heart and now Mary Pat is trying to find her and get to the bottom of things. There’s a cop, too, named Bobby who has a bead on the crime. 

This one is gritty and full of harsh language, but man does it deliver. Despite her narrow-minded background, Mary Pat is one you end up rooting for throughout the story. There’s some humor in this dark, suspenseful tale that cracked me up along the way. I have read two other Lehane novels (Shutter Island and Since We Fell) and seen the movies to several of his other novels (Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) … but Small Mercies might be near the top of his pile for me. The dialogue is superb and Lehane is a master at creating these people and their circumstances. And so is actress Robin Miles who reads the audiobook for the novel. She knocks it out of the park with her accents and delivery. I don’t think either of us will forget Mary Pat Fennessy anytime soon. Is she still living there?

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these and what did you think?  Happy end of August to you. 

Whoa it’s almost August. Where did July go? We had some rain yesterday — real rain! — which will help with the dry conditions. And here are two of the three hay bales we produced from our back field recently. It was fun to watch the baler. We are city folk previously so we are a bit newbies to the process. If it hadn’t had been so dry this season, we would have had a bit more. Even the big farmers around the area didn’t get nearly as many bales as usual this year. 

Not much else to report. Though our older dog Stella, age 11, had surgery this past week to remove a lump under her chin and a troubled molar in her mouth, but she is on the mend now. She just has to wear an undignified cone on her head for two weeks and eat soft food until it heals. Gads, two weeks is a long time to be bumping into walls around the house. I can’t wait to take it off. 

You might have noticed I don’t have my August Preview posted yet. That’s because I’m reviewing a fall novel for PW due on Tuesday. I hope to get the Preview out by next weekend. And my husband is away so we haven’t seen the Oppenheimer movie yet, or Barbie for that matter. Have you seen either? Meanwhile I’m watching the British crime drama series Happy Valley, which is set and filmed in West Yorkshire, England. Or as we call it Unhappy Valley because the small town in it is riddled with awful crimes. But actress Sarah Lancashire as the police sergeant and the rest of the cast are so good I can’t turn away. Season 3 will be the end, but I’m not close yet.

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of two novels from my summer reading list that I enjoyed as audiobooks. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang / Morrow / 336 pages / 2023

This novel is about two ambitious writers who meet at Yale and one — Athena Liu who’s Chinese American — goes on to become a young star author while the other a white girl named June Hayward has a debut that goes nowhere. So when a freak accident happens, June ends up stealing Athena’s next manuscript and publishing it as her own and it becomes a big hit. But what ensues after with her readers, social media followers, editors, and publishing house gets crazy. 

My Thoughts: 4.5 stars. The first person narration of June is pretty diabolical and funny in parts too. Here and there the biting satire cracked me up. And June, who steals Athena’s manuscript, is over-the-top as one jealous, envious chick out for herself at nearly every turn, but she’s clever too. The story is not exactly subtle, but the dialogue and pace are pretty snappy and entertaining. It’s fun as summer pop lit … a revenge story about two writer “friends” who meet at Yale … that weaves topics of cultural appropriation, racism, and the pitfalls of the publishing industry. 

It’s fun too that it mostly takes place in D.C. where I previously lived, and it all comes down to a showdown at the Exorcist steps in Georgetown. What more do you want? It’s an amusing ride. My only slight criticism is that having June’s sole uptight narration throughout is enough to suffocate and tire one out completely. Still I went on, trying to reckon with this duplicitous get-ahead person and her various shades and reasonings. Indeed no one comes off looking too great: June, Athena, editors, the publishing house, and social media trolls. There’s enough bad to go around, which makes it a fun romp through the swamps of writing and the publishing world. It might just be the novel of the summer. Hmm.

Go as a River by Shelley Read / Spiegel & Grau / 320 pages / 2023

4.3 stars. I pretty much loved this old-fashioned-style tale set in rural Colorado of a young girl’s coming of age that tells of her life from the 1940s thru to 1971, and I found it compelling. 

It tells of Victoria’s family — her Dad, brother, and uncle — who are pretty rotten to her after her mother dies in a car accident when she is 12 and she is left doing their meals and chores for years. Then a native boy — Wilson Moon — comes along who she takes a shine to and they have a heartfelt fling that ends with tragic and problematic consequences. Victoria is left with a hard choice to make that haunts her for decades. 

I liked how this novel involves the small town of Iola, which was flooded in the 1960s to make room for a reservoir; and the peach tree orchard that her family owns and Victoria tries to save. There’s feminist overtones in the novel about the sacrifices women make and the difficult reproductive and child-raising choices many face … as well as the racial bigotry towards Native Americans. 

I found the story was affecting and well-told, even if a couple parts might have been a bit of a stretch to believe, such as when Victoria runs off to the mountains and survives for a season by herself … for reasons I will leave for the reader. And perhaps its sentiments put it firmly in the women’s lit camp. Still I followed the tale of Victoria’s life closely and felt the pull of it. Many have faced what she did and can relate to her struggles. It’s poignant and a thoughtful look in the end at one’s life.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and if so what did you think? Have a great weekend everybody.  

Hello. I hope everyone is doing well. I have been busy so have been away from the blog for awhile. I was reffing the junior provincial tennis tournament all of last week for 12 to 18 year olds and there were so many matches, day and night. I’m lucky to be still standing, but it seemed to go well. And now it’s over and I can go back to life on the farm, full of gardening, house chores, dogs, reading, and summertime fun. Yay. 

We have been in the new place now almost six months. It’s hard to believe but true. There’s still some things left to unpack. And I finally set up a new bookcase in my soon-to-be office. I have put fiction on one side and nonfiction on the other. And I just ordered a desk and chair from Pottery Barn to go with it. So I’ll see how that looks once it comes. Slowly but surely we’ve added some furnishings to what we already had. It’s a work in progress, LoL. 

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

The Postcard by Anne Berest / Europa / 464 pages / 2023

3.7 stars rounded up. The story of various generations of the Rabinovitch family is heart-wrenching and moving about how present-day Anne in Paris is trying to piece together who sent her a postcard with names of her grandparents and an aunt and uncle on it —who perished during WWII. So part of the tale is a mystery of Anne investigating how she and her mother came upon this postcard decades later, and then other parts are of her relatives lives in the past during the war, and also how her mother came to survive those days. Along the way Anne comes to find and learn about her Jewish heritage and identity. 

It’s an ambitious tale with various threads and at times I found it was trying to do too much and was a bit stretched. I also found the execution of the tale a bit uneven. Some parts breeze over the years in fast succession and I wanted to get a bit more into her relatives’ lives or closer. Still there are details and facts about Occupied France and a sketch of what happened to them that kept it compelling. It’s a tragic story and one where you wish her grandfather had gotten them out long before. 

I appreciated that this was a personal story based on the author’s family and she seems to pour much of herself and heart and soul into it. In the end, the mystery over the postcard takes Anne on a journey finding out pertinent things about her family’s lives and her heritage. While good, I think others might have liked the novel a bit more than I did as it is very popular right now.

Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah / Pantheon/384 p /2023

3.5 stars. This novel wasn’t really for me, but I made it through the audio with avid persistence. Still the novel gets its points across effectively about how bad the U.S. prison system is in general — particularly toward African Americans — and how crazy our love is for violent action sports. 

Still I liked the two main characters of the book and their love story: Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx,” which I was impressed with coming from a male author. I think they were the best part of the story along with Hendrix, the singer, character. All three are criminals in a prison system where you can opt to fight gladiator-style to try to gain your freedom, which is televised by an action sports franchise. After so many matches, if you survive, you can gain your freedom. I guess it’s a bit like the Hunger Games for criminals. 

I found parts of the novel well done and written, getting its points across: as prison is often no place for reform and justice is so frequently abused. But other parts I found a bit repetitive and the two main characters weren’t given enough material to do enough. I definitely wished for their escape so they could move around more. The chapters jump to and fro among many characters and I found some a bit hard to track or care for. The story felt long and the lead-up to the fight at the end of the book seemed to take a good while. I wanted to see what would happen, which is quite tragic, but I almost didn’t make it. Others are liking this book more.

On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood by Irmgard A. Hunt/ Morrow / 288 pages / 2005

4 stars. This is an affecting memoir about growing up in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden, Germany, where the Nazi elite made their retreat and built Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. The author Irmgard was born in 1934 and her parents were supporters of the Nazis and as a young child she was indoctrinated as everything there was under Nazi rule. She even was dawdled by her parents on Hitler’s knee. Then early in WWII her father dies in France when she is 6 and her world is shattered. She takes part in the Hitler youth, and later just wants the war to end. After the Americans come to town, she learns a new way of life.

This is a pretty fascinating tale about a family behind enemy lines and a warning about how this happened to them. It’s a look at their daily life in the mountains at a dark time in history. It’s a bit of a chilling tale and the author was a young pretty powerless girl growing up under Nazi rule and indoctrination. She describes how life changed as the war went on and what happened at various points along the way. As it wound down, they were without much food and necessities. Later she details when the Americans entered her village in 1945 when she was 11 and what happened post-war.

This book was written in 2005 and I couldn’t help but be on full alert to see whether these many decades later the author seemed to be whitewashing the Nazi experience in any way about what she knew and when the people there knew it. She says they didn’t know about the Jewish people’s plight or all the victims of the Nazis until after the war. She heard rumors at some point of secret trains but didn’t know more. She isn’t easy on the Nazis, her family, or the other villagers in the book for their support of the regime and it seems she doesn’t make excuses. In the end it becomes a warning in ways about following such a dictator and regime and to never letting it happen again. 

I saw that the author Irmgard Hunt recently passed away in May at age 88. Here is her obit. She had a long career in the U.S., where she became a citizen after the war. Her book is one of the only memoirs I’ve read from the enemy side in WWII, which made it a rather eye-opening account. 

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin / Dial Press / 224 pages / 1956

4 stars. Baldwin’s second novel is expertly read for the audiobook by Dan Butler, who seems to have the perfect voice and diction as David, the main character and protagonist. 

Though at first I wasn’t taken with the story of David, an American who goes to Paris in the 1950s and struggles with who he is and his sexuality, drinking, and shortness of money. He has a relationship with a woman named Hella, though while she’s on a temporary trip to Spain, he meets a beautiful male bartender named Giovanni who he’s drawn to despite of himself. Soon he is spending nights in Giovanni’s Room, his lover. But when Hella eventually returns, David has to decide whether to tell Hella about Giovanni or whom he wants to be with. Later Giovanni gets involved in a murder case that is in all the Paris papers. 

It’s a tragic story about a gay-closeted man that gripped me towards the end because of the charged matter and power of Baldwin’s writing. His writing marks him as a natural, so good he can transport you geographically and in feeling in a short amount of lines. I will continue to read his large canon of works. So far in addition to this, I’ve only read his novel If Beale Street Could Talk, which was also good. 

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

Hi. I hope everyone enjoyed the summer solstice yesterday, the longest day of the year. It stays light these days till past 10 at night here, which is really nice, and we often garden and do yard work till after 7. We need to hold onto summer as long as possible up north.

We received some much needed rain this week, which pleased all, including the farmers, and firefighters who are battling the wildfires in the north. We are down to 12 fires out of control and 73 active, with more thunderstorms on the way.

Also good news: my husband and I had a lovely meet-up with fellow blogger Lesley from the blog Coastal Horizons and her husband author Rod Scher on June 8 at the Hard Knox Brewery about twenty minutes from where we live. They were coming through on their RV trip to the Canadian Rockies and we were lucky to get together. We had a really fun visit talking about books, trips, and sights to see. And it was so cool to meet a fellow blogger whose blog I’ve followed for a long while. Lesley and Rod are great people and we hope to see them again. Follow their trip excursion on Insta at @lesscher. They got snowed on in Jasper!!

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

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak / Bloomsbury / 368 pages / 2021

A friend recommended this novel to me and I’m glad I picked it up. It has several moving parts and timelines but essentially is about Kostas (a Greek) and Defne (a Turk) who grow up on the island of Cyprus and fall for one another in secret as society and their parents wouldn’t allow it. Their banned romance reminded me a bit of Romeo and Juliet. 

Then the civil war in 1974 tears them apart — Kostas going to England and Defne staying — while many lives on the island are lost. Years later Kostas is a botanist and Defne an archaeologist searching for bodies of the disappeared and they become reacquainted again. 

Chapters alternate with their daughter Ada in 2010’s London who is having trouble in school and is trying to connect with her parents’ past and their Cypriot heritage. Other chapters are narrated creatively by a wise fig tree that witnesses much on Cyprus when they were young and is replanted in England by Kostas. 

Wow there is much to this story, which introduced and educated me about the island of Cyprus and its conflict in an impactful way. This is my first time reading Turkish-British author Elif Shafak and I was impressed. There is much richness, poignancy, and an appreciation for the natural world and the island in her love story about two people from opposite sides and the civil war’s devastating effects. And I was surprised to like the fig tree’s chapters so much, but they are really well done. Apparently the novel was shortlisted for both the Costa Award and the Women’s Prize. I hope to read Elif Shafak again.

Maame by Jessica George / St. Martin’s / 320 pages / 2023

I listened to the audiobook read by Heather Agyepong, who does a good job as Maddie, the main protagonist of this coming-of-age tale. I was rooting for Maddie throughout this debut novel, who is a 25-year-old British-Ghanaian woman navigating young adulthood in London. She’s a caregiver for her father who has Parkinson’s disease and is working for a theatre company when we first meet her. Her brother doesn’t help much with her Dad and her mother is away mostly in Ghana, so she is left putting in the hours at work and then at home caring for him.

Later she decides it’s time to find a flat with roommates and go on some dates and find new work. She’s ready to live a little and spread her wings. But when family tragedy strikes and her dating life hits the rocks, Maddie is left reeling. Slowly she must find a way and regain her self and try anew while navigating her grief and loss. 

I liked how Maddie straddles two cultures in this story and how it brings out her Ghanaian roots. She is pretty sheltered and quite naive at 25, though still ambitious to find the right work and friends. She admiringly battles subversive racism along the way, and searches Google for various answers to her questions about sex and dating and all sorts of things, which comes off pretty amusing most of the time. She has a good personality and is sympathetic in her loss and beliefs, though I found the story pretty 20-ish fare, first-time sex, roommate angst, boys, job direction, and all that. It’s a little bit YA-ish and I sort of drifted in and out of that. I found it a bit predictable and light and perhaps others enjoyed it a bit more than I did. Still it’s a debut with promise.

Road Ends by Mary Lawson / Dial Press / 352 pages / 2013

Whoa this family is one troubled mess. Each member is going through problems they struggle facing. Set in a cold northern Canadian town from 1966-1969, the daughter Megan has been raising her younger male siblings because her Mom is undergoing some mental instability and is incapable.

Her father — whose youth was marred by a violent father and the Vietnam War — is also neglectful of his young brood and spends his days working for the bank, while her older brother Tom can’t get over the loss of a friend. But when Megan decides to leave home for London at age 21 to pursue a life independent of them, things begin to unravel for the family and its very existence is tested like never before.

This story might have been too soppy or unbelievable in another author’s hands but Mary Lawson is always one that has just the right details of the isolated far North and sensibilities to make such a family dynamic all ring true. The chapters alternate between Megan, Tom, and their father Edward … who all go through some kind of reckoning over their past and dreams of the future, which are a bit sad but one you’ll want to see through in a page-turning flurry … to find out if the family holds together and if Megan returns home and Tom gets over his troubles. It’s a poignant story that resonants. I’ve read three of four of Mary Lawson’s novels and they never disappoint. Perhaps her novel A Town Called Solace remains a favorite.

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

Greetings, hello. There’s much to talk about as the news was just announced from the U.K. that author Barbara Kingsolver has won again for her 2022 novel Demon Copperhead. Wow this time she’s won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and earlier she won the Pulitzer Prize. She’s raking in the accolades this year. Coincidentally I just finished reading the e-book of it, which took me a month, LOL. It’s a lengthy read and reminded me slightly just in its large scope of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, perhaps because like that one it’s also about a boy’s coming of age into young adulthood. Though Copperhead is a bit more issue-oriented and inspired as a modern-day takeoff of Dickens’s novel David Copperfield set in Appalachia. I’m glad to have finally finished it and to know what all the fuss is about. I have reviewed it below. I guess I’m not totally surprised it won the Women’s Prize as I was thinking it was likely favored over the other fine nominees.

Also this week, condolences to Cormac McCarthy fans as the highly esteemed author passed away this week at the age of 89. I first read his fiction with his 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award, and read him again in 2006 with his haunting and stunning post-apocalyptic novel The Road, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

I saw the movie too, and it’s scary … about a father and son trying to journey to the coast after some kind of cataclysm of civilization. Yikes the road is a hazardous place. For his notable writing, I am sad McCarthy has passed away and I’d like to go back and read more of his novels sometime, like Blood Meridian or his newer ones from 2022. What would you suggest?

Lastly, I see that author Elizabeth Gilbert has postponed the release date of her upcoming novel The Snow Forest because she said Ukrainian readers objected to it being set in Siberia, Russia, while the war in Ukraine is still going on. The novel was supposed to be released in February 2024 but now its release date appears delayed.

Apparently the novel, is inspired by a true story and tells the tale of a Siberian family that opposes the Soviet government and has lived in isolation for more than 40 years. Hmm if the family opposes Soviet rule then wouldn’t that be a good thing to the Ukrainian cause? Perhaps Gilbert will reconsider her postponement since many are not happy that she has delayed its publication and for the appearance of what precedence this sets. What do you think? I feel if its anti-Soviet and set in the Siberian wilderness I’d like to read it — even as a staunch Ukraine supporter.

And now I will leave you with two books I finished lately. (I will hold off on reviewing a couple others I finished for next time.) 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Harper / 560 pages / 2022

I rounded this novel up from a 4 to a 5 rating — for its big scope of issues about life and for the way the boy, Damon, know by his nickname Demon, tells it. I read this novel as an ebook which took me about a month to finish. I started it in May for my book club and  put it aside once in the second half and then picked it up again to complete it.

It’s a hard, darkish journey for Demon of his younger years through poverty, Appalachia, and an addicted mom who marries a man harsh to Demon, who later gets put into foster care at age 10 where he winds up working hard labor and living in inhumane conditions. Up and down Demon’s rollercoaster life goes as he later hitchhikes a long ways to his grandmother’s house and finds some success as a football player in high school and as a talented cartoon creator and artist.

Those are the days I wish he could’ve held onto — living at his Coach’s house whose daughter Angus befriends Demon and helps him along. But no! Things later take a terrible turn and you have to stick around for a long while before finding out if Demon will be all right and be able to regain his footing in life. 

As Demon goes from adolescence to teen to young adult, I felt I aged with him through the book. He learns a lot after being put through the ringer as an orphan and later as the opioid crisis unfolds. The story of his life grew on me as it went along. There’s a pretty big cast of characters who come to interact with Demon and who become quite real by the end, some good like a neighbor named June, and Angus, and others quite awful like a guy known as U-Haul and his stepdad Stoner. Most of all there is Demon himself, a tall red-haired kid, a talented artist and football player, who becomes a young adult through all this. He is someone I felt I came to know by the end and whose long often-grueling journey I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.

The Churchill Sisters: The Extraordinary Lives of Winston and Clementine’s Daughters by Rachel Trethewey / St. Martin’s Press / 320 pages / 2021

I pretty much loved this nonfiction book about the four Churchill daughters. I found their lives quite fascinating, full of an era of involvement and danger (during both WWI and WWII) and adventure and changing female roles, and also rather tragic about their depression and lives cut short. I learned quite a bit about Diana, Sarah, Marigold, and Mary and their relations to their famous parents. The book mentions their son Randolph but focuses mainly on the girls. They were all different but the family seemed a close, tight-knit unit, and Winston seemed a doting father to all of them. 

Although the youngest Mary is the only one who had a long, calm, less drama-filled married life, there’s something about Sarah that appealed to me most. She was foiled in love and never had children; she was ambitious about having an acting career but never fully attained complete success. She also had trouble with alcohol later in life and wound up being arrested several times because of it. Her three close romantic partners all died, which had a sad impact on her. And she died at 67. One husband said she had an obstinate streak that made them both unhappy. Perhaps Sarah was the most interesting as she: worked in the women’s auxiliary Air Force during the war, had a career as an actress, and even maintained a secret love affair with the American ambassador during WWII, which seemed pretty shocking both then and now. 

This book clips along at a good pace skipping over years quickly — it seems at times more of an overview of their lives rather than a full picture, but still reveals some detailed and formative information. I was caught up in knowing about each of them. I both listened to the audio and read the hardback book. The book dovetails nicely with The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz, which details Sarah Churchill’s trip with her father to the Yalta conference and I loved it as well. If you want more, read that one too. I’m a bit curious now to read sometime Sarah Churchill’s 1981 autobiography called Keep on Dancing. That book came out just a year before she passed away and seems like it would be fascinating.

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

Yay, it’s that time of year again. I’m joining Cathy’s Books of Summer challenge in which I hope to draw from the list of 15 novels below to read over the next three months from June 15 to Sept. 15 (since I’m late) and I’ll see how many I get to. 

It took me a while to choose which books I wanted to pick up — a number of them were recommended by other bloggers — and I think all of these are novels from this year that slipped by me. So now I hope to rectify that. I tried to choose novels that would make for well-paced summer reading — ones that can be read at the beach or on the back deck and can be tossed into a sandy, suntan oily bag. We will see if these hold my attention. 

So what about my list — have you read any of these and what did you think? I have listed a brief synopses of each novel below if you are curious about any that was compiled from publisher listings and other sources. The novels are in no particular order.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue — A college student in County Cork gets caught in the middle of a friend’s romance in this novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor — A poor boy in India joins up with a ruthless rich family in this fast-paced thriller. Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, Age of Vice transports readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi.

The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen — A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious death in this propulsive thriller.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle — A Black woman in 1915 heads to Big Sky Country with some unusual baggage in this haunting historical horror novel.  

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang — A struggling novelist passes off a manuscript left by her dead college friend as her own in this satire that grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation.

Maame by Jessica George — After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities. The novel captures the uncertainty, freedom, and anxiety of a mid-20s woman in London.

All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay — A woman vanishes, leaving her kids to wonder whether their father is a murderer in this tale about family secrets, vengeance, and love.

The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel — After the death of their father, two teens accompany their scientist mom on a globe-trotting expedition and discover themselves in the process.

Go As a River by Shelley Read — Set amid Colorado’s rural beauty, this debut novel is a coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter with a drifter.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane — Set against the tumultuous months in 1974 when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, the novel is a thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. 

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah — A debut novel set in a dystopian alternate U.S. where people incarcerated in an expansive private prison system have the option to fight for their freedom in gladiator-style death matches.

Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb — A music scholar discovers his favorite composer may have stolen compositions from a Black Jazz Age prodigy in this simmering thriller by the author of The Violin Conspiracy. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane — The search for a missing boy in the Australian outback in 1883 casts lights on the tensions roiling beneath the surface of the English colony in this novel shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

The Postcard by Anne Berest — When the protagonist of this novel finds an anonymous postcard among the usual holiday cards from her maternal great-grandparents who died in Auschwitz, she sets off to discover who sent it and why. Her journey leads her through the history of her family and exposes the secrets her ancestors hid for generations.

Biography of X by Catherine Lacy — A widow sets out to uncover the truth about her late wife, a mercurial artist who adopted many personas, in this novel of an alternate America. 

Hi All. I hope everyone is well. Here we need to stay indoors this afternoon as the air quality is hazardous from all the wildfire smoke coming to us from north in the province. The trouble is the southern wind that had been pushing the smoke away from us changed direction overnight and now has pushed all the smoke into our area and beyond. It’s very grey and the visibility is low. Whoa it looks like the apocalypse outside. It’s best to stay inside and avoid the smoke and any possible zombies.

Early over the weekend it was still clear out and we took the dogs to the Bow River, where they swam like there was no tomorrow. They love swimming; unfortunately I didn’t get a good shot of it. We also put in our inaugural vegetable garden at our new home, which was fun. We planted a wide range of things including: radishes, carrots, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, green beans, and corn. We plan to put in some zucchini as well. Do you plant any veggies in the summer and what do you like best? Do they grow well where you are?

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

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai / Viking /448 pages /2023

Synopsis: This novel is about a film professor and podcaster named Bodie Kane who gets swept up in a murder case decades later that happened when she was at boarding school in New Hampshire. She had been a senior there when her roommate Thalia Keith was murdered, which she hasn’t been able to entirely put behind her. Years later when Bodie’s asked to teach a course at the school, she begins to analyze whether the man arrested for the crime was wrongly convicted and whether other suspects were overlooked.

My Thoughts: Much of the novel I liked, especially Bodie’s younger years at the high school, along with the writing, but then other times the minutiae of going over and over, analyzing the crime and all the suspects a hundred times over sort of exhausted me. Sure it was a horrific crime and an injustice that a more thorough investigation wasn’t done when it happened, and as a young teenager I’m sure it haunted so many students at the prep school forever, but man, it really turns the case inside out till I was blue. It’s a slow-burn and then some.

Granted, the author brings up many issues in the story along the way: including sexism, racism, sexual abuse, harassment violence, bullying, and adolescence that make the re-examination of the case quite worthwhile. There’s a lot to digest. And the victim Thalia seemed a promiscuous girl, which opened up the possibilities of various motives and suspects. Several people could’ve done it, which Bodie finds out in due time.

Mostly I think I liked the novel for its look back on adolescence and the school and Bodie’s time there — how she viewed things then versus what she thinks about it now, her friends there, and how Bodie was a bit of an outlier back in high school and what she was going through with her family then and now. Those personal parts interested me. Also the fact that the author made Bodie and the characters feel very real throughout the journey. So perhaps the novel was a bit of a mixed bag, but still it was worth 4 stars.

I listened to the audio read by Julia Whelan, who I thought did a terrific job.

Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams /Crown / 272 pages / 2023

I have long been a fan of Lucinda Williams’s songs and music, which I first started listening to around 1992 when I was living in Seattle and her album Sweet Old World came out. I was wowed by her poetic lyrics and raw folk-country-rock sound. Her next four albums: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998), Essence (2001), World Without Tears (2003) and West (2007) were especially stunning. So I jumped on her book when I heard that it was out.

I listened to Lucinda’s memoir read by the author for the audio. In it, she’s raw, she’s real, and she lays it on the line. She tells of her background, her family, where she came from (Louisiana, and Arkansas mostly), and how she got into music. She includes many great stories of her life and how she stuck to her guns about her songs and direction when the record companies didn’t know how to place her music. She was told for many years she was too rock for country and too country for rock, and she struggled at first to get a record deal.

Luckily she kept at it. She tells of playing guitar and singing from age 12 to 70. She’s an American treasure and I was thankful just to hear a bit about how she accomplished what she did and what she’s like offstage … and how she wrote the wonderful lyrics and tunes. This book is quite insightful about her life … foremost about her parents who had their problems (her mom had mental illness and her Dad moved the family around a lot for work) … and all the men she had relationships with. Holy smokes there’s a lot! She’s quite candid and just a couple times I thought maybe it was a wee bit oversharing about her sex life. But still I was glad to know where her songs came from, many were based on real relationships or people she knew.

My only qualm with the memoir is that it stops abruptly around 2007 around the time of The West album and her marriage to Tom Overby in 2009. The memoir is a bit too short. She does talk about her parents passing away around 2014 and 2015, which had a huge sad impact on her. But I wanted to know more from her recent years (she had a stroke in 2020, which she doesn’t really talk about). So perhaps that is the sign of a good memoir, hoping that she’ll write another and add the remaining years.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho / HarperOne / 208 pages / 1993 translated

This was Book One for quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ book club, so I was curious to check it out. Not that Aaron is one I really follow, but he just talked it up quite a bit. I had missed the novel or fable when the translated edition first came out in 1993. So this runaway bestseller has now been out 30 years.

And yes it’s a fable-like story about a shepherd boy (Santiago) in Spain who sells his sheep to undertake a self-discovery journey to find a treasure, which he dreams about being among the Pyramids of Egypt. He goes through various stages on the journey, following omens and trying to realize his “Personal Legend.” Along the way, he meets an old king, a crystal merchant, an Englishman, and finally an alchemist who help him and he learns from on his way. He also falls for a girl named Fatima who will wait for him while he searches for the treasure.

The fable is endearing in certain aspects of a young person being on a quest and trying to find one’s destiny and journeying around through the Sahara Desert. Though at times it was a bit like reading pop-philosophy or psychology, and I wasn’t too sure if it went deeper than: following or listening to one’s own heart, which always seems wise to pursue. I liked some of the images in the book: the places and people, the desert and sheep, though a few parts dragged: some of the pseudo-philosophy parts perhaps. But luckily it was a relatively short read and I bid adieu to Santiago the wandering shepherd who seemed to find his happiness.

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