The Cue Card

Hi all. We made it to California on our road trip and are enjoying some warmer temps. On the way south, we stopped at a donkey sanctuary in southern Utah. The owners were kind to meet with us and let us know about their interesting and adorable animals. They have about nine, and this one at left is named Homer. (He must like the Greeks.)

We are still considering whether we might get a couple donkeys in the future. Only trouble is most donkeys don’t like dogs so we would need to keep our Labradors away from them, so they don’t get trampled. Also our northern winters might be a bit harsh for donkeys, so we need to do more research and ask some neighbors who have them about how they manage. Getting donkeys remains a bit uncertain but Homer sure was cute.

Meanwhile in book news my Q & A with Irish author Colum McCann was recently published in Publishers Weekly here. I think they make you register to see the link, argh. Anyways we chatted about McCann’s new novel Twist coming in March … which is about a journalist who goes to cover the story of a crew on a cable repair ship off the coast of Africa. It’s a bit of a mysterious tale and illuminates how much of our internet communications runs in wires at the bottom of the oceans that are somewhat vulnerable to breakages. I don’t want to say too much about the story, but McCann, a National Book Award winner, is always one to watch. Look for the novel coming in March.

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

Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong / Harper / 352 pages / 2024

4.5 stars. I pretty much loved this novel about a girl (Pearly) who grows up in a lumber camp in the woods of New Brunswick during the Depression-era … with her poor family and a small abandoned black bear that they take in as a cub. Pearly and Bruno (the bear) are raised together and the family is close as they endure the rigors of the camp and a new logging boss who is cruel and arrives during Pearly’s teenage years. Then something happens to Bruno and Pearly must journey away from the camp and all she’s known to find him. It turns out to be quite an adventurous trek and she winds up in a town that she must navigate.

Pearly Everlasting is a bit of a tomboy and a strong female protagonist who can hold her own. I hadn’t known of writer Tammy Armstrong before, but she’s an award-winning poet who casts a spell with her lyrical prose writing and her descriptions of the woods and the girl’s life. Apparently Armstrong grew up in New Brunswick and now lives in Nova Scotia. She’s a new favorite Canadian author to me and I will watch for whatever she puts out next.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout / Random House / 327 pgs / 2024

4.5 stars. This is the fifth book in Strout’s series that feature the same cast of her beloved characters and are mostly set in the small town of Cosby, Maine. This one, which I listened to on audio by the superb Kimberly Farr, grew on me as it went along and I especially liked the novel’s second half that features lawyer Bob Burgess taking on a case of a hapless man who is charged with the death of his elderly mother.

Much has been made in the novel of Strout’s major characters: writer Lucy Barton meeting Olive Kitteridge, now 90, at her senior community. Olive tells Lucy some interesting stories she thinks Lucy might be able to use as a writer. And those were fine, and Olive’s directness still makes me laugh, but it’s Bob Burgess who really steals the show in this novel. Bob undergoes a bit of a crisis when he begins to have feelings for Lucy Barton, despite his marriage to Margaret, the pastor. You have to see what happens at the end with that and his law case. Bob’s a caring and generous soul and the journey with him is something to eagerly take in.

Throughout there’s many details and sentiments in these characters’ lives that Strout seamlessly weaves in and out that makes her storytelling one of the best in the business. We know Olive, Lucy, the Burgess brothers, wives: Margaret, and ex-Pam, and some of the kids quite well now that they all feel very real. By the end, Strout cuts to the heart of the matter moving us with her poignant characters and their lives. Her storytelling of the town and its denizens still casts a touching spell.

Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino / Penguin / 384 pages / 2024

4 stars. We listened to the audio of this on our road trip south, read by the author in his raspy voice. It’s quite an epic telling of his poor childhood in the South Bronx of N.Y., his group of friends there, and how he got into acting in theater and later movies. It touches briefly on some of his personal relationships with Jill Clayburgh and Diane Keaton for example, but it doesn’t go into too many others.

What I liked hearing about were his roles in films such as The Godfather (trilogy), Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, Glengarry Glen Ross, and many other great films. And I guess I didn’t realize how much he was into theater, which seems his first true passion, and Shakespeare. He goes into his theater world quite a bit and the plays he did. It also touches on how he had to sober up and quit alcohol, or else he wouldn’t have lasted.

Towards the end, Pacino sort of meanders on and off with various topics, the people he grew up who died from drugs, and it could’ve been edited shorter. It seems he wasn’t good with money and he went broke at certain points. Some of his willingness to keep acting at times was for money as well as what he knew how to do. Acting runs strong in his DNA, which is quite apparent throughout this. I hardly ever check out actor memoirs, but this was a good exception, and it made me like him a bit more.

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

Hi all. Time has flown by this month. You might already be gearing up for Thanksgiving. It’s that time of year. Gobble, gobble. Winter hit us full on this past week! We were lulled into thinking fall would continue on, but no! All of sudden it was snow, snow, snow!

I can’t complain too much because the drought wasn’t good for a while. So it’s better to snow. And it’ll be good for the ski areas. We might have a foot of snow on the ground by Sunday, lol. I keep filling all the bird feeders around the house. The birds are very hungry these days and are emptying the feeders so quickly. Meanwhile I hope those who live along the northern West Coast weren’t too hard hit by the “cyclone bomb,” which brought a lot of rain and wind this past week. It was crazy in some areas apparently.

In book news this week, Percival Everett’s novel James, a retelling of Huck Finn, won the National Book Award for fiction. Yay. I think it was quite deserving of a big award. While the Booker Prize chose Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital recently, James took the NBA, which was hosted by comedian Kate McKinnon. Her speech was pretty amusing and can be heard here if you’re in need of some levity.

Also this past week author Anne Michaels won Canada’s Giller Prize for her novel Held, a multigenerational tale that looks at war and trauma and spans more than a century. While I have read James, I have not read Held yet. So I will give it a go sometime.

Also in book news, we had good news this week that the city’s library system here was coming back online after being down for a month. Around Oct. 18, they shut it down due to an apparent cyberattack. You couldn’t put books on hold, or return books. The whole library system was virtually shut down. And it went on for four weeks. Gosh we all learned how much we value the library after that. It is finally back open again and our flow of incoming and outgoing books can be restored, hooray. Both dogs are happy that their mother is happy about this, and Willow, at right, is celebrating her fourth birthday today. 🙂 But Stella doesn’t want her to get all the attention.

Also in good news, I had the great fortune to see Bruce Springsteen in concert last Saturday night. I’ve been a big fan of his ever since I was a teenager when I saw him in concert in 1981 at the L.A. Forum. News of the show came up quite suddenly. I found out about it late, the morning of the concert, but I knew I had to go. I worried it might be the last time I saw Bruce perform, so I went all out to see the Boss: driving an hour, parking in craziness, trying to get a ticket at the box office! Which I did somehow, someway.

And of course, I wasn’t disappointed. Bruce gave a 110 percent and rocked so many of his great songs throughout his career for nearly three hours. He and the E Street band brought the house down! I was moved beyond belief. He gave an amazing show! I never sat down. I know I won’t soon forget it. It was like a healing balm after the election. And at 75, Bruce is still more energetic than most of us combined. You might recall I wrote about the last time I saw him in 2012 here. But it seemed even more poignant this time. For his song setlist of the show you can look here. And yes, he did sing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” which is sort of silly and fun, even though I’m not even thinking about Christmas yet.

Lastly, I don’t have a book review to feature this week as life was busy. But I’ve been reading the novel Pearly Everlasting by the Canadian author Tammy Armstrong lately, and it seems good so far. I’ve also been working on a project for Publishers Weekly, which asked me to do an author Q&A. I can talk about it more next week once it’s published. But I was a bit nervous since I had to come up with questions about a new novel by a previous National Book Award-winning author and talk with the author on Zoom about it. I’m sort of an introvert so things like that don’t come too easily. Luckily the chat went well and I just need to pare the interview down now.

That’s all for this week. What about you — have you read anything good lately? Happy Thanksgiving to those in the States.

Hi all. I hope everyone is doing all right. I don’t know about you — but I’m still in a post-election news blackout and feel it suits me and my headspace nowadays. Who wants to witness whatever chaos lies ahead? It’s a new dawn here, see the sunrise from this week. Meanwhile I have more time to do other things, like read books, walk the dogs, do my part-time jobs, and take care of the homestead. And recently I received news that my next knee replacement is not going to be till February or March. I’ve been on a long surgery wait list.

There’s so many oldsters who are in need of joint replacements and only so many operating rooms in the city, so you must wait your turn. The replacements certainly work well (my first one went according to plan) and will allow me hopefully to keep active till late in life. I was able to bike this past Monday (see photo at left) since it’s been quite mild for this time of year.

Meanwhile my husband and I have made plans to spend much of December and the holidays in Southern California, visiting my father and brother and we’ll return in January. It’ll be a winter break, which is okay by me. So I need to gear up and get ready for the long road trip ahead.

In book news, I see that British author Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prizer this past week for her short 136-page novel Orbital, which is set aboard the International Space Station. Wow! It was quite a surprise since others expected Percival Everett’s novel James, or Yael van der Wouden’s novel The Safekeep to win.

But nope. Harvey’s book of astronauts in space, which apparently is filled with beauty and wonder, grabbed the attention of the judges who didn’t seem to mind that it’s “virtually plotless.” I have yet to read Harvey’s novel, but I intend to. I wonder if I will find the plotlessness a drawback, though it is quite short, so maybe I won’t. The cover is a bit fetching. Have you read this?

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

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante / Europa / 331 pages / 2011

4+ stars. First of all, thanks so much to Tina at the blog Turn the Page for doing a buddy read with me of this much-acclaimed novel. It had been on my shelves for many years and our read-along finally gave me the strong push to pick it up. It also had been named in the New York Times’ survey this past summer as the Best Book of the 21st Century. Whoa! I’m not sure why I had put it off so long, but after all the hoopla — it’s a pretty accessible story about the friendship of two girls from poor backgrounds who grow up in the same neighborhood in Naples, Italy, in the 1950s.

Elena Greco tells their story; she’s the studious good girl who despises her mother and gets high marks in school that allows her to continue on to attend high school. Whereas Lila is the adventurous one when they’re younger. She’s the bad girl in her antics who’s able to read and write brilliantly, but then is forced into working in her father’s shoe shop with her moody brother Rino instead of pursuing more school.

The story follows Elena and Lila’s close friendship and rivalry from ages 6 to 16 and their lives in the neighborhood, which is a pretty rough place … where people wind up dead, parents hit their kids, and bullying, backstabbing, and fighting are commonplace. The two girls inspire and rely on each other in ways to navigate and rise above the circumstances and patriarchal confinements of their lives.

At one point, they hope to write a novel as Louisa Alcott did with Little Women to become well off and independent. They each come to plot ways to transcend their neighborhood, Elena with school, and Lila by designing leather custom shoes to sell and by becoming engaged to a well off young man in the ‘hood. One summer Elena has the good fortune to go to an island to take care of a lady’s kids at the beach. While there, she falls for a boy, but a disturbing event transpires that makes her avoid him later.

After the novel’s accolades, I went into the book not knowing what to expect. But like others, I found it well written — in parts it’s a bit dense with a lot of exposition writing and not a lot of dialogue. Still it really takes you there, and I could picture Elena and Lila’s neighborhood and the people … and the poverty, violence, and the motivations behind the girls’ whims. From early on Elena felt school was the safest place to be.

Many characters from their area inhabit the novel and it was a bit hard to keep track of them all, but the key ones stood out. Their 1950’s setting is quite provincial, sexist, and hard, but I was lured in by the girls’ friendship and how they think highly of one another yet still compete a bit with each other and how they help each other to overcome situations. Lila is at first mean but later seems nicer to Elena than Elena is to her by the end. I’m not sure I preferred one girl over the other. They both seemed bright with potential to break out of their claustrophobic confines. Fingers crossed.

The novel is the first of four in a series. We plan to read Book 2 sometime next year. This novel was translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, and was written under the pseudonym of Elena Ferrante. I tried to find the book cover I liked best. And so far, I have not watched the adapted TV series of it. Have you?

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this and if so what did you think? And are you reading anything great?

Hi all. I guess I will try to make this post short. For those who’ve followed this blog, which dates back to 2009, you know this isn’t a political blog and I try not to include my opinions about that here. But this past week with the election was truly shattering and deeply disappointing. It was not the outcome many — including me — were hoping for, and I think dark days and irreversible damage are ahead. It’s a very big downer and one that feels worse than in 2016. 

I feel a time of withdrawal is here … unplugging from news and social media and taking a step back. Who are we as a people? Where is the human race heading? Good grief, it doesn’t look anywhere good. I wish I could offer some solace, but there’s very little to say right now. I went back and read my post from November 2016, remembering those days and now this. Both are terrible. For those distressed perhaps one can find comfort in: reading and books; those we hold dear; and the outdoors, nature, sports, and chatting with other book enthusiasts. These are things I cling to, especially in troubled times. You can see from my photo I’m reading on our front stoop Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend.

Perhaps unsurprisingly over the past chaotic years “healing fiction” from Japanese and Korean authors has really taken off … like Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Hiro Arikawa’s The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Many of the novels are set in mundane locations and center on people struggling and overcoming everyday problems, and often feature cats with magical healing powers. You can read Alexandra Alter’s NYT article about the genre trend here. While I haven’t read these, I can see their cozy appeal. For me, books don’t have to be in this category to offer good escape and comfort. So many do that already, which is part of the magic of reading. 

And now I’ll leave you with a review of the book I finished lately. 

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing /357 pgs/1959

I think I reread this book every 20 years, my first time was probably in 1999 when I went to an exhibit of the expedition at the Natural History Museum in New York. In the book, Lansing wastes no time in his telling of one of the greatest survival stories of all time. It’s a roller coaster action-filled story. Caroline Alexander’s book The Endurance gives a bit more context, but Lansing was one of the first to give a full account of the Antarctic expedition of 28 men whose aim it was to cross the Antarctic continent in 1914 led by Irishman Ernest Shackleton. Apparently Lansing talked to 10 of the survivors and was granted access to the journals and diaries of those on the expedition in order to write this. 

As you probably know, they failed in their attempt to cross Antarctica because their ship the Endurance became trapped and crushed in the ice and they were left on the ice pack. But what they accomplished in their amazing survival turned out to be so much more. They drifted for a while on the ice pack until it melted and they launched three lifeboats into the Southern Ocean and managed to make it to Elephant Island where most stayed. Then Shackleton led a crew of five on a lifeboat trying to get help at the whaling station at South Georgia Island, which took 16 freezing days in an open boat. When they finally made land, they had to trek over icy mountains by foot to get help. 

It’s a rousing tale and I could almost feel the cold and salt-water wounds on their hands, their inadequate clothes and shivers, and the grossness of their rotting food rations. I don’t know how the 28 men survived the various legs of their scary predicament and the two years lost from the world, but their teamwork, fortitude, and how they rose to the occasion was incredible. A lot of credit goes to Shackleton’s leadership as “the boss” and keeping the men together and moving forward. To my knowledge, he’s one of the few polar explorers who brought his entire crew back alive after their ship was destroyed by ice and they were left abandoned. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this and what did you think? Are you enjoying any good reads now? 

Hi all. I’m going to try to post regularly on Fridays now. Ha, as soon as I say that I’m doomed, but I will try to make Fridays my post day. We’ll see if it lasts. I hope so. Even if I don’t have a book to discuss, I’ll try to have something to feature and chat about. I’ve always admired other blogs that stick to a schedule, so I’ll give it a go. 

I hope everyone’s fall has been nice. This past Monday we had our first snowfall, and it stuck around for two days before melting away. The forecast looks clear now till Halloween when trick-or-treaters might see snowflakes again. It’ll be fun if the spooky night sees snow, though the pumpkins don’t like freezing temps. 

My reading lately has been scattered. Part of that is that I’ve got three novels going on and I don’t seem to be making much headway in them, and partly it’s due to the election bearing down on us. We might have turned off the news, but still it’s permeated our brains by now. For many of us, the next 10 days will be a knotted ball of anxiety. The uncertainty is palpable. I have voted early from abroad and I urge you to wherever you are. Will chaos ensue? I really hope not. I’m eager to move forward and not go back. 🙂 

Lately in book news, I see that Percival Everett has won the Kirkus Prize for Fiction for his novel James and received $50K. Wow and he’s still up for two more big awards with the Booker and the National Book Award. Will he win either of those? I have read and liked James and I still want to read The Safekeep and other nominees. Speaking of which The New York Times had an interesting story this week about the Dutch author of The Safekeep, which you can see here.

And unfortunately due to snow and not feeling well, I missed seeing Rachel Kushner talk about her nominated novel Creation Lake at the book festival here. But I saw the book talk with Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle and the other event with Holly Gramazio whose time-bending novel The Husbands sounds a bit like a hoot, with different husbands coming out of the attic … like a revolving door. I haven’t read it yet, but I think she must have had one heck of a wacky dream. It was fun attending the book festival and it’s given me more for the TBR. Though lately one weird thing is: the city’s whole library system has been derailed by a cyber-security problem and has been mostly shutdown for over a week. You can’t check out or return books and there’s no indication when it will return. Argh.

And now I’ll leave you with the novel I finished lately. 

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa /Harper /160 pgs/ 2023 

3.7 stars. I enjoyed this one on audio, which takes place in an artsy neighborhood of Tokyo where there are a lot of bookstores. Takako, 25, is in free fall when she gets a call from her uncle Satoru offering for her to come live at his old used bookshop. She’s had a skank of a boyfriend who she’s found out has taken advantage of her and has had to quit her job to avoid him. Now she’s sleeping the days away in a small room above the bookshop and depression has taken over.

But in time her uncle and the cozy bookshop and its customers weasel their way into her life and give her meaning and reason to keep going. She learns to fight back against the skank and begins to read and enjoy Japanese lit. A number of Japanese authors and novels, which I’d like to read, are mentioned throughout the story. I always seem to like translated Japanese lit. 

The novel’s second half involves Satoru’s long-lost wife (Momoko) who returns after five years away. She and Takako bond on a girls’ hiking trip, and Momoko confides in her why she left and why she’s returned. It’s a heartwarming tale and though it might have familiar themes of other bookshop kinds of novels about healing and spreading one’s wings, this novel is well told, engaging, and has worthy nuggets of wisdom in it. It might be a bit slight, but I liked the characters and how they evolved and grew closer. Sometime I will pick up the sequel novel that came out this year: More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop!  

That’s all for now. What about you have you read this book or bookshop novels like it, and if so, what did you think? Happy Halloween! 

Hi all. I hope everyone is enjoying some pretty fall days. It’s starting to get cooler here now. And as it gets closer to Halloween, we might even see a snowflake or two. We’ll see. Last Monday was Thanksgiving here in Canada, which was a beautiful day and my husband and I went for a long bike ride. I shot this photo as we biked along one of our favorite routes, and later we had a nice Thanksgiving turkey dinner at our local golf club, which put out a lovely special holiday meal. No clean-up at home necessary, yay.

Recently we took down our vegetable patch for the year. It was a good season and we still have plenty of squash and cucumbers left, and enough to make zucchini muffins.

On Saturday I will head to the city for the book festival by Wordfest. It’ll be my first of three events. The talk features several female authors: Holly Gramazio (The Husbands), Madeline Ashby (Glass Houses), Robyn Harding (The Haters), and Marissa Stapley (The Lightning Bottles). Have you read any of these? I have read Harding before … her 2017 crime thriller The Party was a doozy. Then on Sunday I will see Irish authors Roddy Doyle (The Women Behind the Door) and Anne Enright (The Wren, the Wren), and Monday’s talk features Rachel Kushner (Creation Lake). Yay.

After Saturday’s talk, I plan to meet up with book blogger Haze from The Book Haze, which should be a lot of fun. A while ago after I found her blog, I discovered she lives in this province as well, so it’ll be great to meet up in person. Check out her blog if you don’t already know it. She reads and reviews a variety of great books.

And now I’ll leave you with a review of a nonfiction book that I finished lately.

Running With Sherman by Christopher McDougall / Knopf / 352 pages / 2019

My sister gave me the perfect gift when she sent me this book early this summer, since I have been interested in keeping donkeys at our back field ever since we moved to a more rural location in January 2023. They seem adorable animals and I have been intrigued by them for a long while. Though I’m still trying to talk my husband into the idea of these braying pack animals. I hope someday it will happen and we will have two here … if all goes well.

As for the book it’s a heartwarming true story that’s very informative too … about an abused, neglected donkey that is given a second chance at life when the author and his family save him from the previous owner and take him to live on their farm in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. Sherman — as they rename him — can barely walk at the time due to overgrown hooves.

Luckily with vet care they are able to rehabilitate him … and when the trainer says Sherman “needs a purpose,” the author gets an idea to train him for the World Championship burro race in Colorado. This involves running alongside the donkey holding a rope from the harness as the donkey runs (or decides not to run) the mountainous course.

Over several months the author and “his team,” which includes his wife and a neighbor’s college son, train with Sherman along with two other buddy donkeys named Flower and Matilda that lure him along. As the race nears they have to overcome many obstacles just to get to the race — due to unrelated injuries and driving logistics — which miraculously they do.

The book is about donkeys but also about the people in their rural neck of the woods and so much more. Some of the book is the author’s personal story and another part is his journalistic reporting about Amish country, endurance running, and the world of burro racing and those who do it. Who knew? I hadn’t even heard of the sport till this book. But what really won me over are the three donkeys: Sherman, Flower, and Matilda. They are smaller than you might expect but they each have their own funny personalities and egg each other on. I loved them.

It’s a moving story for animal lovers, or for readers of human interest sports stories. I have the paperback copy as well as the audio version, which is entertaining and enthusiastically read by the author.

You might remember the author from his 2009 bestselling book titled Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen about the author’s journey to Mexico’s Copper Canyons to learn the secrets of the Tarahumara Indian native people, known for their ability to run for hundreds of miles without problems, or injury. Well apparently Matthew McConaughey has signed on to star in the movie version, which is still in early development. We will see if it pans out and is made.

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

Hi all. I hope you’re having a pleasant fall. It’s been nice here and warm conditions make it feel like it’s an Indian summer, but I know others far away are on the run from Hurricane Milton so hopefully they can get out of its path in Florida. What’s being predicted doesn’t look good. What a worry for the state’s Gulf side.

Meanwhile next week the city’s book festival is going on here along with a Challenger pro-tennis tournament, so I’ll be driving back and forth to those events. At the festival, I’ll be seeing authors Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Robyn Harding, and Rachel Kushner speak about their new novels. I sort of want to see Nita Prose and Alice Winn too, but I’m not sure I will get there since we live a ways away. I will report back on what happens.

Also my husband and I recently saw British nonfiction author Ben Macintyre talk about his recent book The Siege, which gives a suspenseful account of the 1980 hostage crisis that took place at the Iranian Embassy in London.

Whoa, I don’t recall much about it at the time — perhaps since the other Iranian hostage crisis was going on and I was in high school — but it was a very tense, dangerous situation. Macintyre’s books are all very good, especially his 2014 book A Spy Among Friends about British spy Kim Philby. It was great to see him and he gave a great talk about his new book, which sounds like a page-turner.

Now let’s check out the various books I picked up from the library recently. Here’s my library loot at left. Have you read any of these? They all look pretty good, but I might not get to many this time around, since I signed up for Ti’s October read-along of Of Human Bondage, which I need to start pronto. I just finished a novel for PW, so that distracted me for a bit. Now I’m back to pick up Somerset Maugham’s 1915 classic, which seems like it’ll be terrific. Yay.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of novels that I finished lately.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger / Grove / 336 pages / 2024

4 stars. It’s been years since I read author Leif Enger back when he wrote his lovely debut Peace Like a River, which actually was published on 9/11/2001 — not a good pub date! But here I was 20 years later reading his newest tale, which I couldn’t resist —set along Lake Superior in the not so distant future, where much has closed, violence is out there, and people are barely getting by. Groups of people have been opting out by taking a suicide drug known as Willow.

But bar-band bass guitarist Rainy is doing his best with his beloved wife Lark, who owns the bookstore in town and seems like the coolest, poetic person on earth. But when a boarder (Kellan) comes to stay at their place — little do they know that he’s being pursued by bad guys who want the drug stash he stole from them. As Kellan flees, the bad guys descend upon the house while Rainy is out and cause heartbreak for him to find.

Rainy takes to a sailboat to escape and to try to find Lark’s spirit amid the Slate Islands where they once sailed together. Along the way he stops in various coastal towns for supplies and finds he’s being shot at and pursued. Meanwhile out on the lake, he meanders his grief and learns how to manage the boat under tough storm and lake conditions. It’s dicey trying to stay alive out there on so little rations and he meets one couple onshore that help. Later at another stop, he helps a young girl (Sol, age 12) get out of her harsh predicament and she becomes a passenger on his boat. Eventually the bad guys catch up and things play out on a large medicine ship.

Much of the story is vividly and movingly rendered like the misty fog on the lake and Rainy’s feelings onboard, and other parts get a bit slow, weighed down and long. But still you keep on to see how it will play out and how Rainy will fare. The ending with the bad guys gets a bit suspenseful — and afterwards I felt like I had been through the ordeal and I thought about the book for quite a while. Kudos to Enger for this dystopian tale and its chilly lake setting.

The Women by Kristin Hannah / St. Martin’s / 471 pages / 2024

4+ stars. The first half of this novel I liked best about young American nurse Frankie McGrath’s time helping the wounded in Vietnam circa 1966-1969 and the friends (Barb, Ethel, and doc Jaime) she meets while there. She follows in her brother’s path to Vietnam. The first half is fast paced and really details how tough it was and the contributions the nurses made, and how young they were. Innocent Frankie comes into her own there as time goes on and she finds she’s good at being a nurse and helping save the lives of soldiers torn apart.

Along the way, I didn’t doubt Frankie made close friends and fell for a couple men over there during such intensity. But when she gets back to the States after her service, so much goes wrong at each turn that it’s a heavy dose of drama. Though I don’t underestimate that Veterans struggled to acclimatize when they returned from the war and were looked down upon by a society that had turned against the war. Many did and became dependent on drugs and alcohol to ease their nightmares and pain.

Frankie’s struggles with her parents and how the country perceived Vietnam nurses as pretty much invisible and like non-veterans seems well described. But later the twists that come with the relationships she has (one in particular with a Navy officer) goes sort of overboard. It gets a bit drippy. Yet still all the research the author obviously did into the Vietnam War and the vet nurses comes through and makes it a worthy respectful story of their contributions and perhaps is her best book yet … though I have only read her novel The Nightingale. I listened to The Women on audio narrated movingly by Julia Whelan.

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