I’m still reading Alice Hoffman’s books, even after all these years and it is not a difficult task to be a loyal fan because her writing is always pretty flawless. Of course not every book has been a favorite; there are some tales I have liked better than others, and there are still books that really hit the literary spot for me. Faithful is almost in that sweet spot. It a very good book, just not one I would put on her top shelf. It has a beautiful blue cover and it contains lots of blue imagery, but it seems to lead to nothing more than a very blue mood, or perhaps the ink tattoo artists use.
We begin with two high school beauties, one slightly prettier than the other, with all the confidence and arrogance their looks endow them with. These two are a powerful presence in their school. Almost everyone is either in love with them or envies them. Then life happens. One beauty ends up in a coma in her childhood bedroom with the rose wallpaper. That’s Helene Boyd. The other Shelby Richmond, stops her life to do penance for still being alive. She shaves her head, once adorned with long stylish hair. She wears black clothing. She cuts herself. She slits her wrists. She ends up in a Psych ward where she is raped routinely by an orderly until her mother finds out and takes her home. Helene, it is rumored, can make miracles happen. Shelby can barely survive from day to day.
Someone is looking over Shelby though. Postcards arrive for her in the mail with interesting drawings and messages perhaps from an angel or a savior, or maybe somehow from Helene. They bear cryptic messages such as, “Say something”, “Do something”, “Be someone”. Shelby keeps them in a box with a blue velvet lining. Who will save her? Will anyone save her? That I cannot tell.
This is not rocket science. It is not the great American novel. It doesn’t employ deep symbolism or leave you in a literary trance. Still it portrays the depths of grief a human soul can plumb and it shows that the way out is a function of time and positive social interactions until one day hope becomes stronger than grief and the two strike a bargain that allows life to offer some sweetness once again. Faithful is a story of our times and one that young adults would find very relevant indeed.
I started a book list for December and then gave it up. December is just not a normal month in publishing. Readers, writers, publishers, editors and reviewers tend to look back over the year and give us their best-books-lists, or they sometimes have their experts pick the book/s they read or reread in the past year that they thought was/were best for any number of different reasons. I like “best of” lists, especially when folks explain why these were the best choices, in this case, the best books. So in January my list will include mostly books published in December and November. Amazon gives us titles that are out now and ready to buy. The Indies give us, as usual, books purchased most often in December in their shops. Publisher’s Weekly goes European on us for the most part, and the New York Times was more impressed with nonfiction than fiction this time. For what it’s worth, here is my January 2017 book list, prepared for me and by me, but shared with you just in case you are interested.
Amazon
Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World Class Performers by Tim Ferriss (NF)
Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos (political humor) (NF)
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis (NF)
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Doug Preston (NF)
History of Wolves: A Novel by Emily Fridlund
The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel by Katherine Arden
The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper
Lillian Boxfish takes a Walk: A Novel by Kathleen Rooney
This is How it Always is: A Novel by Laurie Frankel
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine
Human Acts: A Novel by Han King
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Rushkovitch
Indelible by Adelia Saunders
Huck Out West: A Novel by Robert Coover
The Midnight Cool by Lydia Peelie
Mystery, Thrillers, and Suspense
Idaho by Emily Ruskovitch
Her Every Fear: A Novel by Peter Swanson
The Girl Before: A Novel by J. P. Delaney
The Sleepwalker: A Novel by Chris Bonjalian
The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper
Human Acts: A Novel by Han King
The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller
Fever Dream: A Novel by Samantha Schwelsin and Megan McDowell
The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America by Mark Sundeen (NF)
Independent Booksellers
The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
The Muralist by B A Shapiro
The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
The Seventh Plague by James Rollins
Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovitch
The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer
Publishers Weekly
Merrow by Ananda Braxton Smith
The Thieves of Threadneedle Street: The Incredible True Story of the American Forgers who nearly Broke the Bank of England by Nicholas Booth
Under the Midnight Sun by Kiego Higashino (whodunit)
An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy by Marc Levinson (NF)
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything by D A Mishane (police procedural)
These are the Names by Tommy Wieringa (trans. from the Dutch by Sam Garett)
The Gentleman form Japan: An Inspector O Novel by James Church Minotaur
The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg (graphic novel)
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind by Siri Hustvelt (NF)
The Garden of Consolation by Parisa Reza (trans.from French by Adriana Hunter) (Iran)
Kill the Next One: A Novel by Federico Axat (trans. from the Spanish by David Frye)
The Return of Münchausen by Segizmund Zzhizhanovshy (trans. from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull)
The Hollow Man: A Novel by Rob McCarthy
Best Books Read by PW staff in 2016
The Gentleman by Forrest Leo
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
The ABC’s of Socialism edited by Bhaskar Sunkara, illustrated by Phil Wrigglesworth (NF)
We Want Everything by Anne Baletrini, trans by Matt Holden
The Obelisk Gate by N K Jemisin, (Volume 2) (Volume 1 published earlier, The Fifth Season)
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy (trans. by Tim Parks)
Girl in Disguise by Greer Macallister (not out until March)(read in galleys)
A Beam of Light by Andrea Camilleri (trans. by Stephen Sartarelli)
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
The North Water by Ian McGuire
NYT Book Review
How to Survive a Plague by David Franco (NF)
Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada
Thus Bad Begins by Javier Márias
Judas by Amos Oz
Nonstop Metropolis, A New York City Atlas edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (a most unusual atlas)
The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas
Colonel Lágrimas by Carlos Fonesca (trans. by Megan McDowell)
Blood of the Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jiménez (trans. by Elizabeth Bryer)
Divorce is in the Air by Gonzalo Torné (trans. by Megan McDowell)
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good.
The term literally meant “common well-being”.
There is, however, another form of commonwealth. The ever-helpful Dictionary.com offers this alternate definition: a “self-governing, autonomous political unit…
There are at least two commonwealths in the novel Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. In one instance the term most likely refers to the Commonwealth of Virginia (technically designated as such) and in the other instance it could describe the relationship that develops among the children in the two blended families we meet in this novel. If you have watched You’ve Got Mail as many times as I have, then you remember the scene in Kathleen Kelly/Meg Ryan’s little bookshop where Joe Fox/Tom Hanks is trying to hide his identity. When one of the children with him reveals that she is the aunt of the much older Joe Fox and the other young child reveals that he is Fox’s brother, Tom Hanks says, “We are an American family.” Well here in Commonwealth we find another such non-nuclear American family.
The beautiful Beverly is married to a man named Fix Keating, who is a policeman. When his second child is born an uninvited DA, Albert Cousins, crashes the party and that ends up being the catalyst that brings about the destruction of two marriages. The problem is that Beverly is a parent who really is not suited to parenting and her second husband, the wife stealer DA, Bert, is almost a completely absent father. These two parents reside in Virginia. Fix and the wife of Bert Cousins, Teresa reside in California. There are six children. Carolyn and Franny are the children of Beverly and Fix. Cal, Holly, Jeannette, and Albie are the children of Bert and Teresa. After Beverly and Bert divorce their spouses and marry each other, Fix and Teresa both remarry but not to each other. So each child ends up with 3 sets of part time parents.
Two of the children, Carolyn and Franny live in Virginia and only visit California; the other four spend the school year in California and the summers in Virginia. It is difficult to keep these families straight when the children are young. Although each child has his or her own personality, I found it difficult to remember which child belonged to which parent.
The children have complicated emotional responses to their situation and to their natural and by-marriage siblings. But as they age they find that they become a sort of commonwealth of five and we learn who is who, so it is not necessary for readers to worry about those early confusions. There is, of course, a great tragedy that brings the children together in guilt. They are keeping a secret about what happened to the sixth child, which does not really get told until the parents are dying. In classic novels this would have been the key to deep psychological wounds in the children, but the tone of this novel is perhaps too superficial, or too modern, to go “there” in any meaningful way.
Ann Patchett is an excellent writer who knows how to tell a story but this story is just giving us details of a tale that is so common in modern life as to almost be cliché. I liked the children and some of the parents but the story is more a slice of life than any kind of social commentary. Do I think fiction has to be culturally relevant? Perhaps not, but novels that stand the test of time usually have a je ne sais quoi factor that raises them out of the ordinary. I enjoyed reading Commonwealth, but I am not sure that it will turn out to be a keeper.
We live in a time when civility and charm seem difficult to find and tempers are on a short fuse. Even a trip to the grocery store can seem like negotiating a mine field of human hostility. People disconnect from fellow shoppers and single-mindedly rush to get items crossed off their errand list. All they long for is to get home to their personal sanctuary. In times like these, Amor Towles is just the antidote required to inspire introspection and self-evaluation. Perhaps he will even help us change the way we relate to the world. A Gentleman in Moscow, although just a fiction story, makes a point that could transform us all.
Our gentleman in Moscow, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, Member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt, is 33 years old when we first meet him in 1922. He is a man caught between two ages in Russian history so disparate as to induce whiplash. He is an aristocrat who returns, to his peril, to Russia from Paris in 1918, which if you know your history, is just after the Russian Revolution when Russian society gets turned over like a compost pile. What was on the bottom is now on the top and what was on the top is now, for the most part, either dead or in Siberia.
But Count Rostov is such a benign style of aristocrat that he manages to wend his way through the anger and revolutionary righteousness of the new Communist state, not completely unscathed, but as a permanent resident of a luxurious Russian hotel right near the center of Moscow. Rostov has never held a job, has never been a worker, but he is trained by his former lifestyle to have skills that are quite useful to have. He is a great judge of human interaction and he knows how to arrange people at a state dinner or in a well-run restaurant so that any strife is defused and affairs run smoothly. Besides this talent he is charming and amenable and flexible in the face of change. His good nature is adaptable but he is not a chameleon; he is always himself.
Count Rostov’s punishment for coming back to Russia at exactly the wrong time is that he is imprisoned in the lovely Metropole Hotel where he has been living for four years. When asked by the tribunal why he came back he says he missed the climate and they all shake their heads in understanding. He has to give up a large suite of rooms with excellent views that he has been occupying and move into servant’s quarters in the attic. If you think that once sentence has been passed this tale will turn gloomy and scary then you have not yet met our Alexander. He’s in a hotel. Things happen. You may find that you have to “suspend your disbelief” a bit but it will be well worth it.
Amor Towles, author of Rules of Civility writes like times that are past and gone, like one who is on earth to remind us of slower times when people were kinder and more (heaven forbid) socially correct. It was a balm to my spirit to read A Gentleman in Moscow at this particularly pugilistic moment in the history of our nation.
I have read so many novels that are also historical. People love to trace things back in time to see their beginnings, their causes and effects, and to feel some continuity in a constantly changing world. Americans of European descent can mine a rich trove of historical literature that speaks to them.
However, for Americans of African descent the pickin’s are a bit slimmer. We have books that happen in Africa and books that describe various aspects of the fraught history of Africans as slaves and later as citizens of America. There are only a few novels that connect the two, Roots by Alex Haley being the best known of these. In this case, in Yaa Gyasi’s book Homegoing, we get to follow an African family line through a pair of necklaces which have been owned by two sisters with disparate fates.
I don’t believe that white readers are able to experience this novel in as intimate and familiar a way as would an African American reader. Clearly we understand the words, get interested in the characters and wince at the injustice of the struggles, and perhaps even accept blame for the actions of our forebears. We may connect at some level with the idea of being sold into slavery by our own or neighboring people because the appearance of Europeans in Africa was somewhat comparable to what it might be like for aliens to appear in our home town. We can see, in hindsight, what the European drive to colonize did to Western coastal groups in Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana). Still it is difficult to feel the imprisonment, the terrifying oceanic transport, the slavery, the aftermath of contempt that accompanied freedom. It is, I think, not as visceral an experience to read this book as a European transplant as it is for an African transplant. However, even if the experience is felt at a slight remove by some readers it is still a book well worth reading.
In these days when a white nationalist like Richard Spencer, President of a group called The National Policy Institute (gasp) says things like “As Europeans we are uniquely at the center of world history” and calls white folks, incomprehensibly, the “children of the sun” is cropping up on mainstream news we must insist that people are not ranked in any order – not from brightest to dimmest – not from most deserving to least deserving – not on a scale from best to worst – based on the color of their skin or the continent of their origin. In fact, since slaves were not allowed to read or write and families were often callously separated it seems more accurate to blame any perceived differences between white folks and black folks on the whole experience of slavery than on membership in an ethnic group.
As you can see Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a book that inspires lots of internal thought and dialogue about cultures and histories and guilt and pain. And this book ends with hope. It ends with an offspring of two African sisters in a library at Stanford University researching her heritage in order to give the world this important book.
I’m still reading but I am going through a slow phase with too much happening to allow for much peaceful book time. But I will still keep making myself (and you) a book list each month because winter is coming and curling up in a chair and reading are favorite winter activities of mine. I have compiled a list that includes four sources: Amazon, Independent Booksellers, Publishers Weekly, and the New York Times. Each of these sources makes its list a bit differently, with Independent Booksellers being the most different (they do not base their list on what is being published, they base it on what their readers are buying).
AMAZON
Moonglow: A Novel by Michael Chabon
Saving Time by Zadie Smith
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Lewis
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramovic
The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West by Peter Cozzens
Night School by Lee Child (Jack Reacher)
Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III (member of the Grateful Dead) (Bio) by Robert Greenfield
Victoria: A Novel of a Young Queen by Daisy Goodwin
The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart
Literature and Fiction
Valiant Gentlemen: A Novel by Sabina Murray
Judas by Amos Oz and translated by Nicholas de Lange
The Terranauts: A Novel by T. C. Boyle
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
Faithful: A Novel by Alice Hoffman
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Orphan of the Carnival: A Novel by Carol Birch
The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness by Maddie Dawson
Victoria: A Novel of a Young Queen by Daisy Goodwin
The Spy: A Novel by Paulo Coelho
The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart
Mystery and Thriller
Night Watch by Iris Johansen, Roy Johansen
Conclave: A Novel by Robert Harris
The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer
The Whistler by John Grisham
The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
Night School (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child
Moral Defense (Samantha Brinkman) by Marcia Clark
Livia Lone by Barry Eisler
INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Whistler by John Grisham
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Today Will be Different by Maria Semple
The Trespasser by Tana French
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Order to Kill by Vince Flynn
Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
Home by Harlan Coben
The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith
The Terranauts by T. C. Boyle
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
The Nix by Nathan Hill
Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith
Winter Storms by Elin Hilderbrand
Escape Clause by John Sanford
Float by Anne Carson
A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
The Blood Mirror by Brent Weeks
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
The Obsidian Chamber by Douglas Preston
By Gaslight by Steven Price
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
Envelope Poems by Emily Dickinson
Felicity by Mary Oliver
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Before, the Fall by Noah Hawley
NEW YORK TIMES
A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
The Guineveres by Sarah Domet
Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
Shelter in Place by Alexander Mahsik
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
Crime
IQ by Joe Ide
The Trespasser by Tana French
No Echo by Anne Holt
Female Protagonists
The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller
All the Time in the World by Caroline Angell
Nine Women, One Dress by Jane L. Rosen
The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandburg
Bridget Jones’s Baby by Helen Fielding
Nine Island by Jane Alison
The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
Napoleon’s Last Island by Thomas Keneally
The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (The Tempest)
Night School (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child
The Long Room by Francesca Kay
The Fall Guy by James Lasdun
The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith
The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti
Livia Lone by Barry Eisler
Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey by Elena Ferrante (NF)
The Mothers by Burt Bennett
The Whistler by John Grisham
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
Serious Sweet by A. L. Kennedy
The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter by Joh Pipkin
The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
Black Widow by Christopher Brookmyre
Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything by D. A. Mishani
These are the Names by Tommy Wieringa
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramovic (NF)
New York Times Book Review – Every Sunday the NYT’s reviewers write about the newest books on the market. Here are most of the titles discussed in August, 2016, more fiction than nonfiction.
How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks (NF)
I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman (Memoir)
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman (NF)
Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney
Break in Case of Emergency by Jessica Winters
Conrad and Eleanor by Jane Rodgers
Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard
Leaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
The Inseparables by Stuart Nadler
Southern Fiction
A Thousand Miles From Nowhere by John Gregory Brown
Nitro Mountain by Lee Clay Johnson
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Oprah’s Book Club)
We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley
Cousin Joseph by Jules Feiffer (Graphic Novel)
Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals by Jesse Armstrong
Max Gate by Damien Wilkins
Chance Developments by Alexander McCall Smith
Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe
Still Here by Lara Vapnyar
Dr, Knox by Peter Spiegelman
Security by Gina Wohlsdorf
God, Realigned: The Era of Reformation by Michael Massing (NF)
American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin (NF)
The Couple Next Door by Harlan Coben
Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr “addictive crime procedural”
War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig
Losing It by Emma Rathbone
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
Powerhouse by James Andrew Miller (NF)
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong (NF)
Scream by Tama Janowitz (NF)
Modernity and Its Discontents by Steven B. Smith (NF)
Against Everything by Mark Greif (NF)
Necessary Trouble by Sarah Jaffe (NF)
The Great Suppression by Zachery Roth(NF)
From Humans of New York to Obama’s Office: How a Principal Built a School by Nadia Lopez
Crime Fiction
Rise the Dark by Michael Koryta
Still Mine by Amy Stuart
Nothing Short of Dying by Erik Storey
The Wages of Desire by Stephen Kelly
From French
One Hundred Twenty-One Days by Michèle Audin
Constellation by Adrien Bosc
Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras
Mon Ami Amèricaine by Michèle Halberstadt
Publisher’s Weekly – Book List
The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig
To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of The Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin (NF)
Still Here by Lara Vapnyar
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich (NF)
The Wages of Desire: An Inspector Lamb Mystery by Stephen Kelly
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
All at Sea: A Memoir by Decca Aitkenhead
The Golden Age by Joan London
A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto
Riverine: A Memoir From Anywhere But Here by Angela Palm (Memoir)
Damaged by Lisa Scottoline
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto
The One Man by Andrew Gross
Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs, and the CIA by Christopher Moran (NF)
Moo by Sharon Creech
The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro di Medici by Catherine Fletcher (NF)
A Shocking Assassination by Cora Harrison
The Nix: A Novel by Nathan Hill
IRL by Tommy Pico
Blood in the Water: the Attica Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson (NF)
Independent Booksellers – Book List
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers
Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
The Last Days of Nights by Graham Moore
A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George
First Comes Love by Emily Griffin
Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman
The Muse by Jessie Burton
The Singles Game by Lauren Weisberger
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood
Amazon
Best Books for August
Another Brooklyn: A Novel by Jacqueline Woodson
Behold the Dreamers: A Novel by Imbolo Mbue
I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman (Memoir)
Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Bright Edge of the World: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey
The Last Days Night: A Novel by Graham Moore
Good as Gone by Amy Gentry
Christodora: A Novel by Timothy Murphy
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin
Literature and Fiction
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers
The Bright Edge of the World: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey
Bright, Precious Days: A Novel by Jay McInerney
Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
I Will Send Rain: A Novel by Rae Meadows
Another Brooklyn: A Novel by Jacqueline Woodson
Christodora: A Novel by Timothy Murphy
Carousel Court: A Novel by Joe McGinniss Jr.
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Gentleman: A Novel by Forrest Leo
The Dollhouse: A Novel by Fiona Davis
Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
Mysteries and Thriller
A Time of Torment by John Connolly (Charlie Parker)
In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White
Damaged by Lisa Scottoline
The Couple Next Door: A Novel by Shari Lapena
Surrender, New York: A Novel by Caleb Carr
Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
Insidious (an FBI thriller) by Catherine Coulter
The Last Days of Night: A Novel by Graham Moore
Good as Gone by Amy Gentry
Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Hike: A Novel by Drew Magary
The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth) by N K Jemisin
The Last Days of New Paris by Chine Mièville
Blood of the Earth (A Soulwood Novel) by Faith Hunter
Ben H. Winters captured my heart and broke it when he wrote The Last Policeman trilogy. I’m not sure how he did that but in my review of World of Trouble I put it down to the magic of good writing. Mr. Winters writes science-fiction with an apocalyptic edge. His newest offering, Underground Airlines, is in the same vein. One of the best reasons to write science fiction is that it allows you to include lots of social commentary without being pedantic. Instead you get to exercise your most flighty imaginings and then ground them in our present day human dilemmas.
Winters imagines that America never actually fought the Civil War to free the slaves. He proposes a parallel America where a compromise ended the war before it began. In this compromise, four US states were allowed to keep their slaves and to continue to use them in a variety of industries. These industries conduct their business in secure compounds surrounded with electrified fences and guards and security cameras. In the North, above and around these four Southern states, there are many free black folks, who are not as free as you would like them to be (sound familiar?). Since Northern officials assume that any one of them could be a runaway from a Southern business plantation they are subject to random stops. Their paperwork must be in order and with them at all times. Many free folks live in the poorest parts of the largest cities in areas that are all known by the same name, Freedman Towns. In these days many years after the compromise was made law the only thriving economies are the Four Slave States.
Jim Dirkson (not his real name), a black man who was once a slave, has been caught and turned into a bounty hunter. A chip implanted by the US Marshals insures that he can be forced to catch runaway slaves and return them to the “plantations” that own them. He has learned to appreciate the small pleasures that come with his very limited freedom and to tuck away the nagging of his conscience, which makes sense considering that he has no choice at all about what he must do. He is in Indianapolis on an ordinary case to catch a runaway named Jackdaw. However, on closer examination of Jackdaw’s file the case appears to be anything but ordinary. Martha, a young white woman with a mixed race child has her own reasons for joining Jim to solve the mystery of Jackdaw.
This may be a parallel America experiencing a divergent future; the fact is, though, that this slave-holding America, sadly, has much in common with our version of America which has supposedly chosen to abolish slavery and in which all men (and women) should be equal. We know that we have doled out freedom to Americans of African Descent quite grudgingly. Winters hits us with an alternate reality that (almost) might as well be our actual reality. Will any amount of excoriation and guilt teach us to look for ways to tackle the issues in our inner cities that function as race and poverty traps? Will we finally find ways to get people the things they need to live productive lives which promise a comfortable future? You won’t find the answer in Underground Airlines, but you will find that an exaggeration of our actual social conditions might get you thinking.
What was different about the escape of Jackdaw? Why was his folder so different from the others that Jim had been assigned? Where is Jackdaw now? What are the Southern States up to now? Ben H. Winters doesn’t forget to pursue his case once again, just as his Last Policeman did not give up even in the face of apocalypse. This novel did not quite break my heart the way the trilogy did, although eventually the fictional outcome could possibly be just as awful. Perhaps it is because the conditions in the America we already occupy have done the deed already. Still, I must say that I really connect with the stories that Mr. Winters has to tell.
Literature right now is looking at families and, just lately a surprising number of these families live in New York City. Perhaps it is because diversity has long been tolerated by sophisticated New Yorkers. Perhaps it is the desire, held in abeyance by many of us, to live in New York City for at least a while. Maybe it is because, somehow, raising a family in New York City, seems both better than raising a family elsewhere because of the pace of the city and all the cultural options that families can sample, and more problematic because it denies children more bucolic pleasures. Unless you have money it is probably quite difficult to raise a family in this particular American city. However, when you are the author of a book your fictional family can be as rich as you like and thus the whole NYC fantasy can play out. Despite the stimulating and expensive surroundings it is still possible to make points about modern life that resonate universally, so an author can have their cake and eat it too.
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub is just such a novel. We meet three people who met each other in college. They were in a band together and were quite popular at local college parties and bars. They wore gothic attire and managed to sound better than they actually were. A fourth band member, Lydia, who became very famous, died in an OD at the age of 27. Two band members, Elizabeth and Andrew married. Elizabeth is a real estate agent, Andrew, who inherited money, is a man who drifts from interest to interest. They have a son Harry, who is studying for his SAT’s. Zoe, the other band member, apparently so beautiful and lively that people are always falling in love with her, is married to Jane, a chef with her own successful restaurant. They all once shared a house in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn. Zoe and Jane have a daughter, Ruby, also preparing for her SAT’s. The college band is being resurrected in memory as a result of a decision that must be made.
This is a slice of life novel, although not in a strict sense since we do hear the backstory. Each couple is at a point of crisis in their relationship. Each couple must decide whether to remain together or to separate. Harry and Rudy, ditching their SAT Prep course also have things to work out both together and separately. Does it make any difference that one couple is made up of a man and woman and the other couple is made up of two women? That’s what is refreshing about this novel. We see two marriages and two families, but the difficulties and challenges each couple faces could occur in any relationship. This is lighter than you would think based on the subject matter, perhaps even a bit superficial, and perhaps the ending is a bit abrupt with too little detail about the outcomes for each character, but this is still an enjoyable book with engaging characters.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 