Synopsis:
When her marriage breaks apart after a spectacular midwife crisis, a mom discovers a natural talent for public relations.
Review:
A Thousand Pardons isn’t quite the fictional juggernaut its marketing copy made it out to be. It’s a mostly engaging character study that never quite pulled me in. It kept a certain level of distance from the reader, and that’s a technique that just doesn’t do it for me.
Many thanks to Random House for the review copy.
Synopsis:
Dysfunctional family gets collective ass kicked by haunted hotel.
Review:
I think The Shining is probably my favorite Stephen King book–and that includes the Dark Tower books. And I’m always tickled at how different it is from the Kubrick movie–and how I can love them both as complete works without needed them to resemble one another. My husband decided he’d give King a try, having never read any of his books, and asked me which one. I didn’t hesitate before recommending this one to him, and he’s really been enjoying it. I’m torn on which one to suggest he read next–for selfish reasons I want to say Cujo, because I’m in the mood to reread it myself, but I think The Dead Zone is more up his alley.
Synopsis:
Three sisters approaching middle age find themselves caught in the roles they were assigned as children, and now the family tension is threatening to explode.
Review:
I loved the caustic, witty tone of Lucinda Rosenfeld’s I’m So Happy For You, and The Pretty One didn’t disappoint.
Olympia is the titular pretty one, but she won’t tell anyone in her family that she used a sperm donor to conceive her 3 year old daughter Lola. Imperia (Perri) seemingly has the perfect life, but her obsession with order and appearance are imploding her marriage. And Augusta (Gus) has always been a free spirit, but a recent breakup has her wondering if she could possibly be attracted to men after a lifetime of lesbianism.
The sisters can’t forget old insults and injuries, and none of them can set their pride aside for the good of the family. It was really fun watching these women work out their issues and grow out of their childhood ways. Rosenfeld crafts great characters, and while the plot had some contrivances, I was willing to forgive.
Synopsis:
When her roommate’s sort of boyfriend’s body is discovered frozen in a lake, a journalist struggles to separate personal from professional while pursuing the truth behind what might have been murder.
Review:
A Cold and Lonely Place is steeped in character and setting, much like the novels of my beloved Tana French. I only wish the mystery itself had been stronger and richer. I never really connected with Troy, the main character, perhaps because I haven’t read the previous book.
Synopsis:
When Edie Middlestein tips over into morbid obesity, her husband leaves her and her grown children don’t really want to pick up the pieces.
Review:
The Middlesteins is a family melodrama, pure and simple. I definitely got sucked into their unhappiness, but appreciated that I never felt like I was wallowing in it. The Chicago setting came through in a fully realized way, adding another element of depth I liked (as opposed to being the generic suburbs). I didn’t necessarily identify with any of the characters, but I felt like I knew them.
Synopsis:
When her popular older sister Alex falls into a depression, ambitious Thea sets her sights on everything that she covets from her sister’s life.
Review:
Told in alternating POV chapters, All You Never Wanted is a merciless look at one sister bent on destroying herself, and another sister bent on helping her achieve her goal. As the mom of two daughters it made me sad to see the animosity between them, but I also really liked the complexity of their relationship and the way the story unfolded. I couldn’t put it down but I was glad when it was over.
Synopsis:
While working on her PhD thesis on unmarried mothers in British literature, a young woman finds disturbing parallels between a violent work of fiction from the mid-20th century and her own life living with her gay brother.
Review:
Everything I love about Barbara Vine is present in The Child’s Child: a haunting atmosphere, complicated characters, and a sense of urgency to the storytelling that has nothing to do with a jam-packed plot.
The book opens with Grace, a PhD candidate living a peaceful life with her gay brother Andrew, until her brother invites his boyfriend to move in with them. Grace and James don’t get along, and he’s especially scornful of her thesis work exposing the plight of the unwed mother in English history. He says that the unwed mothers suffered nowhere near as badly as gay men were, and won’t hear anything to the contrary. Things get worse when Andrew and James witness the fatal beating of a friend upon exiting a gay club.
Grace decides to take a break from her thesis to read an unpublished manuscript called “The Child’s Child,” written by an ancestor of James’s who had published many critically acclaimed works. Because this book touched openly on homosexuality, it was never even considered for publication. Grace has been asked to read it to see if it could be published now. The story is that of Maud, a young women who falls pregnant at the age of 15 in WWII England. Her secretly gay older brother steps in with an unorthodox plan to save her, but that plan becomes the undoing of both of them and has repercussions for everyone around them.
The book-within-a-book is especially enthralling because it feels like Vine is channeling Patricia Highsmith, writing the book that Highsmith, herself a lesbian, could never have written in her own day. It’s so dark and tricky and hermetic and Vine does it exceptionally well. I was less satisfied by the framing story, which felt unfinished when the book was ended. So it’s not my favorite book by Vine, but I enjoyed it immensely.
Synopsis:
A lost professor muses on the mess he’s made of his life and his inability to shake himself free from the burdens of family, tradition, and history.
Review:
As It Is On Earth is a stunningly well-written novel. Comparisons to Walker Percy are more than apt, they’re jump-with-joy appropriate. Who writes like this? I’m just not used to seeing this level of thoughtfulness, depth, poetry, and philosophy in books anymore. Plus it’s weird and funny and bawdy and depressing and bizarre and twisted. It doesn’t have a plot you can easily describe, but neither does Marilynne Robinson so who cares. I really just want you to read this one (after you finish The Devil in Silver, please) because it’s good for you and you’ll like it and you deserve an encounter with greatness.
Many thanks to Fomite for the review copy.
Synopsis:
When Pete discovers his mother is living in a filthy hoard, he tries to get her help–not realizing that her problems may have a supernatural origin.
Review:
I loved the idea of marrying a zombie story to a hoarder story, but I did feel like The Hoard petered out and ended on an unsatisfactory note. But up until the last few pages, I really couldn’t put it down and even got pretty freaked out–not to mention grossed out.
Many thanks to DarkFuse for the review copy.
Synopsis:
After a popular parish council member drops dead from an aneurysm, the bucolic English town of Pagford comes undone over fears about how a new council member might upset the balance of power with the encroachment of council flats from the next town over.
Review:
The Casual Vacancy isn’t quite as high concept as JK Rowling’s more familiar works, but most good novels defy my particular brand of glib summarization.
I always enjoy a complicated soap opera and I appreciated how deftly Rowling wove all the story lines together. It didn’t take me long to get everyone sorted out, even though the relationships were pretty tangled. I do have to admit that the main reason I read it was out of curiosity, to see what else Rowling has up her sleeve. And this book is certainly a departure on just about every level. I was left a little cold by the ending and I’m not sure how long it will stick with me.
