Archive for the ‘fiction’ Tag
Raquel Toro is a first-generation university student in her third year at an Ivy League school studying art history. She’s never heard of Anita de Monte but the two share several commonalities though they’re a generation apart in Xochitl Gonzalez’s novel Anita de Monte Laughs Last.
Anita was an up and coming artist in the mid-1980s before she’s found dead. Her husband, Jack, is a well-known, successful sculptor who, although professes his undying love, manipulates his wife to suit his moods/needs.
Jump ahead to the late 1990s, Raquel is certain she wants to do her senior thesis on Jack, with neither awareness of his deceased wife, nor knowledge of how she died. Although Raquel doesn’t realize it, readers will quickly see similar behaviors between Jack and Nick, the graduating art student from a wealthy family, with whom she becomes romantically involved.
There is passion in both relationships, but there are also strings attached. As she researches Jack’s work, Raquel identifies a period in which he produced little, if any, art. This is roughly the same time of Anita’s death, which is noted as either a fall from or push out of a high-story New York City window in the novel’s early pages. A subsequent trial following her death is also new to Raquel.
The engaging storyline is driven by chapters narrated by Anita, Raquel and occasionally Jack. Those revealing Anita’s side of the story require accepting the perspective from someone who’s dead, but very much alive in the spirit world.
Anita De Monte Laughs Last
Three and three-quarter bookmarks
Flatiron Books, 2024
341 pages
In Open Throat, a feral mountain lion roams the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles (“ellay”). He’s hungry, but has his limits as to what prey he’ll pursue. He even protects a homeless camp, unbeknownst to its inhabitants.
Author Harry Hoke’s novel addresses climate change, homelessness and humankind’s encroachment on nature. Almost poetic in form, the lion narrates the story as he watches hikers and eavesdrops on their conversations. Some words he overhears often enough that they become part of his narrative: scarcity becomes scare city.
The lion witnesses the start of a manmade fire, something erroneously blamed on the homeless camp. The heat and smoke force the lion into a residential neighborhood where he finds shelter in the basement of a house he overheard someone say was owned by “slaughter.”
He’s soon discovered by the owner’s teenage daughter who calls him “hecat” and he refers to her “little slaughter.” (All quotation marks are mine, not the author’s).
There’s no punctuation no capitalization except for the personal pronoun I. Excluding the italicized statements from little slaughter, who treats him in as a pet and support animal, everything is from the lion’s perspective. When she takes him to Disneyland, suspending disbelief is challenged!
From 2012 to 2022, a puma known in the Los Angeles area as P-22 roamed Griffith Park. His presence was well known making him a celebrity of sorts. The only concern for Hoke’s predator comes from little slaughter; otherwise, interest in his wellbeing is, reasonably, overshadowed by fear.
Open Throat
Three bookmarks
MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023
160 pages
It’s 1966 and young men are going off to war in Viet Nam; except they’re not alone. Young women go, too, which is the topic of The Women by Kristin Hannah.
Frankie McGrath volunteers for the Army Nurse Corps soon after learning her brother has been killed in the war. She is part of a field medical unit treating wounded soldiers. Many of whom can’t be saved. As her nursing skills get stronger so does her friendship with fellow nurses, Ethel and Barbara. She also falls in love with a naval pilot.
Dealing with the natural elements, seeking safety from enemy bombardments and never getting used to the carnage wrought by war is almost nothing compared to Frankie’s return to the States following two tours of duty.
Hannah’s descriptions of the attitude toward Viet Nam vets are heart wrenching because of their truth. This is compounded by the mindset held by many, including other vets, that there were no women in Viet Nam. Even Frankie’s father refuses to admit to his country club social circle that his daughter served in the war.
The novel is divided into two parts. The first focuses on Frankie’s naiveté and gradual realization that the situation in Viet Nam is uncompromising for those in its midst. The second section deals with her reintroduction to society vehemently opposed to the war without acknowledging its toll. Thankfully, Frankie’s nursing friends provide unending love and support as she fights her inner battles and struggles to move forward.
The Women
Four Bookmarks
St. Martin’s Press, 2024
470 Pages, includes Author’s note and acknowledgements
The Lightkeeper by Linda Duval is a tale of a young woman who seeks to be independent and then becomes fiercely so in a time when it is far from the norm.
Because of the Civil War there’s a shortage of men to staff the lighthouses on the Massachusetts coast. Amy Pritchard is mourning the death of her husband when not long afterwards her infant daughter also dies. Seeking refuge and a desire to prove herself as a capable person, she is hired to care for the Point Peril lighthouse.
Amy becomes adept in her role caring for the lighthouse and its grounds, teaches herself to swim, garden and manages life, mostly, on her own. A ferocious storm changes things when she saves a shipwrecked sailor. Amy and the man, who she later learns was the ship’s captain, are destined to meet again months later. From this point the plot becomes predictable, but no less engaging.
Later, a young man is available to take over the lighthouse and Amy must give up her job. The captain offers her a position at his family’s shipbuilding company and housing in Boston, which she reluctantly accepts. This further tests her resolve to maintain her independence.
DuVal has crafted a richly descriptive narrative with interesting characters, although she resorts to caricature in her portrayal of the rural pastor. Still, the story flows well and Amy’s insistence of staying true to herself despite the limitations imposed on women of that era is impressive.
The Lightkeeper
Three-and-three-quarters bookmarks
Ryolite Press, 2024
178 pages
When considering that Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer is about a dysfunctional family the title is certainly appropriate. Yet these are subtle, more like distracting sparklers than explosives, although the repercussions are rattling.
Narrator C.C. begins her story as an engaged woman about to marry into a wealthy family. She alternates between the present and living in Florida as a youth with her older sister and parents. C.C.’s father is a slick, successful used car salesman. He moves his family from Ohio to the Sunshine State after burning down his own sales lot for insurance money.
Those funds allow him to purchase property in a rural, as yet undeveloped area in Palm Beach County, and build a house with a swimming pool. These, C.C. says, are the best days of her childhood.
Soon, however, the halcyon times fade: her sister becomes a drug addict, and her parents begin a drawn-out separation while sharing the same space — until they don’t.
The chapters about C.C. as an adult living in Connecticut are less engaging. There are no pyrotechnics and not much action. Those are saved for her teenage years.
C.C. is smart enough to see she has to work to change the trajectory of her life. The odds are not in her favor of achieving any semblance of a normal life, i.e., without following in her parents’ or sister’s patterns of deceit and self-destruction.
Raymer incorporates dark humor while describing the harsh reality of living in a world of disappointments.
Fireworks Every Night
3.75 Bookmarks
Random House, 2023
224 pages
A book with few likeable characters such as Paula Hawkins’ A Slow Burning Fire, is difficult to recommend. Granted, the mystery element is strong with several suspects, but it almost doesn’t matter who-dunnit if there isn’t one for whom to root.
When the body of a young man, Daniel, is found brutally stabbed on a London houseboat the immediate suspect is Laura who was seen leaving his place covered in blood shortly before the body is discovered. Yet other suspects include Miriam who lived on the neighboring boat, and Carla, Daniel’s once-estranged aunt.
The back stories for these major characters factor into the present-day mystery. Laura was in a serious bicycle accident as a child and has dealt with anger management issues ever since.
Miriam is without friends or family. As a teenager she was abducted, and these many years later she remains a broken, unkind person.
Carla, the deceased man’s aunt, had a tenuous relationship with him based on guilt for how she treated his mother/her sister. Fifteen years earlier, Carla’s three-year-old son died while in the care of her sister. Her nephew discovered the child’s body.
Hawkins offers plenty of credible twists throughout, including several instances where it seems obvious, beyond a reasonable doubt who killed Daniel.
Laura is befriended by Irene, an elderly woman (who interestingly lives next door to Carla’s late sister’s home). For the younger woman, this is significant: Irene genuinely cares about her. Consequently, Irene is finally a character the reader can actually appreciate.
A Slow Burning Fire
Three Bookmarks
Riverhead Books 2021
306 pages
The way Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story, as in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, is cinematic. And it’s not just because the namesake character was a Hollywood movie star and much of the narrative is set in Tinseltown.
At 79, having outlived her fame, friends and husbands, Evelyn is ready to give an interview after years of avoiding the media. However, the only person to whom she will meet with is Monique Grant, a young, unknown writer. The younger woman is, understandably, surprised. Evelyn has several stipulations. First, Monique will not be writing an article, rather a book about the actress’s life story, and it can only be published upon Evelyn’s death. Such a book is destined to earn the writer fame and wealth.
The novel moves between the past (initially the 1950s) to the present (2017), with Evelyn relating how she came to be in the limelight, her years in and out of favor as a beautiful woman. Readers also learn about Monique in the process.
Monique has two important questions: why me and who was Evelyn’s one true love? After all, who has seven husbands?!
The assumption, of course, is one of the many spouses, but there’s no spoiler here. This big reveal comes well before the end. However, that’s when Monique’s other query is finally answered.
The engaging storyline and characters provide the diversion that comes with a good book. Sexuality, treatment of women in the film industry, friendships and, of course, marriage are underlying issues.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Four Bookmarks
Washington Square Press, 2017
389 pages
Whether it’s referred to as a tome, an extravaganza, or even a whale of a novel, all are apt physical, and some are literary, descriptions of Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water. At more than 700 pages, if nothing else, it’s a marathon of a read.
Set in southwestern India, it encompasses 1900 to 1977. The narrative follows three generations of a family whose members have a history of drowning, known as “The Condition.” Besides the expanse of time, much of what adds to the book’s length is the number of characters introduced, then seemingly discarded only to eventually resurface.
Big Ammachi is the (direct and indirect) loving force binding all of them together. It begins with her as a 12-year-old girl betrothed to a much older widower with a young son and thriving farmland.
The author’s fortes are evident in the descriptions of the numerous evolutions of the relationships among those populating the book. This is rivalled only by the portrayals of the characters and the imagery of the various landscapes visited in the novel. Along with the family’s farmland, the latter includes Madras and a leper colony. Everything is connected; it just takes a while to see how.
Indian history, the caste system, British Raj and medicine are significant elements.
Tragedies and joys abound throughout this epic, with themes of faith and resilience. After questioning whether so many characters, settings and, ultimately, pages were necessary, it’s difficult to see how the story could have been told any other way.
The Covenant of Water
Four-and-a-half Bookmarks
Grove Press, 2023
724 pages, including acknowledgements and notes
Imagine receiving texts or missed calls from a deceased friend. MIT tenured physics professor Helen is initially baffled, if not quite haunted, when she finds herself in this situation in Nell Freudenberger’s Lost and Wanted.
Helen’s friend Charlotte (aka Charlie) has recently died, but they had ceased being close long ago. Nonetheless, Helen is saddened to learn her best friend from college is dead. Charlie’s husband, Terrence, and their daughter, Simmi, move to Boston from California to be near his in-laws. Consequently, Helen becomes involved with them, which is familiar yet different. Helen is a single parent by choice. Her young son and Simmi become friends.
Helen is a respected physicist. Her books on physics are well received for their accessibility on the subject. Thus, her scientific background is what keeps her from considering that the texts are supernatural.
While the novel may initially seem to have roots in the paranormal, it’s not the case. Rather, friendship and grief are the themes driven by the loss of someone’s friend, daughter, wife and mother.
The texts are a mystery, Charlie’s husband is a potential love interest — or is he — and Helen’s memories of Charlie during their Harvard days are all intriguing.
However, because of Helen’s career, there are a lot, as in too many, references to physics. Freudenberger did her homework, but it’s questionable whether so many details are necessary.
The title was initially puzzling to, but the deeper I got into the novel, the more I appreciated it.
Lost and Wanted
Three-and-three-quarter stars
Alfred A. Knopf, 2019
315 pages
Despite the racism, hardships and wrongs done to the Blacks and Jews who inhabit the landscape of James McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, there is redemption — on numerous levels.
The appropriately-named store is a gathering place for the myriad of immigrants in the Chicken Hill community of Pottstown, Penn. It’s run by Chona, a kind, rabble-rousing Jewess. She’s idolized by her husband Moshe, a Romanian immigrant who runs a successful dance hall. Nate is his Black handyman.
It’s the early-1970s when the remains of a body are found in the neighborhood; the identity keeps readers wondering throughout the novel. The engaging storyline switches to the mid-1920s. The interactions among the Jews, Blacks and whites (who include Klu Klux Klan members) are vividly detailed.
Nate, needs to hide, Dodo, his deaf, orphaned nephew from authorities who want to institutionalize him believing him to be feeble-minded. Chona insists on harboring him in her apartment above the store. While the boy doesn’t hear, he is far from stupid — something Chona recognizes. The two become close and she does what she can to keep safe from the white powers that be.
McBride’s story is rich with characters, although many are one-dimensional; many more — the ones readers will care most about — are multi-faceted. The result is a poignant narrative about people living and working together toward a better life.
Humor and injustice are an odd couple, but here McBride deftly proves them to be a good match here.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Four-and-a-half Bookmarks
Riverhead Books, 2023
400 pages, includes acknowledgements.
The Blue Page Special 
