Archive for the ‘relationships’ Tag
For a light, easy read, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum fits the bill.
After leaving a successful career that left her unfulfilled, Yeongju opened a bookshop in a quiet, off-the beaten path in a Seoul neighborhood. She has no business experience, but she does have a love of books and their ability to transport readers away from their daily lives.
Initially, she does little to make the shop inviting; she simply reads while waiting for customers. Slowly, she discovers what she needs to do. First, she writes a blog about the shop, then hires a barista, and eventually she begins hosting book-related events such as monthly book groups, writing workshops and more. Slowly patrons become regulars, each contributing in their own way, to create a sense of community none realized was missing from their lives.
In the process of Yeongju becoming more business savvy she opens herself to accepting more about herself. Toward this end, the author intersperses a little back story, not only about Yeongju, but the other characters, too, including the barista; a coffee roaster who sells the beans used in the shop but is in an unhappy marriage; a woman dissatisfied with her spends time among the books crocheting; a teen uninterested in anything; and, a writer invited to speak about his newly published book.
The narrative is observational and ultimately uplifting without being heavy handed, even if it does become predictable.
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop
Three bookmarks
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024
301 pages
Set in the small town of Crosby, Maine, many of Elizabeth Strout’s previous (and distinctly different) characters populate the town and novel.
Bob Burgess, a semi-retired lawyer, takes on a case involving a lonely, isolated man accused of murdering his mother.
Bob has a long-standing relationship with Lucy Barton and reluctantly finds himself falling in love with her, despite being married. Lucy is divorced, but lives with her ex-husband William. Still, Lucy and Bob regularly walk together talking about the many aspects of their lives. There are many things they reveal only to each other.
Olive Kitteridge is another familiar character known for her cantankerous, usually, insensitive, dealings with others. Olive lives in a retirement home; she and Lucy often spend time together sharing stories about people they’ve known or situations they’ve experienced. The women attempt to give these stories meanings, but often they are simply glimpses of life’s ups, downs and unknowns.
Strout imbues the novel with empathy and intrigue. There are Bob’s emotions, not just his love for Lucy, but the emptiness he feels following his sister-in-law’s death and concern for his client charged with murder. Interestingly, even Olive has more empathy than disdain for those around her (although in limited doses). Lucy is in more of a recipient; her feelings for Bob are never fully disclosed, although suggestions are inferred.
Descriptions of small-town life, changes in seasons and day-to-day routines of the characters are, in Strout’s hands, much more interesting than they might otherwise be.
Tell Me Everything
Four Bookmarks
Random House, 2024
326 pages
Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood blends 1940s noir with humor thanks to its New York City setting and irreverent narrator, Will – short for Willowjean.
Will ran away as a teen and joined the circus becoming an adept knife-throwing performer. Her skills saved the life of Lilian Pentecost, a successful private investigator with a recent multiple sclerosis diagnosis, caught in a dangerous situation.
Soon, Will has left the circus and is working as Lilian’s personal assistant, which results in a dramatic lifestyle change for the younger woman. In addition to a salary and training, Will gets room, board and new kinds of adventures as she hones her own investigative skills
Three years after taking Will under her wing, Lilian is hired to solve a high profile case, one involving the murder of Abigail Collins, matriarch of a wealthy family. Of course, there are plenty of suspects to go around including Harrison Wallace, CEO of Collins Steelworks, and Abigail’s psychic friend. Becca and Randolph, Abigail’s adult children, also contribute to the intrigue, as do some employees of the wealthy family.
Lilian’s experience is evident in her calm, deliberate approach. Will’s role involves research and interviewing possible suspects; however, she’s also inclined to follow her gut, which doesn’t always have good results.
Clandestine relationships and other secrets keep the detectives on the alert. There’s even a bit of romance between Will and Becca. Spotswood has crafted a fast-paced who-dunnit with entertaining characters. Plus, Will’s sardonic humor makes it a fun read.
Fortune Favors the Dead
Four Bookmarks
Doubleday, 2020
321 pages
Even after reading 19 books featuring Inspector Armand Gamache, his investigative team and the quirky residents of Three Pines, none of it gets old. Louise Penny continues to keep the magic and intrigue going strong in her latest, The Grey Wolf.
Repeated phone calls, which Gamache refuses to answer, interrupt an otherwise peaceful, late summer morning. This is only the beginning of disturbances that threaten to go beyond his quiet village. He soon discovers the entire Quebec province is at risk.
Through a series of seemingly unrelated events such as a stolen coat, a cryptic note and, of course, a murder lead Gamache, Jean-Guy and Isabel LaCoste to far reaching locales in order to avert a national catastrophe. This includes revisiting characters and places from previous novels (investigations), such as the remote Gilbertine monastery.
Gamache suspects colleagues and a self-serving politician with an axe to grind against him are involved.
While the potential danger moves the narrative forward, the novel is rich with descriptions of the recurring people and places readers have come to know. Subtle humor and meaningful relationships remain hallmarks of the Gamache series.
In thinking about the appeal of the series, Louise Penny sums it up best in the book’s acknowledgements: “The Gamache books are proudly crime novels … but at their core they’re about community. Acceptance. Belonging. Courage. … About trying to do better.” After all, who doesn’t want to read about such attributes, especially when there’s good writing, engaging characters and a murder to solve?!
The Grey Wolf
Four Bookmarks
Minotaur Books, 2024
419, includes acknowledgements
Lorrie Moore has multiple threads in her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, some are easier to digest than others. First, there are letters from a woman to her dead sister written shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The main plot, though, follows Finn, a middle-aged man fumbling through life.
Finn and Lily have ended a long relationship. She worked as a clown therapist; that is, a therapist dressed as a clown) with a history of threatening suicide. He’s suspended from his teaching job because of his attitude issues. After receiving a call about Lily’s latest attempt, he leaves his brother’s deathbed and drives through the night to be with her.
Here’s where things get strange. Lily is, in fact, dead, but her remains were not placed where she wanted them to be, so she and Finn take a road trip to her desired final resting spot.
Despite the bizarre turn off events, or maybe because of them, Moore’s writing is imbued with humor, poetic phrasing and sharp wit. Her descriptive language is vivid. Interspersed with the road trip are other letters from the woman to her dead sister.
Finn is still in love with Lily and as they make their way from one cemetery to another, her body continues to slowly decay. When Finn needs to stop to rest, they land at an old inn that is almost as decrepit as Lily. The inn is significant, but I’ll avoid a spoiler here.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
Three-and-a-half bookmarks
Random House, 2023
193 pages
The title alone gives away that this is a mystery with trust issues. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston follows Evelyn “Evie” Porter on a secret assignment to get romantically involved with Ryan Sumner.
It’s soon evident that Evie isn’t who she says she is; parts of her backstory are interspersed with the mysteries at hand: who is Ryan, why is it necessary to know him, and more, importantly, who is the elusive, enigmatic “Mr. Smith”?
It’s no spoiler to reveal Evie, is aka Lucca Marino, who explains that Smith is the person who clandestinely hires her and pays her handsomely to get the dirt on people. Consequently, Evie moves from location to location, mostly in the South, with different identities, looks and ways of ingratiating herself into her targets’ lives.
The problem Evie encounters with Ryan is that she finds herself actually falling in love with him. Yet, she knows there’s a lot he’s hiding from her. Of course, everyone has their secrets but in this case, there are a lot to keep track of!
Evie, a smart, engaging character, and Devon, the assistant she’s secretly hired to help her unbeknownst to Smith, make for a strong team. The relationship between Evie and Ryan is credible and one the reader actually roots for.
Elston incorporates a number of plot twists to keep the reader guessing and it mostly works. However, there are so many threads to untangle it often gets a little messy; this serves to break the tension rather than enhance it.
First Lie Wins
Viking, 2024
Three-and-a-half Bookmarks
340 pages
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
Until August Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s posthumously-published novel lets readers revel in something new by the renowned author who died in 2014.
The novel’s background is interesting. Its bones were first published in The New Yorker in 1999. The Editors Notes at the book’s conclusion indicate the short story was to be part of something larger featuring the same main character. Garcia Marquez finished the work, but it had yet to be fully edited before his death and he felt the work should be destroyed. His sons decided otherwise: “In an act of betrayal, we decided to put his readers’ pleasure ahead of all other considerations,” they wrote in the preface.
Every August, Anna Magdalena Bach travels by herself to a nearby island to place flowers at her mother’s gravesite. It was her mother’s final wish to be buried there, although Anna never knew why.
Yet, the flowers are not the only reason she goes every August for one day and catches the return ferry to the mainland the next day. She also takes a lover for that one night. Each year, it’s a different man. Up until the first time, she had never previously been unfaithful.
Through the years, the island becomes more popular among tourists, which affect her visits. And, of course, Anna gets older. Readers learn about her reading habits, her preferred drink, how her family has changed and more. It’s all succinctly described in 107 pages rich with humor, tension and intelligence – complete with a surprising revelation.
Until August
Four Bookmarks
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024
129 pages, includes Editor’s Notes and Facsimiles of the Original Manuscript
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
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
