Archive for the ‘relationships’ Tag
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
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
Presented as a coming of age tale, Go as a River by Shelley Read relies on the spirit of place while addressing romantic and maternal love. And, the author incorporates Colorado history.
Victoria Nash is 17 when she meets a drifter in her small town of Iola. This quickly evokes feelings she’s never experienced. Wilson Moon is not much older than Victoria but his wisdom and sensitivity captivate her. They embark on a brief, clandestine affair. He’s suspected of theft, although his only crime is being Native American in a mostly racist community.
When his body is found at the bottom of a gulch, Victoria suspects her brother of murder. However, her attention soon turns to dealing with her pregnancy. When she can no longer hide her swollen stomach, she runs away from the family peach orchard to hide in the nearby mountains.
Read’s descriptions of the land, Victoria’s feelings and determination to survive on her own are vivid Victoria endures harsh conditions alone, including giving birth. This, and coming upon a young family picnicking in the forest with whom she furtively abandons her son, make belief difficult to suspend.
The impending destruction of Iola, a consequence of the creation of Blue Mesa Reservoir is among the losses she carries the rest of her life. Yet, she moves forward. With assistance from a botanist and others, Victoria moves the peach trees to Paonia before Iola is submerged. And thoughts of the son she gave away remain close to the surface.
Go as a River
Spiegel and Grau, 2023
305 pages, includes acknowledgements
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 one-time punk rocker, tattooed, cigarette smoking, gay Sister Holiday, doesn’t fit the mold when it comes to Catholic nuns. In Margot Douaihy debut novel, Scorched Grace, she’s a member of the Sisters of Sublime Blood order, which runs the Saint Sebastian School where she’s the music teacher. The convent adjoins the school.
When not one, but two fires and two deaths occur at the school, Sister Holiday initiates her own investigation convinced authorities aren’t moving fast enough to find the culprit – and avoid potential further harm to her school and church community.
Set in New Orleans, the storylines moves between Holiday’s past and what at first appears as her new-found faith. In fact, one of the strengths of Douaihy’s writing lies in slowly revealing the nun’s deepening convictions, in spite of her rebellious personality and the obstacles she encounters in her attempts to solve the crimes.
The list of suspects is credible, even as evidence points to Sister Holiday herself. The investigating police officers are convinced of her guilt. While the fire investigator, Magnolia Riveaux, is less ready to pin the blame on Holiday.
Descriptions of the Big Easy, the humidity and other characters are vivid. Sister Holiday is tenacious and the authorities consider her a pest. Her relationship with the other nuns (there aren’t many) are a way the author deftly merges the past and present. Sister Holiday is, indeed, the sum of her history: colorful tats and all.
Based on the subtitle, Sister Holiday isn’t being cloistered anytime soon.
Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery
Three-and-a-half bookmarks
Gillian Flynn Books, 2023
307 pages
The Blue Page Special 