My mostly junky reading continued throughout the summer--I feel confident that when the weather cools off, I'll be reading only intellectually challenging works (LOL). Meanwhile, here are my favorites from the dog days.
Fiction
Rachel to the Rescue, by Elinor Lipman. I have, in the past, compared Elinor Lipman to Jane Austen--her books satirize the culture but always end with a happy coupling. In Rachel to the Rescue, she for the first time gets political (though the book still ends with a happy couple!). Rachel works in the Trump White House, taping together papers that the president has ripped up so they can be archived. When she mistakenly hits "Reply All" and sends an email critical of the president to the wrong people, she is fired. On her way out of the office, she is hit by a car driven by an eye doctor who is allegedly speeding to the White House for a tryst with Trump. From there, the story gets even crazier. Though the political commentary is not deep, it is amusing (if you don't like Trump). A fun read.
Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss, by Rajeev Balasubramanyam. Although I hate the phrase "follow your bliss" (long story), I was entertained by following Professor Chandra as he tried to recover from the annual insult of not winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. His journey involves quite a bit of time in Colorado, including Boulder, where his ex-wife lives with her second husband, a granola-y type, and Chandra's youngest daughter is going off the rails. He also spends a weekend at Esalen, checks out his son's highly successful business seminar, and tries to reconnect with his oldest daughter at a monastery in the Colorado mountains. The characters are mostly flawed but endearing; they have some deep conversations as well as some ridiculous adventures--it's funny and rather heart-warming.
Should We Stay or Should We Go? by Lionel Shriver. I found Shriver's book to be the opposite of fun, although I did read one review that described it as "rollicking." Here's the set-up: When they're in their 50s, Kay and Cyril are exhausted from watching their parents and patients (both work in the medical field) deteriorate in old age. So they decide that, when they turn 80, they will commit suicide together. However, when the time comes, they're not so sure it was a good decision. Shriver presents 12 possible outcomes--sometimes one commits suicide and the other doesn't, sometimes neither does, etc. Some of the scenarios seem far-fetched (a nursing home that is worse than prison, a cryogenic option) and only one that I can remember could be described as positive, which leads me to wonder if Shriver is actually suggesting all of us should kill ourselves at 80. While I'm not with her on that, the book kept me reading, and I admired Shriver's inventiveness. I've never read anything quite like it.
Baby Teeth, by Zoje Stage. Baby Teeth is even less fun than Should We Stay--but it definitely keeps you reading. Hanna is an electively mute 7-year-old who torments her mother, Suzette, both physically and mentally. Suzette, a frustrated artist, has suffered from Crohn's disease for many years; her own mother did not get her adequate treatment for the problem when Suzette was a child. When Suzette's husband Alex is home, Hanna, while still mute, acts the loving child. As the situation between Suzette and Hanna deteriorates and the Alex remains mostly in denial, the reader believes firmly that Hanna is a psychopath but also starts wondering about Suzette. It's creepy and disturbing--but I liked it.
God Spare the Girls, by Kelsey McKinney. When you're a Southern girl whose father is the beloved pastor of a Texas megachurch, what do you do when you learn he has been unfaithful to your mother? That's the question sisters Abigail and Caroline face the summer that Abigail is to be married and Caroline is to leave for college. What they experience, how they feel, and what they ultimately do makes for a fascinating story.
Mystery/Thriller
While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams. I greatly admire Stacey Abrams, but I couldn't help wondering if her novel would be any good (when did she find the time to write?). I'm happy to report that, though While Justice Sleeps isn't a great book, it's a decent legal thriller replete with conspiracies. Since it features a young clerk to a Supreme Court justice and a conspiracy involving the Court, it was somewhat reminiscent of John Grisham's Pelican Brief. But the main character, Avery Keene, also reminded me of the bad-ass Olivia Pope from the TV series Scandal. If you like Grisham or were a loyal viewer of Scandal, you'll definitely enjoy Abrams' book.
Science Fiction
The 22 Murders of Madison May, by Max Barry. Why is Madison May murdered 22 times, you might ask. The answer: a deranged stalker-killer loose in the multiverse. Journalist Felicity Staples is reporting on the murder of real estate agent Madison May when she accidentally does a little universe hopping herself and discovers that Clay Hors is repeatedly killing Madison. As Felicity pursues Clay, with a cast of other characters who sometimes help, sometimes obstruct (and sometimes, like Felicity's cat, disappear in some worlds). Like Rachel to the Rescue, the book is not deep, but it is fun. May belong in mysteries, but I wanted more than two categories, so I'm calling it science fiction.
Most Disappointing
Whereabouts, by Jhumpa Lahiri. A few years ago, Lahiri fell in love with Italian and decided to begin writing in Italian rather than English, because she didn't feel truly at home in English (or in Bengali, her parents' native language). I think this is her first novel since she made the transition--I, of course, read her English translation of the Italian text. The novel lacks the intricate plotting of her other books--it's basically a series of vignettes in a professor's life. She seems to be stalled but decides to make a change by the end of the book. The book also lacks the rich, complex language of her earlier novels. Of course, I could not write a blog post in another language; that said, the switch to Italian has not enhanced Lahiri's expressiveness. A lot of more knowledgeable people than I have reviewed the book positively, but I was unmoved.
Favorite Passage
In God Spare the Girls, the father in the story pours his wife a cup of coffee to show his caring for her. His daughters watch as it becomes clear he doesn't know how his wife of 25 years takes her coffee. There's nothing fancy about the language, but it was a moment that hit hard:
"He tore open a couple of Splenda packets for his own. Caroline then waited for him to reach for the fridge. He didn't. He stared at his wife's cup as if it might tell him the answer. "
--Kelsey McKinney, God Spare the Girls
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