I passed the 100-book mark on Friday--there have been a few greats, some good ones, some mediocre reads, and some real stinkers. I don't think I've written about all of them--but trust me that you don't even want to know about the ones I've omitted.
Fiction
I am going to have to break up with Barack Obama, or at least with his book picks, which in 2021 included Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura. The protagonist is an unnamed (I really don't appreciate unnamed narrators, though I suppose they create some desired distance between narrator and reader) translator who has moved from New York to the Hague to work in the International Criminal Court. Stuff happens, including stuff that suggests her sense of ethics isn't great, but there's not really a plot; I wasn't that far into the book when I stopped caring about her relationship with her married boyfriend, the fate of the war criminal whose trial she was working on, or anything else. Not sure why I finished the book--but I was happy that I was listening as many readers of print had serious complaints about Kitamura's punctuation (or lack thereof). Sorry, Mr. Obama, this one's a loser.
Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead, is a massive book--but it's worth the time. It's the story of Marian Graves, who, with her twin brother, was rescued from a sinking ocean liner as a child. The two were then raised by an alcoholic uncle in Montana. Marian early on becomes interested in being a pilot and faces extreme prejudice in order to become a pilot, first for bootleggers and then for the RAF during World War II. She eventually succeeds in finding financing for her dream of flying around the world over the poles. While the book is really Marian's story, a second narrative features actor Hadley, who is cast as Marian in a movie of her life. At first I didn't think Hadley's story added much to the book, but I changed my mind as I progressed, both because of what the interesting parallels between the two made me think about how women's lives have and have not changed and because the modern piece illustrated how someone's story gets changed as it is filtered through different authors and observers. Definitely recommended.
The Life of the Mind, by Christine Smallwood, quite literally made me feel nauseous. It's the story of Dorothy, a borderline academic supporting herself as an adjunct while struggling to write a book that might land her a tenure track position. She has just had an unsuccessful pregnancy that ended with a medical abortion. And this is where my nausea comes in. The author describes the, um, effluent (?) resulting from the abortion in great detail--and, unfortunately for both Dorothy and the reader, the expulsion/bleeding seems to go on and on. I guess it's good for people to understand what abortion really involves but it doesn't make for pleasant reading.
The Dependents, by Katharine Dion, is a family drama in which the family is actually two families that function almost as one--Gene and Maida (who has recently died) and Ed and Gayle and both couples' children. The jacket blurb makes you think there is going to be a huge surprise about Maida, but the surprise that is hinted at never really gets revealed, and you're left with the notion that Ed should have married Maida and Gene should have been with Gayle, which was fairly obvious from the flashbacks to their college years. There are other conflicts and happenings--it's a pleasant enough read but I will have forgotten it fairly soon.
Count the Ways, by Joyce Maynard, is also a family drama, but one that had a lot more resonance for me, perhaps because it's primary focus is the mother of the family. Eleanor, an artist and children's book author, meets and marries Cam, a maker of wooden bowls, in the early 1970s. The settle into her New Hampshire farm and fairly quickly have three children. Although Eleanor is irritated by Cam's contributing little to the family, she loves motherhood and her life. Then there's an accident that she blames Cam for, and their marriage falls apart. Over the next decades, she deals with rifts with her children, as well as serious challenges faced by two of them. Despite the many sad things that happen throughout the book, it somehow ends on a positive note, which I found uplifting.
I'm a fan of Julia Glass, whose new book, Vigil Harbor, is something of a departure as it is set in the near future and has a strong environmental theme. As with all Glass books, multiple characters play important roles, including college student Brecht, who witnessed an act of eco-terrorism that killed a friend (at the beginning of the book, he does not remember that his friend was killed and thinks he's living in the attic at Brecht's home); Brecht's stepfather Austin, a well-known architect; a journalist who had a relationship with a mysterious--perhaps alien--woman that Austin was once engaged to; Celestino, a Guatemalan immigrant who, while valued for his work as an arborist, feels set apart from the mostly white community of Vigil Harbor; and many more. Vigil Harbor is almost a character, as it offers its mostly white, mostly wealthy residents safety from the encroaching ocean, perched on a high headland. The book is engaging but there is a very long denouement (how often do you get to use that high school English term?) after what seems to be the climax. Still, worth reading.
I have not appreciated the past few Anne Tyler books, so I'm not sure why I read French Braid. I shouldn't have as I didn't appreciate it either. It, too, is a family drama that provides glimpses into multiple generations of the Garrett family. We get the most detail about Robin and Mercy, who married in 1940 and shaped their children and grandchildren. There's a distance about their marriage--Mercy moves out when they become empty-nesters but they don't tell their children and keep up a marital pretense. We get just glimpses into the lives of the children and grandchildren and no sense of any resolution. I found it unsatisfying.
L.A. Weather, by Maria Amparo Estandon, is drama, drama, drama among a Mexican-Jewish American couple and their three successful daughters, whose lives all fall apart at once.
Helen Hoang is an interesting author. She writes romances, her latest being The Heart Principle, that feature characters on the autism spectrum (and sex--there's definitely sex). Because Hoang is herself on the spectrum, you have to believe that her characterizations are accurate and thus informative. But the book are romances, so they're utterly predictable. We don't know what barriers the couple will have to cross (or the sexual stimulation technique Anna needs to have an orgasm--it's related to her autism), but we know Anna will end up with Quan and we're pretty sure Anna will return to playing the violin. If you like romances, you might get something a little extra from Hoang's work.
Mystery/Thriller
One Step Too Far, by Lisa Gardner, is the second installment in her series featuring Frankie Elkin, who travels the country finding missing people (usually dead). This case involves a groom who disappeared in the Wyoming wilderness on his bachelor weekend. It is five years later, and no one expects to find him alive, but his father wants to find him before his mother dies and his friends, who were along on the fateful weekend, want some resolution (and they have secrets). Basically, the book is kind of a wilderness survival tale, so not my favorite thing, but well done for what it is.
The End of October, by Lawrence Wright, is also a survival story, but the enemy is not a murderer or the wilderness but acute hemorrhagic fever. Dr. Henry Parsons, the scientist with the best chance of solving the medical mystery, ends up trapped in various locations in the Eastern Hemisphere while his family, particularly his children, must deal with the raging pandemic in Atlanta, where they live. It's not the greatest medical mystery I've read, but it was entertaining.
I have enjoyed a number of Val McDermid's books and admire her ability to create multiple characters around which she bases series. But I did not find Allie Burns, the journalist-heroine of 1979, to be very interesting; I did find her to be lacking in common sense, which perhaps I value too much in my advancing age. Allie and her pal Danny take on two big stories, one involving tax fraud involving Danny's brother, the other requiring infiltration of a "cell" of three idiots planning a terrorist act designed to bring attention to the movement for Scottish independence (and modeled after the IRA). Literally did not care what happened in either case.
Favorite Passage
I'm told girls dream of being wives, but wifedom seems an awful lot like defeat dressed up as victory. We're celebrated for marrying, but after that we must cede all territory and answer to a new authority like a vanquished nation.
Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle
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