Widowland, People Person, and More October Reading

 

Fiction

The idea of Widowland, by C.J. Carey, is interesting. The book is set in Great Britain, 13 years after Britain agreed to be ruled by Hitler's Germany. Women have been divided into several castes that define how they live their lives. King George and his family have disappeared, and King Edward (he of Wallis Simpson fame) is about to be re-crowned, an event that will end some aspects of the British-German agreement (including protection of British Jews). The protagonist Rose works rewriting literary classics to reflect the new views of women's roles. All that is interesting. But then the book goes off the rails when Rose receives a special assignment to investigate whether a group of widows (a disrespected caste) is responsible for anti-regime graffiti. That could also have been interesting but it just didn't work (e.g., why would Rose have been chosen for this assignment, for which she had no discernible skills?). Disappointing. 

People Person, by Candice Carty-Williams, is an entertaining but completely unbelievable story. Dimple has four half-siblings (same father; the five have four different mothers) whom she has met exactly once, when she was a child and their narcissistic father decided they should all meet. When her ex-boyfriend falls in her kitchen, hitting his head on the counter and apparently killing himself, she calls her eldest sister, who brings the rest of the crew alone to help dispose of the body. The rest of the book is about the five of them helping Dimple and building a family relationship. I found this so unlikely as to be a fantasy--but perhaps I am just a bad person. 

The Every, by Dave Eggers, is a sequel to The Circle, a cautionary tale about what can happen when your life is lived entirely in public via social media. In The Every, the Circle (essentially a combination of Google and Facebook) has merged with an on-line digital retailer named for a South American jungle, and the merged company's cultural influence is even greater than in the The Circle. A technocritic named Delaney decides to destroy The Every from within by getting a job there and proposing terrible ideas that will ultimately bring about economic failure. But the ideas are not only adopted by the company, they become wildly popular, albeit with some bad effects. The book is more satirical and less frightening than its predecessor, perhaps because the plot isn't strong and aspects of the company's practices and culture seem so ridiculous. But I enjoyed it.

Up until a couple of years ago, I had never read much Stephen King--but I've picked up several of his books recently and I do admire his writing skills while occasionally wondering how his brain works. Billy Summers is interesting because it's a story in which the main character is a hired killer (although he only kills truly bad people, so there's that)whomt I sometimes found myself liking. Then I remembered there was a lot not to like about the man--but he was dealing with so many worse people so maybe that meant he was all right. At any rate, Billy was a fully realized character. I don't know if Stephen King actually knows how assassins work, but the details mostly seemed plausible. Somewhat uncomfortably enjoyable.  

Mysteries/Thrillers

What She Saw, by Diane Saxon is evidently the third entry in a series featuring D.S. Jenna Morgan. I listened to it because it was free on Audible and, while I didn't hate it, was glad I hadn't used a credit on it. It opens with a man murdering his family members and setting his house on fire. One of his daughters survives and hides in a neighbor's barn. Why she thought she should hide is not entirely clear,  and it's kind of a distraction from the narrative about the work of the police. On the other hand, it's key to the climax, so maybe that's why. Probably won't read any more of the series. BTW: What She Saw is the title of multiple books. 

The Guilt Trip, by Sandie Jones, which was advertised as a mystery but seemed more of a domestic drama, had me wishing someone would die a lot sooner than they did--and I wouldn't have cared which character it was. In sum, the narrator is happily married until she goes to her brother-in-law's destination wedding and becomes convinced her husband is having an affair with the bride. She spends the weekend melting down, arguably too late, until she figures out what's really going on. Not recommended.

In Righteous Prey, by John Sandford, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers take on a band of bitcoin billionaires who have decided to become vigilantes, killing "assholes," sending out press releases on their kills, and maintaining a Dark Web presence. Interestingly, Virgil's presence seems to prevent Lucas acting like the vigilante he himself has become in other recent books. The story is entertaining enough but is a clear set-up for a sequel, which I generally find annoying. 

I'm not a fan of Harlan Coban, but Gone for Good was available on Libby, so . . . I checked it out. It revolves around a 15-year-old crime that might have been committed by the protagonist Will's brother, Ken, who has been missing ever since. Now, with a new crime at hand and evidence that the brother may be alive, Will must figure out what is going on. If it sounds similar to my description of Alex Finlay's The Night Shift, that's because there are similarities. But The Night Shift is better. 

The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda is not a particularly great mystery about a series of disappearances from a North Carolina inn. For me to think something is a great mystery, it has to have interesting twists -- but give the reader enough information as they go along to think the twists make sense at the end. The twists in this book are so out of left field that they don't seem believable. However, I did learn about an interesting concept from the book: trauma tourism. Trauma tourists go to places where bad things have happened and wallow in the horror. I guess this is really a thing!!

The Judge's List by John Grisham is one of those books that starts out strong--a woman whose father was murdered believes she has identified the killer--a sitting judge in Florida. She takes her evidence to Lacy Stoltz, an investigator with the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. Since the Board doesn't generally handle murders, Lacy initially refuses to take the case--but the law demands that they look into every complaint, so she begins an investigation. Around the time the judge figures out he is being investigated, I thought it broke down and became a typical "chasing the bad guy" scenario. And the ending--truly hated. 

Cajun Kiss of Death, by Ellen Byron, won the Agatha Award for 2021, Byron's second win for the Maggie Crozat series in four years. The series is set in a small Louisiana town and is just way too cutesy for me--even though people are dying, being stalked, getting food poisoning, etc. all around. I thought it might be interesting because it was all about food--a chef was murdered, other chefs/cooks were suspects, there were recipes at the end. But nothing redeemed it for me. 

Nonfiction

Although I don't live in Broomfield any more, I'm still in a Broomfield-based book group and interested in the town's literary goings-on. This year, the One Book One Broomfield selection is The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees, by Meredith May. As one might guess from the title, there's a lot about bees and the beekeeping grandfather who taught Meredith about the habits and wisdom of the bees. Sadly, others in her life were less supportive--her mother barely leaving her bed for years after she was divorced from May's father and her grandmother--perhaps from some guilt complex--defending her daughter when she abused Meredith and her brother. I guess the book is well done for what it is, but I found the bees as a model for human community overdone and the family dysfunction of a piece with so many other memoirs that it failed to provoke the outrage it deserved. Again, perhaps I am just a bad person.

Favorite Passages

He knew there should be a balance between the taking and the giving a person does in one lifetime. That a good relationship, between bees and humans, or two middle school classmates, or between a mother and daughter, needs to start from a mutual understanding that the other is precious.

    --Meredith May, The Honey Bus

People liked the idea of a strong leader--they didn't much care what that leader stood for. What citizens wanted above all things was a quiet life. They didn't mind shrinking their horizons. They didn't object to not travelling, as long as nobody else was travelling either. They wanted an orderly life with everyone knowing their place. Plenty of rules, the more of them the better.

    --C.J. Carey, Widowland

Good Memoirs: In Love and Going There

So I have mentioned ad nauseum that I am not a fan of memoirs, but two very good ones were highlights of my late September reading. Other than those two books, most of what I read since I last posted just made me grumpy although I should say I did actually enjoy a couple of light beach reads.

Fiction

I was surprised to enjoy Golden Girl, by Elin Hilderbrand, because I had read a few of her books and never been too impressed. There's a fantasy element here that was actually entertaining--Cape Cod author Vivi is killed in a hit-and-run early in the book; a heavenly guide allows her to watch over her family for a few months and intervene with three "nudges." Who wouldn't want to do that, especially if you were a mom leaving three children behind? For me, the question of who killed Vivi wasn't that important (I guessed early on!) but getting the kids straightened out did engage me. Fun beach read (or, if you're me, fun listen on my morning walks).

Another fun though not deep read is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbie Waxman. It's basically a rom-com but it's set in a bookstore (score) and trivia contests (funny) with family drama involving the heroine learning she has a large extended family she knew nothing about. Not very realistic but another fun late-summer read.

Mysteries/Thrillers

The Overnight Guest, by Heather Gudenkauf, has a Room-esque element, as well as the popular trope of having a true crime writer as a protagonist.  The writer Wylie Lark writes about cold cases and, rather creepily in my opinion, is staying at the Iowa farmhouse that was the scene of the crime she is trying to solve. Who would do that? Seriously? The story is told in three narrative threads: Wylie's present-day research, events around the time of the crime in 2000, and brief snippets about a child and mother trapped in a basement by the child's father. The three threads come together in a way Gudenkauf clearly intends to be surprising but just felt highly unlikely to me. Didn't love. 

The Island, by Adrian McKinty, is one of those thrillers in which people do something really stupid and spend the rest of the book trying to escape. Here it's a woman and her two stepchildren trying to escape from a crazy Australian family's island. It's basically an extended chase scene that I grew weary of.

Continuing my grumpy commentary, Do No Harm, by Christina McDonald, is a stupid story about a doctor who, upon learning her child has leukemia and needs an expensive treatment not covered by her insurance, becomes a drug kingpin pretty much overnight. And she's cavalier about any harm (substantial) she is causing; at points, the author seems to be arguing that opioid deaths are the price we have to pay for people getting some relief from chronic pain. Also stupid is the fact that the two local cops investigating opioid deaths are the doctor's husband (despite the fact that her brother is a known drug dealer) and a woman involved romantically with a doctor who has already been arrested on drug-related charges. Conflict of interest much?  Unsure why I finished this book. 

Lonely pregnant woman befriends another apparently lonely pregnant woman at a prenatal class. Second pregnant woman starts stalking first pregnant woman though first pregnant woman doesn't seem to notice. Weird doings ensue. Way too much explication at the end of the book. That's Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner.

Slight break from grumpy negativity: The Night Shift, by Alex Finlay, is actually a decent mystery. On New Year's Eve 1999, someone attacks the employees of a Blockbuster, killing four (three teenage girls and the manager) and leaving one girl alive. Fifteen years later, the employees of an ice cream shop are attacked and, again, three teenage girls are killed and one survives. Are the two crimes linked? Could the suspect in the first crime, who escaped and has not been seen since, have returned? Is his brother, now a public defender, somehow involved? Is the survivor of the first crime? Pregnant FBI agent Sarah Keller has to put it all together. While I had suspicions about the person eventually revealed to be the killer early on, I still enjoyed the book. 

Like other well-established mystery series, Linda Castillo's Kate Burkholder series has gotten a bit tired. Perhaps because it strains credulity that there could be so much violence among the Amish in Kate's small Ohio community, The Hidden One involves the discovery of the body of a long-missing Amish bishop in Pennsylvania instead of Ohio. Kate and the suspect were close as teenagers and the elders in the community ask her to investigate. Of course, she is threatened and of course she solves the case. Not terrible but not great.

YA

I can't remember who recommended The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune to me, but they sold it as a sweet fantasy/queer love story about children with special powers who suffer discrimination but feel safe in the residential orphanage/school where they live. I found it mildly interesting but predictable. Then I read that the author said he had been inspired to write the book upon reading the terrible news stories about the horrific treatment of Native Canadians at residential schools. For the second time in this post I ask, seriously? To trivialize and misrepresent that experience through a treacly fantasy story is despicable.

Nonfiction

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom is the moving and instructive story of her husband's decision to seek aided suicide when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It turns out that this is not an easy thing to do if you are expected to live longer than 6 months. Bloom and husband Brian Ameche (who seemed like something of an odd couple and yet clearly had a happy marriage) eventually landed on Dignitas, a Swiss company, as the route to a dignified death rather than "the long good-bye." Bloom reflects on the early signs of Brian's dementia, recounts the process of getting approved as a Dignitas client (grueling), and describes their trip to Zurich for Brian's planned death--and she does it all beautifully. 

More of a surprise to me was how much I enjoyed Going There, by Katie Couric. I've never been a huge Couric fan, but it was interesting to read how her career developed in an era when women journalists were subjected to various forms of discrimination and misogyny. And she does not hold back in calling out a lot of people who acted badly, especially at CBS during her 5 years there. The story of her first husband's illness and how she brought all her research skills to bear on trying to keep him alive was moving; her insight later that she had spent too much time trying to help him live and not enough helping him prepare to die was devastating. Years after his death, her daughter's research into her family's "Southern-ness" brought out some things about Jay's attitudes that were challenging, and I respect her for bringing them into the light. On the other hand, I have some doubts about her response to #MeToo and Matt Lauer. Although she acknowledges Matt did some terrible things, I felt she still has trouble accepting that these things happened (and that perhaps she should have known). In fact, she admits to being "tone deaf" or wrong a number of times throughout the book--and I felt in many of these cases she should have known better even as these things happened. So I'm still not a huge Couric fan, but the book is interesting and I recommend it. (And I was sorry to hear this week that she has been in treatment for breast cancer since June--the disease has definitely been a scourge on her loved ones.)

Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, by historian Nicole Hemmer, is most notable in (1) pointing out that, although the right loves to quote him and pretend a reverence for Ronald Reagan, his optimistic view and willingness to compromise made him different from the conservative movement that he helped to launch (and actively disliked by some of its denizens), (2) reaffirming the influence of the right-wing chattering class, in part on television but maybe more effectively on talk radio and the internet, and (3) drawing a direct line from Pat Buchanan to Donald Trump. Donald Trump was not as new or surprising as we may have thought--he was the successful incarnation of the hateful and racist ideas that Buchanan had advocated for and eventually brought into the mainstream of the Republican Party, which, as Hemmer says, "gave up on governing in 2014" (I might say it was before that, when they announced their goals were for Obama to fail and be a one-term president). It's about power, more specifically, white power (she didn't say that specifically--but I am saying it). 

Favorite Passages

All happiness is fleeting, but I see now that there is fleeting and then there is the true and wall-like impossibility of ever experiencing this kind of happiness again, even once, even next week, let alone a year from now. Doors are closing around us, all the time.

"You should be with a guy who doesn't mind that you're smarter than he is, who doesn't mind that most of the time, you'll be the main event," he said. "You need to be with a guy who supports how hard you work and who'll bring you a cup of coffee late at night. I don't know if I can be that guy"--he broke into tears--"but I'd like a shot."  We married.

    --Amy Bloom, In Love