My First Five Favorite of 2020

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the year 2020, the annus horribilis, when we witnessed the most heroic and the most despicable actions from our fellow human beings. It was a year of remarkable resiliency and the discovery of innovative ways for the world to remain connected. Teachers, writers, performers, and just plain old bored families lifted our spirits with their Zoom creativity. Reading, once relegated to a few stolen moments of time, became the salvation of many an isolated soul.

Reviewing my favorite novels of 2020, I looked for a theme, a common message that might have run through them, and no surprise, in all but a couple of titles, the overarching emotion is loss tempered by hope. I find that I can no longer name favorites in the old way, numbered one through ten. My answer would be different depending upon the day or even the hour. But I have been able to alight on ten titles and authors that made me close the final pages and just say “wow!”

Ayad Akhtar’s achingly intimate novelized memoir “Homeland Elegies” made me laugh, despair, and gasp in shock as he tore at the wounds of a dark-skinned Pakistani-American’s struggle to assimilate in a post-9/11 New York, unable to understand his father’s blind embrace of all things capitalist, including D J Trump, even as both father and son succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

“Little Family” by former child soldier Ishmael Beah portrays five children, wise beyond their years, with exquisite tenderness as they band together for safety in an abandoned airplane that crashed in an unnamed African country. Forming a natural hierarchy the little family survives stealing food by day and telling stories into the long, nightmarish nights.

“The Death of Vivek Oji” is a haunting novel from Nigerian-born author Akwaeke Emezi which presents a searing examination of gender dissonance, sexual attraction, and familial love and loyalty. Through Vivek’s vivid flashbacks we meet a sensitive child prone to bouts of depression and angry outbursts that reflect his fear that his true nature may always have to remain invisible to the world.

Colum McCann’s “Apeirogon” renewed my faith in human nature during a year when I was losing it. Based on a true story, this exquisite novel about two fathers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, each wracked by the loss of their young daughters to the insane violence that pervades the middle east, form the organization “The Parents Circle” traveling the world, telling their story, and bringing their daughters back to life for anyone who will listen. (My deeper review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/09/colum-mccanns-apeirogon.html)

“Migrations” knocked me out not only because this is the first adult novel by Australian writer Charlotte McConaghy but because it was so inventive. I kept having to go back and forth through the chapters to be sure I’d really understood what I thought I’s just read. It’s about climate change, specifically about the migration of the last living Arctic terns as they make their way from Greenland to Antarctica, but it’s also about love, those who stay and those who leave, and a woman, Franny Stone, whose peripatetic life was set in motion when she was abandoned by her mother at the age of ten.

Tomorrow I’ll share my other five faves. In the meantime, happy reading and my deepest hopes for a 2021 we can all be proud of.

Margot Livesey's The Boy in the Field

Three siblings, on the cusp of adulthood, lose their innocence over the course of a year when an act of violence infects their small town on the outskirts of Oxford. Meandering home from school, middle sister Zoe spots something in the field. Her brothers, Matthew and Duncan, follow behind her, at first puzzled, then horrified by the blood on the boy’s legs. A scene like this, Matthew thinks, is straight out of an Inspector Morse novel.

As Zoe holds the boy’s hand, quietly talking to him because somewhere she heard that that is the right thing to do, the boys get help and tragedy is averted. But the incident is the catalyst for a time of rude awakenings as each child grapples with the realization that no place is completely safe and secure, perhaps not even their own home.

Children cannot be fooled. Their intuition seems to be finely honed. Like the dog, Lily, that the family rescues, the children sense when someone or something is off. Matthew realizes that his girlfriend is not the person he thought she was and acts wisely on the information. Zoe rebuffs a reckless boy who might be putting her safely in jeopardy, and Duncan, dear Duncan, the youngest of the three, who has always looked and felt just a little bit different, whose dark skin and eyes are evidence of his adoption, decides it’s time to find his first mother.

Into this year of upheaval comes the added burden of the silence between their parents. Suddenly Hal has become moody, taking off for the weekends to pursue his photography, while Betsy throws herself into Greek lessons. Zoe sees her dad coming out of a coffee shop with a woman she doesn’t recognize, and Duncan overhears a conversation that weighs heavily on him.

Of course, every reader brings her own life experiences to a novel and what speaks deeply to one may not resonate with another. Still, I found that this book took me back to my teen years in a profoundly moving way, though I can say unequivocally that neither my brother, sister, nor I ever found a body in a field. I felt deeply connected to these young people and their parents. At a time when all the best sellers seem to be just copycats of “Gone Girl” or “Girl on a Train,” peopled with characters no one would want to waste a moment of their time with, “The Boy in the Field” is a deceptively simple, exquisite snapshot of a loving family facing the complexities of life with grace and courage.

Margot Livesey is one of those writers whose name may never appear on the New York Times top ten list. This is a fact about the publishing industry that will forever drive me right up a wall. So many authors working today consistently deliver novels of such nuance and lyricism but if not for librarians and bloggers their names will not likely become household words. This is Ms. Livesey’s tenth novel. Why not give her a go.

Queen Elizabeth as Sleuth in The Windsor Knot

If you’ve binge-watched The Crown or marveled at Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance of The Queen, have I got a treat for you! Elizabeth watchers understand there is much more depth to Queen Elizabeth the second than meets the eye. No, the royal family’s history is not at all pretty, but Elizabeth is no light weight on the world stage. Just think of the prime ministers she has handled!

It seems that the British children’s author SJ Bennett (https://www.suffolklibraries.co.uk/posts/meet-the-author/meet-the-author-sj-bennett) arrived at the same conclusion while searching for a theme that would propel her into the adult fiction genre. “The Windsor Knot” has picked up lots of buzz and with good reason. This book is so much fun!

The Queen, at Windsor Castle for the Easter holiday, has a busy week ahead of her. The Obamas are coming for their final visit as president and first lady, there’s an important horse show scheduled in which she hopes her favorite filly will shine, and Charles and Camilla have asked her to host a last-minute soiree for a large gaggle of monied Russians from whom Charles wants a favor.

Imagine the queen’s dismay when her private secretary, the delightfully obsequious Sir Simon Holcroft, informs her the morning after the party that the handsome and talented pianist who had twirled her around the dance floor the previous evening, was found dead in his guest quarters, naked and hanging by the cord of his velvet robe.

Bennett’s plotting is intricate, this is no little cozy mystery. As the investigation gets underway, much is made of the case for secrecy, after all the royal family has a long history of poor relations with the press. MI-5 is brought in and the rush to judge the Russians is on, but the queen has her back-door channels, her own suspicions, and a whip smart assistant, Rozie Oshodi, whose previous service in the Royal Horse Artillery will serve her well as the two follow their own line of inquiry.

I cannot say enough about this witty, clever mystery, which combines historical details about the queen’s various castles with smart commentary on the current political climate in Great Britain and beyond. Bennett imbues the queen with a wry sense of humor and the ability to size people up in an instant, coupled with a personality that refuses to suffer fools gladly.

Best of all, it appears that this is the first in a series, “Her Majesty the Queen Investigates,” and the second novel set at Buckingham Palace is already in the hopper. I read an advanced copy provided by publisher Harper Collins. The hard copy won’t be out until March but place your holds now.

Library Journal Reviewers Weigh in on 2020's Best

The December issue of Library Journal just arrived and, as always, it's a bit of a thrill to open it up and see one's name in lights, so to speak. Here are the results of months of deep reading, much emailing back and forth, and then the final zoom meeting where Barbara Love and I got to finally "meet" each other. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=best-books-of-2020-literary-fiction

Choosing ten finalists is always so difficult and personal. Four reviewers, multiple sensibilities, so many books that didn't make the cut. Some of them found their way to other "best books" lists and others were honored by the National Book Awards ("Interior Chinatown"), the Booker Prize ("Shuggie Bain"), and the Kirkus Prize ("Luster").

I can't speak for my cohort on this project but when I was finished all I wanted to do was overdose on light, breezy mysteries like the ones I'm in the middle of right now. "The Guest List" by Lucy Foley and "Big Summer" by Jennifer Weiner both involve celebrity destination weddings, a boggy island off the coast of Ireland and Cape Cod respectively, in which the brides and grooms are so unsavory and unlikeable that you almost don't care that something awful is going to happen to them. And be assured, from page one you know that couples this rich and golden and ecstatic with each other are way too good to be true!

Fear not though, I won't let my brain go to complete mush. As the perfect antidote for the final throes of the worst presidential term in my seventy plus years I am savoring Barack Obama's "A Promised Land." Hardly a book that you sit down to and read straight through, this is one to be dipped into and out of, maybe a hundred pages at a time, so that you can absorb it in increments. I won't even attempt to review this book, Chimamanda Adichie already went overboard in that department https://nyti.ms/3gn3kSu

The Lying Life of Adults, Back to Naples with Elena Ferrante

The Neapolitan Quartet written by the illusive Elena Ferrante was my favorite read a few years ago. https://bit.ly/3nNzh9m Now Ferrante’s newest novel, “The Lying Life of Adults,” is out and it doesn’t seem to be making as much of a splash as the previous books. I was a little disappointed by it myself so when I attended Diane Rehm’s book discussion last week on Zoom I was reassured to learn that I was not alone. In fact, Laura Benedetti, professor of Italian culture at Georgetown, posited the theory that Ferrante’s latest seemed so uneven and repetitious that it may have been written by a group, kind of like the James Patterson books. Oh, I hope this isn’t the case.

Thematically she covers much the same territory. Naples, Italy is the setting. Class distinctions are everything. Giovanna and her family live in the “high district” where the language spoken is formal Italian and education is prized. Giovanna’s father comes from the industrial zone south of the city where a vulgar dialect prevails and young women are encouraged to marry young and reproduce. Dad, stern and withholding like many of Ferrante’s fictional fathers, left his sister Vittoria and the rest of the family behind and never looked back. Therein lies the crux of the story.

Giovanna is a bookish teenager with few friends who spends way too much time in her room. She is an observer, a listener, a spy in her own home, so it’s no surprise when she overhears her folks having a disturbing conversation about her, her grades, and her overall behavior. Giovanna is becoming as ugly as Vittoria her father says, and for Giovanna life will never look the same again.

This is a disturbing novel, a coming-of-age story mired in family secrets and lies. Giovanna’s pain and insecurity about her looks become an obsession to connect with the disowned Aunt Vittoria who, sensing the opportunity to drive the wedge between families further in, callously manipulates her niece.

This novel abounds with colorful characters, but they lack the depth and nuance that we came to love in the Lena and Lila books. That failure to create an emotional bond between Giovanna and readers may be a problem for Ferrante since the abrupt ending led me to believe that a sequel is likely in the offing. Will we care?

I would love to hear from you if you’ve read this book already. Am I being too harsh? Did I expect too much? Ferrante aficionados, call me out!

The Darkest Evening, Book 9 in the Vera Stanhope Series

For years my friend Don and I have traipsed the desolate Northumberland hills with Vera Stanhope and her crack investigative crew as they track down the remarkable number of killers who inhabit this north eastern part of England. We have followed Vera on Masterpiece Mystery, BritBox, and Acorn TV but never, until this weekend, have I actually read one of Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope mysteries. More fool me! 

“The Darkest Evening” is simply wonderful on several levels. First, I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out who the murderer was even though when we watch on TV I am so good that I’ve been named an honorary DCI. Second, the novel portrays a much more nuanced portrait of the enigmatic Vera because Cleeves takes us inside her head and allows us to hear her inner musings. Third, Vera’s sidekick Joe, who only seems to act as her foil in the televised drama, is a more fully drawn, interesting character in the book. 

Lorna Falstone, the young woman found lying in a snowy field on the Brockburn estate, head brutally bashed in, was by all accounts a lovely girl who had overcome a serious illness to give birth to Thomas and was thriving as a working mother on her own. So when Vera comes upon a car in a snowy ditch as she trundles home from work one evening in a blizzard, she is stunned to see a toddler who we will learn is Thomas, tucked into his car seat in the back of the abandoned vehicle. 

Soon Vera and her colleagues, Joe Ashworth, Holly Jackman, and the entire forensic team are ensconced in the kitchen at Brockburn Hall where a too-good-to-be-true domestic worker, Dorothy Felling, takes charge of the baby, feeds the police crew, and continues to serve an elegant dinner to the owners of the manor and their guests in the formal dining room.  

What a shock for Joe and Holly when they discover that the hall is owned by the oldest and once wealthiest family in Northumberland, the Stanhopes, a fact that Vera plays down even as the idea that this murder happened on the property where her dad Hector, the black sheep of the family, grew up. Difficult memories of her father’s death from alcoholism and the loneliness that has followed her and probably informed her ability to completely thrown herself into her work all her life, rise to the surface and help readers see Vera as more than the brusk, no-nonsense Columbo-like investigator that she is.  

Ann Cleeves is brilliant at recreating the small-town atmosphere that gives rise to class distinctions (who owns the land, who works it), the neighborly gossip and chit-chat, and the secrets and resentments that the people hold close. It’s a pure joy to watch Joe, Vera, and Holly go about their work, wheedling their way into kitchens and living rooms, gently prying various tidbits from each of the suspects until they arrive at the whole picture.  

But don’t mistake Cleeves, who also wrote the engrossing Shetland series featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, for a cozy mystery writer. Her novels delve into the darkest realms of human nature and we often aren’t a very pretty species.  

Hedy Lamarr, The Only Woman in the Room

I am so enjoying the book discussions led by the women at the local Twin Beaches library here in my Maryland home away from home. Even though Maryland libraries have only recently reopened with fewer hours, they do so much with so little and so well. Throughout the pandemic Zoom has been working over time for them.

Apparently each November around Veterans' Day the discussion centers on a book about war, fiction, non-fiction, each year is different. This year was wide open. The discussion was to be about Hedy Lamarr and we could research her life through documentary films, fiction, biographies, and yes, even Wikipedia!

I watched an award winning film that utilized a great deal of original footage and interviews with family and friends who knew her well. I supplemented with "The Only Woman in the Room," a novel by Marie Benedict. Benedict's specialty seems to be this now ubiquitous genre, the "fictional biography," and she loves to write about the woman behind the man. Einsteins''s wife, Clementine Churchill, and Andrew Carnegie's maid have all been subjects of her books and, though I felt she took quite a bit too much licence by use of the first person, I look forward to her take on Agatha Christie.

So what do war and Hedy Lamarr have in common? Well, by now you may know that Ms. Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler, in Vienna, Austria, to a secular Jewish family, was much more than just a pretty face. Her story is fascinating and the discussion was lively.

It was the looming rise of Fascism in Italy and the threat of German boots at Austria's border that changed so many lives in the 1930's, Hedy's among them.  Hedy caught the eye of arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl while appearing onstage as the empress of Austria. Their subsequent marriage, though psychologically abusive, afforded Hedy the opportunity to listen and learn as her husband entertained weapons scientists and leaders like Mussolini and Hitler. Hedy was little more than eye candy to Mandl and his associates but their conversations thrilled the woman who, at five years old, disassembled a music box and put it back together just to see how it worked.

Years later, while charming Hollywood and the world with her beauty, she put her mind to work devising a method of frequency hopping that would inhibit an enemy's ability to jam transmissions between torpedoes and targets. Though she and her partner, the musician George Antheil, were awarded a patent for their breakthrough, it was years before the technology was used and even more before Ms. Lamarr was acknowledged by the Dept. of the Navy.

For centuries smart women have had to hide their lights under barrels. Think of the leaders we could have, should have had, how only as an appendage to a man were we "allowed" in the room. Yes, things are finally looking up - go Kamala - but it's been a long time coming. Our discussion was graced with smart, accomplished women with something to say. Now go learn the truth about Hedy Lamarr.

Bryan Washington's Odd Couple Shine in "Memorial"

"Does love need a reason?" from Masao Wada's "Terrace House" is the quote you'll read before settling into Bryan Washington's poignant debut novel "Memorial." You may ask yourself this question several times as you become privy to the complex four year relationship of Benson, an African American kid- averse daycare worker, and Mike, a Japanese American chef whose specialty is Mexican food. They live together, sometimes uncomfortably, in Houston, but when we meet them they are separating for an unknown period of time. One can't help but feel the mix of relief, worry, and resentment that permeates the air.

Both sets of parents have long been divorced, alcohol and violence as factors, so readers will wonder if their memories have stunted Benson's and Mike's ability to communicate with each other and share their deepest feelings. Washington creates a melancholy sense of two people who are just going through the motions, unable to fully commit to the relationship but too needy to walk away.

Mike has just invited his estranged mother, Mitsuko, to come to Houston for a reconciliation visit. At almost the same time he decides to fly to Osaka to be with the dying father he hasn't seen since childhood. This selfish move lands Benson in the awkward position of entertaining a woman he's never met and who, he's convinced, does not approve of her son's relationship with a man, let alone a Black man!

The novel is set up in halves so that we first see Mike only through Ben's eyes.  As Ben and Mitsuko warily dance around each other, finally bonding through the meals that Mitsuko lovingly prepares, Ben learns more about Mike through Mitsuko than he ever got from Mike himself. And Mike, from his precarious situation in Osaka where he's running his father's barroom, meeting with doctors, and parrying the verbal taunts of an angry old man, reminisces about his childhood, his meeting Ben, and his failures in the relationship.

Bryan Washington is a major talent whose first book of short stories, "Lot," was widely praised. He excels at realistic street dialogue while crafting lovely sentences full of anger, despair, and hope. Like Ocean Vuong, Washington juxtaposes graphic, mindless sex with scenes of tender beauty. This brave exploration of race, culture, familial dysfunction, love, and grief, didn't quite make Library Journal's top ten this year but it's certainly one of my favorites.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

In the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn91L9goKfQ), "War! What is it good for?" Phil Klay, an Iraq war veteran and debut novelist, might echo the Boss.  "Absolutely nothing!"

Klay, like many soldier-novelists before him, (Karl Marlantes' "Matterhorn" comes to mind) brings a searing honesty and the visceral horror of war to the page in ways that may cause some readers to have to look away. And this is part of what infuriates him. How dare we send our young men and women off to fight for dubious reasons and then forget where they even are and what they are seeing every day in the field.

"Missionaries" follows four disparate characters as their lives intertwine in the killing fields of Columbia during the so-called war on drugs. Mason, a medic seeking a safer assignment now that he's a father, and Lisette, a correspondent hoping to make a name for herself in long form journalism, thought they had experienced the worst in Afghanistan. Yet in Columbia Abel saw his entire village destroyed by narco terrorists and Juan Pablo, a military man, is losing control of the various factions vying for power over the cocaine trade. Graft and corruption is rampant. Those who refuse to pay face the enforcers who seem to change every few months. No one can trust anyone.

Klay is an exquisite wordsmith. His powerful collection of short stories, "Redeployment," won the National Book Award in 2014. He excels at depicting the absurdity of war and the oh-so-human responses of soldiers to disfigurement and death, the way black humor is used to deflect emotions that might ravage a person. He also nails the interpersonal relationships of couples long separated by overseas assignments as they try to maintain honesty while abstaining from truths that might be more than each partner could bear to hear.

"Missionaries" is a brutal history lesson in the globalization of warfare in the 21st century, providing a window into the tricky ways that countries defuse blame as each contributes to the creation of modern drone technology allowing violence to be rained down on the innocent from the comfort of a trailer nestled in the suburban hills outside London or DC.

My initial critique of this book was that it could have benefited from a strategic editing of its over four hundred pages, but in retrospect, I've changed my mind. When a soldier-writer bares his soul on the page the very least we can do is bear witness.

A Reading Job Well Done and Other Thoughts

For the third year in a row I have been asked to participate in the choosing of the top ten literary fiction books of the year for Library Journal. Three of us have been voraciously reading for two months as we suffered over whittling the list down from a hefty number of fifty-five! And still there were some that I'm sure we have missed. But yesterday afternoon in a zoom meeting - what else - we found serendipity among us and decided on our top ten in record time. I can't wait for the article to be published (December issue) so that I can share with you the wonderfully diverse list of authors and their marvelously original works.

In the mean time, bear with me as I adjust to this horrible new "upgrade" to the Blogger format which has been giving me fits. I simply do not have the psychic energy right now to create a new blog on Wordpress and try to import ten years' worth of work. Maybe this winter?

One of the most rewarding benefits of participating in a project like this is being introduced to authors I might never have crossed paths with and being able to share my excitement with you readers. After all, yes, we had to narrow down our choices to ten but honestly there were really no losers. Each novel is noteworthy in its own way and I have enough material to last for months!

Stunning books by debut authors vied for attention with established award winners like Sigrid Nunez, Martin Amis, Marilynn Robinson, and James McBride. My admiration for writers continues to grow unchecked.

Today I am taking a break from the news and from serious fiction to try to revitalize my waning sense of humor. In two weeks we may have a new president and my stomach is in knots. It's fitting that I relax on the swing, on what may be our last warm day of the year, with Christopher Buckley's satire "Make Russia Great Again," though I must admit it's pretty difficult to even work up a laugh as we face the waning months of this destructive administration.

Tomorrow I'll get serious again with my thoughts on Phil Klay's "The Missionaries."

The Fire Next Time, Book Discussion of James Baldwin's Classic

Long before Ta-Nehisi Coates penned his sorrowful yet powerfully angry letter to his son, "Between the World and Me," James Baldwin wrote a similar missive to his nephew in the introduction to "The Fire Next Time." What's so difficult for me to tell you is that, though sixty years separates the two books, the letters sound almost identical.

The fear is palpable, the fear that if the young Black boy refuses to accept what he's been taught, to despise himself, that he's less than his white counterparts, if he goes about with his head held high, he will be a target of white resentment. Baldwin exhorts his namesake, "If you know whence you came, there is no limit to where you can go."

Diane Rehm, who retired from her daily NPR radio program a few years ago, is still doing what she loves - talking about books. Next month? "1984." This month it was the Baldwin. She was joined by several academic scholars including Princeton's Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. whose new book "Begin Again" delves into James Baldwin's work as it relates to America's history with race, poet and writer for the Atlantic Clint Smith, and author of "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," Jeanne Theoharis. What an inspiring way to spend an afternoon!

Like Ms. Rehm I too was ashamed to admit that I had never read this particular book of Baldwin's. What an eye opener! It could have been written yesterday. Baldwin is especially eloquent when he talks about his youth, his abusive step-father who was ironically, a preacher, and Baldwin's own decision to best the man by following in his footsteps and being better, more powerful. He discovered the power of words early on, controlling the congregation with his sermons. He soon lost his faith, but he honed those words for years and, by the time he returned in 1963 from self-exile in Paris, he was, according to Glaude, at the height of his talents and ready to bear witness to the movement.

Theoharis posited that Baldwin demands that this nation grow up and reckon with its racial past by accepting that the myths we have always taught and told ourselves are not necessarily the truth, that no one in white America is completely innocent of setting up the structure that holds its Black citizens back to this very day.

Baldwin's own words on the end page of this brief, cogent work seem prescient. ""Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands....If we, conscious white and conscious blacks...do not falter in our duty now....we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world." We work together or lose it all.

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Every now and then, if you're lucky, a novel grabs you at hello and doesn't let go. Such is the case with this gripping debut novel from Elizabeth Wetmore. https://www.elizabethwetmore.com/ I actually gasped at the unexpectedly powerful first paragraph and then marveled at Ms. Wetmore's visual writing style and wildly apt metaphors.

It's said that this is the year of the woman and I've discovered that so many books on the Library Journal long list for best literary fiction of the year feature wonderfully resilient, powerful female characters. "Valentine" introduces them in abundance.

Fourteen-year-old Glory's is the first voice we hear as she rises to consciousness from the desert floor. When she spots the man passed out in the bed of his pickup, the horror of what happened to her the night before dawns just as the agony from her injuries slams her fully awake. The vast, arid landscape of the west Texas oil fields offers little hope of escape but on the horizon a farmhouse beckons if she can hobble her way there.

Mary Rose can scarcely believe what she sees when the broken girl knocks at her door but she takes Glory in, compels her daughter to call the sheriff, and grabs her rifle when the pickup pulls into her driveway, joining her fate to Glory's from that moment on.

Gossip runs like a wildfire through Odessa. When the rape charges are filed everyone has an opinion. Corinne, recently widowed, angry at the world, and drinking way more than she should sits at the bar with one ear tuned to the conversation of the two old guys a few stools down as they opine that "those Mexican gals grow up quick. She was no kid, she knew what she was doing." We cheer for Corinne as she laces into them but somehow we understand that little good may come of it.

Mary Rose has had to leave her farm and move into town for her own safety. Since she offered to testify her life has become a living hell, death threats come fast and furious as her phone rings off the wall. Her husband thinks she's losing her mind and sometimes she thinks so too. Only her new neighbor Corinne intuits her full fury.

This piercingly angry novel tears open the window into small town prejudice, class warfare, the nature of evil and yes, the satisfaction of revenge. Wetmore describes lives as dry and desiccated as the landscape that envelopes them yet, when pushed to the limit, these women rise up and change each other's futures.

 

Working at Reading!

It's fall and that means that work begins on top ten lists all over the publishing world. Library Journal is no exception. I so look forward to the December issue to see what books knocked reviewers out this year in all my favorite genres but I work in literary fiction and this year there are many outstanding novels to consider, not to mention the extraordinary number of debut novelists whose names we'd like to get out in front of the reading public.


This is all an excuse to explain why I may be absent for a little while as I read madly, deeply, writers from all over the globe and writers from right here at home that will sound very familiar to you, authors like James McBride, Louise Erdrich, or Marilynne Robinson.


Several of the books in contention I've already reviewed. A couple of standouts you may want to be watching for are Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's "A Girl is a Body of Water." The title alone is enough to draw you in. 

Set in 1970s Uganda, this bewitching coming-of-age novel introduces readers to a smart, feisty heroine, Kirabo Nnamiiro, and her complicated extended family. Though deeply loved by the grandparents who are raising her, Kirabo yearns for knowledge of the woman who abandoned her at birth. She consults Nsuuta, the village seer, who recognizes in Kirabo evidence of the local myth of the first women; fiercely independent, changeable, and powerful, like the water from which they came. An exceptional student, Kirabo moves to Kampala, where her father has agreed to finance her education. It is here, as an observer of her unhappy, powerless stepmother and under the influence of her self-sufficient, modern aunt Abi, that Kirabo will learn to unravel the complexity of her lineage and to navigate the rapidly changing world for women in a modern Uganda. Though the novel is rife with the everyday fact of disappointment and loss, the overall atmosphere is one of joyous, feminist abandon. VERDICT A recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction and the Kwani Manuscript Project for her first novel, Kintu, UK-based Makumbi is a mesmerizing storyteller, slowly pulling readers in with a captivating cast of multifaceted characters and a soupçon of magical realism guaranteed to appeal to fans of Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing.


Another that actually hurt to read it was so spot on was "Like a Bird" by Fariha Roisin.

DEBUT In her extraordinary first novel, Róisín exposes the damaging effects of colorism through the Chatterjee family, who unconsciously pit their golden child, light-skinned, confident Alyssa, against Taylia, dark and brooding like her immigrant father and an unwelcome reminder of his roots in Calcutta. Crippled by low self-esteem and a poor body image, Taylia withdraws into her studies, hiding behind baggy, gender-neutral clothing, while her sister flaunts her sexuality and flouts her father's strict moral code. After Alyssa's shocking death, Taylia yearns finally to be seen by her grieving family, but rather than support her in the aftermath of a horrific rape at the hands of a trusted family friend, they exile her from their Upper West Side home. Róisín is masterly in her visceral representation of Taylia's despair and rage, her depression and self-loathing, and her inability to be open to even small acts of kindness. Yet as weeks of her wandering in the city unfold, readers sense Taylia's innate strength, a survival instinct at her core that enables her to find work in a bakery and a friend in Kat, its owner. VERDICT In lustrous, lyrical language, multifaceted artist Róisín has written an ode to the joy and healing power of self-love. This powerful novel is highly recommended


Both of these  novels will be out this month and if this is really the year of the woman then these two books should be on your list. They soar with tough, resilient, funny young women that you'll enjoy getting to know. These writers may not be household names right now but they are going places. Trust me.

Colum McCann's Apeirogon

"The only revenge is making peace," Bassam Aramin's son tells an audience of seven hundred people at the Alternative Memorial Service for Palestinian and Israeli citizens. Araab Aramin is speaking for the first time, taking up the mantle his father has shouldered since his daughter Abir was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli soldier as she walked to school. In a minute the listeners will hear from Yigal, son of Rami Elhanan, whose daughter Smadar died at the hands of a Palestinian suicide bomber.


These men and their sons are actual people. They have been traveling the world for years, telling their stories to any who will listen as members of The Parents Circle Family Forum https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/pcff-home-page-en/, a non-profit that no one wants to belong to as it means you've lost a loved one in the Israeli-Palestinian debacle. The National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann has written a truly remarkable novel based upon the friendship of Rami and Bassam and the tragedies that brought them together.


Unlike anything I've read this year, "Apeirogon" had me at page one and I hated to put it down. This exquisite book defies genre as McCann folds into the

narrative of Rami, Bassam. Abir and Smadar, a history of the Occupation, the PLO, the rise of Netanyahu, the Holocaust, and the development of military weaponry. He even gives readers a lesson on falconry that spans centuries.


But the most important thing that McCann accomplishes is bringing Abir and Smadar to full, glorious life. Through their parents' eyes, their teachers' reports, their siblings' memories, readers visualize who these young women could have been had they been allowed to live to their full potential. They are symbolic of thousands of youth in the Middle East who have died in service to generations of prejudice, misunderstanding, and zealotry in a land that has room for all of them if they could only concentrate on their commonalities rather than their differences.


For decades politicians have promised solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They have all failed and sadly will continue to. Why? Because, like the blazing racial/economic crisis in the United States, politicians have caused these problems. McCann shows us through fiction that it's the everyday people, the victims, the idealists, the children, who hold the future in their hands. "Apeirogon" should have been the most difficult book I've read this year but instead it left me lighter and more uplifted than I've felt in a long time. This will definitely be on my top ten list for 2020.

Louise Penny with Hillary Clinton

What, you might wonder, do these two fabulous women have in common? Well last night at a Zoom presentation from local independent bookstore Politics and Prose we found out. It seems that, during Hillary's campaign for president back in 2016, her husband Bill was interviewed and mentioned that Hillary loves mysteries and that she was currently reading Louise Penny. The Twitterverse went into overdrive and soon Hillary's best friend Betsy was meeting with Louise at a book conference in Chicago. They became fast friends according to Louise and Betsy then told Hillary that she had to meet Louise.


Those of us who have followed Louise Penny for years remember how she cared for her beloved husband Michael through a long bout of Alzheimer's disease and when he died, Hillary took time from her rigorous campaign to write a very personal note of sympathy that Louise told us said everything about the real Hillary Rodham Clinton, a woman with empathy to spare.


And so it was that the two women discussed the latest in the Inspector

Gamache series, "All the Devils are Here," without giving too much away. I ordered my copy from the bookstore and it will be mailed out today and I can't wait to delve right in. I hope that readers won't be disappointed that this book is set in Paris rather than in Three Pines but Louise told us that she really felt the need to do something a little new to keep from becoming formulaic. Hell, maybe she just wanted an excuse to go live in Paris for a while. Who wouldn't? The two talked about their favorite neighborhoods and Hillary specifically waxed nostalgic about spending time there in her twenties.


But what I found most interesting about the talk was the emphasis on Penny's theme, which actually runs through all of her books, about good and evil, the light and the dark, and about the choices that we all are faced with throughout our lives to lean one way or the other. They spoke about the pain of addiction, Louise's struggles with alcoholism mirrored in Jean-Guy's reliance on pills after suffering a life threatening injury in a previous novel. They touched on leadership and the ways a good leader can inspire and a bad one can create chaos. And then, oh yes, they turned to politics. You can imagine how that went!


Over twenty-one hundred fans from the United States and Canada zoomed in to the hour long presentation with Louise speaking from London, Hillary from Chappaqua, and the moderator from her home in the DC area. Is it any wonder that Zoom's profits are over the top? Tomorrow at 4, Politics and Prose https://www.politics-prose.com/will host a writer, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, whose book gorgeously titled, "A Girl is a Body of Water," I reviewed recently for Library Journal. It is definitely in contention for one of my top ten of the year. My review is printed in full at Barnes and Noble. Just scroll down. https://bit.ly/3bl0dIh Anyone can register for these fabulous author booktalks. Enjoy!

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

One Maryland, One Book has been hosting state-wide readings, discussions, and author interviews for thirteen years now and they aren't going to let a pandemic stop them. The author Lisa See http://www.lisasee.com/ has been plumbing the depths of her Chinese-American background in fiction and memoir for many years now, developing a loyal fan base. She will be in zoom rooms all over Maryland next month to discuss her latest historical novel about the very remarkable, real women of Jeju Island, Korea, who have been supporting their families for generations by diving for abalone, octopus, sea urchins, and other edible creatures.


Spanning seventy years, See's story commences in 1938 during the run up to World War II and revolves

around the very complicated politics of the Korean peninsula and its subjugation by Japan. You may feel the need to head to Wikipedia to supplement your knowledge of this time and place. Still, there is a universal quality to the suffering of any people denied the right to self-rule and this suffering informs  the entire novel.


At the heart of the story is the enduring power of female friendships but also the inability to let go of wrongs. At one point our narrator Young-sook says of herself that she knows she has a heart of ice, that the anger and resentment she's harbored against her best friend Mi-Ja for decades is only hurting herself. But how do you forgive someone whose actions, or lack thereof, results in the death of your husband and son? Is that even possible?


Friends from early childhood, Mi-Ja and Young-sook were inseparable. They trained, as all the Jeju Island girls did, to be divers, the renowned Haenyeo who worked the sea while the men stayed home with the babies. The women were spiritualists, worshipping the goddesses of the mountains and oceans and relying on the advice of a shaman prior to boarding their boats. Often the girls traveled as far as Russia to dive during more propitious seasons. But one year, upon returning to Jeju, Mi-Ja and Young-sook meet a worldly charmer on the dock who offers help with their trunks. It will be decades before the horrific ramifications of Lee Sang-mun's appearance in their lives will be fully understood.


I'll admit that I had read more than sixty pages before the stories of these women and their families really grabbed me. The story began slowly but eventually I was immersed in the idea of this matrifocal society and the strengths and weaknesses of its culture. Ironically, though the women were the source of income, the men still held the power through property ownership. Women were illiterate, though education for boys was a coveted goal. Poverty was rampant and years of occupation and war brought refugees from the mountains to the seaside.


For seven years hunger and fear turned one against another as rebel forces formed and turned against the local constabulary. Protesters were tortured and murdered. Entire villages were burned and the people massacred but to speak of it brought a death sentence. Yet through all the upheaval these amazing women found solace in their friendships and in the sea. If stories of strength and resilience are your cup of tea then Lisa See's "The Island of Sea Women" should be your next read.