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!