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.