Anthony Marra  |  Fiction

2022, 416 pages

The story is about a young woman who emigrates from Italy to the US and, in 1941, is hired at Mercury Pictures.  It sounded interesting!  But I did not survive.

The average reading level of best-selling books, across genres, is 7th-grade.  While many novels (especially) are dumbed down to this level for a more general audience, and that irritates me, I guess I am also displeased when an author uses ridiculously flowery language to express a scene or event.  Here are three examples, looking only at pages 40, 41, and 42.

"Every family is a palimpsest and most days, in the kitchen, Mimi felt herself the half-effaced hardly legible text overwritten by the energetic bluster of her successors." (Pg 40). Even rereading this sentence multiple times, I still don't know what it says.

"It looked like the royal treasury of Atlantis had been dredged from the deep, given a fresh varnish, and relocated to downtown's gray-beige busyness."  (Pg 41). The royal treasury?

"Once she wandered into a speakeasy gents room and beheld in the wall-scrawled vulgarities the sense of expressive possibility Monet must have felt when he saw his first waterlily."  (Pg 42). Would one really actually sense this amidst the vulgarities?

One reviewer said it gets better at page 80.  Another reviewer argued for page 200.  Defying the "Pearl Rule of 50," I made it to page 100.  I am just not enjoying myself.

Did you read and like Mercury Pictures Presents?

March 2025

Nikki May

Novel 2024 | 340 pages

Lizzie and Margot are sisters, raised in England. Lizzie meets a Black man from Nigeria, marries him, moves to Nigeria, and her family disowns her.  Later, both become mothers.  Margot is cold, distant, mean, and greedy.  Lizzie is warm and loving.

But this book is not about Margot and Lizzie.  It is about their daughters Liv (Olivia) and Funke (Katherine/Kate).  Lizzie, along with her son Femi and her daughter Funke are in a horrific car accident near their home in Nigeria.  Only Funke survives. In his immeasurable grief, as well as his anger with Funke for living when his wife and son are dead, Funke's father sends her to England to live with her Aunt Margot.  Liv and Funke meet for the first time, at about ten years old.

Liv takes Funke under her wing.  It is a challenging adjustment for Funke, where her skin doesn't match the rest of the family nor her school or neighborhood. The girls transcend vast differences in culture, food, values, even morals, to become fast friends. We delight in their discoveries, shenanigans, coming of age together.

Until one night, a few years later, they go out to a bar together and everything turns topsy-turvy and inside out.  Again Funke (now called Kate) is shipped back to her other country (Nigeria) through no volition of her own.  And we follow them both into adulthood.

I liked this book.  I liked Liv and Funke.  It wasn't a page-turner for me, but I recommend This Motherless Land as a readable tale about the challenges of growing up in a cultural divide, and about the unbreakable love between two cousins, despite what the world throws at them.

March 2025

Amanda Peters

Fiction 2023 | 302 pages

I found The Berry Pickers to be sad and rather boring.  There are two primary characters ... and their chapters are interspersed.  One fact that makes these characters interesting is that they are First Nation people, members of the Mi’kmaq tribe, though one of them does not know this.  Their homes are originally in Nova Scotia and when young, travel to Maine each summer to pick berries and earn a living.

Joe is dying and has held on for all his life to two tragedies that happened when he was a child, the kidnapping of his little sister Ruthie, and the beating death of his brother Charlie.  Joe is a sad, unredeemed man, who becomes violent and distant.

Norma is plagued by bad dreams and always has a sense that something is amiss in her family, where she is an only child of an overprotective mother and distant father, both actually decent parents.

By the third chapter in, you know the denouement.  This may sound like a spoiler, but it is quite obvious that Norma is actually the abducted little sister of Joe, Ruthie.

I found the characters rather shallow and cliche-ish, and I didn't much like either one.

But the sweet tenderness of the ending almost made it all worthwhile.

Suggested by KK.

February 2025

John Boyne

Novel 2017 | 580 pages

I am struggling a bit to write this review.  I guess it is because this book is more of an epic than a novel.  It is large and deep and bold.  Thank you, Pam, for recommending this book.

Cyril's mom is 16 and pregnant when she is thrown out of her parish and her small Irish town by her Catholic priest in 1945.  She gets on a bus to Dublin and begins her adult life too soon and with no support.  She gives birth, then turns her baby boy over to a nun, who takes him to a couple that (allegedly) want a child, Charles and Maude Avery, when he is but a day or two old.  His adoptive parents, a cold and distant mother, and a cruel and dishonest father, drill into his head that he is NOT an Avery, and should never think of himself as one, and that he is NOT their biological child, and that he should never refer to them as anything but his "adoptive" parents.

Thus begins the life of Cyril, our main character in The Heart's Invisible Furies.

Cyril's story is told in eleven parts, each seven years apart.  This structure provides interesting gaps ... there is enough time for things to happen in-between each part, but not so much that you lose the thread.

Cyril comes to learn that he is a gay man, trying to find his place in the world, in a time when Catholic Ireland believed gay people were reprehensible, immoral, filthy, inferior species of humans.  It was a very challenging time to learn anything about the normalcy of being gay, much less to be loved or admired or respected.  But Cyril eventually understands his own humanity and fights away his shame.  But that takes many years.  Meanwhile, he falls in love with his best friend Julian, who is a vigorous womanizer.

Eventually, he comes into his own and finds a real relationship with Bastian, always battling the social morays of his time.  He finds a job, makes friends, is happy, though life keeps pitching curve balls to him.  As a reader of his life, we are privileged to follow him from the hiding and pain of his youth, to a loving, generous man who is comfortable in his own skin. His character, as written by Boyne, is astounding.  We come to know Cyril extremely well.  We live in his mind and heart.  We cheer him on and wish him peace, clarity, and authenticity.

In the end, one important piece of his life comes to closure.  I won't tell you how; that would be a major spoiler.

During the years he is 14 and 21 and 28, there is a lot of sex!  I am no prude, and even enjoy reading about sex ... I just want you to know, there is a lot of it! But as he matures, of course, his hormones and Julian's calm down, and we see the more well-rounded men they have become.

I really enjoyed this book. I think it will stay with me a while.  I certainly recommend it.  If you have read another John Boyle, please let me know in the comments section.  I think I would like to read another by this fabulous author, but don't know which one to choose.

February 2025

Percival Everett

Novel 2024 | 303 pages

An astounding book from the prolific Percival Everett, you will find this tale about "Nigger Jim" captivating.  It is the story of Huck Finn and the slave Jim (who renames himself "James") from Jim's perspective.  Where he went when he and Huck were separated; what feelings he had; how he thought;  how he learned to run; how he concealed his proclivity with English as well as his ability to write and to read.

From The Guardian:

And whereas the Jim of Huckleberry Finn is ignorant and superstitious in ways that are played for comedy, James is a thoughtful bibliophile who debates in his dreams with Voltaire and John Locke and harbours an ambition to write his own story one day.

As in the original novel, James and Huck take flight together on to the Mississippi: Huck running from his abusive father, James because he’s going to be sold. Many of the same key incidents occur. In Huckleberry Finn, there are various sections when Jim and Huck become separated. Now we learn where James has been in these interludes.

I fell in love with Jim.  His character is fully developed, and he has a pure heart and soul.  I gained a new and deeper understanding for the hardships of trying to run away from slavery, at the start of the Civil War.  James is incredibly well-written, and I completed it in under 48 hours.  The interactions Jim has with others, and with nature, will hold your interest.  But most compelling are Jim's inner workings.

I fully and heartily recommend that you read James.  I know it is very popular this year and is difficult to get, and you may have a long wait at your library, but it is well worth the wait.  In the meantime, I would suggest you do something I did not do ... reread Huckleberry Finn before your copy of James arrives.  That will ground you further in the narrative.

February 2025

Elizabeth Strout

Fiction 2024 / 326 pages

I saw this cool graphic on the Oprah website, identifying the number of characters in Elizabeth Strout books.  The highest number of characters is in Tell Me Everything.  Twenty-three characters.  Be prepared!  The descriptions about the book tell us it is about "unrecorded lives."  This is an apt description. It is a panoply of stories from people living in Crosby Maine.  And the stories are interesting, even though these are everyday people.  But/and I have an image of a peg board.  The stories are hung on the peg board like a bunch of tools, or more accurately, pieces of fabric.   Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they stand on their own.

Except of course for our main story ... the life of Bob Burgess.  Bob is the 65-year-old defense attorney who is trying to find out how Delores Beach, also known by the unattractive name of "Bitch Ball" came to be found dead.  Bob, who is married to Margaret, also has a burgeoning relationship with Lucy, who is living with her ex-husband William.  Bob and Lucy meet once a week for a talk and a walk, and I frankly grew real tired of how Strout, at the end of each of these meetings, talks about how Bob feels seen and listened to by Lucy.  The author kind of drives this point into the ground.  Clearly Bob is falling in love with Lucy.

And, of all the "unrecorded lives" in this book, Bob's life is the centerpiece.  It is his mind and heart we come to know, not only as he defends Matt, Delores Beach's son, but his he brings Matt back to life, how he copes with his brother’s wife Helen dying, how he helps his brother heal his relationships with his children, his strong intuition, his ability to care for and about other people’s children (though he has none of his own), his support and forgiveness for his alcoholic ex-wife Pam  … and on and on.  His character is somewhat implausible.  Everyone loves him, he is a helper with a big heart.

So, do I recommend this book?  It is fun, pleasant, rewarding.  A little too saccharin for me, but it might keep you warm on a winter’s weekend.

February 2025

Betsy Lerner

Novel 2024 | 266 pages

I love the quote that is associated with this book in most reviews and descriptions:  "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister."  I do not have a sister, but this quote tugs at my heart every time I read it.

I quite enjoyed this book about two sisters, based primarily in New York.  Amy is four years younger than Olivia, and Olivia (Ollie) is mentally ill.  The time frame is the mid-70s to the mid-90's.  Especially when Ollie is younger, we see how our knowledge of mental illness and how to address it was really just at its infancy.  Once Ollie hits puberty, she becomes quite unmanageable ... often doesn't come home for days on end, steals, become promiscuous, ignores the drug regimen her doctors put her on.

Amy, meantime, is stable, smart, and trying to live a normal life with a "crazy" sister whom she loves.  Their parents ... especially their father ... always forgives Ollie her excesses, but miraculously, Amy doesn't seem to be injured by the imbalance.  It is like a child in a family with most any disability ... that child receives more than his or her share of attention.

I really liked both of these characters, Amy and Ollie.  I like where Amy developed and shepherded her career, and the ways in which Ollie avoided anything that smacks of a "profession."  They both were involved with a number of men, which became just a tad confusing at times, but it is difficult for Amy to develop real friendships ... in this way, she HAS been hurt by the instability of her sister and the challenges associated with emotional intimacy.

This is an easy read, though it just might make you think. I recommend it for a winter weekend.  This is Lerner's first novel.

January 2025

Katherine May

Memoir 2020 | 241 pages

We all encounter times of wintering. Our cold, transformative, challenges may be precipitated by a death, or one's illness or the illness of another, or a child who hates the school he is at, or financial worries, or a sense of a spiritual void, or depression, or simply the short cold days of a season we mostly want to end.

May tells us about her journey through her own wintering and shares with us what she has learned, what perspectives she notices and alters, what attitudes and attributes appear during the seemingly dark time of wintering.

She tells us about the bees and how they, and the ants, prepare for winter.  She relates stories of going to the Arctic, even though she is very pregnant.  She travels to Stonehenge one winter solstice to learn how the people who show up there view the shifting currents of winter.  She learns to plunge into icy cold waters to clear her head and regain a sense of presence, aliveness, resilience, and self-sufficiency.

I picked this up because of what I read about her integration of other authors, poets, mystics, philosophers.  I enjoyed this part ... she could have done much more of it!  Wintering is really a spiritual book, to savor and read slowly; to let her wisdom sink in.

Some reviewers did not like this book.  They were offended by her privilege and her financial ability to travel to a spa or to see the northern lights in Iceland (she lives in Britain). While these readers vehemently claimed they were not looking for a self-help book, I believe they were. They wanted "how to winter" advice that they could apply and integrate into their own lives.  Even though I am currently immersed in my own set of "wintering" experiences, I was just as vehemently not looking for any self-help.  I wanted to read this book just as one woman's account of her wintering. And, as such, it was astoundingly beautiful.  Her writing is simply beautiful and soothing.  And still, I know that I couldn't help but learn from her story.

I recommend Wintering.

Chris Whitaker

Fiction 2016 / 361 pages

Harry Monroe, three years old, is abducted from his bed by someone wearing a clown mask.  This transgression rattles the small town of Tall Oaks, which is unaccustomed to major crime.

Tall Oaks, the book, takes us into the lives of many of the residents of Tall Oaks, such as Manny, 17, who wants to be a gangster; Jess, Harry's mom, who obsessively puts up posters in town with Harry's picture on them; Jim, the local sheriff who has fallen in love with Jess; Jerry, the 500-pound manager of CopyMax, whose manipulative mother is dying of dementia and who is actually a brilliant photographer; and Jared, who moves from town to town every few months and clearly has something to hide.

The book is allegedly about the discovery of Harry's abductor, but it isn't a crime/detective novel as such.  It is a psychological thriller, much more about the myriad of characters and their intra- and interrelationships. Harry's kidnapping is just the context.

Whitaker, in this debut novel, excels at building idiosyncratic, intriguing, and sometimes funny characters.  The struggle I had with Tall Oaks is the format.  He writes from the perspective of his characters, but typically no more than one or two pages at a time.  It is difficult to keep track of who is who (and there are a multitude of other, lesser, characters in addition to the ones I mention above).  It took me about half the book before I could comfortably move between characters and know whose voice I was reading.  You will find lists of Tall Oaks characters on the Internet because others have had the same challenge.  Use one of these lists to help you!  He also does that thing that debut novelists sometimes do ... almost all of his character names begin with the same letter, this time it is a "J," making it more difficult to differentiate.

So, I enjoyed this book, but it won't be my favorite book of the year, for certain. It is an entertaining read, but not something that needs to go immediately to the top of your book pile.

January 2025

TJ Klune

Fiction 2023 | 420pages

You know immediately, when you start reading this book, that it is not really about robots, even though three of our four main characters are robots.  It is about people ... our idiosyncrasies, quirks, feelings, emotions, insecurities, communication styles, strengths, skills ... all the characteristics someone might program into a particular robot.

We have Victor, our one human.  GIO is the robot who raised Vic from infancy. Rambo is the small vacuum robot, and the Nurse robot (Nurse Registered Automaton to Care, Heal, Educate, And Drill ... Nurse Ratched for short).  Rambo loves everything about life, and the Nurse is not only brilliant, but I love it when she turns on and off her empathy protocol ... "Engaging Empathy Protocol" she says!

The four of them live on their own, way out in the forest, having no contact with the outside world.  The relationships among them are loving, with lots of kidding and caring.  They each bring unique proclivities to the family they have formed.  Individually and as a family, Klune has created engaging and interesting distinctive characters with strong personalities.  They have lovely conversations and fun teases with sexual overtones.  They often make me laugh.

One day, Vic and Nurse Ratched and Rambo travel to one of the many Scrap Piles placed in the wilderness to see what they can salvage.  They find the remnants of a robot named HARP, who has been decommissioned and has no memory, nor a working battery pack.  They bring him home and attempt to get him operational again.  After weeks of work, they succeed, and HARP renames himself as HAP.  And now, there are five.

Everything is delightful up to this point.  Then a crisis occurs and GIO is kidnapped by other robots, and the rest go to look for him to bring him home.  Their journey begins as they travel towards the City of Electric Dreams, where they believe GIO is being held.  And the story starts a slow decline, in my opinion.  The journey is okay, but once they reach the City, there are way too many robots, too much chaos, too many robots with odd, sad, and destructive designations.  We lose the tight connection of the family in this electric maze (as I suspect our main characters also feel), and I become bored to tears.  My four-heart rating drops to three and then finally to two, as I force myself through the time in the City.  There are 200 pages in the middle of this book I would pull out and rewrite to maybe 30 pages.  Not surprisingly, the story reengages near the end, as the five characters become a family again (it's not as easy as it sounds!!) out in the wilderness.

I am disappointed in this TJ Klune, whom I enjoy, and am just hard-pressed to recommend it, unless you are way more interested in the machinations of robots than the workings of humans.

(My apologies to the friend who recommended this book to me.  Keep on recommending please!!)

January 2025