Author Spotlight: Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott has won so many literary prizes that the list would take up this entire post, so I’ll just mention that her novel Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998. Her novels have often been on the New York Times bestseller list, and her short fiction has been featured in such publications as the New Yorker.

McDermott can conjure up New York City in the early-to-mid twentieth century better than any other author I know, and within this area of historical fiction she specializes in creating characters who are Roman Catholic. She isn’t trying to convert her readers to Catholicism but rather to tease out complex ethical questions. How does an ordinary person pursue virtue and decency? How does a adopting a religious framework for one’s life affect this pursuit, for good or for ill? McDermott will make you think hard about questions of morality.

Here are two examples of McDermott’s work set in New York City:

Someone     Alice McDermott     (2013)  In this novel, McDermott gives us an intimate portrait of an Irish Catholic woman’s conventional life, from youth to old age. The beauty here lies in the simplicity and the lovely language.

The Ninth Hour     Alice McDermott     (2017)  This book appears as a favorite of mine in several categories. With wonderfully resonant prose, McDermott presents the pros and cons of being Catholic in early twentieth-century Brooklyn. The neighborhood nuns are often heroines. Click here for my full review.

McDermott’s latest novel departs from her usual locale, with great success.

Absolution     Alice McDermott     (2023)  At the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States sent “advisors”—some of them civilian engineers and some of them military personnel—to southeast Asia. Those in the higher ranks of advisors brought their families with them to Saigon. (Even though I remember the Vietnam era vividly, this possibility had never occurred to me.) Absolution is a fictional story about those wives and children in Saigon in 1963. Tricia/Patsy is a naive young bride who is befriended by Charlene, a mother in her thirties. Charlene is a manipulative woman who dabbles in the black market, among other unsavory pursuits, and she pulls Tricia into her circle. Their story is narrated, looking back from the present day, first by a very elderly Tricia and then by Charlene’s daughter, Rainey. The racism and sexism of the period are presented in unvarnished and realistic detail, as the women muddle along on the edges of a momentous period in the history of both the United States and Southeast Asia. Alice McDermott is at the top of her game, so don’t miss Absolution.  

Boomer Tales

If the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946-1964) is not a demographic that interests you, feel free to skip to another post. But if you want to dive deep into the emotional territory of aging, here are some tales for you. Remember, we all become elderly eventually!

First up, a new review of a recent book by a seasoned and reliable author.

Baumgartner     Paul Auster     (2023)  The title character of this short novel is a seventy-something philosophy professor who, at the beginning of the book, is just about to retire from teaching at Princeton. Baumgartner’s wife has been dead for a decade, but he revisits his life with her through dreams, reminiscences, and perusal of the journals and poems that she left behind. Sensing the precarity of old age, he seeks to make the most of his time, continuing to write scholarly books and pursuing various romantic relationships. At the risk of revealing a spoiler, I’ll tell you that that ending is disturbing and not at all what you might expect. (For a review of another Auster novel, 4321, click here.)

Next, recaps of a few of my many reviews over the past seven years that feature elderly characters.

Our Souls at Night     Kent Haruf     (2015)  A widow and a widower, neighbors in a small Midwestern town, carve out their own version of happiness in spite of setbacks. Readers can tuck this story away as a tutorial in how to cope with the inevitability of mortality. (The 2017 movie of the same name starred Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.) Click here for my full review.

Olive, Again     Elizabeth Strout     (2019)  In thirteen linked short stories, the incomparable author Strout revisits Olive Kittredge, a character from her previous fiction. Olive, still living in rural Maine, is retired and declining in health, but she connects with other quirky characters as she fearlessly faces her future. Click here for my full review.

Midwinter Break     Bernard MacLaverty     (2017)  A couple in their seventies who live in Scotland take a short vacation to Amsterdam in this masterful study of the pleasures and trials of a very long marriage. Click here for my full review.

Henry, Himself     Stewart O’Nan     (2019)  This is a quiet, introspective portrait of a year in the life of Henry Maxwell, a retired engineer who lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Emily. The novelist is able to turn everyday events into drama that drives his narrative in a highly effective way. Click here for my full review.

The Sense of an Ending     Julian Barnes     (2011)  Tony Webster, a retired Briton who is amicably divorced, receives an unusual legacy that brings to mind painful scenes from his time in secondary school and at university. This ruminative short novel about memory, regret, forgiveness, and revenge was made into a movie in 2017.

Violeta     Isabel Allende     (2022)  Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle. The fictional Violeta Del Valle tells her captivating life story in first person, from her birth in 1920 during one pandemic to her death in 2020 during another pandemic. The backdrop is the political upheaval in the history of an unnamed South American country that is very much like Chile.

For Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month in 2024, this post highlights some of my best-loved books by African American women.

First, a brand-new fiction review:

Company     Shannon Sanders    (2023)  The thirteen short stories in this volume are linked to each other through their characters, all of whom are members of the extended Collins family or friends of that family. The title also points to another linkage:  each story involves the arrival of a guest—“company”—in someone’s home. Settings include the District of Columbia, New York, and Atlanta, from the 1960s to the near-present. The characters are almost all African American, but they grapple with universal human issues, such as family obligations, sibling resentments, and workplace infighting. (The depiction of the nastiness of academic politics is spot on!) In sentences that are concentrated and sharp, Shannon Sanders gets to the heart of each of her characters, and by the end of the book you’ll have a full picture of a remarkable family.

Next, re-posts of my reviews of two novels:

The Kindest Lie     Nancy Johnson     (2021)  The racial tensions that trouble the United States play out through the stories of two families in the months near the 2008 election of Barack Obama. Ruth Tuttle, a successful Black engineer, can’t move forward with her life in Chicago until she finds the baby whom she was forced to give up when she gave birth at age 17 in an industrial town in Indiana. Her search reconnects her with her family and with the family of a young white boy nicknamed Midnight. The author tackles difficult issues of race, class, poverty, and social justice forthrightly and eloquently.

The Turner House     Angela Flournoy (2015) I’m pretty familiar with Detroit, so I can attest that Flournoy has captured the city in its gritty bleakness of the early 2000s as well as, through flashbacks, in its manufacturing glory of the mid-twentieth century. Her angle in is the varying fortunes of the African American Turner family, with thirteen children who were born in the better days and who are aging in the dying urban landscape. Although the cast of characters is huge, Flournoy keeps the plot manageable by developing primarily the stories of the oldest and youngest of this clan. The house that the Turners grew up in is depicted lovingly, as an organism in decline. The Turner House is about working class Detroiters of any race or ethnicity who are trying to maintain family bonds through tough times.

Finally, a re-post of my review of a famous memoir:

Becoming     Michelle Obama     (2018)  The former First Lady’s memoir is as engaging as a page-turner novel; I read it cover-to-cover in one day. This is the same Michelle Obama that you know from talk shows and interviews and from that slam-dunk speech that she gave at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The cadence of the phrases is the same, the warmth is the same, the frankness is the same. For my full review, click here.

Category Novels, Part Three: Southern Novels

What are Category Novels? They’re fictional tales that I’ve grouped together to help my blog-followers zero in on their preferences. A category might be based on

Most novels fall into more than one of my categories. (To see all of them, on a desktop computer, scroll down and to the right to find the Archive of Book Reviews. On a mobile device, scroll way down.)

My category Southern Novels includes some of my all-time favorite books. Click on the titles below to see full reviews.

News of the World     Paulette Jiles     (2016)  In post-Civil-War Texas, a traveling performer agrees to make a dangerous journey to deliver an orphan to her aunt and uncle. (The film, with Tom Hanks, is also terrific.)

Where the Crawdads Sing     Delia Owens     (2018)  The Marsh Girl roams the lush swamps of coastal North Carolina and meets both friends and foes. Evocative nature prose and a devilish mystery.

Watershed     Mark Barr     (2019)  In 1930s rural western Tennessee, an impoverished agrarian community is confronted with technology that will profoundly change lives.

Heart of Palm     Laura Lee Smith  (2013)  A family tale populated with gun-totin’, hard-lovin’, rip-roarin’ Southerners—plus deftly developed story lines.  


And here is a very recent Southern Novel that I’ve read.

The Caretaker     Ron Rash     (2023) 

Jacob and Naomi Hampton have married against the wishes of Jacob’s well-off parents, who have disinherited him, and Naomi is pregnant when Jacob is drafted to serve in the Korean War. “Caretaker” has double meaning in this superb novel, set mainly in North Carolina. Blackburn Gant is the caretaker for the local cemetery in the small town of Blowing Rock, and he’s also watching out for Naomi while Jacob, his best friend, is off soldiering. The plot gets very thorny when Jacob is wounded in Korea. Novelist Ron Rash, writing in the tradition of John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers, makes you worry about all sorts of terrible denouements, and he adds enough mildly macabre elements to qualify this novel as Southern Gothic. The characters are skillfully drawn, and the language shines with beauty in its spareness.

Author Spotlight: Allison Montclair, AKA Alan Gordon

  • The First Book in the Sparks and Bainbridge Series

I’ve gobbled up all five books in the Sparks and Bainbridge historical mystery series by Allison Montclair. To catch you up, here’s a re-post of my review of the inaugural book, which you should be sure to read first!

The Right Sort of Man     Allison Montclair      (2019)  In the wake of World War II, women who had taken on substantial roles in the war effort were often expected to walk away from stimulating, remunerative work to become housewives. Recently, a number of nonfiction titles, novels, and films have been exploring the ramifications of this cultural shift. For example, in the PBS series The Bletchley Circle a cast of brilliant (fictional) female codebreakers become freelance detectives, solving murders after the war. On this blog, I’ve reviewed several novels treating the issue of women adjusting to wartime and to the post-war economy and society; see links at the end of this post.

In the novel The Right Sort of Man, Iris Sparks can’t reveal her wartime work because of Britain’s Official Secrets Act, but she clearly was a spy for the Allies. The story starts in 1946, and Iris demonstrates her chops through her contacts in high places, her sharp intellect, and her ability to wield a knife against an aggressor. She has met Gwen Bainbridge, a wealthy widow who was so devastated by the loss of her husband in the war that she was confined for several months to a mental institution and lost custody of her young son. Iris and Gwen decide to become partners in establishing a marriage bureau—Iris to have gainful employment as a single woman, and Gwen to reclaim her place in the world. The services that Iris and Gwen offer are in demand as Britons return to civilian life and seek the comforts of home and family.

Alas, after only a few months of operation, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau loses one of its female clients to murder, and a man whom the bureau has matched her with is charged with the crime. Iris and Gwen have vetted their clients thoroughly and are convinced that the wrong person has been arrested. To see justice done and save the reputation of their firm, they set out to find the real perpetrator. In the course of their investigation, they run into black market gangs finding ways around Britain’s strict war-related rationing laws, which were not fully phased out until 1954.

The action moves forward, and the personalities develop, primarily through dialogue, and that dialogue is quick-witted, reflecting Iris and Gwen’s intelligence and perceptiveness.  These two women have Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction as well as skills in subterfuge and in the discernment of the truthfulness of those they are interviewing. Some complex sub-plotting centers on Iris’s sex life, which is, to use Gwen’s descriptor, “adventurous.”

Who is the novelist? Allison Montclair is a pseudonym for an experienced fiction writer who’s venturing into the 20th-century-mystery genre with The Right Sort of Man. It’s a highly successful venture, capturing the immediate post-war period in London and unveiling the lives of two women who survived and thrived.

For other excellent fictional treatments of women’s roles in Britain in World War II and afterwards, see my reviews of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs mysteries (2003-present) and of Anthony Quinn’s Freya (2017). On the American side of the Atlantic, check out Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach (2017), and for women in post-war Germany see Jessica Shattuck’s The Women in the Castle (2017).

  • The Next Four Books in the Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery Series

Although each of these titles has a separate murder mystery for Iris and Gwen to solve, there are through-lines that develop over the course of the series. Iris tries to figure how her espionage experience will fit into the post-war world, and her romantic life gets more and more complicated. Gwen keeps struggling to have her commitment as a “lunatic” legally reversed, so that she can regain custody of her young son and become independent from her in-laws. In each of the books, post-WWII London is the vivid backdrop. For best results, read the novels in order of publication.

A Royal Affair     Allison Montclair     (2020)  Iris and Gwen are hired to investigate a potential problem with the engagement of Princess Elizabeth to her prince.

A Rogue’s Company     Allison Montclair     (2021)  In another rollicking, intricately plotted mystery, the two protagonists end up in back alleys with desperate criminals.

The Unkept Woman     Allison Montclair     (2022)  Iris’s past associations as a spy for Britain during World War II intrude on her postwar job at the marriage bureau.

The Lady from Burma     Allison Montclair     (2023)  A woman dying of cancer contracts with the marriage bureau to find a second wife for her husband, a renowned entomologist. But is her subsequent death a suicide or a murder?

  • About Allison Montclair/Alan Gordon

How did author Alan Gordon became Allison Montclair? Here’s the story: https://www.jungleredwriters.com/2022/07/introducing-real-allison-montclair.html

Under his own name, Alan Gordon has published the eight delightful medieval mysteries in the Fools Guild series. Theophilos and Claudia, a married pair of jesters and acrobats, travel widely and solve crimes in the time of the Crusades. 

From the Middle Ages to 1946 London, Alan/Allison is an author all historical-mystery lovers will want to take a look at.

Author Spotlight: Richard Russo

I’m always assured of a good read when Richard Russo’s name is on the cover. Russo has the capacity to explore the internal musings of his blue-collar characters while advancing a complicated plot, so he gets me totally invested in his characters’ happiness. Of course, not everyone in our world ends up happy.

  • The Fool Trilogy

Back in 1993, Russo published Nobody’s Fool, which turned out to be the first in a series of novels all set in the decaying upstate New York town of New Bath. It helps if you read the three novels in order, but you can pick up the story anywhere along the line.

In Nobody’s Fool, set in 1984, Russo introduced Donald Sullivan, called “Sully.” At age 60, Sully has survived a number of setbacks in his rather dissolute life, but he’s buoyed by his wacky friends. (The movie adaptation of this novel starred a cantankerous Paul Newman.)

Everybody’s Fool, which came out in 2016, is set a decade after Nobody’s Fool. Russo enlarges the cast of characters and presents a flurry of incidents—sometimes hilarious and sometimes pitiable—over a two-day period.

The recently published Somebody’s Fool (2023) is the third installment. Russo moves far ahead in time, to the 2010s. Sully is dead, but his son Peter, now middle-aged, is one of the main characters. Many other folks from the previous two novels are also still around. New Bath has been annexed by the nearby Schuyler Springs, creating multiple plot threads. And, over one weekend in February, a decomposing body is found in an abandoned hotel, an estranged son returns to town, police brutality incidents are revealed, and the romantic entanglements of several couples are altered. There’s never a dull moment!

Prominent among the life lessons embedded in Somebody’s Fool is this one: when life gets tough, you have to try something. If that doesn’t work, you have to try something else. And the overall narrative theme of the novel? “How complex and multilayered even the simplest of lives [are], how they [intersect] in strange, unpredictable ways, people magically appearing at just the right moment, others turning up at the exact wrong one, often giving the impression that fate must be at work, though in all probability it was little more than chance.” (345). I loved Russo’s unconventional characters so much that I did not want this lengthy novel to end.

  • The Pulitzer Winner

Russo won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for Empire Falls, which broke my heart two decades ago. The novel centers on Miles Roby, manager of the Empire Diner, and the other inhabitants of a dying town in Maine. Empire Falls is a must-read in the Russo canon, and there’s a star-studded television mini-series (2005) based on it.

  • Other Russo Offerings

I’ve reviewed a number of Richard Russo’s other writings, both fiction and nonfiction, on this blog in the past. Check out my comments on Elsewhere, That Old Cape Magic, and The Destiny Thief, and my lengthier review of Chances Are . . .

For fans of the contemporary American novel, Richard Russo is essential.

Author Focus: Curtis Sittenfeld

The sophisticated and sassy author Curtis Sittenfeld burst onto the scene in 2005 with her novel Prep, about life in an elite East-Coast boarding school, and she’s been going strong ever since. Sittenfeld has a knack for naturalistic dialogue and page-turning plots. Here are my reviews of five of her books; two of the reviews are reposts.

The Man of My Dreams     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2006)  This early work by Sittenfeld (right after the blockbuster Prep) explores the fears and fantasies of a young woman, from high school into her late twenties. Hannah Gavener is not a very likeable person, but the reader develops sympathy for her because she’s so self-doubting. She desperately seeks a male partner, hoping that marriage and children and domesticity will solve all her problems, but the men in her life either smother her with care or don’t care for her enough. I found the ending of this novel structurally unconvincing, but the insights into a young woman’s mind are worth the read.

Eligible     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2016)  Part of the propulsiveness of this novel lies in its being a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Set in Cincinnati in 2013-2014, Eligible follows all five of the Bennet sisters (Jane, Liz, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia) as they pursue or fail to pursue multiple romantic options. Their father is as droll as Austen’s Mr Bennet, their mother as ditsy as Austen’s Mrs Bennet. I gulped down the chapters, anxious to learn how Sittenfeld had transformed the next bit of early-18th-century narrative to 21st-century sensibilities. (One major approach: lots more sex.)

You Think It, I’ll Say It     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2018)  The ten short stories in this collection reveal Sittenfeld’s wide-ranging understanding of women’s roles in romantic relationships, in parenting, in the workplace, and even in volunteer activities. As each story presents a different set of characters, human foibles are certainly on display, but so is human compassion. I especially like that many of the offerings are set in non-coastal places such as Houston, Kansas City, and St Louis, underscoring the ordinariness of the plots, even though some of the plots are pretty zany. Of course, zaniness is a characteristic of twenty-first-century life.

Rodham     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2020)  What if Hillary Rodham had not married Bill Clinton in 1975? This alternate version of Hillary’s life starts out hewing pretty closely to well-known facts—Hillary goes to college at Wellesley and then to law school at Yale, where she meets Bill. But at that point the novel follows a different trajectory, with Hillary as an unmarried law professor and politician (and Bill on another path also). Throughout, the portrayal of Hillary is, for me, totally believable, and the dialogue is especially realistic. Sittenfeld takes readers on a fun ride through the ”what ifs” with Rodham.

Romantic Comedy     Curtis Sittenfeld     (2023) Go behind the scenes in 2018 at The Night Owls, a not-very-disguised version of Saturday Night Live, to meet Sally Milz, a comedy writer in her late thirties who has often been disappointed in love. Meet a guest host of the show, pop star Noah Brewster. Watch Sally develop a crush on Noah and then accidentally insult him so that their light flirtation ends. Next, skip to the year 2020, in the depths of the COVID pandemic, and read emails between Noah and Sally. Speculate on whether this romance will re-blossom. As befits a late-night comedy show, the scripts that Sally writes can be raunchy, but Sittenfeld’s depiction of modern America is spot on.

 

 

 

A Grab Bag of Novels

Historical Fiction, Medieval Variety:

The Maiden of All Our Desires     Peter Manseau     (2022)  We can’t escape our involvement in planetary calamities, as the 14th-century inhabitants of a small, isolated convent in the north of England discover. This novel is set on a single day, during a fierce December blizzard, twenty years after the peak of the Black Plague. (There are multiple flashbacks to the plague years, including one very violent scene.) Several lives and past lives intersect, including that of the abbess, the former abbess, the resident priest, one of the nuns, and a young woman who lives in the nearby forest. The novelist evokes the period effectively, with gorgeous descriptors. I predicted the denouement early on, but I couldn’t help wondering how the nuns managed to brave the blizzard without cloaks!

Modern Families:

Hello Beautiful     Ann Napolitano     (2023)  William Waters had a terrible childhood in Boston. When he goes off to Northwestern University in Chicago on a basketball scholarship, he meets Julie Padavano and her gregarious Italian American family, which includes her three sisters. He begins to think that his life is turning around, but his dark past is only temporarily tamped down. All sorts of trouble ensues. The novelist echoes some of the themes of the four sisters in Little Women, however it isn’t necessary that you pull out your tattered copy of Louisa May Alcott’s classic to appreciate the well-drawn characters in Hello Beautiful. The Padavano sisters’ love for each other—and for William—shines brightly as they work their way through the decades of their lives to the chapters that conclude in 2008. And you don’t have to understand basketball, either.

Story of a Bad Guy:

The Complicities     Stacey D’Erasmo     (2022)  How might the people who surround white-collar criminals, such as the charismatic con man Alan, be complicit in their crimes? Readers get insights into several of Alan’s relationships. When Alan goes to prison, Suzanne, his first wife, divorces him and tries to reinvent herself. Lydia, his second wife, has survived a terrible accident and is a recovering alcoholic. Sylvia, his mother, is an aging free spirit who wants to reconnect with her estranged son. Noah, Alan’s adult son, always remains loyal to him. I found the shifting narrative viewpoints sometimes hard to reconcile, but the characters here are well developed, and the moral issues are thought-provoking. Oh, and a beached whale plays a major role.

Dystopian Fiction (Story of Extremely Bad Guys):

The Testaments     Margaret Atwood     (2019)  Dystopian novels and movies creep me out, but I had to read Atwood’s Booker-prize winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (published in 1985), which I reviewed recently. For decades, fans begged Atwood to explain how her fictional society of Gilead (theocratic, brutal, corrupt) finally fell, leading to the restoration of the United States. The “testaments” of the sequel title are documents written by three women—two of them are within Gilead, and the third, though in Canada, is unknowingly linked to events in Gilead. The narrative moves from one testament to another at a brisk pace, so I kept turning those pages even as I shuddered at the gruesome atrocities depicted. The highly skilled Atwood has written this sequel with meticulous care, offering truly sobering parallels between Gilead and the United States of the early 21st century.

 

Contemporary Novels by Reliable Authors

Lucy by the Sea     Elizabeth Strout     (2022)  Pulitzer-winner Strout has helped her readers examine many of the complexities of the human condition in her eight previous highly acclaimed books. Now, in Lucy by the Sea, she looks at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, through the eyes of Lucy Barton (a character she’s developed in My Name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible, and Oh William). Lucy’s ex-husband, William, is a scientist who sees how dangerous the coronavirus is. In early March 2020, he insists that Lucy leave New York City for a rental house on the coast of Maine. In first-person narrative, Lucy details the interactions she has with family and friends during 2020 and early 2021. Lucy by the Sea is the first discussion of the pandemic I’ve read that truly captures the sense of desperation and loneliness that the pandemic has wrought. One quote: “I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone.” (245)

The Master Bedroom     Tessa Hadley     (2007)  Kate Flynn is brilliant, brash, and beautiful—never boring. She takes a leave from her teaching job in London and goes back to her home town in Wales to care for her elderly mother, who has dementia. Kate’s entanglement in the lives of old friends allows the author to explore the complexities of desire, ambition, and generational ties. I’ve been bingeing on the well-crafted books by Britain’s Tessa Hadley; they are among my favorites, as you can see in this recent post.

The Sweet Remnants of Summer     Alexander McCall Smith     (2022)  In this 14th offering in the Isabel Dalhousie series, it’s a warm September in Edinburgh. Isabel and her “dishy” husband, Jamie, get themselves involved as mediators—or possibly interveners—in two interpersonal dramas in the worlds of art, music, and wine. Glimpses of Isabel’s personal life, and of her job as editor of a philosophy journal, punctuate the gentle, easygoing story. I’ve reviewed novels in this series previously. The setting and the characters rank high for me in McCall Smith’s voluminous catalog of titles.







The Popularity of Historical Novels, Part 2

I posted last week about the publishing trend over the past two decades toward historical novels. This week my focus is a specific historical period: the decade after World War II, a time of immense cultural change, both in a devastated Europe and in the United States, which sent soldiers to the war. I recently read two novels set in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The Tobacco Wives     Adele Myers     (2022)

In 1946 North Carolina, a war widow dumps her daughter, Maddie Sykes (age 15), at the house of Aunt Etta, in a town totally dominated by the tobacco industry. Maddie is expected to assist Etta with sewing gowns for the wives of local executives, but when Etta becomes seriously ill, all the work falls to Maddie. She rises to the challenge, all the while dealing with a secret that she’s stumbled upon about the harmful health effects of tobacco. (The total obliviousness of the characters to the hazards of smoking seems incredible today, but it was the norm until near the end of the 20th century.) Despite some anachronisms and unlikely coincidences, Myers draws her characters well and propels the plot along with realistic dialog.

Jacqueline in Paris     Ann Mah     (2022) 

It’s a historic fact that Jacqueline Bouvier (later Kennedy, and even later, Onassis) spent her junior year of college, 1949-1950, studying in Paris. Although Europe was still recovering from the destruction of WWII, Paris was magical for Jackie O, as she attested many times. Novelist Mah spins out this year in France, reconstructing and imagining the details, as Jacqueline attends lectures, dances in jazz clubs, falls in love, and encounters the post-war conflicts between democracy and communism. Any fictionalized version of the life of a famous person is risky. This one hits the mark and is highly recommended.

 

In the archives of the Cedar Park Book Blog I found a number of other novels set in post-WWII Europe. Click on the title to be taken to my review. 

Freya     Anthony Quinn     (2017) The friendship of two British women, traced from the end of World War II through the 1960s, with insights into feminism, marriage, and culture.

The Women in the Castle     Jessica Shattuck     (2017) Hardscrabble life in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, with reflections on the rise of Hitler.

The Italian Party    Christina Lynch     (2018) As effervescent as the Campari-and-soda drinks that the characters order constantly, but the sunny picture darkens as we learn the many secrets of an American couple living in Siena, Italy, in 1956.  

The Right Sort of Man     Allison Montclair     (2019) In post-WWII London, two bright women start a marriage bureau and end up solving a crime. Spunky and sparkly. This is the first in the Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery Series, which includes A Royal Affair (2020), A Rogue’s Company (2021), and The Unkept Woman (2022), all of which I’ve reviewed. For best enjoyment, read the books in order.   




The Popularity of Historical Novels, Part 1

If you look beyond science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels (as the Cedar Park Book Blog does), your options for current fiction reading are weighted heavily toward the historical. Why? This podcast from On the Media suggests a few possible reasons. For example, fiction can draw attention to neglected parts of history. And some authors want their work to be more timeless, not dated by references to modern technology, which changes rapidly.

So it isn’t just my imagination that historical novels have been proliferating for the past two decades! In my scanning of book-lovers’ sites such as The New York Times, BookPage, and Goodreads, I’ve found that history is hot. In particular, there’s recently been a glut of novels about women spies during World War II. I haven’t reviewed many of these spy novels because they’ve proved too violent or sad for my taste—plus I don’t like to get stuck in one time period with my reading.

Over the past six years, I’ve featured a wide range of historical novels and historical mysteries, set from ancient times up into the 20th century. This week, I scoured the Cedar Park Book Blog archives to highlight some of my best-loved historical reads, in random order. Click on the title to be taken to my full review!

News of the World Paulette Jiles     (2016) In post-Civil-War Texas, a traveling performer agrees to make a dangerous journey to deliver an orphan to her aunt and uncle. (The film, with Tom Hanks, is also terrific.)

The Hearts of Men     Nickolas Butler     (2017) Starting in 1962 at a Boy Scout camp in northern Wisconsin, this novel follows a boy’s difficult life in a complex United States.

Where the Crawdads Sing     Delia Owens     (2018) The Marsh Girl roams the lush swamps of coastal North Carolina and meets both friends and foes. Evocative nature prose and a devilish mystery.

Peculiar Ground     Lucy Hughes-Hallett     (2018) A densely layered novel set on a fictional Oxfordshire estate in 1663, 1961, 1973, and 1989. Features walls—border walls, the Berlin Wall, walls of inclusion, walls of exclusion, and many others. 

The Light Between Oceans     ML Stedman     (2012) In the 1920s, a lighthouse keeper and his wife, on a remote island off the coast of Western Australia, find an infant in a boat that washes ashore.  Melodramatic but worth the anguish.

The Golden Age Joan London     (2014) In 1953, two adolescents with polio meet in a rehabilitation center in Perth. A moving story that won top prizes in Australia.

The World Of Tomorrow     Brendan Mathews     (2017) Rollicking action at the fabulous New York World’s Fair, in June of 1939, when the Great Depression has eased and World War II was still unimaginable to Americans.

The Ninth Hour     Alice McDermott      (2017) The pros and cons of being Catholic in early 20th-century Brooklyn. Exploring the intersections of morality, religion, and culture in resonant language.

Little Fires Everywhere     Celeste Ng     (2018) Teens in late-1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio, confront incendiary issues of the upper-middle-class: bigotry, greed, and a disdain for those who diverge from the norms set by their communities. 

Pachinko     Min Jin Lee     (2017) A sweeping saga about the struggles of Korean immigrant families in Japan throughout the twentieth century.

A Gentleman in Moscow     Amor Towles     (2016) The amazing adventures of a Russian aristocrat under house arrest in a Moscow hotel from 1922 to 1954.

The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos     Dominic Smith     (2016) The story of a painting and its impact on families in three settings:  The Netherlands 1636-49 (dark, burgher-ruled); New York, 1957-8 (shiny, jazz-filled); and Sydney, 2000 (sunny, cosmopolitan).

West     Carys Davies     (2018) Preposterous plot, peculiar characters, spare language, in a tale that’s akin to ancient myth, set on the North American continent in about 1815.

Barkskins     Annie Proulx     (2016) An expansive account of two French Canadian families and their relationship to the forests of North America over three centuries. Love all those trees!

Watershed     Mark Barr     (2019) In 1930s rural western Tennessee, an impoverished agrarian community is confronted with technology that will profoundly change lives.

Varina     Charles Frazier     (2018) A fictionalized version of the troubled life of the second wife of Jefferson Davis, set in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

The Vineyard     María Dueñas     (2017)     Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García A swashbuckling historical romance that travels to Mexico, Cuba, and Spain in 1861.

The Fortunes     Peter Ho Davies     (2016) Interlocking stories about the experiences of Chinese immigrants in America over the past century.

In a special category, four historical murder mystery series:

The Marco Didius Falco Mystery Series and the sequel Flavia Albia Mystery Series     Lindsey Davis     (1989-present) Complex, fast-paced, satirical, and outrageously funny mysteries set in first-century Rome. Bonus: Learn some Roman history and geography.

The Brother Cadfael Mystery Series     Ellis Peters     (1977-1994) Meet the brilliant and compassionate monk Cadfael, who lives in a monastery in 12th-century Shrewsbury, England, tending his herb garden and rooting out evil.

The Dame Frevisse Mystery Series     Margaret Frazer     (1992-2008) Dame Frevisse, a nun at a fictional Oxfordshire convent in the 15th century, is a practical and clever sleuth, solving personality clashes as well as crimes.

The Roger the Chapman Mystery Series     Kate Sedley     (1991 to 2013) Roger is an engaging, burly fellow with a large backpack of wares. He tramps all around England in the 15th century, unravelling mysteries. 

My recent posts on this blog have also had lots of short reviews of historical fiction. For example:

Historical Fiction, 7th Century to 20th Century

Strong Women of Yore

Historical Fiction Sequels That Can Stand Alone

Among My Faves: Tessa Hadley

British author Tessa Hadley’s writing just keeps getting better with each successive book that she produces. Her plots focus on families, marital relationships, friendship, and the impact of grief. Her characters are primarily middle-class or upper-middle-class British people who are artists or writers or teachers. I find her prose to be both lucid and rich in its deep searches into motivation, desire, and personality. In this review, I take a look at two of Hadley’s books.

Bad Dreams and Other Stories (2017) is a collection of ten short stories, seven of which appeared previously in the New Yorker magazine. To give you a sense of Hadley’s writing, here are selected quotes from four of the stories:

From “An Abduction” 

“Something was revealed in her that was normally hidden: an auburn light in her face, her freckles startling as the camouflage of an animal, blotting up against her lips and eyelids. . . Her family called her pudgy, but she just looked soft, as if she were longing to nestle.” (9) 

From “Bad Dreams” 

“In the lounge, the child paddled her toes in the hair of the white goatskin rug. Gleaming, uncanny, half reverted to its animal past, the rug yearned to the moon, which was balanced on top of the wall at the back of the paved yard.” (118) 

From “Under the Sign of the Moon”

“All the time he was setting out these platitudes with such solemnity, Greta felt sure that they weren’t the real content of his thoughts, just as her own sceptical, condescending cleverness when she argued with him wasn’t the real content of her thoughts either. This conversation took place on the surface, while their real lives were hidden underground beneath it, crouching, listening out, mutely attentive.” (185) 

From “Silk Brocade”

“.  . . on the white walls there were prints of paintings by Klee and Utrillo and a gilt antique mirror with a plant trailing round it. Morning light waited, importantly empty, in the cheval glass.” (205) 

In Hadley’s 2019 novel, Late in the Day, two couples have been friends for decades and are now in their fifties. At the beginning of the book, Lydia’s husband, Zachary, dies suddenly. In deep shock and grief, Lydia comes to stay with Alex and Christine. Hadley explores how each of the three misses Zachary desperately, but she also delves into the interpersonal relationships of all four characters—relationships that have evolved through many changes in their lives. For this she shifts back and forth in time, looking at pivotal events. Again, I offer some key quotations:

“Marriage simply meant that you hung on to each other through the succession of metamorphoses. Or failed to.” (118)

“Both women felt some balance of power in their lives had been restored in relation to their men, after the initial blow of becoming mother to young babies, which had knocked them back; now their children filled them out rather than depleting them.” (161) 

“And we were terribly bored by the Manifesto, couldn’t understand a word of it, we preferred historical novels, really. (236) 

Earlier short story collections by Tessa Hadley include Sunstroke and Other Stories (2007) and Married Love and Other Stories (2013). Earlier novels are Accidents in the Home (2002), Everything Will Be All Right (2003), The Master Bedroom (2007), The London Train (2011), Clever Girl (2013), The Past (2015), and Free Love (2022). I’ve reviewed Free Love on this blog.

Add some of these titles to your list of books to buy or to request from your library!

 

Favorite Reads of 2019

Favorite Reads of 2019

photo by Ed Robertson

photo by Ed Robertson

I’m a finicky reader. About 80% of the books that I check out from my local library never get a review, after undergoing my 50-page test. (To be honest, some don’t make it past page 10.) Reasons that I send books back unfinished and unreviewed? Oh, too much violence or an insipid plot or characters who are so disgusting that I don’t want to get involved with them. And remember, I don’t even check out books in the genres of horror or science fiction or fantasy.

In 2019 I reviewed 72 books on the Cedar Park Book Blog, and picking my favorites was a challenge. The sixteen below are the best of the best! Contemporary fiction rose to the top this year, with eight of the sixteen titles that I selected.

Here are the winners, in alphabetical order by title. The brief descriptions with each are totally insufficient, so be sure to click on the title to go to my full review.  

Becoming by Michelle Obama   The former First Lady recounts her remarkable life as if she’s sitting right in the room with you. MEMOIR

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment   In spare prose, the story of an affair between two jurors sequestered for a sensational murder trial. CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng   An intimate family tale wrapped around a tragic death, probing racism and sexism in 20th-century America.  HISTORICAL NOVEL

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling   Deftly deflates cultural beliefs about immigration law, motherhood, and rural California.  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Henry, Himself by Stewart O’Nan   An introspective, naturalistic portrait of a retired engineer in Pittsburgh.  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

How Not To Die Alone by Richard Roper   A forlorn civil servant in London has a job searching the homes of the deceased for evidence of family. Can he find happiness?  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J Ryan Stradal   A quirky take on the craft brewery phenomenon, featuring feisty women of the upper Midwest. CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Little Faith by Nickolas Butler   A family in rural Wisconsin becomes involved with a religious cult as they try to sort out their relationships. Poignant portraits of varying beliefs.  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Normal People by Sally Rooney   Coming of age, falling in love, and confronting societal constraints, by Ireland’s hottest new novelist.  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout   Don’t miss this sequel to the Pulitzer-winning novel Olive Kitteridge. Linked short stories by a truly gifted American writer. CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield   A nearly drowned young girl is the center of a magical mystery that unwinds along the Thames in the 19th century. HISTORICAL MYSTERY

The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair   In post-WWII London, two bright women start a marriage bureau and end up solving a crime. Spunky and sparkly. HISTORICAL MYSTERY

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames   A boisterous Italian family’s 20th-century immigration saga, starring the women. HISTORICAL NOVEL

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens   A “Marsh Girl” roams the lush swamps of coastal North Carolina and meets both friends and foes. Evocative prose. HISTORICAL MYSTERY

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason   A medical student assigned to an eastern European field hospital confronts the physical and mental damages of WWI. A bleak but rewarding read. HISTORICAL NOVEL

The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz   An invented version of the author Horowitz helps solve a crime in this spritely metafictional British whodunit.  MYSTERY

Happy reading in 2020!  Check back with the Cedar Park Book Blog every Friday for curated recommendations of historical novels, mysteries, and contemporary fiction, plus an occasional social history and memoir. Follow the blog on Facebook to get a reminder.

For more Blogger Favorites, click in the right-hand column.

 

Among My Faves: Mystery Series

Once I find a mystery series I like, I read every installment that’s published. The characters in the series become my friends, whom I want to check in on, whose life adventures I want to follow.

Peters.jpg

I’ve profiled a number of these series already on this blog. In the medieval mystery sub-category, my favorite is Ellis Peters’s classic Brother Cadfael Series, centered on a monastery in 12th-century Shrewsbury, England. In 21 books published between 1977 and 1994, Peters developed the brilliant and compassionate character Cadfael, with excellent historic authenticity.

Among authors of contemporary mystery series, Alexander McCall Smith stands in a category of prolificacy all his own. I’ve reviewed his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series, set in Botswana (1998-present) and his Isabel Dalhousie Series, set in Edinburgh (2004-present).  Both series feature female detectives who investigate primarily non-violent crimes. These novels are definitely not thrillers!

Other mystery series that I’ve reviewed in the past are listed at the end of this post. Here are some new reviews:

Davis.jpg

The Marco Didius Falco Mystery Series and the sequel Flavia Albia Mystery Series by Lindsey Davis (1989-present). 

Falco is a private investigator of thoroughly modern sensibilities who lives in the first-century Roman Empire. By the time he retires after 20 books, his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia, is ready to move into detective work. Many of the novels in these two series take place up and down the seven hills of Rome, but the remarkable mobility of Roman citizens allows the author to set a number of the tales in far-flung provinces of the empire.

Early on, the plebian Falco acquires a patrician girlfriend, Helena Justina, the daughter of a Roman senator. Falco also has an old Army buddy, Lucius Petronius Longus, and a large extended family who figure prominently. The books are best read in sequence, so that you can keep track of the interpersonal relationships that evolve over several decades. Start with Silver Pigs (also published as The Silver Pigs).

The stories are complex, fast-paced, satirical, and outrageously funny. I love how the characters curse, as in this bit from The Third Nero (2017): “Perella exploded with exasperation. ‘Venus and her golden girdle! I can’t leave them alone for a moment without the idle barmpots getting in a twist.’” And I love how Davis portrays the Roman bureaucracy that Falco has to wade through as he takes on assignments from various emperors. “People wonder how the Roman Empire can be managed so successfully. As any scribe would tell you, this is how. Emperors may come and go, bringing more or less chaos, but the bureaucrats keep the wheels turning.”

If you know a little Latin and a little Roman history, you’ll catch a few more of the jokes, but you definitely don’t need a degree in classics to appreciate this series. If you’re familiar with I, Claudius (the 1934 novel by Robert Graves adapted into a 1976 BBC television series), you’ll recognize Davis’s flagrantly anachronistic technique of transposing modern British social constructs to the ancient world.

I grab every one of these books the minute they hit the library shelves.

The Rev. Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Series by Julia Spencer-Fleming (2002-2013, possibly ongoing)

Fleming.jpg

For several years now, fans of Julia Spencer-Fleming have been waiting breathlessly for the next installment in this contemporary mystery series, set in upstate New York.

The character Clare Fergusson served as a combat helicopter pilot in the Army but finds her true vocation as an Episcopal priest. Russ Van Alstyne is the police chief in the small town in which Clare arrives to minister to a faltering congregation. Clare is in bad shape emotionally from her military service; Russ, who is also a veteran, has his own demons. The electricity between these two is crackling from their very first meeting. And did I mention that Russ is married?

I confess that the crimes that occur in the Clare/Russ Series are not the main attraction for me. There are violent scenes that I have to glide past, particularly when they involve fresh human blood on snow banks. I’ve read this series primarily for the interactions of Clare and Russ and for the Episcopal humor. I laughed out loud when Russ came to discuss a case privately with Clare late one spring evening and was shocked to find the church filled with worshipers attending an Easter Vigil service. The non-believer Russ has to learn a lot about Christian customs and has to accept that Clare is going to intervene in his murder cases when she feels a moral obligation to do so. Clare, who is a Southerner, has to get used to both the snowbound winters and hidebound mindsets of rural New York State.

Spencer-Fleming uses dialogue extensively in building her characters, and the dialogue in the Clare/Russ Series is snappy and authentic. The setting is depicted generously and with elegant detail, helping readers feel the biting cold winds of a blizzard, the treacherous slippage of tires on ice-slicked roads. Indeed, the first novel in the series is In the Bleak Midwinter, taking its title from a Christmas carol. Subsequent books are also titled with lines from various hymns, all beloved by Episcopalians.

Be sure to read the eight novels in the series in order, and maybe send Spencer-Fleming a Facebook message, encouraging her to get going on the ninth installment.

& & & & &

My reviews of medieval mystery series:

My reviews of other historical mysteries set in Britain:

My reviews of contemporary mystery series:

My reviews of standalone mystery novels are too numerous to list, but you can click on “Mysteries” in the right-hand column to scroll through them all.

Favorite Reads of 2018

photo: Stanislav Kondratiev

photo: Stanislav Kondratiev

I reviewed 72 books on the Cedar Park Book Blog in the calendar year 2018, and I hosted two additional reviews by a guest blogger. The 15 selections listed here were standouts for me in a year of exceptionally fine reading. You’ll notice that these books are all fiction and are mostly historical fiction. This year, no biographies or social histories made my list of favorites.  

Bear in mind that I never review horror, science fiction, fantasy, or novels with scenes of excessive violence. I haul eight or ten books home from the library every week and reject most of them by page 50. So here are the best of the best, in alphabetical order by title. Click on the title to go to my full review.  

Freya  Anthony Quinn (2017)  HISTORICAL FICTION The friendship of two British women, traced from the end of World War II through the 1960s, with insights into feminism, marriage, and culture. 

Heart of Palm  Laura Lee Smith  (2013)  CONTEMPORARY FICTION A family tale populated with gun-totin’, hard-lovin’, rip-roarin’ Southerners—plus deftly developed story lines.  

Holding Graham Norton (2017)  MYSTERY A village in the west of Ireland, a human skeleton unearthed at a building site, gossip about old love triangles, and a bumbling local police sergeant:  all the ingredients for a classic cozy mystery, but this one goes beyond the genre. 

The Italian Party  Christina Lynch  (2018)  HISTORICAL FICTION As effervescent and rosy as the Campari-and-soda drinks that the characters order constantly, but the sunny picture darkens as we learn the many secrets of an American couple living in Siena, Italy, in 1956.  

The Italian Teacher  Tom Rachman  (2018)  CONTEMPORARY FICTION An inquiry into how to live a meaningful life, centering on the fraught relationship between a famous visual artist and one of his sons. 

Little Fires Everywhere  Celeste Ng  (2018)  HISTORICAL FICTION A story about adolescents in late-1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio, tackles incendiary issues of upper-middle-class Americans: bigotry, greed, and a general disdain for those who diverge in any way from the norms set by their communities. 

Manhattan.jpg

Manhattan Beach  Jennifer Egan  (2017)  HISTORICAL FICTION A noir novel with entangled plot lines, mobsters, and plenty of period detail from 1930s and 1940s New York City, especially the Brooklyn Naval Yard.  

Midwinter Break  Bernard MacLaverty  (2017)  CONTEMPORARY FICTION A masterful study, by an eminent Irish author, of the pleasures and trials of a very long marriage, set in Scotland and the Netherlands. 

The Ninth Hour  Alice McDermott  (2017)  HISTORICAL FICTION Wonderfully resonant prose about the pros and cons of being Catholic in early 20th-century Brooklyn, exploring the intersections of morality, religion, and culture.  

Peculiar Ground  Lucy Hughes-Hallett (2018)  HISTORICAL FICTION A densely layered novel set on a fictional Oxfordshire estate in 1663, 1961, 1973, and 1989, featuring walls—border walls, the Berlin Wall, walls of inclusion, walls of exclusion, and many others. 

Radio Free Vermont  Bill McKibben (2017)  CONTEMPORARY FICTION A local radio show host stumbles into becoming the leader of a movement for Vermont to secede from the United States in this uproarious fable about Trump’s America. 

The Strays  Emily Bitto  (2014/2017)  HISTORICAL FICTION Set in Australia in the 1930s and then the 1980s, a piercingly moving first-person narrative about loneliness, friendship, the art world, and the choices we make.  

Virgil Wander Leif Enger (2018) CONTEMPORARY FICTION In a dying mining town in far northern Minnesota the title character, aided by an ensemble cast, is recovering from a terrible accident. The prose of this novel is quietly dazzling.

West.jpg

West  Carys Davies  (2018)  HISTORICAL FICTION Preposterous plot, peculiar characters, spare language, in a tale that’s akin to ancient myth, set on the North American continent in about 1815, a time when the lure of the western frontier was irresistible.

The World of Tomorrow  Brendan Mathews  (2017)  HISTORICAL FICTION Rollicking action at the fabulous New York World’s Fair, in June of 1939, when the Great Depression has eased and World War II is still unimaginable.

Happy reading in 2019! Keep checking the Cedar Park Book Blog for recommendations!

 

 

Among My Faves—McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series     Alexander McCall Smith

Some of my friends seem abashed to admit that they read a “soft” author like Alexander McCall Smith. His novels run around 225 pages, with simple plots, mostly lovable characters, and generally happy endings. I can consume one in an evening, and I relish every minute of it.

McCall Smith writes most of his books in series, so you get to know the characters and want to find out the next events in their lives. You can, however, select any book from a series as your first foray, and McCall Smith will provide you enough background to get oriented. I’ve reviewed two of his series previously on this blog:  the Isabel Dalhousie series and 44 Scotland Street series. But the grandmother of them all is McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

McCall Smith 3.jpg

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series is set in Botswana, where McCall Smith taught law in the 1980s and for which he plainly has a great affection. After I’d read a couple of the Botswana novels, I educated myself about this nation in southern Africa (bordered by South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe), to get some context. Since Botswana is at 24 degrees south of the equator, and since the Kalahari Desert makes up about 70% of its territory, you’ll find ample references in the novels to hot, dry, dusty, sunny weather conditions. Thanks to cattle farms and the mining of gemstones and precious metals, the economy of Botswana is especially strong, and residents enjoy a good standard of living, especially with respect to education and health care. Still, the AIDS epidemic has hit the country hard, so a recurring feature of McCall Smith’s books is an orphanage that shelters children whose parents have died from AIDS. The Tswana African people are the predominant ethnic group, and Christianity is the predominant religion. English is the official language of Botswana, but you’ll find honorifics in the Setswana language:  “Mma” for women and “Rra” for men. You’ll also find the English adjective “late,” referring to the deceased, used not only as a modifier (“her late father”)  but also as a predicate adjective (“her father was late”). 

Zooming in to the series, you’ll meet Precious Ramotswe, the owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in the capital, Gabarone, a bustling city with a mix of Western amenities and traditional African dwellings and family affiliations. Precious, who is 34 at the start of the series, was raised primarily by her beloved Daddy, the cattle farmer Obed, in a rural village. Although she had a happy childhood, she married the musician Note Mokote, who physically abused her and then abandoned her, leaving her unable to bear children. When her father dies, Precious is able to sell some of his herd to launch her business, the first detective agency in Botswana. She hires the capable Grace Makutsi as her secretary and sets up an office near the auto repair shop of  JLB Matekoni, an excellent mechanic. The detective agency usually takes on cases that involve domestic or business problems—cheating spouses, thieving employees, missing persons, petty vandalism.

Although Mma Ramotswe does thorough surveillance and research, she also applies levelheaded thinking to solve the cases, and she encourages her clients to utilize compromise or forgiveness as part of the solutions. Readers have access to her thoughts as she ponders motives and ethical challenges. McCall Smith’s specialty in his years as a law professor was ethics, and through Mma Ramotswe’s cases he presents many moral quandaries. Is a legal approach or personal reconciliation preferable? What are appropriate punishments for various degrees of crime? How have societal views of women affected attitudes toward domestic violence? At a much lesser level, what should the response be to a coworker who is good hearted and efficient but irritating in manner? These are the kinds of tough questions that underlie the easygoing banter of McCall Smith’s dialogues. He paints scenes of kindness, but not without pushback on ethical issues. Oh, and there’s romance in some of the novels, too.

McCall Smith churns out writing at a prodigious rate. Remember that he’s publishing books in several other series at the same time as he’s writing more for The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In addition to the two series I’ve mentioned above, he has books in the Corduroy Mansions series and in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. He’s also written versions of African folk tales for children, and he’s produced half a dozen freestanding novels for adults. I’d recommend steering away from the freestanding novels, which vary in quality.

But the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is highly recommended. I offer the list to date below. At your library or book store, be sure to look under “M” for “McCall Smith,” since that’s his full, unhyphenated surname.

  • The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (1998)
  • Tears of the Giraffe (2000)
  • Mortality for Beautiful Girls (2001)
  • The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)
  • The Full Cupboard of Life (2003)
  • In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)
  • Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)
  • The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007)
  • The Miracle at Speedy Motors (2008)
  • Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009)
  • The Double Comfort Safari Club (2010)
  • The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (2011)
  • The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (2012)
  • The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (2013)
  • The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Café (2014)
  • The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (2015)
  • Precious and Grace (2016)
  • The House of Unexpected Sisters (2017)

Video side note: In 2008-2009, BBC/HBO broadcast seven episodes of a  television series loosely based on the early books about The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I found that these episodes, filmed in Botswana, admirably captured the spirit of the books. 

Favorite Reads of 2017

I’ve reviewed 101 books on the Cedar Park Book Blog in the calendar year 2017, counting reviews of book series as one book. Thirteen individual titles, listed below, stand out as favorites of mine. Not all were published in 2017, but all were reviewed on my blog in 2017.

Cedar branch.jpg

Pre-eliminated from this list are titles from categories that I don’t read—science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and horror. I also abandon fiction that turns out to have what I consider to be too many scenes of extreme violence. So this list of my favorites is heavy on historical fiction, family sagas, and introspective novels. I was surprised that none of the many mystery novels that I reviewed stood out for me as top choices for the year. I think of myself as loving mysteries, especially historical mysteries, but in selecting favorites I gravitated toward non-mysteries that presented ethical challenges and complex family dynamics. I occasionally review biographies and social histories, and one social/economic history, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, made my list of favorites.

The brief blurbs here do not begin to do justice to these books. Click on the title to go to my full review! Here are my favorite reads of 2017, in alphabetical order by title:

  • Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. Interconnected short stories about families in a rural Illinois town; sort of a sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton.

  • Barkskins by Annie Proulx. A sweeping three-century saga of two French Canadian families and their relationship to the forests of North America.

  • The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble. Looking at mortality and the environment through the lens of a contemporary British family.

  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. An awkward and abused woman in Glasgow faces her demons and seeks to change her life.

  • The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies. Interlocking stories about the experiences of Chinese immigrants in America over the past century.

  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Adventures of a Russian aristocrat under house arrest in a Moscow hotel from 1922 to 1954.

  • The Golden Age by Joan London. Two young polio victims grow up in a convalescent home in Australia in the 1950s.

  • The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos by Dominic Smith. Visiting a painting and its impact on families in the Netherlands (1636-1649), in New York (1957-1958), and in Sydney (2000).

  • Moonglow by Michael Chabon. The fictional biography of a Jewish engineer, recounted by his grandson, touching on key events of the twentieth century.

  • Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. Two neighbors in their 70s find companionship and tackle difficulties together.

  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. The struggles of Korean immigrant families in Japan during the twentieth century.

  • The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon. A huge and detailed nonfiction book, with emphasis on food, housing, sanitation, and consumer goods that have shaped the economy.

  • The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. Hardscrabble life in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, with reflections on the rise of Hitler.

Eight of the titles that I reviewed in 2017 appeared in the New York Times list of “100 Notable Books of 2017.” This list has some overlap with the above list of my own favorites:

I’m looking forward to many more great books in 2018!

 

Among My Faves: David Sedaris

Among My Faves:  David Sedaris

Sedaris.jpg

In 2017, David Sedaris published Theft by Finding:  Diaries 1977-2002. This book of excerpts from Sedaris’s extensive diaries is for serious Sedaris buffs, and I count myself as one. If you’ve never read any work by David Sedaris, do *not* start with Theft by Finding, because it will seem rambling and possibly ridiculous. First go read several of Sedaris’s collections of essays or stories. I especially recommend the following:  

  • Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) has two sections of essays—one about Sedaris’s youth in Raleigh, North Carolina, and one about his move to France as an adult, with his partner, Hugh Hamrick. The essays about Sedaris’s attempts to learn to speak French are so hilarious that I laughed until tears obscured the words on the page.
  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004) has widely-ranging essays, with a focus on family relationships. Sedaris’s realization that he’s gay is presented frankly and yet with comic self-deprecation.
  • When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008) includes one of my favorite Sedaris humor pieces: the story of his trip to Japan to try to quit smoking. His idea was to get far away from his usual haunts to break his habit, but he found that smoking is very common in Japan.
  • Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk:  A Modest Bestiary (2010) is a collection of animal fables, a departure from the usual Sedaris essay form.
  • Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013) continues with Sedaris’s droll observations on humanity. Of particular note is the essay about Europeans’ reaction to the election of President Obama in 2008.

If we have all these other books about David Sedaris’s upbringing and family members and encounters with odd strangers, why do we need to read his diaries? Well, Theft by Finding provides insights into the creative process that produced so many excellently sardonic essays and stories. For example, there are entries that give the background to Sedaris’s most famous piece, “SantaLand Diaries,” about his experiences working as an elf at Macy’s in New York during the Christmas season. “SantaLand Diaries” appears in his 1994 book, Barrel Fever, and also in his 1997 book, Holidays on Ice, but Theft by Finding records the day in December 1992 when Sedaris first read this essay on National Public Radio and caused a sensation among listeners.   

Theft by Finding also includes entries for important events in history, so that you can read Sedaris’s first notice of the AIDS epidemic, as well as his reaction to the attacks on September 11, 2001, while he was living in France. In Theft by Finding you can watch the development of Sedaris’s style, from jotted observations to more expanded commentary on those observations. Sedaris notices absolutely everything and is a master at capturing offbeat, ridiculous, and sometimes illegal activities occurring around him. In his twenties, his existence on the fringes of life, in crime-ridden neighborhoods, put him in the company of panhandlers, drunks, and drug addicts. In mid-life, his expanding celebrity status exposed him to the rich and famous, who can be equally absurd. From reading the diaries, you can see how Sedaris blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, taking scenes from real life, amplifying them, and surrounding them with extraordinary contextualizations.

For years, David Sedaris scrimped by on odd jobs—refinishing furniture, cleaning apartments. He kicked his meth habit, cut out alcohol and tobacco, and by sheer hard work became one of the most celebrated humor essayists in the English language. He’s among my favorites.