Well, the pandemic keeps resurging, and with many activities again restricted, I’m doing a lot of reading.
The Mission House Carys Davies (2020) In 2018 Davies took us to the early-nineteeth-century American frontier with her brilliantly plotted novel West (reviewed here). The Mission House is set in contemporary India and features more of Davies’ unconventional characters: a disabled orphan, a barber who aspires to be a country-Western singer, and a depressive Brit taking a rest-cure. Don’t miss this one.
The Pull of the Stars Emma Donoghue (2020) If you can bear another pandemic story, The Pull of the Stars is the one. Julia Power is a nurse working in a maternity ward in Dublin during the 1918 flu pandemic. She contends not only with an invisible virus but also with lack of supplies, women oppressed by the strictures of the Catholic Church, and her own sexual awakening.
The Goldfinch Donna Tartt (2013) This winner of the Pulitzer Prize is a Bildungsroman, a mystery, a thriller, and a wild drug-fueled ride through a speculative alternate history of New York City. But you can read its nearly 800 pages solely for Tartt’s extraordinarily lush vocabulary and sympathetically drawn characters. I’ve finally caught up with my 2013 must-read list.
Beautiful World, Where Are You Sally Rooney (2021) We can all speculate whether the character of Alice, a bestselling novelist, shares personality traits with Rooney herself, but all the characters in this novel are deftly delineated. Many struggle with how personal fulfillment intersects with global trauma and strife. This is Rooney’s third exploration of the existential angst plaguing Generation Z; her Normal People (reviewed here) is another winner.
Busman’s Honeymoon Dorothy L Sayers (1937) I hadn’t read this Golden Age classic detective novel in decades, so I’d forgotten much of the plot and was once again surprised by its ingenuity. However, for fans of the romance between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, the murder investigation is definitely secondary to the tender scenes between the honeymooners. (Note that in dialogue there are some ethnic stereotypes, common in this era, that are repugnant.)