#108: Now You See Him

Now You See Him, by Eli Gottlieb

(New York: William Morrow, 2008)

Summary:
"The deaths of Rob Castor and his girlfriend begin a wrenching and enthrallingly suspenseful story that mines the explosive terrains of love and paternity, marriage and its delicate intricacies, family secrets and how they fester over time, and ultimately the true nature of loyalty and trust, friendship and envy, deception and manipulation.

"As the media take hold of this sensational crime, a series of unexpected revelations unleashes hidden truths in the lives of those closest to Rob. At the center of this driving narrative is Rob's childhood best friend, Nick Framingham, whose ten-year marriage to his college sweetheart is faltering. Shocked by Rob's death, Nick begins to reevaluate his own life and past, and as he does so, a fault line opens up beneath him, leading him all the way to the novel's startling conclusion."

Opening Line:
"At this late date, would it be fair to say that people, after a fashion, have come to doubt the building blocks of life itself?"

My Take:  
Side note:  While the barrage of end-of-year books I've just posted may have gotten somewhat out of order, I do know this was the last book I read in 2012. Just as parts of our lives have their own soundtracks, much of what I've done and read this past year comes with its own scenic backdrop. (Of course, some of the scenery was prettier than the rest.) There are novels I know I read in Boston because I can't see their covers without picturing the bedspread in my Boylston Street apartment; others I place in D.C. from the memory of painstakingly cramming the flimsy Days Inn pillows into place behind me so I could lean back while I read. Strangely, I could certainly look it up, but I don't know what I read in Pullman. I can see the autumn Palouse light, golden on the rolling hills and tinged pink through my window; I know I sat in the Lighty Hall atrium at lunchtime with a mocha in my right hand and a book in front of me. (What I remember from that trip is the podcast -- Frontline's "God in America" -- that served as its soundtrack: gasping uphill through the wildfire and paper mill smog in Lewiston on the way to the Nez Perce County Fair; twilight descending between the downtown taqueria with the mural and the community garden's fading sunflowers as I took the scenic route back to my hotel; gazing out the airplane window as Minneapolis fell away and realizing I'd be back amid the familiar bustle and mess of my family within hours.)

But this book did not come to Pullman. This one came to Boston over New Year's; I fiddled with the adjustable mattress as I sprawled on my bed in the Revere, the air smelling faintly of peppermint shampoo, Eliza channel-surfing and Mike doing game prep on his laptop at the art deco-inspired desk. Perhaps I sipped a glass of the wine we picked up at the 570 Market on our way back from dinner at Addis; it's likely I schlepped it to Manchester in my satchel when we drove up to see the NH side of the family.

If only. If only I could make the time to capture moments like this more frequently, rather than just sneaking them into tangentially-related blog posts like Jessica Seinfeld's vegetable brownies.

But oh, yeah, the book. Gatsby a la Richard Russo, if you transplant the title character from Roaring '20s Long Island to 21st-century Mohawk small-town Upstate New York. This is a good thing, and a good (if sad) story.

#76: The Folded World

The Folded World, by Amity Gaige

(New York: Other Press, 2007)

Summary:
"Charlie Shade was born into a quiet, prosperous life, but a sense of injustice dogs him. He feels destined to leave his life of "bread and laundry," to work instead with people in crisis. On his way, he meets his kindred spirit in Alice, a soulful young woman, living helplessly by laws of childhood superstition. Charlie's empathy with his clients—troubled souls like Hal, the high-school wrestling champion who undergoes a psychotic break, and Opal, the isolated young woman who claims "various philosophies have confused my life"—is both admirable and nearly fatal. An adoring husband and new father, Charlie risks his own cherished, private domestic world to help Hal, Opal, and others move beyond their haunted inner worlds into the larger world of love and connection."

Opening Line:
"At the moment she was born, five hundred miles away, a small boy, his mouth ringed with jam, paused in his play on the carpet."

My Take:
(Quickly, as I'm both backlogged and -- having gotten up at 2:45 to catch an early flight -- tired.) OK after a bit of a slow, confusing start, but not exceptional. Yet another meta-critique that may or may not have been what the author intended: for a novel that's all about how there are typically many more facets and much more complexity to an individual or a relationship than what we see on the surface, the novel almost seems too much aware of its own intricacy ... to the detriment of the characters and plot.

#71: The Cookbook Collector

The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman

(New York: The Dial Press, 2010)

Summary:

"Heralded as 'a modern-day Jane Austen' by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfullment.

"Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposited in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriends, not so much -- as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

"Passionate, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can't find what we're looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding onto what is real in a virtual world: love that stays."

Opening Lines:
"Rain at last. Much-needed rain, the weathermen called it."


My Take:
A good read -- perfect blend of being interesting enough to keep me turning pages, but substantial enough for me to care about the characters. Not big on weighty matters while I was home last week, or, for that matter, since I've come back to work (and soul-sucking travel) this week. 

#69: The False Friend

The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg

(New York: Doubleday, 2010)

Summary:

"Twenty years after Celia’s best friend, Djuna, went missing, memories of that terrible day come rushing back—including the lie Celia remembers having told to conceal her role in Djuna’s disappearance. But when Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, her family and childhood friends recall that day very differently. As Celia learns more about what may or may not have happened, she becomes increasingly uncertain whom she should trust.

"In The False Friend, Myla Goldberg -- bestselling author of Bee Season -- brilliantly explores the cruelty of children, the unreliability of memory, and the unpredictable forces that shape our adult selves."

Opening Line:
"The sight of a vintage VW bug dredged Djuna Pearson from memory."

My Take: 
Not sure I ever quite bought the book's main premise -- that Djuna wasn't taken away in a strange car, but fell into a hole in the woods, and Celia's been lying about it all these years -- but it still made for an interesting story about our memories of childhood and its friendships, our growing awareness of our parents' imperfections, and how our hometowns look from a distance.

#53: The Interruption of Everything

The Interruption of Everything, by Terry McMillan  

(New York: Viking, 2005)

 

Summary:

Since Terry McMillan’s breakout novel Waiting to Exhale surged onto the bestseller lists, critics and readers alike have been captivated by her irreverent, hilarious, pitch-perfect tales of women’s lives and contemporary issues. With The Interruption of Everything, her sixth novel, McMillan takes on the fault lines of midlife and family life, reminds us once again of the redeeming power of friendship, and turns her eye toward the dilemma of how a woman starts to put her own needs higher on the to-do list while not shortchanging everyone else.

"Marilyn Grimes, wife and mother of three, has made a career of deferring her dreams to build a suburban California home and lifestyle with her husband, Leon. She troubleshoots for her grown kids, cares for her live-in mother-in-law, Arthurine (and elderly poodle, Snuffy); keeps tabs on her girlfriends Paulette and Bunny and her own aging mother and foster sister—all the while holding down a part-time job. But at forty-four, Marilyn’s got too much on her plate and nothing to feed her passion. She feels like she’s about ready to jump. She’s just not sure where.

Highly entertaining, deeply human, a page-turner full of heart and soul, The Interruption of Everything is vintage Terry McMillan—and a triumphant testament to the fact that the detour is the path, and living life 'by the numbers' never quite adds up."

Opening Line:
"The only reason I'm sitting on a toilet seat in the handicapped stall of the ladies' room is because I'm hiding."

My Take:
One of my more expensive finds from the May booksale at the Boston Public Library (think I paid a dollar for it), and a highly entertaining read. Things do tend to wrap up a bit too neatly and quickly at the end, which is often a peeve of mine, but it wasn't necessarily a bad ending -- just one that might have benefited from a loose end or 2.

 

#40: Agent 6

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012)


Summary:
"Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a 'Peace Tour' to NewYork City, he is immediately suspicious. 


"Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal -- one that will end in tragedy.


"In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world -- from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York -- in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6."

Opening Line:
"The safest way to write a diary was to imagine Stalin reading every word."

My Take:
Not bad, but certainly the weakest in the trilogy that includes Child 44 and The Secret Speech. The first two books were solidly entertaining political thrillers; this one alternates between dragging a bit and jumping abruptly across way too much time and space for the reader to have a good grasp of what's going on. It's not clear if Smith's trying to write a thriller about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or a psychological novel about a secret policeman who starts having doubts about the rightness of all he's done, and it doesn't quite fit either niche correctly.

#38: Bed

Bed, by David Whitehouse (New York: Scribner, 2011)


Summary:
"Mal Ede. a child of untamed manners and unbounded curiosity, is the eccentric eldest son of an otherwise typical middle-class family. But as the wonders of childhood fade into the responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits fade too. On his twenty-fifth birthday, disillusioned, Mal goes to bed -- back to his childhood bed -- and never emerges again.


"Narrated by Mal's shy, diligent younger brother, Bed details Mal's subsequent extreme and increasingly grotesque transformation: immobility and a gargantuan appetite combine, over the course of two decades, to make him the fattest man in the world. Despite his seclusion and his refusal to explain his motivations, Mal's condition earns him worldwide notoriety and a cult of followers convinced he is making an important statement about modern life. But Mal's actions will also change the lives of his haunted parents, his brother and the woman they both love, Lou.


"In Bed, David Whitehouse has put a magnifying glass on contemporary society. Hailed as a 'momentous' (The Bookseller) debut in the UK, Bed is a mordantly funny and ultimately redemptive parable about mortality, obesity, celebrity, depression, and the broken promises of adulthood. It is one of the most audacious debut novels in years."

Opening Line:
"Asleep he sounds like a pig hunting truffles in soot."

My Take:
OK but a bit on the underwhelming side. I seem to be saying this a lot, but it was hard to get a good grasp on the characters and their motives. Mal comes off as a spoiled brat (if a deeply troubled one), and both the brother/ narrator (who never does get a name of his own) and their servile, enabling mother are ciphers. I also didn't see a lot of humor here, probably because so much of the description of Mal's condition was so horrifyingly grotesque. Heft was, in my mind, a much stronger book on similar themes.

#34: Swimming

Swimming, by Nicola Keegan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

Summary:

"A spectacular debut about the rise of an Olympic champion -- a novel about competition, obsession, the hunger for victory, and a young girl with an unsinkable spirit struggling to stay afloat in the only way she can.

"When we first meet Pip, the extraordinary heroine of Nicola Keegan's first novel, she is landlocked in a small town in the center of Kansas, literally swimming for her life. Pip is tall and flat and smart and funny and supernaturally buoyant. On land, she has her share of troubles: an agoraphobic mother, a lost father, a drug-addled sister, and a Catholic education dominated by a group of high-energy nuns. But in the water, Pip is unstoppable. In the water, her suffering and rage are transmuted into grace and speed and beauty.

"Swimming is the story of Pip's journey from a small Midwestern swim team to her first state meet, her brutal professional training, and the final, record-breaking swims that lead to her dizzying ascent to the Olympic podium in Barcelona. It's the story of a girl who discovers, in the loneliness of adolescence, in the family tragedies that threaten to engulf her, the resilience of the human spirit and the spectacular power of her own body."

Opening Lines:

"I'm a problematic infant but everything seems okay to me. I'm sitting in Leonard's arms grabbing at his nose."

My Take:

This was one of those books that left me feeling a bit stupid and lightweight because I didn't enjoy it more than I did. It was OK, but as Ron Charles's Washington Post review points out, 

Swimming remains an unusually interior novel, contained entirely in Pip's discordant head. Even the dialogue is mediated by her voice, rendered only in italics, no quotation marks, sometimes slipping into shorthand and ellipses. This can feel a bit claustrophobic, as though we're missing a lot of what's happening outside her narrow attention. Moscow, Paris, Stanford University and other colorful locales are hard to see in much detail through the scrim of Pip's self-absorption, but if you've spent time around precocious teenagers (or been one), you'll recognize how true this sounds.

Charles' review was a positive, almost laudatory one nonetheless, but for me, the interior nature of the novel was a real roadblock. It was hard to get a real feel for any of the other characters, or even a vivid, objective picture of Pip (nee Philomena) herself. I'm glad I read the book and appreciate Keegan's literary skill, but think there's something I just didn't get here.

#24: Cost

Cost, by Roxana Robinson (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).

Summary:
"When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction. In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters' lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life. ... In Cost, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling us with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the reader's sense of discovery and compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end, even as the reader, like the characters, is caught up in Cost's breathtaking pace."

Opening Lines:
"Her memory was gone. It came to Katharine like a soft shock, like a blow inside the head."

My Take:
Aaahh. After working a few late nights, I took last night off, got into bed at 9, and stayed up till I finished Cost. (Admittedly, I was about 2/3 of the way through when I went to bed.) Compelling, beautifully-written story with a fitting, not-too-tidy ending. I particularly appreciated Robinson's skill with both intensity and depth. On one hand, she really takes you inside the seamy, devastating details of Jack's addiction ... on the other, you also feel like you understand and appreciate the other characters' more subtle inner lives. I was especially moved by Julia's parents' struggle with their advancing frailty. If you're looking for a compelling read that's fast-paced enough to hold your interest, but substantial enough that you don't feel like you've wasted the time it took to read it. this one's a keeper.

#15 - Room

Room, by Emma Donoghue (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2010).

Summary: "To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination -- the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe below Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night in case Old Nick comes.

"Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held since she was nineteen -- for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation -- and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

"Told in the poignant and funny voice of Jack, Room is a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child. It is a shocking, exhilarating, and riveting novel -- but always deeply human and always moving. Room is a place you'll never forget."

Opening Lines: "Today I'm five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I'm changed to five, abracadabra."

My Take: O. M. G. It's not often that I read a book that's generated so much buzz without feeling a let down, but this is most certainly one of those times. In a word, Room is brilliant. I came home from Job #2 & stayed up way later than I should have last night (well, at least it was late for me) finishing it; I couldn't wait to find out how things resolved.

The above summary provides the basic premise for those who've somehow missed the corona of reviews this book's generated over the past year or so. Old Nick has held Ma captive in Room for 7 years, ever since kidnapping her off the street when she was 19, and Jack's lived his entire 5 years within Room's four windowless walls. From some inexplicable reservoir of strength, Ma has managed to give Jack a remarkably healthy and secure childhood, considering. He exercises every day (piling all the furniture in the center of the room and running laps on Track, jumping on Bed a/k/a Trampoline), reads and writes and knows every story his mother can think of, and treasures the toys they've made from eggshells and old vitamin bottles. Ma strictly limits their TV viewing, is absolutely insistent on brushing teeth after each meal, and reads Dylan the Digger (one of a tiny handful of books in Room) Over. And. Over. Again. even when it gets on her last nerve. She tucks Jack into a cozy nest in Wardrobe each night, desperate to keep Old Nick from seeing him on those occasions when he stops by. Perhaps most remarkably, she never gives up hope; every weekday, she and Jack stand on Table to get as close to Skylight as they can, and scream as loud as possible in hopes that someone will hear. And it took me a while to realize that the light-flickering that occasionally wakes Jack at night is Ma's determined attempt to signal someone -- anyone -- who might see the light and investigate.

In short, Ma's prison is Jack's whole world. As she explains later, he knows the difference between real (what's inside Room) and TV, but not between Room and Outside; she can't bear to tell him that there's a whole world of fun that he's missing out on.

To Donoghue's credit, as compelling as the world she creates inside Room for Ma and Jack is, the latter part of the novel -- in which the two finally do escape -- is at least as intriguing and provocative. We've all heard the news stories about kidnap victims long given up for dead and then freed after years and years have gone by, but Room's exploration of what it's like for Ma to re-enter the world and Jack to experience Outside for the first time is absolutely stunning. For years, Ma has ached to see her parents and brother Paul again, to swing with Jack as she once did with Paul in the backyard hammock ... only to find that her parents' marriage didn't survive their grief at losing her (Ma's mother never gave up hope; her father believed her dead and even held a memorial service). Jack's first-ever outing without Ma -- a trip to the Museum of Natural History with Paul and his family -- is rescheduled, when he's overwhelmed by what's supposed to be just a quick pit stop at the local mall. Likewise, his newfound grandmother takes him to a playground only to find that he doesn't know how to play with other children. Trapped indoors for years, both Jack and Ma sunburn at the drop of a hat. That's probably more than enough spoilers to tease those of you (all my legions of readers), but I can't say it loudly enough: You must read this book.

#82 - A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (New York: Random House, 2010).

Jacket Summary: "Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

"We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life -- divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house -- and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his yough, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang -- who thrived and who faltered -- and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

"A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both -- and escape the merciless progress of time -- in the transporting realms of art and music."

Opening Lines: "It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel. Sasha was adjusting her yellow eye shadow in the mirror when she noticed a bag on the floor beside the sink that must have belonged to the woman whose peeing she could faintly hear through the vaultlike door of a toilet stall."

My Take: One of the precious few perks my current job offers is access to a library that, while small in size, seems to have plenty o' hot new releases in stock months before I'd find them in the big, shiny, public libe downtown. Here's hoping this will be more entertaining and less dismal than I need right now.

Well, color me impressed. I'd expected an amusing if sometimes bleak story of angsty, self-destructive urban hipsters. Instead, Goon Squad was ... well, it's hard to describe. To some extent, it's a story about Bennie and Sasha, in that we do learn about their pasts and the future directions their lives take. (No, they don't fall in love and live happily ever after, or even engage in a quick fling. Thank you, Ms. Egan.) And yeah, it's also a story about people whose connections to these two are somewhat peripheral: Lou Kline's oldest children, Charlie and Rolph, as teens years earlier, on an African safari; Bennie's old friends and bandmates, uber-freckled Rhea, her best friend Jocelyn, and reclusive musical wunderkind Scotty; Bennie's ex-wife Stephanie; Stephanie's one-time boss, publicist/ dragon lady La Doll (nee Dolly); Dolly's phenomenally charismatic daughter Lulu; Sasha's own hip college pals, Lizzie and Drew.

Beyond that, it's hard to describe a single plot, as the book is more a collection of vignettes. (And yes, as the dust jacket suggests, a later section is told from the perspective of one protagonist's pre-teen daughter ... in PowerPoint. Believe it or not, it works.) I've been saying this a lot lately, but this isn't the kind of book I usually like; I want a linear plot, darn it, and I don't normally care for short stories (which this both is and isn't). But perhaps I need to rethink my preferences -- this book really was exhilarating, and just plain fun.

#45 - Secrets of Eden

Yesterday -- only a day overdue! -- I finished Secrets of Eden (New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2010).

Jacket summary: "'There,' says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, finds his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about .. angels.

"Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice's daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor for the girl and a shoulder for Stephen -- who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.

"But then the state's attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself ... and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew."

Opening line: "As a minister I rarely found the entirety of a Sunday service depressing."

My take: Initially, I felt like I was reading the much-revised final version of a story that started out as The Law of Similars. I got over it -- Secrets ultimately proved to be a stronger book -- but it nonetheless had its flaws, and is a long way from being as compelling as Midwives or The Double Bind.

Set in contemporary, bucolic Haverhill, Vermont, Secrets of Eden is narrated in turn by four different characters: Stephen Drew, the (so it seems) unusually bereaved and guilty pastor who baptized Alice only hours before her death; state attorney Catherine Benincasa, whose storybook family life contrasts dramatically with the horrors she sees in her work, and who becomes suspicious of Drew almost immediately; Heather Laurent, rock star author whose hippie-dippie, New Age-y beliefs about angels stem from a pivotal moment in her own tragic childhood; and Katie, the Haywards' now-orphaned 15-year-old daughter and all-around Good Kid, whose future the others can only begin to imagine.

You just know when you start a book like this that there's going to be a twist at the end. There is, of course, and I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not guessing correctly what it would be. We do learn, fairly early on, that whether or not it resembles Eden, there are secrets aplenty in Haverhill. Alice's diary is found, and its easily-deciphered code reveals that Stephen was her lover as well as her pastor. Crime scene analysis (I'll spare you the grisly details, which seemed a bit over the top to me) suggests that while George Hayward may have killed Alice, he probably didn't shoot himself. And Stephen, whose faith was faltering even before Alice's murder, feels called to leave his pulpit and Haverhill ... only to arrive in New York City on Heather's doorstep. Understandably, this starts to look a little suspicious.

Perhaps the book would have been more compelling had the narrators been introduced in a different order. Other reviewers have complained that Stephen is unlikeable, and while I don't disagree, I think the bigger problem is that he's just not very interesting. This is too bad, as the introductory chapter -- in which he ponders his growing irritation with the (in his words) whiny concerns his church members bring forward for prayer each Sunday -- has some promise; suggesting a disillusionment with the ministry that's at once funny and sad. Likewise, Catherine Benincasa, the second narrator, just doesn't seem to fit into the story all that well. Sure, I understand her role as the state's attorney, but we see very little of her actually interacting with Stephen, Katie, or any of the other principals. It's as though Bohjalian dropped her in to provide explanations, forgetting that it's always more interesting to be shown than to be told.

Heather's narrative is more solid, and the character more likeable, than the previous two, but as with Law of Similars, it's hard to understand how she and Stephen become romantically involved. Given that she herself was orphaned by her own parents' murder-suicide, after witnessing years of their abuse, her empathy for Katie makes sense, but I think we'd have had a better story had the author not needed to shoehorn this whirlwind love affair between troubled souls in there.

Katie's section seemed to me the strongest of the four, probably because Bohjalian succeeds in capturing the minutae that make an adolescent character believable: her awkwardness about imposing on her best friend's family, who take her in after her parents die; her bemused observation about teachers giving her a free pass; her complicated views and feelings about her parents' marriage. Unfortunately, the skillful way in which she's rendered doesn't manage to give us a deeper understanding of her parents, or even get to know Heather and Stephen more thoroughly. In the end, it's only mildly interesting to find out what really happened, and only Katie we can bring ourselves to care or wonder about once the book ends.

#35 - Little Bee

Wow. Little Bee (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), by Chris Cleave, was awesome. Not in the flip, synonym-for-"cool" way the word's come to be used since, oh, the 1980s, but in the classic, "stunning, sobering, worthy of awe" sense.

Summary (from Booklist Review): "Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural immigration removal center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah's London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah's Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee's elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself." -Donna Seaman

Opening line: "Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl."

My take: A beautiful, moving, and tremendously original story. As the less-than-descriptive jacket blurb suggests, "the magic is in how the story unfolds," so I'll try not to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that at some point before the story opens, the English Sarah and the Nigerian Little Bee met on a Nigerian beach. Between that meeting and their unexpected reunion in London two years later, Sarah has lost a finger and her husband, the depressed and inscrutable Andrew, and Little Bee has lost her beloved big sister Nkiruka. How this all happens, and how Little Bee comes to ring Sarah's doorbell on the morning of Andrew's funeral, makes for a breathtaking and horrifying read. Don't miss this one.

#32 - Noah's Compass

It's been a busy weekend, both book- and otherwise. Stay tuned for a blogolanche, starting with Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

Jacket summary: "Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.

"His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is -- well, something quite different."

Opening line: "In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job."

My take: A gentle book, rather than a life-changing one, but I enjoyed it all the same. Something about it evokes Tyler's The Accidental Tourist, though I haven't read that one in years; perhaps it's that Liam's personality has shades of AT's Macon Leary, or that the quirky and vaguely pathetic Eunice reminds me of AT's dog trainer/ love interest Muriel Pritchett. If you can't get this from the text itself, the title suggests what it is Tyler's asking us to consider: How do we navigate through our lives when all the familiar landmarks are gone?

For Liam, the answers are none too quick in coming. Even before he is injured, the beginning of the story finds himself "interested" in the prospect of downsizing and economizing, but it's a muted enthusiasm at best. As he settles into bed on his first night in his new condo, he muses:

"Most probably ... this would be the final dwelling place of his life. What reason would he have to move again? No new prospects were likely for him. He had accomplished all the conventional tasks -- grown up, found work, gotten married, had children -- and now he was winding down.

"This is it, he thought. The very end of the line. And he felt a mild stirring of curiosity."

Once he awakes in the hospital, though, with a concussed head and a bitten, bandaged hand, he becomes desperate to reconstruct what happened. His family, such as it is, offers little help. Ex-wife Barbara is too busy ranting about Liam's choice of apartment, and eldest daughter Xanthe is convinced the culprit is Damian, her younger sister's boyfriend, who helped Liam move. Middle daughter Louise, a fundamentalist Christian stay-at-home mom pregnant with her second child, seems wrapped up in other things, while youngest daughter Kitty sees this mainly as an opportunity to move in with Liam and away from her constant squabbles with Barbara.

Undeterred, Liam seeks the help of Dr. Morrow, an acclaimed neurologist whose son he'd tutored many years back. While the doctor himself offers little practical assistance for Liam's condition, Liam encounters Ishmael Cope, a venerable and wealthy local businessman, in Morrow's office. Upon learning that Cope has a "professional rememberer" -- a hired staffer whose job is to attend him, take notes, and do whatever else she can to supplement Cope's failing memory -- Liam is intrigued. His curiosity and confusion lead him to track down Cope's rememberer (or "social facilitator," as she calls herself), Eunice, and an odd, almost-but-not-quite romance develops between the two.

Noah's Compass, however, is not primarily a love story, at least not the way the phrase is usually meant. Liam's relationship with Eunice never progresses beyond kisses, and frankly, always just seems Off (as it's probably meant to). No, the book is primarily about connectedness and isolation (no surprise for Tyler fans); we see Liam's tentative but growing relationships with the typically self-centered Kitty, his young grandson Joshua, and even his no-nonsense sister Julia. The conclusion is satisfying, and passes my "not too tidy" test. Definitely a good one to come back to and chew over.

123 - The Story Sisters

Thanksgiving Break edition, part 1. 123 was The Story Sisters, another one by Alice Hoffman (Shaye Areheart, 2009).

Dust jacket blurb: "Alice Hoffman's previous novel, The Third Angel, was hailed as 'an unforgettable portrait of the depth of true love' (USA Today), 'stunning' (Jodi Picoult), and 'spellbinding' (Miami Herald). Her new novel, The Story Sisters, charts the lives of three sisters -- Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart's desire, and a demon who will not let go.

"What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks."

After reading Property Of, my hopes for savoring the rest of Hoffman's ouvre were high. Now, I'm not so sure. I liked Story Sisters well enough, and found elements of the story excellent -- but overall, I don't think it lived up to its potential. Perhaps Wendy Smith, in this Washington Post review, captures it best:

"It's a rare year that doesn't bring a novel from Alice Hoffman, and those who follow this maddeningly uneven writer have learned to cast a wary eye on each new offering. Will it be Good Alice, poser of uncomfortable moral dilemmas and marvelously rich portraitist of family life ... ? Or will it be Bad Alice, blatantly careless plotter and outrageous overdoer of the magic-beneath-the-surface-of-our-lives shtick ... ? The Story Sisters, actually, is In-Between Alice: excessive and over-determined but ultimately so moving that it overwhelms these faults."

On this last point, I mostly concur. There's a lot to be said for this book, even if I have become suspicious of any novel deemed "luminous" by its jacket, but Hoffman comes near to spoiling it by gilding the lily. The title sisters are simply too darned beautiful, and their imagined language (Arnish, which New York Times reviewer Chelsea Cain describes as "[looking] a little like the Italian a Tolkien elf might speak after a year in Rome") too precious. I'm no stranger to excess verbiage, but the purple description in the first chapter made me feel like I'd wandered into a Danielle Steele novel by mistake:

"The Story sisters were sharing a room on the evening of their grandparents' fiftieth anniversary party. Their mother trusted them completely. They were not the sort of teenagers who would steel from the minibar only to wind up drunk in the hallway, sprawled out on the carpet or nodding off in a doorway, embarrassing themselves and their families. They would never hang out the window to wave away cigarette smoke or toss water balloons onto unsuspecting pedestrians below. They were diligent, beautiful girls, well behaved, thoughtful. Most people were charmed to discover that the girls had a private, shared language. It was lovely to hear, musical. When they spoke to each other, they sounded like birds.

"The eldest girl was Elisabeth, called Elv, now fifteen. Meg was only a year younger, and Claire had just turned twelve. Each had long, dark hair and pale eyes, a startling combination. Elv was a disciplined dancer, the most beautiful in many people's opinions, the one who had invented the Story sisters' secret world. Meg was a great reader and was never without a book; while walking to school she often had one open in her hands, so engrossed she would sometimes trip while navigating familiar streets. Claire was diligent, kindhearted, never one to shirk chores. Her bed was made before her sisters opened their sleepy eyes. She raked the lawn and watered the garden and always went to sleep on time. All were self-reliant and practical, honor students any parent would be proud to claim as their own."

The storybook anniversary party goes wrong when the Story sisters attempt to rescue a (so they think) "mistreated" Central Park carriage horse, only to have Claire break both arms and the horse end up dead. This incident sets the stage for the rest of the novel: a place where innocence is lost, and fairytales go wrong in grotesque, unimagined ways. Early on, we learn that "the worst had happened" already, at least for Elv: the summer of her parents' divorce, when she was eleven, she jumped into a neighbor's car to stop him from abducting Claire, and was snatched and molested in her stead.

The girls never tell Meg or their mother, Annie, and it's this summer that Elv invents Arnish and an fairyland, Arnelle, to go with it. Frankly, this is the part of the story that loses me a bit -- perhaps because we get only snippets of it in retrospect, after the horse-rescuing, arm-breaking party when the trio begins to crumble and Arnelle starts to lose some of its luster. At the same time, Elv loses control, staying out all night, using marijuana and methamphetamine, running around with all sorts of disreputable boys. This could be poignant and gripping, but isn't, really; Hoffman offers no clue as to why, after four years of holding her secret, Elv falls apart so suddenly and so completely. Moreover, we see only her defiance and lashing out at her mother and sisters; I know I'm supposed to assume this behavior is somehow related to her earlier trauma, but with nary a glimpse of what she's thinking and feeling all the while, she just comes off like a spoiled brat.

Eventually, the situation becomes so untenable and Elv so uncontrollable that Annie (reluctantly abetted by her ex-husband Alan) plans an intervention, packing the girls off for a drive to New Hampshire that, unbeknownst to Elv, ends at a therapeutic boarding school. Here, her life is transformed, but it's not the treatment that does it; Elv is quick to get around, rather than with, the Westfield program:

"By the end of the first month Elv had come to understand the school's philosophy. They swiftly broke you down until you were nothing. They destroyed you, then built you back up again. Only they did it their way, the Westfield way. What they wanted were clones, people without minds of their own who had the Westfield agenda imprinted on their souls. ...

"If you wanted to survive in this place, you had to let them think you had given in. The harder you fought, the harder they broke you. You had to hide yourself away. ...

"She wanted to jump up and cheer. Inshead, she said 'Thank you' in a solemn, soft voice. 'I'm grateful for your trust and support.' She had the language of self-help down pat. In group therapy, she told sorrowful stories that shocked everyone. It felt as if she was lying even if it was the truth, how she'd been fed bread and water, how he'd tied her down. When she cried, her tears were made of glass. They broke her in half when they fell to the floor. No one noticed; they thought they were real. As if she would ever cry over what had happened.

"The staff began to like her, she could tell. They pitied her. They though she'd been treated unfairly at home, that she'd come from a dysfunctional family of divorce and shared secrets and was trying to reclaim her life."

No, the change comes when Elv meets Lorry, the brother of one of her classmates, who readers of Property Of will recognize as a classic McKay-style bad boy:

"Lorry liked people to hand over what was precious to them, convinced that they had made their own decision to do so. He was tall and thin, handsome, dark, with hooded eyes and an uncanny ability to read people. Women said he had a lethal smile and that he was difficult to resist. Everyone agreed -- he could talk himself out of just about any kind of trouble. ... Unlike his little brother, he didn't have to brag. He simply knew what he wanted."

Elv finally feels "turned inside out by love", and falls "feetfirst, as though dropped from a bridge." Soon, Lorry reluctantly introduces her to his "fatal flaw": heroin. Before long, Annie's second thoughts get the best of her, and she arrives to sign Elv out of Westfield, but discovers almost immediately that the daughter she brings home has changed, but not as she'd expected. Elv's pre-Westfield hijinks resume with a vengeance, and not surprisingly, a tragedy ensues, tearing the family apart.

The aforementioned Times review calls the latter part of the novel "histrionic," but I disagree. While it's not without its cliches (Annie's illness, and her budding romance with the detective she hires to find the runaway Elv), I found Part 2 far more compelling and believable than Part 1. Elv lives in Queens with Lorry, a stone's throw from her childhood home on Long Island, which, er, happens to be where he works:

"People had to live, didn't they? If a lion took a lamb for its supper, did anyone complain or say it was unnatural? She went with him sometimes when he drove out to Long Island, to wealthy neighborhoods where the people were so rich, they wouldn't miss a few things. And if they did, all they had to do was phone their insurance companies and everything would be replaced within the week. Elv sat behind the wheel of the car, the engine running, the headlights low, chewing on her lip while Lorry robbed houses. She thought of herself as an accomplice, and she savored the word."

Too much more detail at this point would spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that the surviving Storys are left to discover, each in her own way, the perils, power, and limitations of love. As the girls' grandmother, Natalia, muses while sewing a wedding dress, "that was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it." Likewise, in the final chapter, one of the sisters observes:

"The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can't even see it, shifting in the dark. She remembered everything."

Her sister, telling her own daughter stories of a fairyland whose demons have now been exorcised, concurs:

"Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones. This is what she remembered and always would: the sisters who sat with her in the garden, the grandmother who stitched her a dress the color of the sky, the man who spied her in the grass and loved her beyond all measure, the mother who set up a tent in the garden to tell her a story when she was a child, neither good nor bad, selfish nor strong, only a girl who wanted to hear a familiar voice as the dark fell down, and the moths rose, and the night was sure to come."

#105 - The Last Secret

Ah, now that's more like it. My 105th book of the year (wow, this really is some sort of compulsive disorder) was The Last Secret, by Mary McGarry Morris (Shaye Areheart Books, 2009) ... and for once, it was just plain enjoyable. Ever compelled to legitimize my book selections with the imprimateur of good taste, I'll quote Sophie Gee's New York Times review:

"In these days of smart, knowing literary fiction, with its ironic debunking of manners and morals, there’s something refreshing about reviewing a book that inspires phrases like 'desperate longing,' 'cruel rejection,' 'deadly truth' and 'lonely passion' to describe its characters and their lives. When most 'serious' novelists write about 'regular' people, they surround them with ­packing-foam irony peanuts so there’s no confusion about the writer’s personal take on the world that’s being recreated with such precision. But this isn’t the case with Morris. ... The Last Secret appeals to the longing readers feel to inhabit, at least for a change, a zone free of such condescension — to be engaged by the lonely passion of Nora’s husband and his lover, the cruel rejection that drives Nora to desperate acts of anger and revenge, the devastating realization that the children have guessed their parents’ crimes of the heart. What a change it is to sink into a book where big, elemental feelings are coming at you all the time, and you don’t have to ponder the author’s debt to French modernism or postcolonial theory."

So yeah, that's about the sum of it. Nora Hammond appears, to the outside world, to have it all: a loving husband from an influential family in their small New England town (Massachusetts this time), two wonderful children, both a paid career and a charitable cause that both reward and challenger. Yet the very first chapter suggests that something darker and more complex may lurk beneath the surface; in it, a then-17 Nora Trimble runs away from home with her older boyfriend, Eddie Haskins, on a cross-country odyssey that ends with another traveler mistaking Nora for a prostitute, Eddie beating the man senseless, and Nora fleeing both, never to see Eddie again. 20-odd years later, though, the misadventure hardly seems a blip on the radar.

Until two revelations split everything open, that is. First, Nora's husband Ken confesses to not a one-time fling or a brief, tawdry affair, but a relationship (in his words) with their closest friend, Robin. As he explains it,

"'Nora, I'm not talking about a few ... a few times,' he says, gasping out times. 'I'm talking about a relationship we ... I had.'

"'A relationship?'

"'For four years.'"

Gradually, Nora discovers that many of their friends and relatives have known of said relationship, but kept it from her. Secondly, Eddie Haskins blows into town and tracks Nora down, reeking of menace and clearly wanting something, but what? His answer is both vague, and more than vaguely threatening:

"Nora leans over the table. 'What is it? Why you're here? What do you want?'

"'Help.' He smiles. 'A helping hand, that's all. To make up for lost time. Chances I never had. Opportunity.'

"'So this is about money, then, isn't it?' She is almost relieved.

"'It's been a long time. How do you put a price on that? On time? I don't know,' he sighs. 'You tell me.'

"'So how much? How much do you want?'

"His laughter is sad, regretful. 'You don't get it, do you? But then, why should you? Nice family. Nice town. Nice life. Hey! Maybe if I hadn't been so worried, driving back and forth tryna find you, maybe I'd'a gotten away, too.'"

As Eddie continues to stalk Nora, her family crumbles. She finds herself unable to forgive Ken and Robin, or to stop asking for still more sordid details. Their two teenage children begin to crack under the strain, especially son Drew, who had been close to Robin's son Clay. The couple try, albeit inconsistently, to patch things up, if only for the kids' sake, but mounting problems at the newspaper Ken co-owns with brother Oliver and Eddie's odd appearances add to the strain. The end result, as the jacket synopsis tells us, is "a shattering conclusion" (though it doesn't mention the faintly cheesy epilogue).

That's pretty much what there is to say; this was a good book that doesn't pretend to be anything more than, well, a good buck. On an interesting side note, though ... I read most of it this morning, while Mr. Hazelthyme and Littlehazel were up with the birds, waiting in line for (wait for it) a book sale. Yes, I abstained; lead me not into temptation. Perhaps it's just me, but I can't help seeing the humor there.

#77 - The House on Fortune Street

Hooray. This is not a novel set in the 1950s; it's set in contemporary London. It's also a darned good read, and manages to make the whole idea of telling one story from multiple perspectives seem fresh.

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey (Harper, 2008) is the story of a tragic watershed moment in the lives of three young adults sharing a house on, well, Fortune Street. It's also novel about the role of luck in our lives. The bare facts are laid out fairly early on. Abigail, the driven theatre manager who seems to be in perpetual motion, owns the house; her boyfriend Sean, an impoverished ABD Oxford grad student, has recently moved in; and the fragile Dara, a counselor and Abigail's college best friend, rents the downstairs flat. We know from the dust jacket that tragedy will strike one of the three, and sure enough, it does. The book opens with Sean's story. Already struggling to balance writing his long-overdue dissertation and his other gig, helping select promising new plays for Abigail's upstart theatre, he takes on yet a third job, co-writing a mass-market book on assisted suicide with his friend Valentine, to help pay the rent Abigail suddenly insists on charging. Since Abigail is already perpetually busy with her theatre work, an anonymous letter accusing her of being unfaithful strikes a nerve with Sean. He becomes suspicious, and starts questioning the decision to abandon his less passionate but more companionable marriage to Judy, his ex-wife, for this tempestuous but shaky affair with Abigail.

The second survivor of fortune we get to know intimately is Dara's father, Cameron, who left the family under mysterious circumstances when Dara was a child, and who's only recently re-entered her life. He recalls his childhood, and the devastating death of his younger brother Lionel, never mentioned since, at 14. Fast-forward to his courtship and marriage to Fiona, Dara's mother; the birth of Dara and her younger brother; his largely innocent fascination with Dara's young friend Ingrid; and the sudden collapse of their family when a weekend camping trip with Ingrid's family goes awry.

From here, we meet Dara, and learn of her intense but sporadic relationship with violinist Robert; her shock and seeming resilience on learning that he still lives with an ex-girlfriend and their daughter; her immersion in colleagues' Halley and Joyce's are-they-or-aren't-they relationship; and her increasing resentment at Abigail's treating her like a poor relation. Lastly, of course, we focus on the ambitious Abigail -- her vagabond childhood at the hands of self-absorbed, follow-your-bliss parents; her de facto adoption by Dara's family during their college years; and her determination to control her own life and make her own luck, unencumbered by love or other unplanned interruptions.

As I said, this was a pretty good book. The characters are well fleshed-out and believable, and Livesey's way of revealing new details and interpretations with each person's story keeps you interested even though you know, at the end of the first, what happens at the end. The conclusion is fitting without being too neat and tidy. If you like this kind of story, this one's a solid good read.

#76 - The Outcast

Yet another book set (mostly) during the 1950s; I'll have to shake things up with my next read. The Outcast, by Sadie Jones (Harper, 2008), was excellent: gripping, painful, and heartbreakingly sad. It opens in a small village outside London in 1957, where Lewis Aldridge is returning home to his father's and stepmother's home after a 2-year stint in prison. He doesn't know quite how to behave with his neighbors or even his family, nor do they with him ... but for now, that's all we learn.

Almost immediately, we rewind 10 years to another homecoming: that of Lewis' father, Gilbert, who has just been demobilized after World War II. Both Lewis and his mother, Elizabeth, have grown accustomed to more closeness and less formality than life with Gilbert seems to demands, and continue to quietly enjoy some of their own rituals, like picnics by the river, while Gilbert's away at work.

Their otherwise-ordinary suburban routine, however, is shattered after one riverside picnic, when Elizabeth drowns. Both father and son withdraw into their own private grief, seemingly unaware of or unable to comfort one another. Within a few months, Gilbert finds comfort elsewhere, remarrying the young, naive, and malleable Alice. Lewis, however, has fewer reserves to draw upon, and in his silence, becomes a local curiosity of sorts. His nearest neighbors, the Carmichael girls, continue to seek him out; Tamsin, slightly older, from a combination of pity and craving admiration; Kit, 5 years younger, because she's learned from her own family's dark secrets that people aren't always what they seem, and she has faith that beneath Lewis' numb exterior lies someone kind and good.

Sadly for Lewis, others don't share Kit's conviction, and treat him only with a distant tolerance. This, coupled with his tense relationships with Gilbert and Alice at home, lead him to cut his arms in order to feel something, and ultimately to commit the crime for which he is imprisoned. After his release, he tries desparately to fit in at last, but is thwarted by a complicated relationship with his stepmother, and by the lingering resentment and suspicion of Dicky Carmichael, Gilbert's boss and Tamsin and Kit's father. Ultimately, his efforts to find love and human connectedness expose long-buried skeletons in both the Carmichael and Albright closets.

The story is gripping, and all the characters (with the possible exception of Dicky) are admirably human; Lewis in particular seems an unlikely hero, and he's really not one ... but the book works. Read it.

#70 - The Family Tree

Somewhat appropriately, I read Carole Cadwalladr's The Family Tree (Plume, 2005) on a slightly-overwhelming vacation with my own extended family. This will be a quickie review (again, I'm trying to catch up on my blogging backlog), but I enjoyed it very much. Set in Britain in the late 20th century, it's the story of three generations of one family, and how our relationships as mother, daughter, sister, wife, and grandchild shape who we are. The narrator, Rebecca Monroe, is in her early 30s as the turn of the millenium approaches, happily married to geneticist Alistair, and childless by mutual agreement (though Alistair seems to agree a bit more emphatically than does Rebecca). The novel tells her story, from childhood on up through the present ... but it's also the story of her mother, Doreen, and her grandmother, Alicia.

We know from the get-go (it's printed on the back cover) that "on the day Lady Diana married Prince Charles, Rebecca's mother locked herself in the bathroom of 24 Beech Drive and never came out" -- but we don't know for quite some time exactly what happened or what led up to that point. Signs of Doreen's voilatility are evident from the outset, though, as is the seeming unlikelihood of two marriages: Doreen's to James, Rebecca's father; and her sister Suzanne's to Kenneth, Doreen's old beau. As the novel unfolds, Rebecca also learns more of her grandmother Alicia's life story (Alicia has Alzheimer's, and is terrified of losing her memories before she can pass them on) -- grandfather Herbert's patient and (frankly) creepy stalking of his young cousin Alicia, Alicia's own secret heartbreak as a young woman, and how she eventually succumbed to Herb's persistence. The story is a bit jumpy and disjointed in places, but honestly, that's how family stories often play out. A good vacation read.

#58 - The Other Side of You

Cape Cod reads, part 2: The Other Side of You, by Salley Vickers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Another decent vacation read, but a bit slower-paced than I'd hoped. The story of London psychiatrist David McBride, whose entire life has been haunted by the childhood death of his older brother, killed while helping David cross the street. Enter Elizabeth Cruikshank, a new patient who recently attempted suicide. As David attempts to probe beneath Elizabeth's remarkable reserve, he uncovers a tale of star-crossed lovers and betrayal that leads him to question his own shaky marriage and career. Recommended, but not if you're looking for something totally brainless.