Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Books Read in 2020: Five-Star Children's, YA, Short Stories, Horror and Fantasy

Things are pretty bleak here at the moment. We still don't know when Eve will be going back to school - at least she was there for the beginning of the course so got to actually meet her teacher, and she's doing well, considering it's grade twelve physics and she has a test every two days or so. I was hanging out in her room the other day and she was talking about the olden days and said "we used to have, like, five weeks before a test. FIVE WEEKS" and we both burst out laughing. My January depression is late but making up for lost time. Eve and I are both having bad allergy weeks, which at least is an explanation for why my head hurts all the time and my sinuses are burny. Mostly I am okay with our new normal, and I realize how lucky we are compared to many people. Sometimes I miss tiny normal things to a ridiculous degree - like Lucy jumping on the stool beside the front door a little before three o'clock to watch for Eve walking home from the bus, and going nuts when she sees her. And Eve coming in and giving me what we used to call The Daily Download - a lightning-fast, witty, hilarious, sometimes complainy recounting of whatever happened during her day. Odds are it won't happen again even if she goes back to school, because I'd rather drive her than have her take the bus. Of course, picking her up is nice too, but I'm sad that her last time walking home from the bus has probably happened and we didn't know it was the last time. Our Covid numbers are at their lowest since mid-December today, though, so that's something. This too shall pass. 

It's pretty widely agreed that the Goodreads five-star rating system is imperfect. No half-stars, little nuance. I don't pretend to any great rigour in the way I rate books either. Much depends on my mood at the time, and there are so many elements in play - plot, characterization, dialogue, writing, subject matter, world-building etc. I don't remember if I ever was very stingy with five-star ratings, but I've definitely decided not to be in recent years. I mean, what's the point? According to Goodreads it means "it was amazing", and many books are, for one reason or another, even if it's just because I thought nothing would make me smile that day and one did.

Five-Star Children's, YA, Short Stories, Fantasy and Horror:

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty: Synopsis from Goodreads: This is a tale of missing persons. Madeleine and her mother have run away from their former life, under mysterious circumstances, and settled in a rainy corner of Cambridge (in our world). Elliot, on the other hand, is in search of his father, who disappeared on the night his uncle was found dead. The talk in the town of Bonfire (in the Kingdom of Cello) is that Elliot's dad may have killed his brother and run away with the Physics teacher. But Elliot refuses to believe it. And he is determined to find both his dad and the truth. As Madeleine and Elliot move closer to unraveling their mysteries, they begin to exchange messages across worlds -- through an accidental gap that hasn't appeared in centuries. But even greater mysteries are unfolding on both sides of the gap: dangerous weather phenomena called "color storms;" a strange fascination with Isaac Newton; the myth of the "Butterfly Child," whose appearance could end the droughts of Cello; and some unexpected kisses.


This is the first in the Colours of Madeleine trilogy, which I have banged on about endlessly. I reread it almost yearly because it just makes me happy. It's amazing for a few reasons - mostly because the setting of the Kingdom of Cello paired with 'Oxford, England, The World' is among the most vivid and wonderful I have ever experienced, but also the amazing characters and the sprawling, dazzling, hugely imaginative plot, the tie-ins to historical figures such as Byron and Ada Lovelace, the . This is the the most entrancing and wondrous portal(ish) fantasy I have discovered since Narnia (without all the heavy-handed religious symbolism). 

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden: Synopsis from Goodreads: New York Times bestselling adult author of The Bear and the Nightingale makes her middle grade debut with a creepy, spellbinding ghost story destined to become a classic After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think--she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price.  Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN.  

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods--bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them--the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small."  And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

This is really middle grade, not even YA, but WOW. It was amazing because it's pretty rare when you read a lot of books to find something that makes you think "I haven't really seen anything quite like this before". I mean, obviously there's a formula. A child, usually experiencing some kind of life challenge already, runs into something frightening and dangerous and discovers their inner fortitude while overcoming the challenge. But the details that clothe this structure are all-important, of course, and here they were fresh and surprising. And pretty effing scary, considering the reading level.

Sadie by Courtney Summers: Synopsis from Goodreads: A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she's left behind. And an ending you won't be able to stop talking about. Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water. But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him. When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late. Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page.


I read this because it was so well-reviewed, and deservedly so. It's an intense, wrenching read that doesn't shy away from difficult topics. The subject-matter would easily lend itself to exploitation, but the writing is anything but. As in The Butterfly Girl, we are given a mercilessly detailed look of what it's like to be young without any security or protection, and the constant danger and exhaustion of having to calculate and scheme to obtain food and shelter. Where it really shines, though, is in bringing Sadie to life as a beautifully complex character. 

Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacle: Synopsis from Goodreads: Legendary genre editor Ellen Datlow brings together eighteen dark and terrifying original stories inspired by cinema and television. A BLUMHOUSE BOOKS HORROR ORIGINALFrom the secret reels of a notoriously cursed cinematic masterpiece to the debauched livestreams of modern movie junkies who will do anything for clicks, Final Cuts brings together new and terrifying stories inspired by the many screens we can't peel our eyes away from. Inspired by the rich golden age of the film and television industries as well as the new media present, this new anthology reveals what evils hide behind the scenes and between the frames of our favorite medium. With original stories from a diverse list of some of the best-known names in horror, Final Cuts will haunt you long after the credits roll.

Like I said, I'm always down for a Datlow anthology, but I admit I thought this sounded cheesy. Blumhouse is a great horror movie maker, but short stories? Come on. 


It was magnificent. The one or two stories that weren't an out-of-the-park home run for me still didn't go the way I expected. The last story by John Langan was outstanding, and the A.C. Wise entry destroyed me. There were echoes of European folklore, a Hong Kong setting, and a university video podcast, so a lot of diversity of culture and place (and at least some diversity among the authors). Many stories as melancholy as they are frightening. A lot of ruminating on the fear of the camera stealing or corrupting the soul. I'm always up for a good 'infernal film' tale, and often they fail badly. Most of these were immensely successful. 

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones: Synopsis from Goodreads: A tale of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition.The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Holy crap. I don't even know how to articulate how absolutely lacerated I felt by this book. This is own voices (an author from a marginalized group writing about that group's experience from their perspective), and a bit unlike anything else I'd read in the horror or indigenous literature categories. Like all the best horror, it is warm and real and and funny and then evisceratingly sad, as well as having an almost unbearable sense of apprehension that actually made me feel slightly sick. The friendship between the three doomed men, the hunting camaraderie, the young male goofiness, was achingly perfect. The fucked-up nature of the racism that is woven into the very fabric of their existence. The bad choices and the self-justifying inner monologues of the older men, the second-chance hopefulness pinned on relationships when the outcome is likely doomed. There are some deep, natural, archetypal rules in place but then some of them get broken which seemed "unfair" to me, which I then realized was probably a big part of the point. Just masterful. 

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss: Synopsis from Goodreads: In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father's vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie's father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind. 

The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice? A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the "primitive minds" of our ancestors.

Short but impactful, with an almost suffocating atmosphere of creeping dread. The rendering of what it's like for Silvie living with a violent father and a mother who is too defeated to offer protection is viscerally disturbing. The sense of place and the discomfort and disorienting effect of trying to re-enact living in the past add another layer of unease. I couldn't put it down. 

Borderline by Mishell Baker: Synopsis from Goodreads: A year ago Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she's sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales.For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star, who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she'll have to smooth talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and sometimes terrifying truth behind the glamour of Tinseltown. But stronger forces than just her inner demons are sabotaging her progress, and if she fails to unravel the conspiracy behind the noble's disappearance, not only will she be out on the streets, but the shattering of a centuries-old peace could spark an all-out war between worlds. No pressure.


This is also Own Voices, which I didn't realize until after I had read and loved it. There is a lot of talk about the need for mental illness representation in books and on that alone I feel like this book is really unusual. The main character has Borderline Personality Disorder which I knew about vaguely and then got more of an education on from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a highly entertaining and hilarious show which also includes realistic and informative representation of mental illness. BPD does play a large part in why Millie is chosen for her role in The Arcadia Project, but this is illustrated respectfully, as are the daily realities of being a double amputee and managing her mental illness as well as those of the people she lives with. All this and then a deft political mystery involving the fairy world next to ours. I got partway through this and then realized there were two more and frantically searched the library's ebook catalogue to establish that I could read the next two right away. 

Just going to list the next two books, I feel like reviewing them would be redundant. 

 Phantom Pains by Mishell Baker (The Arcadia Project #2): Synopsis from Goodreads: Four months ago, Millie left the Arcadia Project after losing her partner Teo to the lethal magic of an Unseelie fey countess. Now, on what's meant to be a last visit to the scene of the crime, Millie and her former boss, Caryl, encounter what seems to be Teo’s tormented ghost. One problem: according to Caryl, ghosts don’t exist.Millie has a new life, a stressful new job, and no time to get pulled back into the Project's chaos, but she agrees to tell agents from the Project's National Headquarters her side of the ghost story. During her visit, an agent is gruesomely murdered in a way only Caryl could have accomplished. Millie knows Caryl is innocent, but the only chance she has to save her from the Project’s severe, off-the-books justice is to uncover the mystery behind incorporeal fey known as wraiths. Why has the centuries-old Project never heard of them? And how do you fight an enemy that is only seen when it wants to be seen? Millie must answer these questions not just to save Caryl, but to foil an insidious, arcane terrorist plot that would leave two worlds in ruins.

Impostor Syndrome by Mishell Baker (The Arcadia Project #3): Synopsis from Goodreads: In the third book of the Nebula Award–nominated Arcadia Project series, which New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire called “exciting, inventive, and brilliantly plotted,” Millie Roper has to pull off two impossible heists—with the fate of the worlds in the balance.Three months ago, a rift between agents in London and Los Angeles tore the Arcadia Project apart. With both fey Courts split down the middle—half supporting London, half LA—London is putting the pieces in place to quash the resistance. But due to an alarming backslide in her mental health, new LA agent Millie Roper is in no condition to fight.When London’s opening shot is to frame Millie’s partner, Tjuan, for attempted homicide, Millie has no choice but to hide him and try to clear his name. Her investigation will take her across the pond to the heart of Arcadia at the mysterious and impenetrable White Rose palace. The key to Tjuan’s freedom—and to the success of the revolution—is locked in a vault under the fey Queen’s watchful eye. It’s up to Millie to plan and lead a heist that will shape the future of two worlds—all while pretending that she knows exactly what she’s doing…

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker: Synopsis from Goodreads:The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses. They feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy.  

I discovered Sarah Pinsker this year - by which I mean another writer I love mentioned her and I then tracked down everything I could. Pinsker is also a musician with recordings to her name, which explains how she writes so well about music. There is a kind of yearning woven through many of the stories, bittersweetness and loss. The story And Then There Were {N-One} is an enthralling murder mystery involving a conference at which all of the characters are Sarah Pinskers from different dimensions. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. KluneSynopsis from Goodreads: A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret. Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days. But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn. An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours. 

I finished this on New Year's Eve after someone in my Book Bingo group recommended it, and it was SO charming and delightful. It's not exactly surprising how things turn out - it's more a kind of fable than a mystery with a lot of tension -- but the journey could not have been lovelier. Such a heartwarming and hopeful read to end the year on.


Thursday, January 21, 2021

Books Read in 2020: Four-Star Non-Fiction and Fiction

I'm at a pretty low point currently, like a lot of people. January is traditionally a difficult month for me anyway, and actually this year up until this week it's been okay, considering the extra stresses happening. I had a colonoscopy yesterday (apologies for TMI) and I think the weird diet and the anxiety and the lack of solid food have thrown me into a bit of a pit. Right after I was dizzy with relief at it being over (plus actually literally dizzy from all the not eating and diarrhea). But today I hurt all over and have zero motivation to do anything. I'm falling into my not-so-great pattern of staying up way too late and sleeping a lot and this makes it so I'm not seeing a lot of daylight. Part of me is fine with doing this for a few weeks and only emerging when Covid numbers are down and the kids can go back to school and I don't have to be a librarian without a library anymore. Part of me always remembers when I was in elementary school and I was going on a camping trip with a girlfriend and her family and I was really excited and said I wished it was already time and my mother said "never wish your time away". Honestly, that was a little heavy-handed for the situation, but she's not wrong. Even the worst of times could always be our last times, so while I sometimes think "there will be a time after this", I'm not really comfortable just trying to make time pass. Although before I started spinning out I was doing okay walking and reading a lot, and that I was just feeling guilty about because of stupid ideas about what actually constitutes contributing to society. In summation, I have no summation, everything is stupid and I am just going to relax and talk about books for a while. 

 Four-Star Non-Fiction:

Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson by Mark Bourrie: Synopsis from Goodreads: Murderer. Salesman. Pirate. Adventurer. Cannibal. Co-founder of the Hudson's Bay Company.Known to some as the first European to explore the upper Mississippi, and widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark Bourrie, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples.” Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland—thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.A guest among First Nations communities, French fur traders, and royal courts; witness to London’s Great Plague and Great Fire; and unwitting agent of the Jesuits’ corporate espionage, Radisson double-crossed the English, French, Dutch, and his adoptive Mohawk family alike, found himself marooned by pirates in Spain, and lived through shipwreck on the reefs of Venezuela. His most lasting venture as an Artic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation. 

Sourced from Radisson’s journals, which are the best first-hand accounts of 17th century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview—and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

I read this for book club. Well-written book about a really fascinating character. A French boy growing up in 17th-century Canada and, as one reviewer commented, sort of a Forrest Gump of his time. Kidnapped and adopted by the Mohawks twice, big in setting up the fur trade, something about pirates, spent some time in London - I mean Jesus, the dude was better-traveled than I am, and there were no planes! It's a little crowded, and about halfway through I started wishing for a writing style that was a little more spare, but hugely engaging. It also sets down how much the Indigenous Canadians were screwed over and treated incredibly badly from the minute the Europeans set foot on Canadian ground.

Educated by Tara Westover: Synopsis from Goodreads: Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.

I have an ugly knee-jerk tendency to be kind of snotty and dismissive of this kind of memoir - like, congratulations, you had a tragic childhood and are able to write, so you get an automatic bestseller. I recognize it for what it is (it's not what my forebrain thinks, just a little part of my hindbrain), but it does lead to me taking longer to read the book sometimes. Once I picked this up I couldn't put it down. I did cry a little, less out of sadness than a towering, impotent rage every time Westover's father put another child (or the same one) in senseless danger yet again and no one did anything, even though it was obvious that no miraculous rescue was coming. This is a pretty good indictment of the worst aspects of Mormonism in particular, religion in general, and, I don't know, mothers bowing down to mentally ill fathers with delusions of grandeur. As frustrating it is to watch Westover keep going back and being treated horribly before finally breaking free, I recognize the immense strength it must have taken to leave at all. It is quite a story, very well told.

Misogynies by Joan Smith: Synopsis from Goodreads: 

In this collection of stinging essays Joan Smith explores the phenomenon of women-hating in politics, religion, history, literature, and popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic. A fascinating collection from the mind of a scholar, educator, and observer of our society, MISOGYNIES will make readers of both genders wonder more about the excuses for hatred of women we create as a society, why we accept them, and what it means to all of our lives.

I didn't take good notes on this, but I remember the thing that struck me most was how NOT dated it appeared, which in a way was profoundly depressing. When I thought about it a bit more, I did think that, although Smith's observations are still germane, the trends and behaviours she's describing are at least more examined and called out these days. Still. The fact that the police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper case were so misguided because of 'whorephobia' is sadly and enragingly reminiscent of so many more recent cases, including those involving Gary Ridgway, Robert Hansen and Robert Pickton. 

Smith also dissects the novel Sophie's Choice by William Styron, and the life and death of Marilyn Monroe, among other women who are exploited for their looks. The writing style is clear and accessible and she does a great job at accomplishing her objective, and honestly, it all made me really tired. I understand that naming and analyzing the problem are important steps that advance the cause, and that incremental progress is being made. The increments are just so very small and the process is so very slow. Excuse me while I go gaze adoringly at pictures of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris from yesterday. 

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester: Synopsis from Goodreads: The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

I had the slightly bizarre experience of having this put on the book club list and then going home and finding I had already borrowed the library ebook a couple of days previous, and then completely forgotten I had done so. It's very interesting but a little odd in tone. The third or fourth time Winchester used the term "mad" or "crazy", I looked up the publishing date of the book, which is 1998, which seems a little late to be so enthusiastically using those terms. I understand that the in the time of the story, people were literally termed 'criminally insane', but Winchester throws around sentences like "the two men who met were both completely mad" a little gleefully for my taste. In addition to that, while describing James Murray's facial hair, Winchester says "ample buggers' grips" were included. Surely, I thought, that doesn't mean what it seems like it would mean. It does, though. Finally, near the end of the book Winchester opines, regarding MInor, that "one must feel a sense of strange gratitude, then, that his treatment was never good enough to divert him from his work. The agonies that he must have suffered in those terrible asylum nights have granted us all a benefit, for all time". Excuse me? Even if the dude had cured cancer I would have trouble feeling grateful that he had endured the torment of mental illness without reprieve. For a few thousand words in a fucking dictionary? Hey, I love words, but no. 

Other than that, this is a great story. The birth of the concept of a definitive English-language dictionary, the inner workings of the incredibly laborious process, the cameraderie between Murry and Minor, are worth being explored. There are lovely turns of phrase such as: "The menu was forthright and English - clear turtle soup, turbot with lobster sauce etc. But like the dictionary itself, it was also flavored generously, but not too generously, with Gallicisms". The listing of the time and volumes of paper involved in the dictionary - "Murray himself tried gallantly to complete work on thirty-three words every day -- and yet 'often a single word, like Approve takes 3/4 of a day itself'" -- really bring home the momentousness of the endeavour. I enjoyed the delving into the roots of words and the sourcing of quotations. I just had a bit of an impression that this was a cranky old British 'man's man' writing, reinforced by the fact that he criticizes some "carping" about a male-centric bias in the dictionary (like, duh). I know, I'm complaining a lot. I still really liked reading it. 

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: Synopsis from Goodreads: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation. In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.” 

Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.” Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804. Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.

GodDAMN this was good. I was wondering if I would be able to sense what made Lin-Manuel Miranda craft such an amazing musical from this source material, and it was immediately apparent. I'm not a bit biography or autobiography reader, although I do find the whole subject fascinating - objective vs subjective truth, figuring out what angle to take, authorized, unauthorized, hagiography vs. warts-and-all. How do you take all the material that must be available related to a historical figure like this and boil it all down to a comprehensible narrative? Like this, I have to say. I have ordered Chernow's biography of Washington, and I will read any others he has written also, because this is how they should be done.

I don't know how to articulate how wonderful the tone is - it's not dry but it's not sensationalist. There is humour and drama and insight and the flow is irresistible. There were times when I was checking the facts in the book against what was in the musical, and there were times when I actually forgot that the musical had come first because the narrative flow was so engaging. 

Things I wanted to know that I found out: Was Burr really as cagey and publicly indecisive as the musical suggests? Apparently so: "Burr's principal quality as a politician: he was a chameleon who evaded clear-cut positions on most issues and was a genius at studied ambiguity"; was it really a toss-up on whether Hamilton would marry Angelica or Eliza? Nope. Angelica was already married when she met him, and her father did, in fact, have sons. But the letters between them were indeed VERY SPICY, and she did actually write to her sister "if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while." (!!); Did Angelica and Hamilton really get married two weeks after they met? Nah; and did Martha Washington really name a feral tomcat after Hamilton? (I didn't really think this was true, I just ran out of things to say).

It was a bit eerie reading about the formation of the two U.S. government parties and the "period of John Adams's presidency declin(ing) into a time of political savagery with few parallels in American history, a season of paranoia in which the two parties surrendered all trust in each other", given what was happening in the U.S. while I was reading. Turns out that fake news and certain media owners being loyal to one faction or the other are not as new as some perhaps might have thought. And wow, Thomas Jefferson was even a bigger sonofabitch than I realized. I love that fact that Hamilton sometimes wrote "pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays". Who could not feel a certain sympathy for Captain William Deas, who lived on top of a cliff and "was frustrated that his ledge was constantly used for duels". 

The other day I was listening to the Hamilton soundtrack in the car and It's Quiet Uptown (the song right after Hamilton's son dies) came on as I was driving to Kettleman's to pick up bagels. Two lines in I thought "hey, this is the first time I haven't cried all the way through this song." Three lines later I was walking into Kettleman's a sobbing mess and feeling grateful that I was wearing a mask. Bonus: by the time I got to the pharmacy near home I was on the very last song in the musical so I got to walk into Shoppers a sobbing mess too! Reading about these events in the book was nearly as affecting as watching or listening to the play. Seriously, this is wonderful - if you're even considering reading it, go for it. 

Four-Star No-Man's Land

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar: Synopsis from Goodreads: A deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds of 9/11 wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.


I was really confused about the whole "blends fact and fiction" thing when everything I fact-checked seemed to indicate that this is mostly, if not completely, true, and then I read that the author called it fiction so Donald Trump wouldn't sue, which seems likely, but I'm not sure whether to file it under fiction or non-fiction.

I haven't read or seen any of Akhtar's plays, but he writes really beautifully. It's impossible to know what it's like being a Muslim in America, but the way he writes about a harrowing traffic stop makes it a little easier to imagine. He makes us feel the complicated relationship between immigrant parents and a first-generation American son. I was a little embarrassed at how long it took me to realize that the "homeland" in the title was America rather than Pakistan. I will admit that I didn't love the way he talked about women or the sex scenes - there was something a little John Updike about them, considering this was written just last year. 

Four-Star Fiction:

Rockbound by Frank Parker Day: Synopsis from Goodreads: To the harsh domain of Rockbound -- governed by the sternly righteous and rapacious Uriah Jung --comes the youthful David Jung to claim his small share of the island. Filled with dreamy optimism and a love for the unspoken promises of the night sky, David tries to find his way in a narrow, unforgiving, and controlled world. His conflicts are both internal and external, locking him in an unceasing struggle for survival; sometimes the sea is his enemy, sometimes his own rude behavior, sometimes his best friend Gershom Born, sometimes his secret love for the island teacher Mary Dauphiny; but always, inevitably, his Jung relatives and their manifold ambitions for money and power. The balance of life on Rockbound is precarious and thus fiercely guarded by all who inhabit its lonely domain, but just as a sudden change in the direction of the wind can lead to certain peril at sea, so too can the sudden change in the direction of a man's heart lead to a danger altogether unknown. Enormously evocative of the power, terror, and dramatic beauty of the Atlantic sea, and unrelenting in its portrait of back-breaking labour, cunning bitterness, and family strife, Rockbound is a story of many passions-love, pride, greed, and yearning -- all formed and buffeted on a small island by an unyielding wind and the rocky landscape of the human spirit. Rockbound won Canada Reads in 2005. 


The very first pages of the book, when David rows barefoot over freezing water to the island of Rockbound to demand his birthright, instantly generate a gut-deep pull, and it's impossible to read on without feeling the rocking of the boat, smelling the stink of the fish, feeling the bone-deep fatigue and anxiety of constant work and never enough money, the rhythm and drag of a completely different kind of life. I don't always love dialogue written in dialect, but worked fine for me. Really good. Really Canadian. 

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler: Synopsis from Goodreads: A dazzling novel that captures all of the romance, glamour, and tragedy of the first flapper, Zelda Fitzgerald. When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes. 


A fictionalized biography of Zelda Fitzgerald from the time she met Scott until just before her death. I used to be even less interested in fictionalized biography than in the straight kind - it seemed both lazy and dishonest. Then I read The Paris Wife and got kind of obsessed with reading fictional accounts of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and their love lives and literary brat pack, although much of it just makes me very angry because they were largely alcoholic self-obsessed dicks. I enjoyed this very much, however sad and angry it made me on Zelda's behalf. I enjoyed the depictions of her Southern girlhood and the gay champagne-swilling adventures with Scott, the turmoil and exhilaration of being on the edge of a dazzling but unpredictable literary career. In my first review of this I said I was going to track down an actual biography of Zelda next, and one of Dorothy Parker. I didn't do that yet - going to track them down and add them to my to-read list now. 

Normal People by Sally Rooney: Synopsis from Goodreads: At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. 

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

I felt like this was a good book - I could see it happening, and it made me feel things. I don't know how to say what I liked or didn't like, because I felt off-balance throughout - I kept wondering how I was supposed to be feeling about it. Marianne was clearly damaged. Was Connell? It's okay for a story to just be things that happened one after the other - is that what it was, or was I missing something? After years of being really happy I can choose my own books without having to read only what's assigned, sometimes I wish someone would teach a course on a book I've read. 

How a Woman Becomes a Lake by Marjorie Celona: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the Giller-nominated author of Y comes How a Woman Becomes a Lake, a taut, suspenseful novel about the dark corners of a small town, and the secrets that lurk within..It's New Year's Day and the residents of a small fishing town are ready to start their lives anew. Leo takes his two young sons out to the lake to write resolutions on paper boats. That same frigid morning, Vera sets out for a walk with her dog along the lake, leaving her husband in bed with a hangover. But she never returns. She places a call to the police saying she's found a boy in the woods, but the call is cut short by a muffled cry. Did one of Leo's sons see Vera? What are they hiding about that day? And why are they so scared of their own father? Told from shifting perspectives, How a Woman Becomes a Lake is a compelling, lyrical novel about family, new beginnings, and costly mistakes, and asks, what do you do when the people who are meant to love you the most, fail?

 

Recommended by Nicole (HI NICOLE). Really, really good. Really, really sad. Full of flawed, sympathetic characters and some you could cheerfully choke to death (or get your sister to do it, I guess). Filled me with a choking sense of rage at times, and a helpless sorrow. 

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst: Synopsis from Goodreads: In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby-whom Nick had idolized at Oxford-and Catherine, highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends. Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.


This had been on my radar for quite a while, so I was glad to be 'forced' to read it for book club. It's hard to say I really liked it or loved it, because it's a complicated story with a lot of things that are hard to read laid open mercilessly. But it is a clear-eyed, beautifully-written slice of a specific span of time in a specific place, and I admired it immensely for that. I was enchanted with Nick's early coming-of-age journey and coming to terms with his sexuality. It was a little hard watching him trying so hard to fit in with wealthy entitled people, but hard to fault him because he so clearly was in love with and longed for beauty. When the second part of the book started with the coke and the threesomes and the ever-increasing fact of the Fedden family's shallowness and distaste for anything that fell outside the family's privileged and narrow field of view, I felt less inclined to pick the book up for a while. Then I drove through to the end, less enchanted but still impressed. 

The Witch Elm by Tana French: Synopsis from Goodreads: Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life – he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden – and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed. 

A spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are. 

This seems to be a little more polarizing than other French books. It was a bit of a departure for her, but still has her trademark depth of character, elegant prose and yearning, melancholy tone. It separates into two distinct halves, and I had no idea where the second part of it was going for a good part of it. It's a dense, dark family mystery, and a good exploration of a "lucky" (good-looking white male) character meeting with circumstances that force him to to come to a reckoning he otherwise would not have. As with Broken Harbour, it took me a good amount of time to shake off the sadness after reading, and I would have to recommend it with a caveat or two -- don't read it in a dark, depressing season or when you're already feeling down.

Outline by Rachel Cusk: Synopsis from Goodreads: A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives. Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself. Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form. 

So I was wandering around the bookstore last year looking for a book to buy. I try to read big-name authors from the library and spend my book-buying dollars on lesser-known ones, but I don't really do my research, so occasionally I magnanimously buy a book by a well-established probably-rich author like a pompous asshole. Anyway, this book was very, very aesthetically pleasing, from the cover to the paper to the writing. It's described as a creative writing teacher's experience with her class (get it? Outline?) but almost the entire first third of the book is actually taken up with a man she meets on the plane to Athens, and then joins on his boat when they get to Greece. The writing is beautiful. The dialogue is extremely unrealistic. Every character is very much a 'character'. There are some funny moment and some striking images. I read this in May and I can't remember much of it, except a few images. I liked reading it, but it's not the kind of book I need to read many of, if you know what I mean. 


My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: Synopsis from Goodreads: When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water..

I didn't love reading this, because it pushed a lot of my buttons, but that was pretty much the point, so well done on that. It's always cool reading something where the place and culture is so different from mine. I should note, before I go on, that I am the oldest of two sisters and we were pretty much treated equally, although there were times when I felt like she got away with murder (NOT literally) because she was smaller and cuter. There's this old cassette tape of her 'reading' Cinderella that is SO freaking cute, and then I start reading something and I ask her to be quiet so I can read and then my parents say 'well maybe we're just all done then' and I start screaming and crying and the visceral sense of rage and injustice I get from hearing that second part of the tape is ridiculous. Maybe it's because of that remembered sense of injustice that I got SO angry when reading about how Korede is supposed to efface herself and support Ayoola. I always find myself thinking indignantly about how I would act differently in the character's place, and then realizing that if I was mired in the same centuries-old traditions and surrounded by family who reinforce them, I would likely be the same sullenly resentful and yet obedient daughter. The harmful, destructive patterns and the helplessness to change them - Braithwaite drew all of this brilliantly. If it isn't obvious, I really didn't get the humour in this. (My sister is a brilliant pharmacist and I love her and she's never killed anyone (that I know of) just to be clear). 


Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman: Synopsis from Goodreads: No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all. Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . the only way to survive is to open your heart.

This was much compared to The Rosie Project and Where'd You Go Bernadette, which I guess is accurate, although I found the undertone of this quite a bit darker. I guess Eleanor's thought patterns were similar to those of Don in The Rosie Project. This was excellent - sort of matter-of-fact even when skirting tragedy, darkly humorous, hopeful and moving. It's books like these that are helping me bust out of my subconscious snobby distaste for 'women's literature' - you kind of know what's going to happen, but the journey is highly enjoyable. 

Weather by Jenny Offill: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation--one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year--a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis. 

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience--but still she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks . . . And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in--funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad. 

This is my second read by this author. I read it, put it down for a bit, then thought "I can't even remember what this is about. The style is too choppy and it's not working. Maybe I won't finish". Then I picked it up to read a couple more pages and couldn't stop reading until the end. I think her style is deceptively simple -- at first I thought maybe it was easier to write a book this way, almost in aphorisms, without the need to come up with connective tissue. And then I realized that nearly every tiny section is, or concludes with, sheer brilliance. And I still think about moments and phrases from the Dept. of Speculation. I do find that sometimes the publisher's descriptions of her books put in information that can't actually be found in the narrative, which seems weird and a little sketchy, but that's not on her. I'm sorry I doubted you, Jenny, I was wrong. I think both books would reward rereading. 

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Books Read in 2020: Four-Star Mystery

Last week I was almost out of hairspray - this hair doesn't work without spray, I'm not proud of it but there it is. I mean I was almost out of the good hairspray. I have backup hairspray, which is really just hairspray that I bought by mistake but discovered was too sticky. I usually get the good hairspray at my hair salon but it's closed. I feel really bad for them because they had moved and expanded not long before Covid started, and I'm really hoping they'll be okay. But also I can't get my hairspray. Sometimes I can get it on Amazon, but they didn't have it either. I was going to check the drug store, and then I remembered that I've been better lately at stocking up on stuff before I'm down to the dregs. I had zero memory of buying any, but I looked under the sink in the bathroom where I put the back-up contact solution and deodorant and there was a FULL CAN. This almost makes up for three days later when I ordered CPAP filters and then found that I already had six months' supply under the sink. On the bright side, six months from now when I reorder them again, I will also then find those same supplies. Wait, that's.... not a bright side, except that I guess it's better than running out of supplies, because when I do actually manage to fall asleep then I won't be starving my brain of oxygen - it's a little thing, but a nice thing. And also, when I checked the drugstore my hairspray wasn't there, is my hairspray being discontinued, because that would NOT BE COOL.

 Four-Star Mystery

Conviction by Denise Mina: Synopsis from Goodreads: It’s just a normal morning when Anna's husband announces that he's leaving her for her best friend and taking their two daughters with him. With her safe, comfortable world shattered, Anna distracts herself with someone else's story: a true-crime podcast. That is until she recognises the name of one of the victims and becomes convinced that only she knows what really happened. With nothing left to lose, she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, Anna's past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.


Four and a half, verging closely on five. I love that with a Denise Mina book I don't know what I'm going to get, but whatever it is will be good. I love that the protagonist is highly, almost proudly, unlikable (with some very good reasons). I love that this is a dark murder mystery crossed with a madcap picaresque romp, intercut with some very affecting moments of insight and connection. At first I kept forgetting that the characters weren't in the same pandemic conditions I am and wondering how they could go to restaurants and cross borders, but eventually I started to forget, which is as big a compliment to this book as anything else I could say. 

The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld: Synopsis from Goodreads: After captivating readers in The Child Finder, Naomi—the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children—returns, trading snow-covered woods for dark, gritty streets on the search for her missing sister in a city where young, homeless girls have been going missing and turning up dead. From the highly praised author of The Child Finder and The Enchanted comes The Butterfly Girl, a riveting novel that ripples with truth, exploring the depths of love and sacrifice in the face of a past that cannot be left dead and buried. A year ago, Naomi, the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children, made a promise that she would not take another case until she finds the younger sister who has been missing for years. Naomi has no picture, not even a name. All she has is a vague memory of a strawberry field at night, black dirt under her bare feet as she ran for her life. The search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets like ghosts, searching for money, food, and companionship. The sharp-eyed investigator soon discovers that young girls have been going missing for months, many later found in the dirty waters of the river. Though she does not want to get involved, Naomi is unable to resist the pull of children in need—and the fear she sees in the eyes of a twelve-year old girl named Celia. Running from an abusive stepfather and an addict mother, Celia has nothing but hope in the butterflies—her guides and guardians on the dangerous streets. She sees them all around her, tiny iridescent wisps of hope that soften the edges of this hard world and illuminate a cherished memory from her childhood—the Butterfly Museum, a place where everything is safe and nothing can hurt her. As danger creeps closer, Naomi and Celia find echoes of themselves in one another, forcing them each to consider the question: Can you still be lost even when you’ve been found? But will they find the answer too late? 


Denfeld writes beautifully, and also uses the medium of a very skillful mystery to shine a devastating light on the lives of marginalized people. The outlining of Celia's days on the street reminded me of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich  - it's one thing to say "she lived on the streets" or "he lived in a Stalinist work camp", but it's another to walk through the humiliating details of a day where the smallest dignities and comforts are very difficult to come by. I feel a bit like the author's plots have become more accessible with every successive book - The Enchanted was quite a bit more literary and enigmatic. I'm not sure if I'm hoping for another book in this series next, or another standalone. Whichever it is,  I'm in. 

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sagar: Synopsis from Goodreads: Fifteen years ago, summer camper Emma Davis watched sleepily as her three cabin mates snuck out of their cabin in the dead of night. The last she--and anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips. Now a rising star in the NYC art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings.. They catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of the very same Camp Nightingale--and when Francesca implores Emma to return to the camp as a painting counselor, Emma sees an opportunity to find closure and move on. Yet, it is immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by surfacing memories, Emma is suddenly plagued by a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca, and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian apparently left behind about the camp's twisted origins. And as history begins to repeat itself and three girls go missing again, Emma must face threats from both man and nature in order to uncover all the buried secrets--including what really happened all those years ago.

I had some pretty big issues with the author's first book, so I hesitated before picking this up. I am a sucker, however, for a good summer camp yarn. One of the books I remember most vividly from when I was ten or so is called Five in a Tent. Even better if there are sinister deaths and disappearances involved - hello, Friday the 13th? Dead of Summer on Netflix? Shut up and take my money. Also, authors deserve a chance to grow and improve. Also, I could get it as a library ebook.
I did indeed find this a vast improvement over Final Girls (which I really, really wanted to love, but didn't). The author captures the fraught dynamic between adolescent girls in close quarters very well, and the mystery is quite satisfying. There are a few details that are a bit too much of a stretch - the fact that Emma takes three girls canoeing over to an island and doesn't tell anyone and then is confused about why her boss is angry is kind of dumb, and I could have used a bit more regular activity between Emma's bouts of running around throwing up and being nervy. The romance is also too much tell and not enough show. Overall, though, a pretty good read that kept me entertained during a couple of flights. 

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager: Synopsis from Goodreads: What was it like? Living in that house.Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?

Good fun. This has the flavour of an eighties scary movie - old, eminently hauntable house, family secrets, missing memories, cinematic reveals etc. A good main character with a decent head on her shoulders. A couple of twists that feel well earned. 

The Hidden Things by Jamie Mason: Synopsis from Goodreads: A hair-raising, atmospheric thriller from the acclaimed author of the “ripping good” (The New York Times) novel Three Graves Full, inspired by the real-life unsolved theft of a seventeenth-century painting. Twenty-eight seconds. 

In less than half a minute, a home-security camera captures the hidden resolve in fourteen-year-old Carly Liddell as she fends off a vicious attack just inside her own front door. The video of her heroic escape appears online and goes viral. As the view count climbs, the lives of four desperate people will be forever changed by what’s just barely visible in the corner of the shot. Carly’s stepfather is spurred to protect his darkest secret: how a stolen painting—four hundred years old, by a master of the Dutch Golden Age—has come to hang in his suburban foyer. The art dealer, left for dead when the painting vanished, sees a chance to buy back her life. And the double-crossed enforcer renews the hunt to deliver the treasure to his billionaire patrons—even if he has to kill to succeed. But it’s Carly herself, hailed as a social-media hero, whose new perspective gives her the courage to uncover the truth as the secrets and lies tear her family apart.

An incredibly literary thriller. I read a review that called this 'plot-driven' which made me bark with laughter, because it is possibly the most character-driven mystery I have ever read. It came perilously near to edging into farce a couple of times, straining credulity that so many of the people in play here were so very in tune with their own traits, motivations, flaws and conflicts as well as those of every other person they meet. The fact that one of the characters is a young teenager just makes it that much more incredible. But that's okay - better, in my opinion, than dull, two-dimensional characters. Enjoyable and a little different. Also led to a comical moment when I got it from the library at the same time as The Hiding Place (similar title AND cover) and at one point felt like I was holding a book while simultaneously staring at the same book on a table across the room. 

Strangers at the Gate by Catriona McPherson: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the Agatha-award winning author of Quiet Neighbors comes a twisty, fascinating standalone that begs the question: how well can we ever know the people around us?

 When Finn and Paddy decide to move from their home in the city to the small town of Simmerton, it feels like everything has finally fallen into place. Paddy's been made partner at the law firm in town, and Finn has found full-time work as the deacon. Paddy's new boss has even offered them the use of a gate house on his property. Finn feels like this must be a fairy tale. Paddy thinks they've won the lottery. Either way, they agree: it's perfect. But only days after moving into the gate house, Finn begins to have doubts. She keeps hearing strange sounds, and the thicket of trees make her feel claustrophobic rather than safe. When she and Paddy discover the bloody bodies of Paddy's boss and his wife, the fairytale has officially ended. A strange email—supposedly sent from the dead man—makes it clear: this was murder. Paddy and Finn's dream of a new life quickly turns into a nightmare as the plot thickens and the tension grows. With strange neighbors and a haunting setting, Catriona McPherson once again weaves a page-turning tale of suspense. 

This was cool and not at all formulaic. Another character of faith faced with a difficult situation that tests that faith to its limit. The workings of Finn and Paddy's relationship and their relationship with their parents were a great story all on their own. There was one small part that was so incredibly far-fetched I still get mad when I remember it, but that wasn't enough to detract from the overall goodness.

Find You in the Dark by Nathan Ripley: Synopsis from Goodreads: A chilling debut thriller in the vein of Dexter and The Talented Mr RipleyMartin Reese has a hobby: he digs up murder victims. He buys stolen police files on serial killers, and uses them to find and dig up missing bodies. Calls in the results anonymously, taunting the police for their failure to do their job. Detective Sandra Whittal takes that a little personally. She’s suspicious of the mysterious caller, who she names the Finder. Maybe he’s the one leaving the bodies behind. If not, who’s to say he won’t start soon? As Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder, Martin makes a shocking discovery. It seems someone—someone lethal—is very unhappy about the bodies he’s been digging up. 

Hunted by a cop, hunted by a killer. To escape and keep his family safe, Martin may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever imagined.

Maybe three and a half. The first half was really cool and different and interesting. The last half lost me a bit, sort of devolving into a standard ooh-so-edgy murder thing. It was nearly very good and seemed to kind of back down, although it's possible it was just my mood. The initial conceit is enjoyably different, and I did very much enjoy the interplay between the cop and her partner in the alternate chapters. 

The Poet by Michael Connelly: Synopsis from Goodreads: Denver crime-beat reporter Jack McEvoy specializes in violent death. So when his homicide detective brother kills himself, McEvoy copes in the only way he knows how--he decides to write the story. But his research leads him to suspect a serial killer is at work--a devious murderer who's killing cops and leaving a trail of poetic clues. It's the news story of a lifetime, if he can get the story without losing his life.


First read in July 2011. I reread it because a new Connelly book about McEvoy was coming out and then I realized I had missed the second one. I regret rereading it a tiny bit because it was a little better in my memory than it was in reality this time. The mystery was excellent and the writing was pretty good, but the romance and sex was a little cringey. I probably would have gone with 3.5 stars, but I'm leaving it at four and decided to wait for the subsequent books as library ebooks.

Hid From Our Eyes (Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne #9) by Julia Spencer-Fleming: Synopsis from Goodreads: New York Times bestseller Julia Spencer-Fleming returns to her beloved Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series with new crimes that span decades1952. Millers Kill Police Chief Harry McNeil is called to a crime scene where a woman in a party dress has been murdered with no obvious cause of death. 1972. Millers Kill Police Chief Jack Liddle is called to a murder scene of a woman that's very similar to one he worked as a trooper in the 50s. The only difference is this time, they have a suspect. Young Vietnam War veteran Russ van Alstyne found the body while riding his motorcycle and is quickly pegged as the prime focus of the investigation. Present-day. Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne gets a 911 call that a young woman has been found dead in a party dress, the same MO as the crime he was accused of in the 70s. The pressure is on for Russ to solve the murder before he's removed from the case. Russ will enlist the help of his police squad and Reverand Clare Fergusson, who is already juggling the tasks of being a new mother to her and Russ's baby and running St. Alban's Church, to finally solve these crimes. 

Readers have waited years for this newest book and Julia Spencer-Fleming delivers with the exquisite skill and craftsmanship that have made her such a success.

I've been a huge fan of this series from book one. I mean, come on, a female very non-traditional priest (and ex-army helicopter pilot) and a very traditional small-town police chief? With instant chemistry? Out of my dreams and into my book. It was a long, long wait between the previous book and this one, and I was so happy to see it finally show up. It's extremely character-driven, and the characters are amazing. Clare's constant struggle to stay true to her faith while helping people in the all-too-real world, and Russ's integrity, compassion and curmudgeonliness are admirable and entertaining. Along with some of the best will-they won't-they suspense ever, the setting and the supporting characters are vivid and well done. This one gives some deep backstory and also deals with some very topical concerns. The mystery is far-fetched, but still works, I think - honestly I might not be the most reliable on that, because unless it was terrible I was going to be okay with it. 

The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas: Synopsis from Goodreads: There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook. First there was the car accident—two girls gone after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Those two girls were killed by the man next door. The police shot him, so no one will ever know why he did it. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they lost. That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. She just wants to forget. Only, Monica’s world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her stepdad’s desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school. . . . Whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. Some people in town know more than they’re saying. And somehow Monica is at the center of it all. There are no more cheerleaders in Sunnybrook, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is safe. 

This author writes intelligent YA that addresses real issues and has characters that act and talk like teenagers, with outsized mysteries as a connective tissue. I like books where several different plotlines come together, and she does that well. I also like that she shows teen-aged girls that are able to have different kinds and levels of relationships, without defaulting to mean girl or lovesick tropes. 


The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup: Synopsis from Goodreads: The heart-pounding debut from the creator of the hit Scandinavian television show The Killing. If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago. A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted? To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues. Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over. And no one is safe.

I found this on my Kindle with no memory of buying it. It's by the scriptwriter for the Danish tv show The Killing - I've only watched the American version, which was very good. The book was also good - very Scandinavian in setting and tone. I actually looked up whether it rains that much in Copenhagen after reading multiple passages about the the characters' clothing and shoes being soaked through. Apparently it does, which begs the question - wouldn't they get better rain gear and rubber boots? Or is walking around soggy all the time just a good motivator? Whatever, it does definitely evoke a vivid sense of place. The mystery is a good, classic serial killer thriller, with a sinister signature, a mystery stretching into the past and a couple of pretty effective twists. 


The Holdout by Graham Moore: Synopsis from Goodreads: In this twisty tale from Moore (The Sherlockian), the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game, young juror Maya Seale is convinced that African American high school teacher Bobby Nock is innocent of killing the wealthy white female student with whom he appears to have been involved and persuades her fellow jurors likewise. Ten years later, a true-crime docuseries reassembles the jurors, and Maya, now a defense attorney, must prove her own innocence when one of them is found dead in Maya's room.

This was a bit uneven in tone, but the ending bumped it up to four stars for me. I always find stories about jury dynamics interesting, and the musings about the strengths and limitations of the justice system are engrossing. The mystery is a little stronger than the characters. Be warned that the book gives away the ending to The Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie and possible the Murder of Roger Ackroyd too - some people on Goodreads were incensed about this because those were the very books they were going to read next and now their lives were ruined (yes, I am a tiny bit underwhelmed by complaints about spoilers for books that were published in the early 1900s, I might be wrong, it's happened before).


Missing Person by Sarah Lotz: Synopsis from Goodreads: From acclaimed horror writer Sarah Lotz, hailed by Stephen King as "vastly entertaining," a new novel about a group of amateur detectives infiltrated by the sadistic killer whose case they're investigatingReclusive Irish bookseller Shaun Ryan has always believed that his older brother, Teddy, died in a car accident. It's only on his mother's deathbed that he learns the truth: Teddy, who was gay, fled the Catholic, deeply conservative County Wicklow for New York decades earlier. Shaun finds no sign of him in New York or anywhere else--until he comes across the unsolved murder of a John Doe whose description matches Teddy's. Desperate for information, Shaun tracks down Chris Guzman, a woman who runs a website dedicated to matching missing persons cases with unidentified bodies. Through Chris's site, a group of online cold case fanatics connect Teddy with the notorious "Boy in the Dress" murder, believed to be one of many committed by a serial killer targeting gay men. But who are these cold case fanatics, and how do they know so much about a case that left the police and the FBI stumped? With investigators, amateurs, and one sadistic killer on a collision course, Missing Person is Sarah Lotz at her most thrilling and terrifying.

I read two books by Sarah Lotz this year - I'm not sure why, maybe I read a short story by her? - and they were very different from each other. The other one was fine, but this was a level up. There's a moving novel about family secrets and damage in parallel with a very satisfying mystery. The website means there are great, nuanced characters in several different settings and situations all obsessed with the case for different, compelling reasons. Chris Guzman (the prickly, wheelchair-bound badass who runs the missing persons website) often pops into my head and I have to think for a moment to remember what book she's from - I would be into her getting her own series. 

Season in the Sun

 I am a little sad for various reasons right now, but I do want to gratefully acknowledge that we had a fantastic summer. Angus didn't c...