RidgewayGirl Reads What She Wants in 2023 -- Second Quarter

Hello, friends! Today really felt like Spring will come and Siberian Squill is spread across the lawn.







Yeah, so I don't have a theme.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Reading Miscellany

Owned Books Read: 23

Library Books Read: 35

Audiobooks: 2

Netgalley: 11

Borrowed: 0

Books Acquired: 36

Rereads: 3

Abandoned with Prejudice: 0

>1 RidgewayGirl: it's going to be a glorious Spring!

Category One.



Global Reading


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

1. How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (Cameroon)
2. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
3. Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (Ireland)
4. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Sri Lanka)
5. Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng (Botswana)
6. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li (China)
7. Silent Winds, Dry Seas by Vinod Busjeet (Mauritius)

Category Two.



New To Me Authors

1. Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
2. 2 A.M. in Little America by Ken Kalfus
3. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
4. An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy
5. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
6. Death at Greenway by Lori Rader-Day

Category Three.



Murders and Other Bad Things: Crime Novels, Noir, Horror

1. Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
2. Find Him by Jake Hinkson
3. 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister by Joyce Carol Oates
4. A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino, translated from the Japanese by Giles Murray
5. Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda
6. How Can I Help You by Laura Sims
7. The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon
8. Device Free Weekend by Sean Doolittle

Category Four.



Representation Matters: Diverse Books

1. The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
2. Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
3. My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi
4. Sinking Bell: Stories by Bojan Louis
5. Central Places by Delia Cai
6. The Laughter by Sonora Jha
7. Chlorine by Jade Song
8. Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

Category Five.



Immigrants, Expats, Works in Translation

1. Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang
2. 1,000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel, translated from the German by Priscilla Layne (Germany)
3. The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
4. Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Dodd
5. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies
6. Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
7. The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker

Category Six.



Books Off of My Own Shelves

1. Cherry by Mary Karr
2. Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
3. Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand: Curious Adventures of a CSI by Dana Kollmann
4. Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
5. Winter by Ali Smith
6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
7. Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea

Category Seven.



Library Books

1. A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp
2. The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
3. The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie
4. Brother & Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella
5. Homestead by Melinda Moustakis
6. My Murder by Katie Williams

Category Eight.



Books Read on My IPad

1. Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
2. The No-Show by Beth O'Leary
3. Kurashi at Home by Marie Kondo
4. Black Dog White Cat: Stories by Kelly Link
5. My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin
6. Haven by Emma Donoghue
7. If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

Category Nine.



Longlisted, Shortlisted and Award Winners

1. Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize)
2. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (National Book Award for Fiction, 2022)
3. An Island by Karen Jennings (longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize)
4. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Shortlisted, 2023 Tournament of Books)
5. Autumn by Ali Smith (shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize)
6. Circe by Madeline Miller (shortlisted for 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction)

Category Ten.



Brand New Books: Books Published in 2023

1. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
2. The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent
3. Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
4. The Midnight News by Jo Baker
5. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
6. Couplets by Maggie Millner
7. Mobility by Lydia Kiesling
8. The Guest by Emma Cline

And my new thread is open. Come on in!

Here's a little something to set the mood.

>3 VictoriaPL: I hope so, Victoria. It's taken its time getting here!

>14 RidgewayGirl: Haha excellent choice of thread intro! Happy new one :)

Happy new thread, Kay. The garden looks lovely!

>16 rabbitprincess: My husband makes a harrumphing noise whenever I show him that.

>17 MissWatson: It will look lovely, just wait a month. Once the peonies are in bloom and everything is green.

Central Places by Delia Cai is the story of Audrey, a young, hip New Yorker, who returns to her small midwestern hometown for the Christmas season eight years after she graduated high school and got away as fast as she could. She brings her fancy New York fiancé with her and before she's been back long, she runs into her high school crush and discovers that her boyfriend is a bit of a dud. But this is not a Hallmark movie. As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Audrey always felt distanced from her peers both by her appearance (and the casual racism that went with that) and her parents's lack of knowledge of how to be American parents. She also rebelled against her mother's expectations and refused to learn Mandarin or eat the foods her parents prepared. Returning isn't something she's happy about. But as she runs into people she knew, spends some time with the guy she had a crush on and fights with her mother, she's learning about herself and how impossible it is to truly leave the past behind.

This novel started slowly, but by the halfway mark, I was having trouble putting it down. I'd be thrown out of the story by the tension between the author mentioning specific places that exist in Peoria, Illinois, but then having other specific places, like the sizable airport, not exist. The author grew up in this area and her own experience makes Audrey's adolescence feel very real. As she struggles against the ideas about her past that she's told herself, she begins to see that the truth might be more complex than she's imagined and that having a central place to call home, no matter how often or infrequent the visits is important. The writing in this novel was good, with the light touch that gradually gives way to a deeper exploration of Audrey's complicated relationship to where she grew up.

Happy new thread! I love the flowers in the lawn!

Happy new thread! I actually laughed out loud at the Mt. Everest picture in your top post.

Happy new thread! Investigating Siberian Squill, it looks like something that might grow around here.

>20 Jackie_K: Thanks, Jackie. I love those first signs of Spring.

>21 christina_reads: It made me laugh when I first saw it, too.

>22 VivienneR: It comes up so early and it's so bright and cheerful.

My husband and I just got back from four days in Chicago, where we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. It was a lot of fun. Chicago is fantastic.

>23 RidgewayGirl: Happy Anniversary!! 💕

>23 RidgewayGirl: Congratulations! Coincidentally our anniversary was on March 29. But considerably more years.

>24 VictoriaPL: Thanks, Victoria.

>25 VivienneR: Vivienne, I realized the downside of an early Spring wedding as we wore our winter coats and kept an eye out for storms during our time in Chicago.

>23 RidgewayGirl: >25 VivienneR: Happy anniversaries to you both! :)

>26 RidgewayGirl: Our March wedding in Northern Ireland could have had any kind of weather but it turned out to be full sun and temperatures in the seventies (F). I've only been in Chicago once and really enjoyed the visit.

>27 Jackie_K: Thank you, Jackie!

Happy anniversary! Glad you were able to get away to celebrate.

>23 RidgewayGirl: Happy Anniversary Kay!
>25 VivienneR: Happy Anniversary Vivienne!

>23 RidgewayGirl:, >25 VivienneR: Happy Anniversary. You chose a great day. March 29th is my birthday.

>27 Jackie_K: Thanks, Jackie!

>28 VivienneR: I got married in Prescott, Arizona. I was worried about it being too hot for an outdoor wedding, but then it snowed two days before the wedding and I had a new thing to worry about.

>29 rabbitprincess: Thanks, rp, it was nice to go somewhere and the Art Institute Museum has been on my wishlist for a very long time.

>30 lsh63: Thanks, Lisa!

>31 lowelibrary: Happy belated birthday, April!

>30 lsh63: Thank you, Lisa!

>31 lowelibrary: Thank you and happy belated birthday, April!

>32 RidgewayGirl: Ouch! I guess weather is the one element that can't be planned.

Happy new thread.
The Mount Everest picture made me snort - in delight!

I realized the downside of an early Spring wedding as we wore our winter coats and kept an eye out for storms during our time in Chicago.
Happy Anniversary. We made a similar decision, the last weekend in November is equally as clement. Ho hum.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is an early short story collection by Yiyun Li. All but one story is set in China and they often have the feel of a folktale. From the village that supplies eunuchs to the Imperial Court to a chilly Chicago street, the author tells stories that illuminate what it is to be human. This is a solid collection that is understated and full of detail.

A belated Happy Anniversary! What a lovely way to celebrate a milestone like 25 years - we will be celebrating 45 years later on this year so I should start dropping some hints!

>36 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, Judy. 45 years is quite a milestone and definitely deserves a special trip! I will note that I did all the planning and made all the reservations for our trip.

>33 VivienneR: Vivienne, it really can't. And now this week the weather here is glorious. I'm hoping to eat outside by next weekend.

>34 Helenliz: And the danger with a summer wedding is that there will be a heat wave, I guess.

Love the blue flowers. Happy anniversary.

I've just got a bit lost on the Art Institute's website. Did you go to the Dali exhibit? Were there particular highlights from the main collection?

I usually find the bookshops in galleries/ art museums incredibly tempting. Did you escape without bringing anything home?

>19 RidgewayGirl: Sounds good. I've not come across it so will add it to the list.

>39 charl08: The Dali exhibit was interesting. The theme seemed to be Dreams & Boobs. The main collection is enormous. I managed to see European painting 1900-1946 and European painting 1946-present and along with the Dali exhibit, that was a day. I barely scratched the surface, but I did see Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte and some German expressionism that I wanted to see. I liked this enormous Georgia O'Keefe they had hanging in a stairwell.



It's well worth a visit and I'm already eager to go back. The gift shop had surprisingly few postcards, which was a disappointment.

>40 RidgewayGirl: One of the greatest experiences I've had at an art museum happened in the room where Sunday on La Grande Jatte hangs (or did 15 years or so ago). I walked into the small room and no one else was there except a group of about 6 preschoolers and their young male teacher. There was a bench the kids sat on in front of the painting and they were very attentive. He went through every element of the painting with them but in terms they would understand. When he got to the monkey they talked about what that experience would be like...for the monkey. Those children were 100% engaged and being with them made my day! And then some I guess, since I still remember it so well. I'll bet the kids remember that painting and I hope that young man is still teaching!

>41 clue: That's a wonderful story! Despite being there on a rainy Monday, that room was packed and many of the people gathering seemed to just be there to take a picture of the painting, rather than wasting time looking at it. But on the third floor, which was much quieter, I ran into a college-aged guy explaining to his friends why futurism was so good and he really knew his stuff. It's fun to see people genuinely excited about art.

Heather Darwent's debut novel, The Things We Do to Our Friends, begins with a shocking act that sets the tone for the rest of this thriller. Clare (not her real name) has looked to friends to fill the role her parents don't and she has high hopes that going to university in Edinburgh will give her the opportunity to make friends and a fresh start. But she finds it harder than she thought. The people who want to be her friends are not the people she wants to have as friends. Then she runs into the charismatic Tabitha and her careless and wealthy friends and she is delighted and surprised to find that they want her to be a part of their group. But there's a reason they want her that reason has a lot to do with what happened in her past.

This is the kind of thriller where events and revelations occur so rapidly that it's impossible to figure out what the end game is. Clare is quiet and she works hard to blend into her new group of friends, but she's not as passive as they assume. And Clare doesn't know what is being planned when she's not there. Every few pages, a new event throws what came before into question and while there's plenty of foreshadowing, the events hinted at show little resemblance to what seems likely a few chapters earlier. Does this wild ride of a book hold up under scrutiny? Oh, certainly not! But does it matter when the whole thing is so much fun to read? Darwent's writing is never clunky or lazy. She's adept at dropping hints without them looking obvious and at creating a sizable cast of complex characters that she manages to make live and breathe, no matter how unlikely they would appear out in the actual world.

Find Him is a solid noir by Jake Hinkson, author of the also fantastic Dry County. Set in Conway, Arkansas, just a half hour's drive from Little Rock, the story opens with a pregnant teenager looking for her fiancé, who has gone missing just a few days before they were supposed to be married. She tries reporting his disappearance to the police, who just laugh and state the obvious conclusion, a conclusion shared by the man's mother. But Lily refused to give up, although as a member of a fundamentalist Pentecostal church who has never cut her hair or owned a cell phone, she's not at all prepared to go out into the world to look for him. But she finds an unlikely ally in one of Peter's co-workers, who may not fully agree that Peter didn't run off, but who sees the danger in letting Lily wander into dangerous places unwittingly. He's willing to be the one to drive her into Little Rock and to let her know what is going on around her.

"Annnnd you ruined it," Allan says, grimacing like he tastes something sour. "Look, Lily, I'm not here to be a stand-in for all the gays, ok? You ain't Kimmy, and I ain't Titus."

"What does that mean?"

"Do you even own a television?'

"No."

But for all the charm of a mismatched duo on a quest, this is not a novel looking to make anyone feel warm and happy. Peter and Allan were working in a motel where drug dealers and human traffickers were operating and Allan is fully aware of how dangerous these men are and of the bad things going on in the back annex. He knows that even asking around for Peter could get them both killed. But he's a man with a heart despite himself and he liked the seemingly straight-laced Peter, and he's got a clear idea of what could happen to a naive girl like Lily.

So this isn't a novel with a happy ending, but it's also not a hopeless one. What makes this book shine is the complex characters Hinkson has created here. No one is entirely good or bad, and there's a nuance to his portrayal of the members of Lily's church that is rare to find. Allan, an intelligent gay man stuck in a small Southern town caring for his FOX News-watching father, while filling his apartment with books and old movies, is a fantastic character. And Lily may know nothing about the world, but she does know that her child will need a father and she refuses to let her shame at what happened, and for which she is blamed far more than Peter, prevent her doing what she thinks is right.

This is the second book I've read by Hinkson and it won't be my last. It's good stuff.

Hanio wakes to find that he's still alive after attempting suicide. Too bored to try again, he quits his job and advertises a Life for Sale. What follows is his being hired for increasingly odd tasks, beginning with being asked to sleep with the paramour of a jealous mob boss and culminating with him being targeted by a secretive international cabal. But no matter how dangerous the job, he can't seem to find a way to die.

This is old school noir. First published in Japan in 1968, Yukio Mishima has his too-cool-to-care protagonist sleep with the ladies and impress mobsters and spies with his sang-froid. Even vampire like him. This is a weird story, but also a lot of fun, despite the dark premise.

Spring is here! These came from my front yard.

>46 RidgewayGirl: Gorgeous!

>46 RidgewayGirl: Nothing says "Spring" like a beautiful bouquet of daffodils!

>46 RidgewayGirl: Oh those are lovely. Mine are being attacked by snails just now.

>46 RidgewayGirl: - I was just thinking what Judy said. I've realized that I need to plant more daffs in the fall. We have a local "pick your own tulip" farm which just opened and the pictures of the fields of tulips they post look gorgeous.

>46 RidgewayGirl: They are beautiful and it's such a joy to see the first ones open in Spring. Unfortunately mine have come and gone for the year. I've been to P. Allen Smith's Moss Mountain farm once when his 1 million were blooming and it was stunning. He has a list of varities, three or four, that would provide blossoms for several months if they were planted together.

>47 rabbitprincess: & >48 DeltaQueen50: I'm grateful to whoever planted a variety of daffodil types around the yard. I'm planning to add more, and more tulips, this fall.

>49 charl08: Ugh. I've dealt with slugs attacking my garden before. Not fun. My MIL loses all her Spring flowers to deer, so I guess it's always something.

>50 dudes22: One Spring Break, when we were still in Germany, we took the kids up to the northern end of the Netherlands. It was a super cheap vacation, because it was early in the Spring. But Spring came early and we ended up in the middle of huge fields of blooming tulips. It was an amazing sight.

>51 clue: That would be worth looking into, just to have them around longer.

Happy belated anniversary! I've fallen behind in reading threads in this group and have a lot of catching up to do. I enjoyed very much reading all your reviews of the ToB books in your previous thread. Some of your reviews, such as for My Volcano and Babel, really captured well the strengths and weaknesses of the books.

>53 mathgirl40: Thanks, Paulina. It really is easy to get behind on threads here.

When Alex is invited to an exclusive writing workshop with superstar author Roza Vallo she is thrilled. She has worshiped the writer of feminist horror novels since she was a teenager. There are only two catches. The first -- since her best friend Wren ghosted her a year ago, Alex hasn't written a word, and second -- Wren will be there. But this is her last and best chance to chase her dreams and so of course Alex goes to The Writing Retreat. Awkwardness with an ex-friend turns out to be the smallest of the problems Alex will face at the retreat, because Roza's house is hiding more than nervous writers and Roza has a plan of her own.

This is the kind of thriller that starts strong and then just keeps piling on new elements until it all becomes ridiculous. But if you read the first chapter, in which a feminist woman author of horror novels is a star, complete with covers of fashion magazines and appearances that sell out in a matter of minutes, who is nonetheless described as "reclusive," you've already agreed to suspend all of your critical facilities to this book. Julia Bartz left nothing on the table when she wrote this thing and you've got to appreciate how she manages to keep raising the stakes. Is this a good book? Absolutely not. Is it a good thriller? Not if you need your thrillers to make sense. Is it a fun read? Yes, it is, as long as you keep turning the pages without thinking too deeply about what just happened. And you've got to like a novel in which an author (I imagined Silvia Moreno-Garcia in the role) is a celebrity made unimaginably wealthy through her handful of feminist horror novels.

Forensic anthropologists come up with weird titles. From Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples to Bone Voyage by Stanley Rhine, you can picture the authors giggling to themselves as came up with that "perfect" title. And Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand certainly fits right in, even if the author didn't finish her doctorate until after she spent ten years working for the Baltimore PD as a crime scene investigator. It's her years as a CSI that this book is about. When Kollmann got her job as a CSI it was during a difficult period for that department. Previously, the job had been saved for police officers nearing retirement and there was a great deal of resentment aimed at these new civilians now working that job. Kollmann was subjected to cold treatment and some not-entirely-benign hazing but she stuck with it and did her job, often working in terrible conditions.

Kollmann is not a writer and this book would have benefited from some editorial attention. The first half is far better than the second, as Kollmann runs out of stories and fills the pages with the kinds of stories that are only funny after a long day and several beers. Kollmann has had an interesting career, and includes pictures of the archaeological digs she worked on and the work she did in the Balkans identifying victims of that war. Sadly, the pictures were included, but nothing made it into the text of the book, leaving this reader convinced that had she had more time (she admits that she wrote this book while she was working on her dissertation and caring for a baby) and someone to help her with the writing, this would have been an excellent and informative book.

Kurashi at Home is Marie Kondo's book of vibes. It's not a how to; that's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which covers everything. This book is intended for people who have read the main book and also like a book with pretty illustrations of spare, well-curated rooms.

I read the first book awhile ago and am still folding my laundry and using a few of the ideas from that book, but a year ago we all moved to a new house and there are still, a full year later, a few boxes stuck here and there. I was looking for more inspiration than instruction, and this book suited that aim. The main thing I took away from this book was that the purpose of finishing up the move and unpacking those final boxes and getting those last spaces organized and clear is the satisfaction that comes from being in a space that looks the way I want it to look. It's about making one's home, regardless of size or how long one plans to live there, into a space that feels restful and restorative.

All in all, a pleasant book, in which it's fun to see that Kondo has relaxed her standards now that she is married and has young children. There's some interesting bits about how her religious faith influences how she looks at her surroundings, making the process of tidying up something other than being uptight about clutter.

Dust rose up behind us, and I watched the bedouin running towards some tattered tents by some bushes southwards of us, where there were diminutive sheep and naked children. Where, O God, is the shade? Such land brings forth nothing but prophets. This drought can be cured only by the sky.

After studying in Europe and having taken a civil servant job in Khartoum, a man returns to his home village on a bend in the Nile only a few times a year. On one visit, he is astonished to meet another English-speaking man and is unsure of what to make of a Western-educated man living in a farming village where traditions remain unchanging and education is rare. Mustafa later shares his story, a remarkable one, with the narrator.

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih is a remarkable book. Originally published in 1966, it holds many insights about the effects of colonialism that remain relevant today. The narrator allows the customs and traditions of his birthplace to commit an injustice, with repercussions that shock everyone. There's a lot going on in this slim novel set in an obscure corner of Sudan and I'm glad to have read it.

The war ended in victory for us all: the stones, the trees, the animals, the iron, while I, lying under this beautiful, compassionate sky, feel that we are all brothers; he who drinks and he who prays and he who steals and he who commits adultery and he who fights and he who kills. The source is the same. No one knows what goes on in the mind of the Divine. Perhaps he doesn't care. Perhaps he is not angry.

>58 RidgewayGirl: I was also very impressed with A Season of Migration to the North, despite its less than satisfactory ending. Worth re-reading, so I've just found my copy. I remember the writing as being quite biblical.

>60 RidgewayGirl: I appreciated how much understanding he had with the plight of the woman in this book.

The Laughter by Sonora Jha is a tenured English professor's account of what led to an incident involving a colleague who teaches law. Oliver Harding is fascinated by Ruhaba Khan, a much younger professor who comes from Pakistan and who wears a head covering. When her nephew arrives to live with her, Oliver sees his opportunity to form a connection. As a divorced man with an estranged adult daughter, Oliver has plenty of free time to spend with Ruhaba's nephew and he happily hires him to walk his dog and takes him on hikes, all with the intention of getting closer to her. But these are tense times at the university, with indications that the curriculum is being pushed away from the dead white guys, a change that would certainly affect a professor in late middle-age who gained tenure due to his focus on G. K. Chesterton. And Oliver is hearing hints that Rhuhaba is under investigation by the university and he's getting visits from the FBI, asking about her nephew.

Oliver is telling the story and he's more concerned with making himself look good than accuracy, we're talking Humbert Humbert levels of manipulation. It's a fun exercise to peer past the narrator to try to see the events as they really are. The reader learns quickly that Oliver is unreliable, but what about Rhuhaba? Is she as blithely unaware of Oliver's attitude towards her? And why is she under investigation by their university? Is it for the same reasons the FBI is interested in her nephew? Jha seems to delight in writing from the point of view of Oliver Harding and she doesn't pull any punches in this excellent campus novel.

After her wife dies and a biography about her wife is published that CM feels is full of inaccuracies and lies, CM sets out to write the real Biography of X. But the artist known most prominently as X has a past filled with obfuscations and deceptions, not all of them done in the name of art. As her widow dives deeper into her wife's life, what emerges is a conundrum. Was her wife a great and multi-talented artist who acted with her art in mind? Or was she a narcissistic grifter who hurt far too many people? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

Catherine Lacey has created a confounding novel; the subject is largely unsympathetic and the narrator is made unreliable by her motivations and loyalties. It's the kind of novel that needs an assured and talented author to pull it off, and Lacey does have the chops. Adding to the mix, Lacey has also set this biography in an alternate history of the United States, parts of which are described in detail, larger questions are hand-waved away or ignored. It was a lot to put in one book. X interacts with pretty much every famous person from the seventies to the late nineties, from Andy Warhol and Kathy Acker, to David Bowie, Warren Beatty and Susan Sontag. Lacey sticks to the format and there are amply endnotes, often referencing real people who accomplished different things in this alternative world, sometimes flipping details, like Rachel Cusk becoming Richard Cusk.

So does this audacious project work? Yes, mostly, almost? The alternate history that allows X to be in/famous and allows her a large role in the lives of many well-known people, lessens the stakes of the novel by constantly reminding the reader that this is fiction. The world Lacey has created has some large holes that are never addressed, while other issues are carefully laid out and it left me increasingly impatient, waiting for the information that never arrived. This is a book that looks at sexism, as it exists in the different countries the US has split into, in detail but ignores racism, which seems to have never existed in this version of the world. And many huge changes occur peacefully and largely off the page. The US split without war, women took over art without more than an occasional article wondering if men can even create real art, and despite the fact that the US is now three separate countries, no one wanted names more creative than the Northern Territory, the Southern Territory and the Western Territory (I really had trouble believing that we wouldn't have ended up with variations on the United Republic of America, the Democratic Republic of America and the Free Republic of Real American States.)

Lacey is a fantastic author and as CM learns new things about her wife, she reassessed their relationship, that was structured very much as a traditional marriage, where CM gave up her own career and aspirations to be X's support staff. These realizations come slowly, having to penetrate the gloss that grief has put on her memories of X and it's very well done. And the endnotes look like they were a lot of fun to write.

Today is Indie Bookstore Day and so I have gone and done my patriotic duty. There is one independent bookstore in town but I had thought it just had comics and children's books. This isn't true and I'm happy to find that out!

An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy follows a down-on-his-heels lawyer living in New York City in a railroad apartment and doing whatever jobs come his way to make ends meet. He's hired by a mysterious woman to see if the husband she's divorcing is trying to sell some valuable legal booklets that belong to her. The money is good and the job is easy, until our protagonist discovers that the woman who hired him was not who she said she was. And so he becomes involved with the woman who was impersonated, someone equally mysterious to him, as he tries to make amends for what he was tricked into doing and to find out who hired him and why.

This is heavily marketed at noir. In descriptions and reviews the terms "hard-boiled" and "homage to noir" are thrown around like confetti. The protagonist sure seems like the kind of detective one found in a classic noir; he's sort of world weary, but also compassionate and in love with the version of New York he lives in, in which the chains stores and luxury apartments have been replaced with colorful neighborhoods full of friendly bars and diners. So by the time I figured out that "noir" was referring only to the stage setting and not at all to the story, which is absolutely cozy in tone, without a hint of danger, I was taken enough with the decor not to mind too much. The main character is a likable guy, who knows a lot of interesting people and just hanging out with him as he wanders around sort of working on solving a case that involves some high level wheeling and dealing, but only marginal amounts of crime, none violent or even menacing (the tensest moment in this novel is our guy sneaking out of a house early to avoid being roped into a fishing trip) is pretty pleasant. There's some nice stuff about old books, some long walks through Manhattan, a few drinks and what is less a conclusion, let alone a climax of any sort, than just the end of the novel, the lawyer's life as he walks away essentially the same as when he walked on stage.

This book was nice. I liked it fine. Noir it ain't.

In 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister, Marguerite's younger sister begins with her last glimpse of her older, glamorous sister and tells the story of what happened after Marguerite disappeared somewhere between the home she'd moved back to after her mother's death to care for her father and younger sister, and the local college where she worked as an artist-in-residence. M. is beautiful and talented and her disappearance brings a lot of attention to their town and to Gigi and her father. Gigi is very different from her sister, not a beauty and unlike her sister, whose art career is taking off, Gigi works as a clerk in the post office. Gigi begins to explore her sister's life, finding surprises in a sketchbook and in the attentions of a man who claims to have been her sister's mentor.

Joyce Carol Oates is playing to her strengths with this novel. There's the young woman both repelled and drawn to an over-bearing man, there's the distant father, there's that sense of being uncomfortable in one's own body and, more than anything, JCO's writing style that gives everything an off-kilter feel, a touch of the creepy. All those things are why I like JCO's writing so much and yet, here, they fail to deliver. JCO is pulling out all the usual tricks, but this novel feels like she's just going through the motions. She's written dozens of books like this one and, for once, it shows. It's not a bad book, but there are so very many better books by her out there. She is an extraordinary author who has written a remarkable number of books so a rare stumble is no doubt to be expected, although her mistakes are usually ones where she takes a chance and fails, not when she's writing to her strengths. A bad book by JCO is still better than most other books, but she's written far better books.

Just catching up. And procrastinating. Hi.

Autumn by Ali Smith is a reread and it certainly held up to a second look. I was surprised to see that a book written to be part of a specific moment (Brexit) has resonance now, but of course it wasn't the case that after the Brexit vote, everything went smoothly and everyone in the UK is enjoying their new, improved situation of being more prosperous and important than they were when they were part of the EU. Had that been the case, this book would be an oddity rather than still so applicable to today. I'm looking forward to continuing with the next four books, none of which I have yet read.

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson is the story of a family told through the eyes of three women. The Stockton family is wealthy, their money old and self-perpetuating. Georgiana is the youngest, with a job with a non-profit where she has a crush on one of her co-workers. Darley is married to a high-flying executive and they have two small children. Georgiana and Darley are united in their dislike for the third woman, Sasha, their brother's wife. Sasha came from an ordinary middle class background and is always tense about doing or saying or wearing the wrong thing. Her husband, a golden boy who is everyone's favorite, is no help. And they were given the family home, a large house in Brooklyn, which would be fine except it's clear that to the Stocktons, the house is still the family home that must not be changed, family members can walk in whenever and the two sisters are resentful of Sasha hinting that they should get their things out of their childhood bedrooms.

On good days, Sasha could acknowledge how incredibly lucky she was to live in her house. It was a four-story Brooklyn limestone, a massive, formal palace that could have held ten of the one-bedroom apartments Sasha had lived in before. But on bad days, Sasha felt she was living in a time capsule, the home her husband had grown up in and never left, filled with his memories, his childhood stories, but mostly his family’s shit.

I'm not going to claim that very wealthy people can't have problems. I am going to say that if you want me to care about their problems, you're going to have to work a lot harder to earn my sympathy. And Jackson did try to make me feel bad for the woman whose married lover died and she can't express her grief because the affair was a secret. And she tried to make me feel bad for the rich lady whose husband loses his job and she might have to ask for money from her parents. And I did feel for Sasha, dropped into that den of resentment with no support, except she did choose a guy who resolutely never stood up for her. I kept reading expecting something dramatic but the ending was rushed and the resolution unconvincing. Which would have been more disappointing had there ever been any stakes to the conflict.

This is definitely a reminder to me to slow down and learn more about a book before reading it.

> Hi Kay, I will be reading Pineapple Street shortly. Also back at >65 RidgewayGirl:, I had to return 48 Clues in the Disappearance of my Sister to the library unfinished, but I will be reading Babysitter very soon.

>69 lsh63: The management of library books is surprisingly difficult! I've got to figure out how to read those books right after I bring them home, rather than in a hurry right before their final renewal runs out.

Though I'd have preferred to have company, there was no question that I felt comfortable being alone at that moment and was glad to see there were other people in nearby cars who felt the same. I thought about all the times I'd sat at the edges of groups in conversation, listening, enjoying myself, but surely considered the person with the least to contribute, the way the least interesting creature in an aquarium is generally agreed to be the slug over in the corner. Overall, it seemed like I had to work extra hard just to make any kind of relationship work. And in that sense, I had a lot to offer.

It's hard to review a book I enjoyed so thoroughly as Elizabeth McKenzie's The Dog of the North. It's an oddball book, to be sure. Any description of the plot is either gives too much away or is inscrutably cryptic. There's a hostile Grandmother who is both a scientist and a hoarder, with an uncertain number of literal skeletons hidden away. There's an accountant undergoing a health emergency who may or may not share a toupee with his younger brother. There are parents long lost in the Australian outback and a dog named Kweecoats, for absolutely the most convoluted reason. There's an old van that is conveniently furnished with a futon and less conveniently furnished with a tire and a bike. And through all the chaos, Penny, our protagonist does her best. She's a mess, but she's also resilient and determined to find her way and help her family.

I hesitate to call this book charming, because I will absolutely not pick up a book anyone calls charming, thank you very much. Penny has such a wonderfully weird take on life, a life in which she has been beat up pretty thoroughly, that gives her a determined kind of optimism and to make friends out of people very different from herself. I loved this book, was entirely immersed in every strange thing life threw at Penny, and will be automatically reading whatever McKenzie writes next.

>71 RidgewayGirl: I think you ended up in the cryptic camp! Intriguing, nonetheless.

>72 Helenliz: Closest recent similar book would be Lessons in Chemistry, if that helps. The same underlay of serious issues over a certain madcap feel. Although Penny is utterly different from the main character in Lessons in Chemistry and McKenzie is a far better writer.

>68 RidgewayGirl: Pineapple Street appears tempting, which I suspect has something to do with the title, and I was just about to put it on my library list. Fortunately I read your review first. Thank you.

>71 RidgewayGirl: On the other hand, I've already placed a hold on The Dog of the North. It's still at the "on order" stage so it will be a while before I get my hands on it. It sounds quirky (not charming) and that always appeals. Another thank you.

>74 VivienneR: I'm sure many people will enjoy Pineapple Street. I just have a hard time caring about very wealthy people whose problems are caused by their own prejudices. And I think you will like The Dog of the North and I want to hear what you think about it.

>71 RidgewayGirl: I think I enjoyed your review more than I enjoyed the book. I disliked her previous book too though, so really I should have anticipated it!

There are two kinds of book I avoid and one of them is books with a Second World War setting. There are other wars, writers! Mix it up a little! That said, I have loved everything Jo Baker has written, from her look at the Bennet household from the point of view of the servants, to her thriller about an academic being stalked, even to her novel about Samuel Beckett set during, yes, the Second World War. So despite the setting, I was eager to read her latest novel, The Midnight News.

In this novel, a young woman has a job typing for the ministry of information and an attic room in London. Charlotte has had some unspecified problem in her past and a father she is clearly wary of, but she has a few friends in London and is enjoying her independence. Then the bombings begin and although nights spent in the basement kitchen with her landlady are not entirely comfortable, she feels safe enough, but as she worries about her friends, family and acquaintances, she notices that she's being watched by someone. And people connected with her are dying.

This is a shape-shifter of a novel, one where it's often impossible to get one's footing, and parts where I was just as lost as Charlotte. But Baker is an author who repays a reader's trust and what seems like treading water turns out to be forward motion and where what seems to be solid ground dissolves at the slightest pressure. This is a very satisfying novel and if Baker decides to just write books set during WWII for the rest of her life, I will read every single one (there are other wars though!).

>75 RidgewayGirl: That's my problem too - rich people and their prejudices. One less book won't make a difference apart from no disappointment.

>76 charl08: Oh, yes, Elizabeth McKenzie is not going to resonate with everyone.

>78 VivienneR: Vivienne, the writing is fine. I just disliked three of the characters SO MUCH.

I was planning to sit down and catch up on reviews but my yard is currently being used for a photo shoot for a car, so things are weird. I was asked this morning, by an acquaintance who lives nearby and I thought it meant an hour and a guy with a camera, but the yard is full of equipment, there are models (a very cute toddler, for one) and at least a dozen people. And they cleared the pile of wood and branches left by the previous owners that we had been meaning to get to.

It's all too much for Melmoth. She's gone into hiding.

>80 RidgewayGirl: aww, poor Melmoth.

>77 RidgewayGirl: Less cryptic. Not read a lot by her, will have to look some out. This sounds interesting (but I agree, there are other wars!)

>81 Helenliz: Melmoth survived and lived to eat a hearty dinner that very night. I'd love to hear what you think of The Midnight News if/when you read it.

I would be with Melmoth, although it's not comfortable reading under there! I can't believe this person didn't ask you about doing this until today.

Kelly Link's short stories often have an otherworldly feel, with odd and unaccountable things happening all the time. So a collection of reimagined fairy tales sounds like it might be something special. Black Dog, White Cat: Stories is exactly this and it is even more marvelous than I had hoped. Link sticks mostly with slightly less well-known stories, like The Musicians of Bremen and Snow White and Rose Red. Each story is wildly inventive and solidly based in its origin story. My favorite was a take on Tam Lin that had an otherworldly, magical atmosphere, even before introducing the supernatural aspect. The best story, in a collection where all the stories were good, was a take on East of the Sun, West of the Moon called Prince Hat Underground, in which a man sets out to find and rescue his husband, who was taken away by a mysterious woman, a journey that leads him to Iceland and an ever increasingly odd set of adventures.

Link knows how to create an atmosphere in her writing, which is a skill that shines in these fairy tales. They are set ostensibly in this world, but each has such a different feeling and air about it, even before the tale gets to the fairies, or the talking animals, or the 300 year old man. Link also knows how to create a story that is hard to put down, even if that story is spent within the walls of a single house or even sitting in the middle seat of a crowded flight. If you have any interest in fairy tale retellings or even a well-told short story, this is the collection to pick up.

In Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, Sally is a writer for a sketch comedy show (obviously Saturday Night Live) and the first section of the novel covers a single week in which she works on a sketch called The Danny Horst Rule, about how ordinary-looking male comedians often end up with gorgeous stars, but the reverse never happens. She also works a lot with the week's host, a gorgeous musician. You can see where this is going, right? Yes, and also this is a great how-the-sausage-is-made look at a writer's job at SNL. I enjoyed this section enormously. Talented people doing a complicated thing and two witty people flirting? Five stars, no notes.

In the second section, all tension and interest is bled out of the novel. Sally and the hunky musician are quarantined in different states, he in his California mansion, she in Kansas City, living with an elderly relative. So they email. And the emails are exactly what would flow between two people who don't know each other well. Lots of do-you-have-any-pets? kind of questions, and long descriptions of their daily routines. There is no man hunky enough for me to maintain interest through a description of his work-out routine. But I made it through this section. One star, would edit down to six brief text messages.

The third section is about two people in their late thirties figuring out how to make a relationship work. It's nice enough, and who is going to complain about reading about nice people doing nice things and settling into a life of obscene wealth together? Me, a little. Happy for them, would rather read about almost anything else. Three stars, mainly because Sittenfeld is a very good writer who can make buying a shower chair at Target almost worth reading about.

So a mixed bag.

>85 RidgewayGirl: I agree that the first section of the book was the best. I ranked the book 4 1/2 stars since I usually do not enjoy romance novels and this one kept me interested from the start, although they could have skipped the emails.

>84 RidgewayGirl: I'm a sucker for a re-telling and am rather fond of the short story form. The library has a couple of her books, but not that one.

>86 lowelibrary: April, this book is already lauded and is very popular. I'm glad you liked it because Curtis Sittenfeld is a fantastic writer and I remain a huge fan, despite thinking this book was not good. The hairpiece bit was great and apparently based on an actual SNL guest host.

>87 Helenliz: Helen, it was published less than two months ago, so maybe check again later?

>87 Helenliz: that'll certainly be factor. Put a reserve on another of her works, for a taster.

>88 RidgewayGirl: This was the first Curtis Sittenfeld book I have read. Which one(s) do you recommend?

>90 lowelibrary: I'd say to look at see which one appeals. I loved You Think It, I'll Say It because I love short stories and Sittenfeld excels at them, but she's written everything from an alternate version of Hillary Clinton's life to a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice to a coming of age novel set at a prep school.

When a man dies below the statues on a famous Tokyo bridge, two detectives from different divisions are part of the task force convened to solve the case. Kaga and Matsumiya are cousins, but Matsumiya admires his cousin's skill at solving complex crimes and happily plays sidekick to his taciturn colleague. When a perpetrator is quickly found, it looks like the case will be wrapped up, but a few questions remain and as Kaga looks into the victim's life, he finds clues that show a connection between the victim and his murderer. But still a few questions remain.

A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino is a police procedural where the two detectives are able to act independently and to continue to investigate long after the case is considered closed. This isn't a thriller, it's a methodical examination of a life, with a detective who carefully untangles each thread, no matter how unrelated to the crime it seems. This is a fascinating look at life in Japan and a quiet sort of crime novel. I enjoy this author's novels and it's good to see that more of them are being translated.

>91 RidgewayGirl: The alternative version of Hilary Clinton's life sounds intriguing. I am going to keep an eye out for Rodham.

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin centers on the Spring semester of Izzy's final year at a prestigious private university in New Hampshire. She's an English major about to take a senior seminar in creative writing, when a not entirely consensual sexual experience throws her off-kilter. This is the late nineties, the Lewinsky scandal is dominating the airwaves and this book is a reminder that even the relatively recent past is a foreign country.

As everyone and especially the college administration quickly try to move past the idea that anything should be done, Izzy quickly develops what should have been an innocent crush on her creative writing teacher but, again, the rules were a bit different then and Izzy is still trying to collect herself. The star couple of the English department, the department head and her professor husband, are undergoing a public and very acrimonious divorce and, again, how we saw things in the past is not how we see things now.

This is an uncomfortable novel that leans hard into gray areas and how difficult it is to make huge life decisions when barely older than a teenager. Izzy is learning how to take control of her own life, to not be reflectively polite and apologetic in the face of hostility and learning how to make her own decisions in the face of people telling her what she should do, should want, should react. This is an ambitious debut novel that just doesn't mind diving into murky waters. It certainly reminded me of how much has changed in the past 25 years, and how much just hasn't.

Ivy Pochoda's new novel, Sing Her Down, begins in a violent women's prison in Arizona, with the voices of three women. There's Kace, who hears the voices of the dead; Florida, who comes from an affluent family from Hancock Park and who was so high when she drove her boyfriend away from where he set a fire that killed a man, that she has no memory of it; and Dios, who loves singing narcocorridos and being feared for her random acts of extreme violence. When both Dios and Florida are paroled at the start of the pandemic, Florida impulsively jumps on an illegal bus to Los Angeles, hoping to go home. But Dios follows her onto the bus and before the bus reaches its destination, both Dios and Florida are not just breaking parole, they are on the run.

This is a novel not about the pandemic, but set in a dystopian Los Angeles ravaged by the shuttering of businesses and the explosion of homelessness. Centered on the skid row neighborhoods around downtown, there's a real feel of hopelessness and of end times to this world, despite its proximity to the comfortable Tudor-style manors and shady avenues of Hancock Park. There's a recurring character from her previous novel, These Women, who serves to ground this novel while Florida and Dios circle each other in a way that feels like a Western, albeit one with an urban setting.

There's a lot of over-the-top violence at the start of this novel and while that isn't something that usually bothers me, Pochoda's writing made it just that bit more vivid and real. It's a wild beginning, that leaves the reader ready for anything. Pochoda is an interesting author and her version of Los Angeles, one of dirty street corners and a capacity to explode into violence at a moment's notice, is a compelling one.

>92 RidgewayGirl: I really like Japanese fiction. I have this one on hold at the library but it's still at the "on order" stage. I have The Devotion of Suspect X so I'll try to get to that one first.

>96 VivienneR: I really like Japanese crime fiction, Vivienne. There's an eye for procedure and for detail that I enjoy. This is my second novel by Higashino and I like his writing a lot.

Hi Kay, you have some good reading going on here. I'm waiting patiently for my library to acquire Sing Her Down, but I'm also waiting for the new Megan Abbott. I bet they both come in at the same time. Back at >92 RidgewayGirl:, you reminded me that I have Newcomer on my Kindle waiting to be read, I think I'll move it up in the reading rotation. I enjoyed Malice when I read it about two years ago.

>98 lsh63: I went ahead and bought a copy of Beware the Woman but I have some planned reading to get through first.

>99 RidgewayGirl: Tempted by the title alone!

>100 charl08: Abbott's so good that I know I'll enjoy the novel no matter what.

Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk, "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase resignation of the soul?

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman is a collection of personal essays centering on her time working towards her Ph.D in Russian literature. She goes to a Tolstoy conference in Russia, helps host a Babel conference at Stanford University and studies Uzbek in Samarkand for a summer and tours the more obscure corners of Turkey for Let's Go.

Batuman is a likable main character in her accounts. She appears to be a hapless victim of circumstance, having accidentally fallen into Russian literature, but she's also someone who is relentlessly curious about the world around her and willing to jump into circumstances most people would balk at. She cheerfully endures weird and trying experiences and turns them into funny stories. My favorite essays are the ones set during her summer in Samarkand, a city which sounds endlessly exotic, but is also in a former Soviet satellite state still struggling to regain its feet. Most of the stories are set among graduate students and visiting scholars and if that sounds even halfway interesting to you, this is a book you'll like; it's witty and intelligent and has a great sense of the absurd. And if you've read either of her novels, you'll get to read about the experiences that she later fictionalized.

All her life, Ren has loved stories of mermaids, from the sweet Disney story to the strangest of folktales. She longs to become a water-dweller, to be one of the mermaids. Her beginning her transformation begins with joining the high school swim team, of spending her her hours and days soaked in the Chlorine-rich waters of Olympic-sized swimming pools, water colored blue and sharply scented, each lane marked off with floating ropes. Becoming a swimmer isn't easy, the coach is abusive, the other team members come from wealthier, whiter families, but Ren makes one friend, and besides friendship isn't the point. The point is becoming better, the point is becoming a mermaid.

This wild and off-kilter story by Jade Song is one that is unsettling and almost claustrophobic in feel. Ren is a lonely Chinese-American girl whose mother works long hours and who both longs to be the best swimmer on the high school team and has the drive to do so. This coming-of-mermaid tale shows how dedicated an athlete longing to excel must be, as Ren sacrifices everything in her life to be the best and eventually comes up with a plan to be even more than that. This novel was unsettling and surprised me often.

It was outrageous, to be criticized by him, after she'd stood by him all these years, after she had held his blood in her hands, trying to press it back into his body. "It's all about what happened to you. You never asked me what it was like for me."

The old anger returned. He should know how much anger she'd kept inside her, afraid to send it in his direction, worried he couldn't handle it. Always worried about his feelings.

A long time ago, Willa and Justin were good friends. Willa looked up to her older brother and depended on him in a broken household, with a dead father and a mother trying to keep them going, with no room for nurturing. But in high school, they splintered apart. Through the years they've drifted apart, Justin into addiction and dealing with the aftermath of a brain injury, Willa working to create a quiet, secure life for herself, but when Justin knocks on her door asking for a place to stay, she cautiously lets him in. What follows is a novel about how hard it is to rebuild a broken relationship and how family has the power to both nurture and destroy. Both Willa and Justin were deeply marked by their childhood, Justin in obvious ways, but Willa just as deeply.

Brother & Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella is a novel about ordinary people, which is the kind of novel it turns out I really like. Mirabella takes a deep and careful look at two damaged people and asks if they will be ok and if they can be a part of each other's lives. He is willing to sit in uncomfortable places with his characters and he avoids all easy answers. I loved how he explores how even when you want the best for a family member and go to great lengths to help them, that your efforts might still be inadequate, and that even someone who has messed up again and again is deserving of care and love. Mirabella writes so well about difficult family relationships and I'm very eager to see what he writes next.

>102 RidgewayGirl: I have this on the shelf, part of a series of books I seem to have picked up about writers' relationships with Russian literature, despite having read hardly any (any?) Russian classics myself. Russian literature by proxy, perhaps?
I must pick it up, it sounds fun. Thank you for the nudge.

>105 charl08: It's worth reading, but also very readable and fun.

Another book about uncomfortable family relationships!



Winter, the second in Ali Smith's seasons quintet, centers on Art, who has a side gig writing a blog about nature, a blog he just makes up. When his girlfriend dumps him, he hires a girl he meets at a bus stop to stand in for his girlfriend during his trip to his mother's house for Christmas. But a stand in girlfriend is not the greatest secret in the house over the holidays. Art's mother isn't doing well, and her estranged sister is called in to help. What follows is an uncomfortable, but necessary encounter between mother and son, between sisters, and Art learning a little about himself. The only stable person in the house is a homeless foreign girl trying to stay under the radar until the Brexit question is settled.

As I read this novel, I felt that it was missing the thing that made Autumn such a good book. The relationship between Daniel and Elisabeth had been so extraordinary that following that with a book about difficult people struggling was a hard sell. But then, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I looked up to see that it was a few hours and half a book later -- the lack of deeply sympathetic characters didn't hamper Smith's ability to deliver a compelling story. I'm looking forward to continuing with this series of books.

Greta has floated through life being feckless. She's worked a series of menial jobs and lived with whomever took her in. Now she's forty-five and living in a very old farmhouse owned by a weed dealer in Hudson, New York. She's found a job transcribing the one-on-one sessions run by a sketchy sex therapist and becomes fascinated by one women she names Big Swiss. Hudson is small enough that she eventually runs into Big Swiss and begins using her knowledge of her to strike up first a friendship and then a relationship.

Jen Beagin's novel spends a lot of time parodying a certain kind of people and creating bizarre situations. It's humorous at times, but often the humor feels forced to me. In this kind of book, it's important to not question or look too closely at a lot of plot devices and details, but eventually the number of times I was pulled out of the story because a scene or character was so over the top I couldn't accept it as part of the world of the story. I think that there is certainly an enthusiastic audience for this form of storytelling, but for me, much of it felt forced. I kept expecting each wacky thing to be integral to the plot or to point to something in the story, but each wacky thing was just wacky for the sake of being wacky. The parts sometimes were good, occasionally even very good, but it all added up to something that was decidedly not for me.

Since my thread has been so quiet, here is a picture of our formally feral cat, Oliver, looking very handsome, if he does say so himself. He would like to point out that he is still wild at heart, despite his love of comfortable napping spots.

>109 RidgewayGirl: A very distinguished gentleman!

>110 christina_reads: He's a giant goofball of a cat and we love him very much. I was all set to get him neutered and release him back into the wild, but my son was distraught at the idea so here we are.

>109 RidgewayGirl: My cat Charlie has similar markings. Is that a gray tail I see?

>109 RidgewayGirl: A very bushy tabby-striped tail that does look black and is mostly held straight up in the air.

>109 RidgewayGirl: Beautiful baby.

Oliver is very handsome! A prince!

>109 RidgewayGirl: Such a handsome boy!

He is indeed a handsome guy, but I'm not reading your compliments to him, it would only make him smug.

>117 RidgewayGirl: I was just thinking he is as beautiful as he thinks he is! He's also very lucky you found him.

>118 clue: It was less that we found him than that he showed up on our deck. My son told me that he thinks that feral mothers will drop the kittens they don't think can make it as ferals at the doors of people they think will take care of them. I don't think that's true, but it's sweet that he thinks of Ollie's journey to us was planned rather than happenstance.

I'm not going to review Circe by Madeline Miller or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, as both were rereads and while I don't like the review I wrote for Circe, I'm going to let it stand. I gave both books five stars when I read each and that assessment stays. Both were well worth a second read, although Thousand Autumns was the more complex and more memorable novel. I don't reread often, and reading these two reminds me to maybe do a little more of it.

The force of its seduction. That and the bagels.
You sally forth practicing your Kegels.

Couplets is a love story told in a series of, well, couplets, making it more poetry than a novel. A married woman meets a woman and, within a very short span of time, ends her marriage and moves in with her. I can see why the author, poet Maggie Millner, chose that format for this story; the play on words is too delightful to resist. But the result is unsatisfying, with many of the rhymes feeling forced and brought back memories of the very bad poetry I wrote in middle school. The story skips along the surface of the story, never diving into what it felt like to leave a long relationship, or made itself feel like a unique story, even as the author included many details that put the story at a specific time, the place never felt more than generic. Kudos to the author for choosing a difficult challenge and I'm not sure if the format could have allowed for more substance.

And now for an Argentinian horror novel, by the author of the supremely excellent short story collection, Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez. Our Share of Night begins as a horror story, and often returns to that genre, leaning heavily on gore. But there's a lot of book here, so this is also a family saga, the story of four childhood friends and a coming-of-age story.

A cabal of super wealthy people worship an entity they think of as Darkness, an entity that they believe can bring them a sort of immortality. In order to reach this entity, they need a conduit, but mediums are hard to find and, once found, quick to die, as each manifestation takes a physical toll and this group of worshippers insist on frequent ceremonies. A boy is found in Argentina and raised to be the medium by one of the families in the cabal. But despite marrying into the family, he isn't as docile as they would like. When he has a son, he takes steps to protect the boy, despite being desperately ill himself, steps that will protect the boy for a certain period of time.

The ceremonies are graphically described and there's a fair amount of child torture, although this takes place mostly off the page. It's intense in places, but also prone to long digressions and side plots. If you like your horror to involve ancient evil powers and contain a quantity of mutilations and dead bodies, while also enjoying a story that takes its time and wanders off on tangents about politics, social movements, history and the lives of secondary characters, you'll like this one. Enriquez has a wild and dark imagination and Megan McDowell's translation is, as usual, extremely smooth and readable. I'll also note that there are ample descriptions of child abuse in this book.

Just saying "hello" for now. Hopefully I can keep up from here on out. I know I'll never get caught up reading the last three months worth of threads.

>123 thornton37814: Lori, there is no way to keep up. So many threads!

Growing up in a middle class Hindu family in Mauritius in the years surrounding its independence, Vishnu grew up in a vibrant mixed neighborhood. His father is a respected teacher and his mother cares for the household. Vishnu grows up watching how the various groups on Mauritius interact, working hard to excel at school, so he can get a scholarship to study in England, something that will make his family and his entire neighborhood proud. Along the way, he watches as things happen in his extended family and around him on the island. Will his hard work pay off and see him leaving his home?

With Silent Winds, Dry Seas, Vinod Busjeet has written a novel that feels like a collection of connected short stories that tell the coming-of-age story of a boy whose life looks similar to his own. It's beautifully told and gives a real sense of what life on Mauritius in the second half of the last century was like. Vishnu doesn't always understand the complexities of what is going on around him, but he is a keen and curious observer and willing to learn and adapt to his changing circumstances.

Life did not make sense if it did not have a forward direction, an upward direction, an uplift.

Bunny is a diplomat's daughter, spending her childhood in far-flung places like Athens, Yerevan, and now Baku, Azerbaijan. She's fifteen, an ordinary girl who now attends a boarding school in Connecticut during the year but this summer is stuck in Baku with her older brother and her father, both too busy to spend much time with her. And so she explores the city, develops a crush on the freelance journalist with an apartment in the same building, watches soap operas in languages she doesn't understand with another neighbor and is dragged to various embassy events as the country's oil boom explodes and journalists, opportunists and political operatives move in. But Bunny's more concerned with the things a teenager should be concerned with; she remains largely uninterested in the geopolitical jostling.

A decade later and Bunny's living in Texas, working in an administrative job at an oil company. The same influences are at work, but Bunny is earning a living and taking care of her Mom.

Then again, as some of the women reminded their peers during their meetings, "diversity, equity, and inclusion" didn't just mean of skin tones and genders--it meant of ideas! All ideas should be welcome. Ideas, it seemed, were the true diversity, and sometimes seemed to matter more than the other kinds. It was important that no one feel left out, especially the men.

In Mobility, Lydia Kiesling shows how geopolitics and greed mean that when developing nations find oil, the wealth generated is not kept by that country, but is passed around to large oil corporations and various opportunists, and she tells this story through the very ordinary life of an American woman. Kiesling has a rare talent for not only writing about the most ordinary routines, but in making those mundane things fascinating. Bunny works as a proofreader, she attends meetings introducing new computer programs, she attends a wedding of a girl she knew from school, she stays with her mother as her mother fails to move forward after her divorce, she lives in a condo in Texas and is pleased to have a job that pays the rent. It's all so ordinary and familiar (I've worked as a proofreader, I've sat through far too many dull meetings, I've gone to weddings for people I've largely lost touch with) that it should be boring. But by burrowing into the ordinary, Kiesling makes it worthwhile, while all the time subtly reinforcing the larger themes.

This is the second novel by Lydia Kiesling that I've read. I loved her debut novel, The Golden State and found that she's continued to develop as a writer with this new book. I'm excited to see what she writes next.

Homestead by Melinda Moustakis is the story of the early days of a marriage, set in Alaska in the late fifties, as Alaska becomes a state. Marie goes to Alaska to visit her sister, eager to get away from the grandmother resentful of having had to raise them. She wants to belong, to be part of a family and to own her own space. Lawrence grew up in poverty and views owning land as the factor that can save a family from ruin. He chooses his homestead with care, and then looks for a woman to marry, because a farm needs many children to help out. They are looking for the same thing, but the differences between them make the marriage difficult, even as they struggle to get a working farm going in the Alaskan wilderness.

As a picture of what life in Alaska was like seventy-five years ago, this novel illuminates the stark realities and the hopes and dreams of people who came to Alaska, and of the people that were displaced as a result. But it's in the portrait of a marriage that this book excels. It's understated, and both Lawrence and Marie are very much part of the time they live in and their approaches to the marriage reflect this. The writing is lovely, with a muted tone that suits this quiet story.

>126 RidgewayGirl: >127 RidgewayGirl: You have grabbed me with so many of your recent titles. These two are definitely going on the list. Thanks for reviewing.

>128 beebeereads: Thank you, Barb. It's been a good reading year, so far.

Skellig Michael is rugged, beautiful and inhospitable island seven miles off the southwest coast of Ireland. It was first settled and a monastery established sometime between the seventh and ninth centuries, by necessity remaining small and was eventually abandoned.



Haven is Emma Donoghue's novel imagining what the first monastic settlement on Skellig Michael might have looked like. Beginning with a cleric from a wealthy background visiting a small monastery in the west of Ireland. He's traveled widely, is intently devout, and that night he dreams of founding a reclusive order with two of the monks, musicians who played after the dinner the night before. He gathers them, along with a curricle filled with minimal supplies and sets off to find a place beyond the map's borders. The island they find is as unfavorable and bleak as anything they've ever seen. But the real struggle is in making their small trio into a team that can survive in this rugged space.

I never quite bought the story that Donoghue was telling. She certainly provided details, but the story hinges on the devoutness of the three men and how that affects their decisions and thoughts. Religious zealotry is a hard thing to explain and the author largely abandoned her attempts to do so in favor of focusing on the two monks sent along with the prior and how their straightforward faith and obedience was tested; a simpler but less interesting story.

When Margo has to suddenly leave her nursing job, she eventually ends up at the Carlyle Public Library, a Carnegie-built library in a small Illinois farming community. She's good at her job, even if she's not a reader, and in the library's calm embrace, she hopes to leave her past behind. Patricia spent years working on her novel, only to find that no one is willing to publish it. She decides to give up writing and fall back on her MLS degree and work as a reference librarian, changes that delight her boyfriend. What doesn't delight him is her decision to take a job hours away from their Chicago apartment, but she is secretly pleased to have a place for herself as she figures out her adjustment to a life without writing. But a lifelong habit is hard to break, Patricia's job is boring and before long she's fascinated by one of the other library staff, a tall woman with an air of authority, which reignites her love of writing and she imagines stories with Margo as her main character. But closely observing her, she's seeing something troubling about Margo.

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims features two main characters, one increasingly unpleasant and the other increasingly willing to slide into gray areas in service to her curiosity. Novels that fall into that odd genre of the literary thriller often fail to deliver on plot, but Sims keeps things moving at a satisfying pace. She writes well, especially the parts told from Margo's point of view, never falling into the trap of withholding information from the reader that is known to the narrator, while maintaining a sense of tension. There are some predictable beats, but the story holds together through the end. As much as can be said about a story involving murders, this was a lot of fun.

>131 RidgewayGirl: Yikes...another one added to my list. Sounds like a fun read.

>131 RidgewayGirl: The premise of murderous librarians was one I couldn't resist.

If I Never Met You is an unabashedly Chick-Lit novel by Mhairi McFarlane, who manages to write so that none of her books resemble each other and her characters are likewise varied. I've yet to read a dud, although this one is maybe my least favorite, largely because of the ending. To be fair, it is hard to stick a landing and McFarlane having to do a little jump at the end doesn't spoil my enjoyment of this fun book.

Laurie is a lawyer, working for the same large law firm as her partner, although they work in different divisions. Yet when he leaves her for another woman, she dreads returning to work and the gossip she'll face. The solution comes in the form of the company's ladies man, who needs to be taken seriously by the law firm's partners to be promoted. They will pretend to be dating; her reputation as a steady worker will make him look more steady, his reputation and looks will prevent her colleagues from feeling sorry for her. Of course this is an often-used plot and a predictable one, but McFarlane makes it fun by providing a bunch of secondary characters who are also living full lives and in making both main characters interesting enough to spend time with. And McFarlane writes so well that her books always make for a few hours of real enjoyment.

>134 RidgewayGirl: Glad you enjoyed this one! I think I liked it even more than you, but then I'm a sucker for the fake-dating trope. I can't wait for her new book, Between Us, coming out August 8 (in the US)!

>135 christina_reads: I am already on my library's hold list for that one!

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo is a quiet and understated novel about an eleven year old Indian British girl whose mother recently died. Her father is told to find something to occupy her time, and that of her two older sisters and so the usual fun games of squash this family enjoyed becomes a training regimen. Gopi is the only one who shows promise; her oldest sister, Mona, has other concerns, not the least figuring out how to keep the family functioning, and Khush, the middle sister, lacks Gopi's dedication and talent. Squash is the way Gopi and her father communicate, watching famous matches and always training. She also trains with a boy whose mother works at the club where the courts are located, and before long she and the boy are focused on an upcoming tournament.

Most of this novel takes place between the lines, in the brief glimpses we catch of the members of this grieving family. Gopi does her best to do her part, in this case that means training hard and in the uncertainty of a family that has lost its center, squash provides her a refuge. This is a small book, both in scope and page count, but is beautifully told.

>137 RidgewayGirl: Sounds wonderful. I am having mixed experiences with novels about grief: some are too close to the bone, others feel comforting. I will look for this one.

>138 charl08: Oh, good. I think these kind of understated novels tend to be overlooked and this one is beautifully written.

The Birthday Party by French author Laurent Mauvignier and translated by Daniel Levin Becker is the story of the four denizens of a hamlet and the terrible events that happened the night three of them threw a small birthday party for the fourth. There's Bergogne, the farmer, content with his cows, in love with his wife, but worried about money. There's his wife, Marion, who works in town and who is about to turn forty. There's their daughter, Ida, who is so excited about the planned celebration and who spends the day before carefully painting a picture for her mother. And there's Christine, who left the art world in Paris for this quiet backwater, and spends her day painting, with only her dog, Rajah and the neighbor's daughter for company. Lately she's been getting some threatening letters though.

What makes this novel so magnificent is the perfection of the pacing and how well the author creates an unbearable feeling of dread in the reader. The novel gives each character a chapter, following their thoughts and every minor preoccupation of their day. It's a style that takes effort to read, until the reader is immersed in each character's life. And, as events move from daily chores or preparation for the party, into the events that make this novel a thriller of sorts, this structure serves to amplify the tension. And by closely following the thoughts of each character in turn, this book is a wonderful collection of complex and conflicted character studies. I was astonished by how good this book was and I hope we see more of Mauvignier's novels translated into English.

>140 RidgewayGirl: That sounds really good. I've added it to the wish list.

>141 pamelad: I was really into this book -- there's one point, where most of the characters's lives are sitting on a knife's edge, but another character is heading into a work meeting that they have been anticipating and I was so eager to get back to the endangered people, but also invested in this office meeting. It takes great skill to create a novel where this can happen. Just be patient at the beginning with the long sentences and the petty detail. It is that way for a reason.

When Lori Rader-Day visited Greenway, Agatha Christie's Devonshire home, she discovered that during the Second World War the house had housed evacuees, children sent from urban centers to keep them safe from bombing. Fascinated, she tried to find a book on the subject, but none have been written. She's a mystery author, so Death at Greenway is a mystery novel of sorts, although there are no sleuths or detectives or any of the other usual characters.



Bridget Kelly is a young nursing student living in London with her family. She's eager to help with the war effort, but a mistake at work puts her nursing career in danger. She's given a way out; an offer to help care for a group of children being evacuated from London. Arriving at the train station, she discovers that all the children are under five, two are infants and the other nurse is also somehow named Bridget Kelly and doesn't seem to know anything about nursing or childcare. And the Devon coast is less serene than expected. Not only is there something odd about the other nurse, but there seems to be too many mysterious deaths in the village.

Rader-Day is one of the rare authors who clearly do the research but use what they learned so carefully, that it never feels like she is telling us what she learned. The result is a story deeply set in a place and a time that feels authentic. Bridget is a wonderful character because she fits so perfectly into this setting. She's almost invisible to others, especially those who imagine themselves her betters. Rader-Day also narrates the novel from the points of view of other characters, from that of the housekeeper, to the voice of one of the young evacuees, and makes each voice distinct. I usually like a little more oomph in my crime novels, but as a gentle historical novel about the British home front, this one was very enjoyable.

Lou is having a hard time moving on after her murder. After she and the other four victims of a serial killer were cloned, she came home to her husband and baby daughter, but she asks all the time for her husband to tell her what happened on that day, as she can't remember the days leading up to her murder at all. All the former victims meet weekly in a group counseling session with Gert, who has guided them since their return. Her husband is as caring and considerate as he can be, but their daughter cries whenever Lou holds her. Her own father doesn't seem to enjoy talking to her on the phone and has not visited. It's just hard to get back to ordinary life.

My Murder by Katie Williams is a new take on a crime novel. I went into this one knowing nothing about the book and almost set it aside once I saw that it was taking place in another version of our world, or set in the near future. I'm not a fan of speculative fiction! But this works so well and was such a fun surprise, from Lou's voice to the directions this book takes. I was surprised in the best possible way by this innovative take on some of the most well-trodden plots, that of the serial killing of young and attractive women. And the world building is subtle and well thought through, from the big picture stuff, to the small details.

>144 RidgewayGirl: Taking a BB for this one. I like authors that take risks with new concepts in murder mysteries.

>145 lowelibrary: I found the speculative fiction elements works really well to make for a novel that surprised me.

>143 RidgewayGirl: That sounds a fascinating surmise on which to base a story. It's a lovely house in a beautiful setting.

Alex was missing the mark so often, lately. Everything was jarred from its proper place, or maybe the problem was Alex. Maybe she should cool it with the pills. Even as she told herself she would try to be better, she was aware that she would not.

Alex's life is a mess. She started out as an escort after leaving home and had done well in choosing her clients. But she's having a hard time not messing up and after she takes money and drugs from the apartment of a man she was involved with, he's angrier than she'd anticipated. And neither the money nor the drugs lasted as long as she'd expected. She's thrown a lifeline when another man offers to let her stay with him at his beach house in the Hamptons. Of course he doesn't know the trouble she's in, nor that she's also now homeless after failing to pay her share of the rent. Alex does try, she does know how to behave as a wealthy man's sidepiece, but she doesn't seem to be able to stop messing up, in ways both big and small. And with one man looking for revenge and another becoming rapidly disillusioned with her, her options are limited.

The Guest by Emma Cline, dealing as it does with a woman intent on destroying her own life, is right up my alley. I think my attraction to this kind of novel stems from the agency it gives the main character. Sure, her life is going downhill fast, but she's the one who is causing the downward spiral. Alex has a lot going for her; she's smart and attractive enough and she knows how to behave among the wealthy. She's also self-destructive to an alarming degree, prone to actions that she knows will alienate the few people still willing to give her a hand, a group disappearing at a rapid pace. Cline knows how to bring a scene to life and Alex is a wonderful character to follow around, as she fails to rein herself in. Alex is not a likable character, but she is a compelling one and Cline paces this novel well, as she walks Alex towards a reckoning of sorts.

>144 RidgewayGirl: Wow! Colour me intrigued. Adding this to the TBR.

>149 rabbitprincess: It's such an interesting idea!

I seem to have been reading a lot of crime novels and thrillers lately. Here's another one.



Emily owns and works as the bartender at the restaurant she inherited from her father. She has a crush on Aidan, a young widower with a teenage daughter, who comes in every week for a soda and conversation. He's good-looking and well-known in town for his helpfulness. Rachel is a woman who has been imprisoned in a shed for years. She's learned to respond to this name that isn't hers and to do what is needed to keep her jailor from hurting her more than usual. When he tells her that his wife died and he's moving, she worries that he will kill her as he has so many others, but instead he has a plan to move her, too, and have her live with him and his daughter, posing as his tenant. He's sure that he has crushed her spirit enough to make this new set up work.

The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon begins with an intriguing premise, and she does a few interesting things as this novel progresses that kept me guessing as to how this would all play out. Definitely not predictable. There were some pacing issues and the characters remained fairly opaque, but this is a first novel for Michallon and it's a fun, escapist read that shows promise.

>151 RidgewayGirl: oooh...another BB for me! This one sounds intriguing...thanks!

>152 beebeereads: The one thing you can count on when reading a writer's debut thriller is that they put a lot of thought into the plot.

Years ago, I read this great little midwestern noir called The Cleanup, about a guy rebuilding his life and working as a security guard at a grocery store. It began my love of Sean Doolittle's novels. So I picked up Device Free Weekend with great excitement.

Seven college friends reunite for a weekend on an island off of Seattle. They've all appear to have done well in life, but one of them is a Zuckerberg-level social media CEO billionaire and it's his private island they're meeting on. Quickly, the reunion turns from old friends reconnecting, to a bizarre trolley problem scenario where the six friends must together make an impossible choice. Of course, there are extra complications -- truly Bond villain-level traps and a staff that possess extraordinary abilities and an utter dedication to their boss.

It was fine. I'm not really interested in billionaires and having the protagonist be a well-off white dude with anger issues didn't work for me. But that's me and this is a fine thriller. I just prefer it when the characters feel more like real people.

If you read any ebooks from your library or are interested in libraries, this is a kind of terrifying piece.

https://karawynn.substack.com/p/the-coming-enshittification-of-public-libraries

Yes - Indeed!

>143 RidgewayGirl: That one sounds good. I'll make a note about it!

Lori, I think you would really like Death at Greenway.

I've opened a new thread!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/352795