June 2020

It's the start of summer, and our reads have become a little lighter, a little cozier.

Here's what we discussed:

The Summer House - Hannah McKinnon
The Liars' Club - Mary Karr
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
These Women - Ivy Pochoda
Slightly South of Simple - Kristy Woodson Harvey
The Expats - Chris Pavone
The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury - Marc Levy
The Daughters of Erietown: A Novel - Connie Schultz
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson
What the Hell Did I Just Read - David Wong
P. G. Wodehouse

From Mary Lou in Maryland:

Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War (2016). This novel is as quirky and delightful as her first one, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. In the summer of 1914, Beatrice Nash arrives in Rye, an East Sussex coastal town, to become a Latin teacher. Her father has died recently and she has to support herself. Her relatives do all they can to thwart her independence. The members of the school board and the town leaders aren’t at all sure that they want a female Latin teacher. She has the support of a couple of the leading women of the town, but even they have very narrow concepts of female propriety. Before school starts, she tutors a group of disadvantaged boys and strives to win them over. A couple eligible young men add a potentially romantic thread to the story. Beatrice’s situation is very precarious and stressful. And then along comes the war and upsets all the social dynamics. Simonson is justly compared to Austin.

Ian Ferguson, Village of the Small Houses: A Memoir of Sorts (2003). In 1959, before the author’s birth, his parents left Edmonton and went 500+ miles north to the former fur trapping town of Fort Vermillion. His father was a charming con man with his heart in the right place who generally lived on step ahead of the law. He got a job as a school teacher and Ian was raised in a community of eccentric, independent characters, many of them First Nations people. It gave Ian quite a broad perspective on cultural norms. I think I have read this book before, but I got so engrossed I had to keep reading anyway. The story of Ian’s birth is one of the funniest I have read. His mother had a lot to put up with.

Kristy Woodson Harvey, Slightly South of Simple (2017). This may be the best summer novel you will find this year. It is set on the island of Peachtree Bluff, Georgia. When Ansley’s husband is killed in the twin towers on 9/11, she has no alternative but to move with her three daughters to the waterfront cottage she inherited from her grandmother. Her eldest daughter Caroline was particularly upset by the move at the beginning of her senior year in high school and she soon escapes back to college in NYC. The events that unfold 17 years later are alternately narrated by Ansley and Caroline. Ansley has established a successful interior design business. She is quite satisfied with her single life and proud that each of her daughters has established an independent life of her own. Then Caroline, 6 months pregnant, leaves her philandering husband in NYC and comes back to Peachtree Bluff with her 11-year-old daughter. Middle daughter Sloane and her two rambunctious sons decide to join the house party. Finally, youngest daughter Emerson, a Hollywood actress, comes to do a film in Atlanta. Ansley’s peaceful home and her orderly life are uproariously invaded by her daughters and grandchildren. Furthermore, she has a secret she doesn’t want them to discover. In fact, each of the women has a secret or two. Despite the interpersonal tensions, some of the scenes are hilarious. It seems impossible that there can be a happy ending, but this is a summer novel. 

 

May 2020

Although the virtual book discussions are short and sweet, I'm grateful we can still get together to share stories.

Here's what we discussed:

Eight Hundred Grapes - Laura Dave

At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan

A Baker's Daughter - Marcy Brenner and Kristin Donnan

Broken for Your - Stephanie Kallos

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff - Christopher Moore

The Plague - Albert Camus

Bossypants - Tina Fey

Jaguar in the Kitchen: My Life with Jungle Larry - Nancy Teztlaff

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson

Noir at the Bar: Authors and book discussion sponsored by Literary Cleveland

From Mary Lou:

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009). This novel presents British history in the time of King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey through the life of Thomas Cromwell. Thomas begins life as the abused son of an abusive blacksmith. He escapes to the continent and doesn’t return to England until he is a grown man. He joins the household of Cardinal Wolsey, trains as a lawyer, and proceeds to make his fortune and his reputation. The novel provides a brilliant account of the upheavals in power politics and power religion before Elizabeth I came to the throne. It draws heavily on George Cavendish’s contemporaneous biography of Cardinal Wolsey. Thomas Cromwell makes an honorable and clever protagonist in this chronicle of intrigue and ambition.

Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004). This is an unusually structured mystery novel with three apparently unrelated case histories in 1970, 1994, and 1979, presented in that order. Each is horrifying in its own way. Enter our somewhat bumbling ne’er-do-well private detective, Jackson Brodie, in 2000. He is hired to investigate aspects of these cold cases and peculiar connections begin to appear. It does not seem possible that the cases can be interrelated, but they are. The suspense in the novel is based on Jackson’s discoveries of these improbable connections. In the end, after several life-threatening events, his efforts are rewarded in a most surprising manner.

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn (2006). Jackson Brodie, retired police office and retired private investigator, is now independently wealthy. He has returned from his villa in France to Edinburgh where his actress-girlfriend has a part in a fringe play during the summer arts festival. He witnesses a road rage incident where a man is beaten badly in the street by an incredible hulk. Jackson slips off before giving a statement to police. He goes to Cramond Island where he discovers a murdered woman with a pink card in her bra: “FAVORS - We do what you want us to do.” The body disappears in the Forth and the police to whom he reports it think he is delusional. Later the incredible hulk encounters Jackson and assaults him but when the police come, Jackson is the one who ends up in jail. He meets Louise, a female police detective who finds his explanations of events incredible, but somehow intriguing. Jackson does not believe in coincidences and he keeps looking for FAVORS. Other peculiar characters also have a connection to the road rage assault, including scoundrels, human traffickers, prostitutes and criminals. As in the previous novel, everything is interconnected. In spite of himself, Jackson manages to stay alive and figure it all out. There may even be a new romance in his future with Louise.