The Testament Of Mary by Colm Toibin

 

In this short novel, Mary is nearing the end of her life.  She is hidden away from the enemies of Jesus although she wonders if her overseers are friends or foes.  Mary looks back over her own life and that of her son.  She relates the day of his crucifixion and his agony.  In this telling, Mary and her cousin leave behind his death, slipping away so that they would not be rounded up with the rest of his followers as they knew the plan to be.  She left the cleansing of his body and his burial to others and this is her greatest regret.

Colm Toibin is an Irish author whose books have been nominated four times for the Booker Prize along with many other awards.  This book was longlisted in 2013 for the Booker.  It gives an alternate testament of the times surrounding the death of Jesus and underlines the dichotomy Mary's life became, as a mother and an icon of the religion.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.   

The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny

 

Sonia and Sunny are both Indian but living in the United States on a visa.  Sunny is working as an entry level journalist and living with an American woman.  Sonia falls in love with an older artist who uses his art to control and ultimately, degrade her.  She loses her job in a gallery after the affair breaks up and must return to India where she is adrift, not sure what direction her life should take next.

When Sunny returns home for a visit, the two meet and there is a spark but Sonny is attached.  When he returns to the United States and finds his girlfriend gone, the spark between the two becomes more serious.  Sonia goes to Goa to research an article and Sunny joins her there.  

But Sonia cannot get a visa to return to the United States and Sunny does not want to live in India where his controlling mother will try to run his life.  Their romance takes them next to Venice but while there they discover an exhibit by the artist who was involved with Sonia and when she sees the pictures he has painted of her, she is humiliated and flees back to India.  Sunny returns to the United States where he gets his green card and then moves to Mexico on a grant to study the culture there.  Will the two get together?

Kiran Desai is an Indian author who immigrated to the United States when she was sixteen.  Her novel The Inheritance Of Loss won the Booker Prize and this novel was also nominated for that award.  I loved this novel.  It is a sprawling book that introduces the reader to different versions of India, that of wealthy and poor inhabitants.  The culture and family expectations are finely drawn and readers will cheer on the love affair between Sonia and Sunny.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Murderland by Caroline Fraser

 

This intensely researched book has a theory: the time in the 1970's-1980's that saw many serial killers in the Northwest states was a direct result of the smelting and release of toxins into the environment, specifically lead and arsenic.  Fraser follows the rise of the mineral extraction business from its beginning and how the industry was first centered in Pennsylvania but later moved to the Northwest, specifically the area around Tacoma, Washington.

She then gives examples of various serial killers who grew up in the area such as Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway and others.  Much of the book follows Ted Bundy from his birth to his execution in Florida years later and details the various crimes he committed in states such as Washington, Idaho, Colorado and Florida.  She also talks in detail about other killers such as Israel Keyes, Dennis Rader, Richard Ramirez and George Russell on Mercer Island.  

Fraser presents research showing the correlation between lead exposure and violence, presenting the lead levels released in various years.  She also shows a decrease in these types of crime as the smelting industry was finally brought into compliance with EPA levels that were steadily lowered.  

Carolina Fraser is an American author whose prior work, Prairie Fires, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.  This book was selected a New York Post Notable Book, Edgar Award finalist for true crime and a best book by various publications.  I was impressed by the research and the way she used the lead exposure to track alongside the stories of these violent men.  I'm not sure that I'm convinced that this was the sole reason for this spate of occurrences.  Why only these men when the exposure was felt by thousands of people?  I'm also leery of those men who didn't live there for their entire childhood such as Keyes and Rader but who grew up in various states as their families moved from location to location.  Also, there are serial killers in other locations during this time period such as the Son of Sam and they continue to the present such as the Long Island Killer.  Still, this is a work that merits reading and serious consideration.  I'm glad to have discovered Fraser and intend to read the rest of her work  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers, specifically science and true crime readers.  

Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

 

Blue van Meer has had an unusual upbringing.  Her mother died in an auto accident when Blue was five.  She grew up moving from town to town as her father took visiting professorships in various colleges and universities.  He made sure that Blue didn't lack for an education and indeed, she is far advanced from her peers although he has done most of her education himself.  As she nears her senior year, he promises Blue a year in one town so that she could more easily apply for her own university experience.  

They settle in a small Southern town and Blue is enrolled at St. Galloway, an exclusive school.  She is used to being the new girl and not having friends but for some reason the drama teacher, Hannah Schneider, takes Blue under her wing and invites her to her Sunday salon where the school's most popular students came.  Jade is the queen bee with Leulah her beautiful second.  Charles is the school's most desired boy and Mr. Everything, good in every sport and class president and prom king.  Nigel is slight but highly intelligent.  Milton is Blue's first real crush, a boy who seems older and a bit dangerous.

With her new friends, Blue becomes a more typical teenager.  They go to bars with fake ids, drink until they are drunk (a new experience for Blue) and the other girls pick up men for a night of fun.  The Sunday lunches are full of exciting topics and hints of mystery, most of which is supplied by the back story of Hannah, whom the students adore but want to know everything about.  When things turn dark, Blue realizes that once again she is on her own and must solve the mystery that she never knew influenced her entire life.

I adore Marisha Pessl.  She is an American author who grew up in Ashville, North Carolina, which is very similar to the setting of this novel.  She was twenty-eight when she wrote this novel so she was close enough in age to the characters to remember how high school attendees were.  Blue is the narrator of the novel and her intelligence yet naiveté is dominant.  The writing is very erudite yet the reader seldom feels lost.  The mystery bursts onto the scene late in the book with only the slightest hints that it is coming and the solution is one I never saw coming.  I can only hope Pessl has another novel in the works and highly recommend this one for literary fiction readers.   

The Turn Of The Key by Ruth Ware

 

Rowan Caine is dissatisfied with her life.  Working as an assistant in a childcare facility in London, she doesn't have a boyfriend, her roommate is going traveling for a year without her, and she doesn't have realistic hopes of advancement at her job.  So when she sees the ad looking for a nanny with a fantastic salary, she answers right away.

Her resume gets her an interview and soon Rowan is off to Heatherbrae House, in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.  There she meets Sandra Ellencourt, an architect.  She and her husband Bill have four children, all girls.  They range in age from fourteen to a toddler.  The Ellencourts have designed their house to be an advertisement for their business.  It is full of modern age technology, with cameras in every room and automatic locks and heating and a program that oversees everything called Happy.  

Rowan is offered the job even though Sandra tells her that four nannies have left suddenly in the recent past and that she and Brian are leaving on a work conference the next week.  The oldest daughter is at boarding school and Rowan feels that she can handle an eight, six and eighteen-month old on her own.  But the girls don't warm to her except for the baby.  The two girls at home run off with their parents' permission on long explorations of the outdoors.  That upsets Rowan as there are ponds and dangers in the woods and even a poison garden, one of the few in existence and protected by the government.  

The strangeness continues inside.  Keys go missing, then reappear.  She thinks she hears someone outside her windows and she knows she hears a creak, creak, creak at night overhead as if someone were walking in an attic, an attic she is told doesn't exist.  There is a woman who comes in to cook and clean who doesn't like Rowan on sight and a caretaker who is also young and who Rowan flirts with but doesn't trust. 

The book is written as a series of letters, mostly from Rowan to a solicitor general.  A child has died under her watch and she is arrested for murder.  What really happened and what was the secret that Rowan herself was keeping?

Ruth Ware is a British author who started in the young adult genre then switched to adult mysteries in 2015.  She has released ten books since then and most have been very successful.  In this one, I felt that the ending was a bit abrupt after a lot of buildup with many tension raising events.  I did like the device of the story being told through the letters which gives the author the ability to ramble on if she feels like it and unlike a conversation could have allowed.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Departures by Julian Barnes

 

This book is a mix of memoir and novel.  Julian Barnes was approaching eighty as he wrote this and endings are on his mind.  He talks about the blood cancer he has been fighting since 2020.  He talks about the death of his beloved wife.  But he also talks about a love story he played a part in, not once but twice.

In university, he played a part in bringing together Stephen and Jean, both of whom were friends of his.  He didn't have a love interest at the time and he felt a part of their love and was quite disappointed when they broke up.  Forty years later, Stephen approached him about bringing he and Jean back together and Barnes does.  The two fall back in love but alas, the ending is the same.

Julian Barnes is one of England's best authors.  He has been nominated for the Booker Prize four times and his novel, A Sense Of An Ending, won in 2011.  I've read the majority of his books and enjoyed them all.  I am sad to see him writing what he says will be his last book.  On a lighter note, I read that he married the woman he was in a relationship with in this memoir when he had reached eighty and I was pleased that he had trusted love once again.  This book is recommended for memoir and Barnes fans.  

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

 

One of the world's most famous artists, J KAT, is dying and his most famous painting, of the sea, a pier and three figures sitting at the end of the pier, is being auctioned.  What no one knows is that the winning bid comes from the artist and he reclaims the picture he painted at fifteen.  The figures at the end of the pier are his friends, his chosen family, Joar, Ali and Ted.  Before he dies, the artist finds a young girl painting on the walls of an ally and he recognizes another talent as original as his.  He makes the decision to leave her the painting.

Ted has lived with the artist for the past few years, tending him in his illness.  He finds the girl, Louisa, and gives her the painting.  She doesn't want to take it, not believing in her own art or why anyone would like it.  But this is just like the artist at her age and Ted knows the artist has made the right decision.  

In order to convince Louisa to take the painting, he pays for them both to take the train back to his hometown where he hasn't been in twenty-five years and tells her the story of the summer the painting was created and the four friends who loved each other.  

Ted's father died when he was eight and he has never recovered from that.  Ali has a con man for a father and the family has to move whenever his cons are discovered or he borrows money he can't pay back.  Joar lives with an alcoholic father who beats him and his mother mercilessly.  The artist lives in a vacuum at home, no one in his family talking or caring about anyone else.  When they find each other, they make their own family and that summer seems like it will last forever.

Fredrik Backman's novels have been huge successes and this one is no different.  He writes about the difficulty of growing up and the need of children to have love.  If they can't get it at home, they will find friends to give it to.  Although there is death in this book, it is life-affirming and the reader will be swept into the lives of these four teenagers and how they survive in a cold world, a world that has identified them as outsiders.  The love between the four is inspiring and the recognition of Louisa as the same kind of person and the way she is brought into their world is fascinating.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

 

Leo Demidov is a war hero in the Soviet Union.  After the war, he joined the security office where he tracks down traitors for the state.  He knows that the men and women he brings in face execution or a long stay in the various gulags but he is a true believer in the state and thinks he is doing good.  He is married to Raisa who is a teacher and whose entire family was killed during the war.

But all of that won't save you if you have an enemy with influence and Leo does.  His subordinate wants Leo's job and he convinces their superior to set Raisa up as a traitor just to see if Leo will be true to the state over his personal love for her.  Leo fails the test and the two of them are demoted and sent to a small village hours away.

Before Leo left the security service, one of his jobs was to convince a family that their small son had not been murdered but had been hit by a train.  When he gets to the new town, he finds out that there have been child murders there as well, and as he investigates, he realizes that the one in Moscow was the forty-fourth victim.  All the cases have been closed with the blame being put on those the state wants to get rid of, homosexuals, those with mental issues, those suspected of various crimes.  But Leo realizes that this is the work of one man.  To even investigate is to commit treason against the state as they have closed the cases, but Leo knows if he is not caught, the murderer will continue.  Can he find the killer?

This was Tom Rob Smith's debut novel and it received many awards including a Booker nomination.  The author went on to write two more novels that featured this environment.  Readers will learn how bleak the Soviet Union was after the war and how everyone lived in fear of being arrested and accused of being a traitor.  Friends were pitted against friends, family against family.  The entire organization was corrupt with those in favor being given material goods and influence while always balancing on a thin line.  The identity of the murderer is another shock in this novel.  This book is recommended not only for mystery readers but for historical and literary fiction readers as well.

Eclipse by John Banville

 After famous actor Alexander Cleave has a nervous breakdown on stage, he returns to his childhood home to recover.  His wife is not in favor of this and she believes that he is going in order to leave her and their marriage.  Besides his wife, Alexander has a grown daughter who he and his wife have had a difficult relationship with and who is currently working overseas.

He arrives to find a house deserted for years and direly in need of cleaning.  He and his wife clean what they can before she leaves to go back to their home in London.  He gets the keys from Quirk who works for the local lawyer and has been working as the caretaker of the house, not very well from what Alexander has seen.

He settles in but does not relax.  Soon he believes that he is seeing and hearing ghosts as he believed as a boy growing up there.  Quirk brings his daughter to help with cooking and cleaning but she is a typical teenager and spends her time reading trashy magazines and rolling her eyes when Alexander asks her to do something.  When his wife returns, it is to news that is a tragedy to them both and they leave again.

John Banville has written over forty books in various series.  This one is the start of what was to be a trilogy but has this novel and Shroud.  He has won the Booker Prize and been nominated several other times for it.  Banville readers will be surprised that he names the caretaker Quirk as he has a series featuring a detective named Quirke but there is no overlap between the two characters.  The book is told in first person and the reader will slowly come to understand Alexander and his life and mind through his telling of this story.  I think it is impossible for Banville to write a bad book and I really enjoyed this one which is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

A Strange And Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows

 

Velasin vin Aaro grows up in Ralia where he has to hide his real self.  He has known since he was a child that he was attracted to men rather than women and that is a scandal in his country.  He deals with it by moving away from his family, as far away as he can get to a place where he can live as he needs to.  But when Velasin is called home, it is to find that his father has created an alliance with a neighboring kingdom's influential family with a marriageable daughter.  Velasin is to go there and marry the woman.  

He is willing, he guesses but that night his lover follows him to his father's house.  The two are caught having relations by the other family's envoy.  Velasin's father is furious and disowns him but the envoy says he has a solution.  Tithenai is not judgmental and the influential family also has a son that Velasin can marry.

Velasin agrees and goes the next morning to start his journey to Tithenai.  Along the way, the caravan is attacked and Velasin's best friend is injured by an arrow.  When he arrives in Tithenai, Velasin meets Caethari Aeduria who is to be his husband.  Caethari is a soldier and interested in serving his country however he can.  The marriage happens immediately and the two husbands are left to work out a relationship.

But someone isn't happy with the marriage.  Attacks continue and Caethari's father is attacked.  Velasin's horse is killed as is a groom in another incident.  Are the attacks targeting Velasin or is the Aeduria family the target?  Can the two men discover who is behind the attacks?

Foz Meadows is an Australian author who writes in the science fiction and fantasy genre and who started in the fan fiction world.  The story is about a gay relationship that starts with the participants as strangers who then start to like and finally love each other.  There is magic involved and lots of politics and individuals hiding their true motives.  Velasin's best friend is mute which also plays a part in the story.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did an excellent job.  This book is recommended for fantasy readers and those looking for stories about gay relationships.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

 

This novella tells the story of Robert Grainger, a man who is one of those who settle the West.  He marries but there is no work where he builds their cabin so he goes every summer further out West to work as a logger.  That money will hold him, his wife and baby daughter until the next summer.

One year when he comes home, it is to find that a fire has devastated the town and its outlying forest.  He goes to his cabin to find it in ashes and no sign of his wife and daughter.  He spends weeks looking for them, traveling to different towns in the area to see if anyone knows what happened to them but has no luck discovering them.  He has a dream that his wife died by drowning but that the baby survived and when the townspeople later talk about a 'wolf-girl' he wonders if that is his child.

Over the years, as he gets older, he has to give up logging.  He works as a carter transporting goods for various people and any other jobs he can find.  His is a bleak life but he learns to make it enough for him.

Denis Johnson is an American author who also wrote poetry.  This novella describes the rough life of the settlers in the West.  It also talks about the Chinese immigrants brought to the country to build the railroads then discriminated against once that work was done, the necessity of men being able to be a jack of all trades, the rough winters and hunger that often occurred and other features of life in that era.  It was a New York Times Notable Book as well as one of NPR's Best Novels of the year.  This book is recommended for readers of literary and historical fiction.

The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham

 

After the disastrous way his last case ended, DI Tom Thorne has been removed from the Murder Squad and reassigned to a different police station and job.  He now heads up the police on the street and goes there himself most nights.  It is a demotion and he feels it deeply.  The only thing that seems to be going well is his new relationship with Helen, who is also a police officer and her young son, Alfie.

Thorne notices that there are an unusual number of suicides among the elderly in his district and the methods chosen are unnecessarily brutal.  What is causing the rise?  Thorne suspects that these are actually clever murders but his new superiors think he is just overly suspicious due to his past assignments and his desire to be back solving murders.  Then Thorne discovers a connection between the victims no one else had noticed and using his friends of many years as resources, sets out to solve the case by himself.

This is the eleventh Tom Thorne novel.  As always, once Thorne gets the bit in his teeth, there is no reining him in.  He is obsessive about the case and willing to put his friends in danger of their jobs as he uses them to find the answers he is sure are out there.  I loved the interaction between Thorne and Alfie and hope this relationship with Helen and her son continues.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Nature Of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

 

Sophie Whalen left Ireland to come to the United States.  She expected to live with her brother but he fell in love, married and moved to Canada.  Left in New York by herself, the best Sophie could do was work in a sweatshop and live in a ratty tenement.  Was this what she came for?  Then she saw the ad.  A man in San Francisco was looking for a wife to keep his house and raise his young daughter after he found himself a widower.  Sophie answered the ad and was shocked but pleased when she was chosen.  

After a long journey, she meets Martin Hocking and they go immediately to City Hall and marry.  She is taken to a beautiful house she never thought she could live in and met Kat who is seven.  Kat has taken her mother's death hard and doesn't speak, having retreated into herself.  Sophie quickly becomes close to her as she always wanted children and it is usually only the two of them.  Martin tells her he works in insurance and has to travel most of the time.  Sophie and Kat explore San Francisco and slowly Kat starts to emerge from her shell.  

Then the doorbell rings.  Another woman is standing there and she thinks that she is Martin's wife.  What is going on?  As the two women confer and look for paperwork, they find that Martin is a serial con man who marries multiple women.  Why?  What does he hope to gain?  Martin returns just in time for the women to confront him and then the San Francisco earthquake hits.  Sophie, Kat and the other woman escape but Martin is left behind, perhaps to live, perhaps to die.

Susan Meissner is an American author who writes in the women's fiction genre.  In this novel, I learned a lot about the San Francisco earthquake I never knew and I gained new respect for the magnitude of this natural disaster.  Everyone in the novel had secrets and these are uncovered to explain everything.  Sophie is the heroine and her love for Kat is her defining characteristic.  This book is recommended for women's and historical fiction readers.  

Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors by Ann Rule

 In this anthology, Ann Rule writes about cases where friends or neighbors were the agents of violence.  The book starts with two longer novellas.  The first is about the Susan Powell case and the evil perpetrated by her husband and father-in-law.  The second is about the case of Becky Zahua whose body was found hung while she was nude days after her boyfriend's young son fell in an accident that took his life.

Other cases are shorter and include things like a young girl who disappeared while her aunt was watching her go around the house into the back yard, another teenage girl whose mother saw her wrestling with what turned out to be her killer in their yard and other cases.

Ann Rule is known as the queen of true crime.   She was a former Seattle police officer and her 35 true crime books are all still in print, although Ann died in 2015.  She rose to fame when she wrote The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy.  She and Bundy worked together on a suicide prevention line.  This is the sixteenth book in her series Crime Files and is recommended for true crime readers.