I'm sort of shocked, looking back at this past month, at just how many books I managed to read! It's a mix, historical fiction, memoir, suspense, contemporary fiction. I typically read whatever strikes my fancy at any given moment, so it can vary wildly! There are so many this month, I'm shortening my reviews just a bit. Without any further ado...
Mrs., by Caitlyn Macy. Three women who don't quite fit the mold are thrown together by social happenstance--all three have children who attend the same elite NYC grammar school. Philippa is a woman with a shadowy past, Gwen is often mistaken for the family nanny, and Minnie is a newcomer, determined to find a way into the elite social circles. But when scandal strikes, nothing will ever be the same...for any of them. If you love a good, gossipy summer read, add this to your list.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. While I'd read Jane Eyre in college, I decided to reread it for my May book club meeting. I'd forgotten how sad Jane's story was, orphaned young and ill-treated by her distant relatives before being sent away to a school where she'd make the best friends of her life. And later, the mysterious Mr. Rochester enters the scene, both enthralling and ominous. We got some excellent discussion from this classic!
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee. A 2017 National Award Finalist, Pachinko follows the story of one Korean family from the early 1900s, from the poor daughter of a lame fisherman who falls for a wealthy stranger, and after finding that she is pregnant and he is already married, marries a sickly but kind pastor and emigrates with him to Japan. Their family struggles on, through war and lean times, into the 1980s, and new opportunities. Excellent, moving and very entertaining.
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. I love David Sedaris; his essays and stories make me laugh like no other. Tales here include his move to Paris and his valiant efforts to learn French, his experiences as a performance artist, and his disastrous year as a writing professor. I laughed til I cried.
Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen before setting foot in a classroom. She'd never been to see a doctor or a nurse; her father was deeply mistrustful of the medical establishment. It was years before she had an actual birth certificate, and no one in her family is sure, still, what her exact birthday is--the government was not to be trusted. And yet, after one of her older brothers goes off to college, Tara decides to try a different kind of life, one that ultimately leads to Harvard and Oxford. Completely fascinating--I could not put this down.
Never Too Late, by Robyn Carr. I borrowed this from Overdrive, as the library's print copy is being replaced. Clare Wilson is starting over. She's ending her marriage to a serial cheater, finding work that she enjoys, reconnecting with her family. But it takes a brush with death to make her take stock of what's most important. Carr is reliable for fast, easy, character-driven stories.
End of Watch, by Stephen King. Retired police detective Bill Hodges is in failing health, something his friends and his PI partner Holly have been suspecting for months. The thing that keeps him going, though, is a new series of supposed suicides that are just too strange and coincidental to sit right with him. It was the original MO of the murderous Mr. Mercedes, Brady Hartfield, who now sits in what appears to be a vegetative state in the brain injury ward of the local hospital. But, Bill wonders, what if Brady is much more alert and aware than he lets on? With the time on his clock running down, Bill sets out to prove his theory right, and stop Brady once and for all. I needed to read this before I went on to King's new book, The Outsider, and I'm really glad I did.
Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate. In the theme of Christina Baker Kline's The Orphan Train, Wingate's bestseller flips back and forth between past and present. In the past, it is 1939 and Rill Foss's parents have gone into town to the hospital for her mother to have a baby. And then she and her siblings find themselves wards in an orphan's home, slowly being sold off to wealthy families. In the present, Avery Stafford comes from a wealthy, influential family, though she's worried for her grandmother's failing memory. When she stumbles across a long-kept family secret, past meets present in a hurry. Slightly uneven, as the past story was more compelling, but still very readable and made even more enthralling as the events were based on a real "baby broker".
The Alienist, by Caleb Carr. While this has been on my reading bucket list for some time, it took the recent miniseries to get me to finally dig in. In 1896 New York City, criminal profiling is in its infancy. A reporter and a psychologist (an "alienist") team up for an unprecedented endeavor--creating a psychological profile of a serial killer in order to predict his next moves...and stop him. With a fast-paced plot and exquisite historical detail, this is a suspense novel like no other.
Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. Three families. One, a childless couple waiting impatiently to adopt. Another, large and wealthy, well-established. And a third, a mother and daughter who move often and are only in town perhaps for a year while the mother, an artist, works on a new series of photographs. What none of them expect this year is that all three families will become hopelessly entwined and forever changed, that some will come out stronger, more sure, and others will find their trajectories altered irrevocably. I read this in a sitting, I just couldn't put it down.
Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, by Sue Halpern. I am so in love with this book, I cannot begin to tell you. Kit has run from her past, and hides in plain sight as a librarian in the failing mill town of Riverton, New Hampshire. She lives a small, solitary life and prefers it that way. The last thing she wants is to spend a summer shadowed by fifteen-year-old Sunny, who has been sentenced to a summer of community service at the library for trying to steal, of all things, a dictionary from a book store. Sunny, however, becomes the crack in the foundation of Kit's carefully constructed walls, and the summer is one of growth and change and challenges for both of them, each extricating herself from a past beyond her control. I never expected to love this book the way I do.
The Whispering Room, by Dean Koontz. Second in Koontz's new series featuring rogue FBI agent Jane Hawk follows Jane as she pursues the shadowy cabal of powerful, influential players who are at the helm of a mind-control conspiracy of terrifying proportions. They never banked on a woman driven by love and fear, a woman willing to go rogue to take them down.
Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett. One chance encounter, one uninvited guest at a family gathering, and the fates of two families are changed for generations. The Keating and the Cousins families would never have known one another until there are two divorces, a marriage, and suddenly all of the kids are spending summers in West Virginia together, and half of them are in California the rest of the year. Their bonds, lasting into adulthood, stem from a shared disillusionment of their parents and a strange sort of kinship in the wake of one tragic summer. While initially I had a little trouble with the timeline, once I figured it out, I was hooked. I adore Patchett's writing.
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