Author: Sherry

Virgil Wander, by Leif Enger

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment

We first meet Virgil Wander soon after he dies. Or not. (It isn’t entirely clear.)

Virgil is an inhabitant of Greenstone, a small, steadily declining town in Minnesota. He works as the town clerk, lives in and operates the local cinema house, and for years now has run his life on autopilot—until his car flies off the road and into Lake Superior, leaving him impaired, reflective, and reluctantly needing in-home assistance.

Enter Rune, a new-to-town Scandinavian who has recently discovered that he is the biological father of a minor-league baseball player named Alec Sandstrom. Alec—a talented but erratic pitcher–had had a brief moment of glory with the Greenstone team, then disappeared mysteriously, leaving behind his stunningly attractive wife Nadine, their brooding young child, and a lingering mystery. Rune has come to Greenstone to fly kites, talk to the residents, and try to understand the son he never knew.

Virgil and Rune are on intersecting journeys of discovery, with the gritty widow Nadine at the hub. Their journeys are made a little more challenging by the return of the town’s prodigal son, who is Satan. Or not. (It isn’t entirely clear.) We’re also distracted by 10-year-old Galen Pea and his quest for revenge on a killer fish, and by sad Jerry Fandeen and his dissolving marriage. But really, this is just a loose premise for Enger’s amble through Midwestern quirkiness, gilded with a coating of magical realism. Each sentence contains a wry smile; each character is imbued with gentle melancholy. The story itself moves slowly and ends with a fizzle. Still, Enger’s characters tug at the heart, and his prose—which first captured me nearly 20 years ago with his enchanting Peace Like a River—is as sweet and warm as a cup of hot chocolate in a Minnesota snowstorm.

Beartown, by Fredrik Backman

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment

I understand Beartown: Always the afterthought, populated by misfits and hard-working scrappers, looking down the road with envy at Hed, the town next door that always gets the money, the jobs, the attention. Anyone who grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, just down the road from Kalamazoo, as I did, understands the dynamic. Throw in a rivalry between the towns’ two ice-hockey clubs, populate the story with the kinds of characters that both small towns and ice hockey attract, and you have a surprising, insightful, emotional book that is about so much more than sports.

When we first are introduced to Beartown, the community is on a nervous high, waiting for the town’s junior ice-hockey team to compete in a huge national semifinal game. For once, the team—and by extension, the town—has a real chance to come out a winner, thanks to Kevin, the star player, and the Beartown team that has grown up around him. But things don’t go quite as planned: as the game approaches, the community is split apart by a violent act. The decisions that must be made as a result test the loyalty and ethics of Beartown’s residents.

I loved Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove (see Kristie’s review here) so much that I was afraid that I would be disappointed by this book. Silly me. Backman’s deep understanding of emotions, motivations, and relationships made A Man Called Ove shine in its portrayal of an individual; with Beartown, the author masterfully depicts an entire community, making us feel that we know each member, that we’ve sat with them in the Bearskin pub and listened to their innermost thoughts. We root for them to do the right thing, and care about them even when they don’t. We understand the mistakes they make, even if we sometimes find it hard to forgive them.

Backman’s extraordinarily pleasurable writing is worth spending time with, no matter what the subject, and if I were the sort of person who highlights great sentences in a book, Beartown’s pages would have been glowing like a radioactive lemon. The author’s insightful offhand comments and wry humor mark every passage. But perhaps the most unexpected aspect of this book with a boys’ sport at its core was its feminist streak–subtle at first, but by the end of the story, there’s no missing it.

If you know the world of ice hockey well, Backman’s portrayal of the coaches, players, parents, and fans will have you nodding your head and grinning in recognition. But even if you don’t know a faceoff from an offsides, Beartown’s story resonates with its examination of family, community, sacrifice, and what it means to be a good person.

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment
where-the-crawdads-sing-cover

Where the Crawdads Sing was the book that you saw everywhere this summer—the season’s “It” book. I’ll be honest, with an “It” book, I usually wait until I’m pretty sure that we don’t have another Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, or Girl on a Train on our hands—or at least until the paperback is released. But I was heading out to the beach and in need of something to hold my attention between naps, so I took a leap and bought the hardcover. I’m not sorry; this was a solid, emotional read with some unexpected twists.

It’s the story of a remarkable girl, Kya, called “the Marsh Girl” by the denizens of the small nearby town on the North Carolina coast. Abandoned as a very young child, first by her beloved mother, then by her older siblings, and finally by her abusive father, she manages to avoid the authorities long enough for them to lose interest in capturing her, then essentially raises herself in the wild. Though a few of the townspeople provide her with subtle assistance, most consider her a freak. As she grows older, a careful friendship with an older boy tempers her loneliness and gives her the tools to educate herself; then a less careful friendship with another young man leads to heartbreak and tragedy.

The book does require some suspension of belief. The idea of a six-year-old girl surviving on her own in the marshes without starving or injuring herself is a bit of a stretch. (On the other hand, I read books where time travel and vampires are de rigueur, so who am I to judge?) I also found it hard to accept Kya’s character development through her relationships–by her late teens she had been abandoned by everyone she ever loved, which made her initial reaction to a major betrayal difficult to process. And the ending, while surprising and emotional, does rely on the reader to avoid thinking too hard about how secrets are revealed.

Still, a good story populated by appealing personalities trumps all for me, and the author does a beautiful job of incorporating the marsh and its wildlife as characters worthy of a lonely young girl’s love. Kya may be lonely, but with the marshland around her, she is never alone.

How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment

What if your life expectancy were measured in terms of centuries rather than years? Would it be a blessing or a curse? How would it affect your relationships, your choices, your enjoyment of life?

These are the questions with which How to Stop Time wrangles through its protagonist, Tom Hazard. Tom has been alive since the sixteenth century. His development was normal until puberty, when the ageing process slowed markedly: outwardly, he aged one year for every 15 he lived. The condition comes with a heightened immune system, providing extra protection from diseases. So although Tom isn’t immortal, in many respects he may as well be. He’s over 400 years old, but he looks like a robust 41-year-old.

Tom’s condition is rare, but not unique. There are others like him around the world, and a secretive group has formed to offer support and protection, though its assistance comes with a price. Among other requirements, he must never fall in love. This is not a problem for Tom; his wife, Rose, died during the Black Plague, and even the centuries since haven’t dimmed his love for her. But his emotional isolation is about to be tested as he returns to live in a city brimming with memories of Rose and meets a charming French teacher who draws him in, despite the danger.

This poignant story is dotted with glimpses of history—William Shakespeare plays a key role, as do Captain Cook and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald—but these mainly serve to provide an entertaining structure for a fantastical romance, and for thoughtful, wry philosophical musings on what it means to live.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment

Author Haruki Murakami is a rock star in Japan, where his books—including this one—are instant bestsellers. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage isn’t quite as catchy a title as, say, IQ84, but then, at this point, Murakami can name his book Blah Blah Blah and it wouldn’t affect sales.

The basis for the story is very simple. In high school, Tsukuru had four dear friends with whom he formed an extremely tight-knit group. After high school, Tsukuru headed to college in Tokyo, but when he returned to hometown for a break during his sophomore year, these very close friends “announced that they did not want to see him, or talk with him, ever again. It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise. They gave no explanation, not a word, for this harsh pronouncement. And Tsukuru didn’t dare ask.”

Tsukuru was understandably confused, then devastated, and Murakami details the excruciating after-effects of being inexplicably declared persona non grata. The emotions are searing. We see Tsukuru’s shaky mental state and watch him make subsequent choices, mostly poor, that flow directly from his broken heart.

After college, Tsukuru works for a railway company designing stations. He struggles with his few personal relationships until, at age 36, he meets Sara, who draws him out and encourages him to track down his former friends to finally find out why they had so cruelly abandoned him.

The plot is as plain as that. The writing, though, has a dreamy quality that made me wish that I could read the book in the original Japanese. Translated into English, the metaphors and wordplay Murakami uses need to be explained in detail; I suspect that the subtlety of reading it in the original may create a more seamless experience. Color is an obvious theme, as each of Tsukuru’s high-school friends has a last name that involves a color, and their nicknames become those colors: The boys are Red and Blue, the girls are White and Black. Only Tsukuru, as the title reminds us, is colorless. But those of us who are reading a translation only know this because the translation spells it out in great detail.

There was much in the story that made me uncomfortable, not least of which was the answer to the central mystery. I also found Tsukuru to be a difficult character to connect with, despite my sympathy for his pain. Then there were the rather odd hallucinogenic scenes thrown into the mix. I came away wondering whether I should blame the story for my discomfort, or the translation, or maybe both. But because I couldn’t read the book the way the author intended me to, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I found myself thinking about Tsukuru long after I’d finished the book– a sign that the story had resonated. The tale made me consider how our friends can define us—after all, would Tsukuru be “colorless” in a group that was not defined by color? It also made me think about how our unwillingness to put ourselves out there socially in the short term—why, oh why, didn’t Tsukuru simply ask what had caused his banishment in the first place?—can lead to unnecessary long-term pain and, yes, pilgrimage.

Mostly, the book made me think about translations of various types, and how they affect our interactions with art, with history, with each other. The limits of translation are clear in a book like this, where so much of the effect seems to depend on wordplay in another language. The author’s intentions fade a bit without the sharpness of the original Japanese. But in the end, this simple tale about a simple man with a broken heart depicts the joy, suffering, and color that friends can bring to one other, and makes it worth the reader’s effort to become acquainted with Tsukuru and his colorful, colorless life.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment
Image result for the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

Evelyn Hugo is a Hollywood icon—Elizabeth Taylor meets Lauren Bacall, with more than a touch of Greta Garbo. She’s the woman that every woman wants to be, and that every man wants to have. Her meteoric rise to stardom and subsequent climb to superstardom leaves a pile of husbands by the wayside. To the outsider, her love life is very complicated. But in the context of her career, it makes perfect sense—to Evelyn, at least.

Evelyn is now in her late 70s, and she has been living quietly, having retired from public life decades before. She decides that it’s time to tell all. And there is much to tell. To do the job, she chooses a nobody, Monique Grant, who has been a magazine reporter for barely a year. Why Monique? That’s a mystery to everyone, including Monique, and Evelyn is in no hurry to give answers as she narrates her scandalous story.

It’s a wild ride indeed. We meet poor Eddie Diaz, goddamn Don Adler, gullible Mick Riva, clever Rex North, tortured Harry Cameron, disappointing Max Girard, and agreeable Robert Jamison, all of whom are lucky/unlucky enough to be married to Evelyn at some point. We also meet Celia St. James, Evelyn’s rival, dearest friend, and fellow Hollywood megastar. We learn, too, that the title of the book is a bit deceptive, as there is more to Evelyn’s love life than meets the eye.

The present-day story is told in the first person by the frankly uninteresting Monique, which works to give us an outside perspective on Evelyn—at least, Evelyn as a still-glamorous senior citizen. Evelyn’s story, though, is told in the first person by Evelyn, which is awkward. It’s just too much of a stretch for Evelyn to be able to remember full conversations and assign thoughts and feelings as she does. On the other hand, this approach does provide an explanation for the reader’s inability to grasp any of the other characters in the book—Evelyn is all about Evelyn, even when she’s protecting those she loves.

The answer to the first mystery of the book—who is Evelyn’s true love?–is revealed early; the answer to the second mystery—why Monique?—develops late and is a bit unsatisfying. And the book skips over some major, and potentially interesting, sections of Evelyn’s life. But despite its flaws, this is a rip-roaring beach romp through old Hollywood, with some interesting observations on love versus intimacy, and on the sacrifices needed to keep up appearances while living in the public eye.

Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment
Ordinary Grace

“All the dying that summer began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses….” And with this first line, the tone is set for Ordinary Grace, a quiet coming-of-age novel set in small-town Minnesota in the 1960s.

Frank Drum is just thirteen years old when the serene town of New Bremen is disrupted by a series of disturbing, deadly events, one of which causes Frank’s world to crack. With his sweet, stuttering younger brother Jake as his shadow, Frank pokes and prods the dark corners of the town, eavesdropping and exploring, trying to make sense of what has happened.

Frank’s father is the town pastor. Though he was originally on the path to become a lawyer, his searing World War II experiences diverted him to the ministry. Frank’s mother, who thought she was marrying a lawyer, is uncomfortable as the pastor’s wife and resentful of his reliance on faith. This novel is as much about the rifts in this marriage as it is about the disturbances in the town. Secrets are uncovered, faith is tested, grief must be dealt with. But ordinary grace proves to be this family’s salvation, and that grace finds its voice in surprising ways.

An Edgar Award-winning novel, Ordinary Grace is less a mystery book than a portrait of a family and a town in crisis. Frank is a boy who is always on the move, one who will climb out of the bedroom window in the middle of the night without hesitation if it will bring him answers. Jake might doubt his brother’s methods, but he’s by Frank’s side through thick and thin. They are a resilient pair with secrets of their own.

This nostalgic, moving novel manages to be simultaneously sad and uplifting. Frank is telling the story forty years later, with the perspective of time—a wise choice by the author, as it allows the adult’s more mature viewpoint to overlay the child’s experiences. All of the characters are familiar and fully drawn, but Frank’s brother and father are particularly captivating in their generous,loving natures. It is a book that reminds me strongly of Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger—one of my favorite novels of all time. It lingers sweetly in the mind long after its central mystery is laid to rest.

Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor

~ Sherry ~ Leave a comment
Image result for who fears death

In post-apocalyptic Africa, there are two peoples: the dark-skinned, oppressed Okeke and the lighter-skinned, dominant Nuru. Our heroine, Onyesonwu—whose name means “Who fears death”—is born a mixed-race Ewu, conceived in a rape during a genocidal raid on her mother’s village. The rape was intended to create a powerful sorcerer, and it succeeded, though not quite as Onyesonwu’s evil magical father had intended. Emotional, passionate, curious, strong, impulsive, and fiercely independent, Onyesonwu is a girl who is no one’s sidekick.

The first half of the book shows Onyesonwu learning who she is while battling prejudice, both as a woman and as an Ewu. At first she tries to conform to the norms of the Okeke village in which she and her mother ultimately reside, but at the same time she begins to exhibit incredible powers that ensure that she will always be an outsider. Eventually she bonds with three other girls with whom she shares a clitoridectomy ceremony, and she grows close to a mysterious Ewu boy named Mwita. Then, when she finally persuades an extremely reluctant sorcerer to take her on as a student, Onyesonwu begins to learn her destiny.

As tends to happen in fantasy novels, there is a prophecy. Although Onyesonwu does not originally seem to fit the description of the one who will literally rewrite the rules, it soon becomes clear that fate may be wrong about some details. As tends to happen in fantasy novels, a journey must therefore be undertaken, and a fellowship must be formed.

The second half of the book follows Onyesonwu and her posse through five months in the desert on the way to a showdown with her father, who leads the Nuru in attacks meant to obliterate the Okeke. Nnedi Okorafor is a skilled raconteur, but given the buildup, the ending comes so quickly that it feels like an afterthought. And Onyesonwu is hardly an untainted heroine, given the destruction she heaps on two villages along her journey. Indeed, she exhibits—even welcomes—the violent tendencies that Ewu are assumed to possess because of the violence of their conception, which is the reason why Ewu are universally shunned. But then, conception is a central theme of this book, and Onyesonwu’s Ewu lover Mwita, born not of rape but of love between the two races, is a moderating force and a healer.

The book has a hard time settling into a groove. It feels at times like a YA novel, except that Onyesonwu and Mwita (not to mention Onyesonwu’s girlfriends) are constantly having sex. (Although their sex feels like YA sex—lots of reaching for each other, and then….) The story follows a fantasy outline, but it throws science fiction elements into the mix without following the paths they suggest. And though there’s nothing wrong with a little ambiguity, there are a ridiculous number of overly sly hints about how this world came to be, with too many questions left unanswered—including the question of how a Schoolhouse Rock lyric might become embedded in post-apocalyptic African lore.

This is not to say that the book doesn’t have a great many rewards. The author has grand ambitions for her story, most of which are at least partially satisfied. The female characters, Onyesonwu in particular, are fully drawn and thoroughly believable. The storytelling is deft and compelling. And the author uses her tale to ponder a variety of social topics,from feminism to racial inequality, from acceptance of one’s fate to control of one’s body. A reader is left to wonder whether “Who fears death” is a question or a statement, and whether the answer even matters to one for whom dying is just another bump in the road.

The Only Story, by Julian Barnes

~ Sherry ~ 2 Comments

The only story

I loved Julian Barnes’s meditative, Man Booker Prize-winning A Sense of an Ending, which I reviewed very briefly here. In it, a middle-aged Brit contemplated the relationships of his youth in spare but lovely prose. When The Only Story began, it felt like it might recapture the thoughtfulness of that earlier tale. Sadly, it was not to be.

In The Only Story, we are introduced to an annoying, self-important protagonist, Paul Casey, whose summer membership at the local country club at age 19 leads to a decade-long entanglement with his tennis partner, 48-year-old Susan MacLeod, a married mother of two. Susan is a spirited woman in a drab and occasionally violent marital relationship. She quickly identifies Paul as a head case, but one with whom she is happy to trade banter. She is not the world-weary Mrs. Robinson type, a cougar on the prowl; instead, she comes across more like a spunky kitten: a woman who is a bit naïve, who regrets her lack of experience but is finally ready to do something about it. She seems to see in Paul—what? A way to overwrite the choices she made at Paul’s age? It’s hard to tell; we never truly get to know Susan, whose mid-life decisions, seen through the filter of Paul’s self-absorption, seem odd at best. It’s Susan’s life that’s the tragedy here, yet the pompous Paul seizes for himself the role of tragic hero.

The first half of this brief book tells the tale of the lovers’ happy-ish first years, in which Paul becomes a strange part of Susan’s household, bringing his college buddies home to her and doing crosswords with her husband. His parents are properly alarmed, which only makes Paul more pleased with his unconventional arrangement. Eventually, though, Paul and Susan decide to run off together, and here is where the story begins to fall apart.

The second half of the book drags, with Susan’s sad spiral glimpsed between Paul’s self-centered and stale musings on love. Paul, unsurprisingly, is ultimately unable to deal with his broken lover or accept his role in her decline, yet once he tosses her back to her family, he also remains too entangled to move on with his own life. For him, this is truly “the only story.”

The author plays with voice here, moving between first-, second-, and third-person observations with varying degrees of success, and as in previous books, he makes memory a central theme. As the book winds down, we wonder: Can we rely on Paul’s recollections or not? In the end, though, this bleak book brings few insights, and even the clean, crisp writing is not enough to wash away the sorrow of two lives wasted in the name of love.

Failure to Launch: A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness

~ Sherry ~ 1 Comment

Two pages. That’s how far I got with Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches. Obviously, it’s a Failure to Launch record, and the book against which future FtL books will be measured.

I had been looking forward to reading this book, a 2011 New York Times bestseller. It’s apparently about a descendant of witches who, in the course of her scholarly research, finds an enchanted manuscript in the Oxford University library. All kinds of demons, witches, etc. descend upon the library as a result. There’s even a vampire, described on the back cover as “enigmatic,” so clearly he’s a love interest. (Maybe that should have been the first clue.)

Now, I’m a huge fan of fantasy, and I’m willing to put up with a lot for a rousing story: J.R.R. Tolkein’s mind-numbing descriptions of mountain scenery, Terry Brooks’s stilted prose. I even slogged my way through the Twilight series, so you know I have patience and stamina, with more than a touch of masochism.

But Twilight had something that A Discovery of Witches did not.

Good writing.

(Not really, but I thought I’d take a moment to give my sister a heart attack.)

No, both have bad, bad, bad writing, but when I read it, Twilight had gone viral, and I was spending a lot of time with middle-schoolers. I needed to read the book to understand why Edward was supposedly the perfect man. I hate that I felt that way, I resent the time I spent reading that WHOLE SERIES when I could have been reading something good, and I still don’t know why Edward was even in the running to be the perfect man. But I digress.

A Discovery of Witches may have been a New York Times bestseller, but it wasn’t culturally necessary enough for me to fight my way through the bad, bad, bad writing past page 2.  Now, keep in mind, I’m a Midwesterner! I am full of optimism! I always think to myself, maybe if I just stick around for a bit, things will get better! So the writing had to be pretty bad.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what page 1 looks like:

“Dr. Bishop, your manuscripts are up,” he whispered, voice tinged with a touch of mischief.

Voice tinged with a touch of mischief? What does that MEAN?

“Thanks,” I said, flashing him a grateful smile….

He grinned back….The thin gold rims of his glasses sparked in the dim light provided by the old bronze reading lamp that was attached to a shelf.

There’s a lot of grinning going on. And unless the lamp is about to turn into a demon, I don’t care about the sparking of the glasses or the attachment to the shelf. (Actually, I was kind of tickled by the thought of the lamp turning into a demon, and then finding that it was attached to a shelf. But sadly, that didn’t seem to be in the cards.)

My smile widened.

More smiling? Did I mention that I’m a Midwesterner? We smile a lot, but we don’t dwell on it THIS much.

Sean looked at me shyly and tugged on the call slip, but it remained where it was, lodged between the cover and the first pages. “This one doesn’t want to let go,” he commented.

Maybe if he stopped looking at her shyly and looked down at the call slip, it would come out. And did we need to be told explicitly that he commented? Isn’t that what the quotation marks were for?

Muffled voices chattered in my ear, intruding on the familiar hush of the room.

“Did you hear that?” I looked around, puzzled by the strange sound.

“What?” Sean replied, looking up from the manuscript.

Wait! Wasn’t Sean looking at her shyly? When did he start looking down at the manuscript? And why are muffled voices a strange sound in a library? Did we even NEED the words, “puzzled by the strange sound”?

Okay, maybe you’re thinking that I’m being a little too harsh. Maybe I was in a bad mood that day, maybe I needed a nice soothing romance or a Jack Reacher novel to take the edge off. I had the same thought. After all, this is a New York Times bestseller! If that many people bought the book, I must be missing something—Twilight notwithstanding! Why, People magazine had called it “an irresistible tale”!

So I set it down and picked up a nice soothing romance, and the book sat on my bedside table for months, bookmarked on page 2.

But when I finally picked it up again, taking care to be in a forgiving mood, nothing had changed. There was still all of that smiling, and looking up without looking down, and sentences spoken with concerned frowns and prim disapproval and smothered sighs.

I opened the book randomly to other pages. Maybe things got better? After all, authors sometimes over-write the first few paragraphs, trying to make a good impression.

Things didn’t get better.

I lifted to my toes. He bent his head. Before our lips touched, a tray clattered on the table.

“That’s it; I’m outta here,” I remarked gruffly with a disappointed frown while stiffly flashing a look over my shoulder to my extreme right. The pale globe of the lamp on my bedside table taunted me with its jaunty brightness, contrasting with the dank darkness of my disenchantment.

And so A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the All Souls Trilogy, was moved to my Failure to Launch pile of shame, with a scrap-paper bookmark in permanent residence on page 2.

What’s in YOUR FtL pile?