Everything seems wrong in Ginny Polk’s life, from her bitter relationship with her mother to her inappropriate romance with Roscoe Simms, warden of Greenmount State Penitentiary in 1950s Louisiana. Ginny even bears scars from her childhood, when she witnessed the electrocution of the man convicted of killing her father. It’s to Ginny’s credit that she attempts to beautify her ugly environment, by cooking special last meals for the condemned prisoners.
Even those meals sound like cruel and...
Thomas Schlesser must have known from the start that he needed a special framework for this novel. Stripped of its premise, Mona’s Eyes is an art history lesson, and a very good one.
Mona, a ten-year-old French girl, suffers a temporary vision loss that may recur at any time. Her grandfather, Henry Vuillemin, resolves to take her on weekly museum expeditions so that if she does go blind, she will have lasting memories of great artworks.
If you know as little about art as I do, you’ll find the...
Are some people too smart for their own good? Or are they just good at rationalizing? Author Don DeLillo introduces a community of philosophical buffoons in his hilarious satire, White Noise.
Jack Gladney is chairman of the Department of Hitler Studies at his college. His colleagues are pseudointellectuals with crackpot theories. His friend Murray says that people can be divided into two categories: killers and “diers”. Killers, he explains, stow up credit like bank interest because their...
Unless you’re well-versed in the investment business, The Lies We Trade may read like a foreign language. Kristine Delano brings twenty years of Wall Street experience to bear with her debut novel.
Meredith Hansel, an investment portfolio manager for Garman Straub, is on the cusp of a career triumph when an apparent betrayal by one of her team members casts doubts upon Meredith’s integrity. Whiffs of a scandal emerge so quickly that she doesn’t know whether she’s about to be promoted or...
I struggle with books like Buckeye. Their authors write so well, their characters are so engaging, and their subject matter is so interesting. The one thing their stories lack is decency.
Take Cal Jenkins, son of a bitter World War I veteran. After Pearl Harbor Cal is eager to serve in World War II but is rejected because of a birth defect. Or Becky Hanover, who has a gift for communicating with dead souls. Then there’s Margaret, who grows up wondering why her mother abandoned her to an...
Gary D. Schmidt has won my heart with another of his delightful novels about middle-school kids. The latest is a youngster with the improbable name of Hercules Beal. His brother’s name is Achilles.
The Beal brothers live in Truro, a small New England town where they try to carry on following the deaths of their parents. Achilles runs the family plant farm and nursery with the help of his girlfriend, whom Hercules is convinced is a vampire.
One of Hercules's teachers is an ex-Marine who runs his...
Although The Memory Police appeared more than thirty years ago, it speaks to the present moment, when sinister forces work to destroy human freedom and initiative.
A nameless narrator describes how squads of police officials sweep through her island community to remove random objects such birds, ferryboats, and rose gardens. Once the items are gone, most people cease to remember them. Some brave souls provide safehouses for the few people whose memories remain intact. But the Memory Police are...
East of Eden is one of those famous books I've always meant to read but have put off until now. In case you’ve been doing the same thing, here are my impressions.
This is supposed to be a retelling of the Biblical Cain and Abel story, but you might not guess that from the text. It involves two Civil War-era families, the Hamiltons of Salinas, California, and the Trasks of Connecticut. Adam Trask enlists in the Union Army while his half-brother Charles stays home to farm their father’s land....
Published in 1965, The Tin Can Tree was Anne Tyler’s second novel. Though she was only 24, her unique insight into human beings shines brightly in this story of tattered relationships.
Three families, the Pikes, the Greens, and the Potters, share a house in North Carolina’s tobacco country. All are grieving over the accidental death of Janie Rose Pike, an exuberant, though bothersome, child. While her mother retreats into a catatonic state, the others try to help while dealing with their own...
It’s nice to see a new novel from Douglas S. Reed. I read Child of Gilead several years ago and enjoyed it immensely. His latest is Elysian’s Son, a thoughtful and engrossing tale about a dictatorial society.
A young boy named David is a citizen of the Divine Five alliance. Children his age receive indoctrination from AI machines. Though orphaned and almost blind, David has qualities that bring him to the attention of authorities. He is assigned to Lady Myla, a highly-placed official’s wife...
Until I read Twist, I didn’t know that the Cloud is deep in the ocean, not high in the sky. If it accomplishes nothing else, Colum McCann’s novel makes us realize how fragile the internet is and how easily it can collapse.
Anthony Fennell, a burned-out novelist and alcoholic, is assigned to write an article about a fiberoptic cable outage somewhere in the South African region. The repair mission commander, John Conway, is an enigmatic character obsessed with both his job and an actress...
Families are falling apart in this well-written tale featuring Hilde, a 14-year-old farm girl. Her mother Jasmine drags the kids to California, leaving their father behind in Wisconsin. Meanwhile two desperate Hispanic men, Joaquin and Fernando, try to sneak across America’s southern border. What unites these storylines is Gabriel, a migrant who works part-time on Jasmine’s goat farm while waiting for Joaquin to join him.
Despite Hilde’s love of animals and her friendship with a benevolent...
Does the world have to be a place of misery and conflict? What’s the point of life if things never get any better? Dr. David Jeremiah addresses these issues in his joyful exploration of heaven.
Jeremiah argues that we are never satisfied with our lives because we have a natural longing for what we lost when we were expelled from the Garden of Eden. His book contains numerous anecdotes about people who have experienced that longing; others who have struggled against it; and still others who...
Hildy Nybo is a passionate environmentalist, admired for her expertise and leadership. But the real Hildy is a deeply disturbed recluse who buries herself in work to maintain her sanity, which is fraying at the edges.
Traumatic events rise to haunt her when she’s forced to return to the Washington State fishing resort of her childhood. Hildy takes residence in one of the resort cabins while overseeing a government reclamation project to preserve aquatic life in the Elwha River. There she meets...
Today’s newsletter concludes my review of Shirley Jackson’s less-known novels.
Shirley Jackson employed numerous iconic elements to create this darkly hilarious novel. Bits of Hansel and Gretel, Robinson Crusoe, Chicken Little, Lizzie Borden, the Book of Revelation, Jane Austen novels, and Greek tragedy join forces to portray a snobbish family preparing for the end of the world.
The Hallorans have just returned to their cloistered mansion after burying Lionel Halloran. His widow Marjorie claims...
Today’s newsletter continues my review of Shirley Jackson’s less-known novels.
The non-fiction story of Sybil came to mind while I was reading this one. That book and the movie it inspired created a sensation during the mid-1970s and established Sally Field as a great actress. But The Bird's Nest predates Sybil by two decades. It's a fascinating tale and one of the first one to deal with multiple personalities.
Elizabeth Richmond is a colorless, repressed young woman with a meaningless clerical...
Today’s newsletter continues my review of Shirley Jackson’s less-known novels.
Sometimes I wish there was a list of books titled “Read These Before You Die.” They would be books I’d never heard of before, but which spoke directly to my heart. Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, published in 1951, is one of them.
Though lacking the high profile of The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the desperate emotional journey of Natalie Waite is equally engrossing. She...
Shirley Jackson is famous for her singular use of fiction to comment on the human condition. Her most famous works are The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Over the next four weeks I will review her less prominent novels. Today I begin with the 1948 book that launched her career.
Pepper Street is an ordinary place with ordinary people—ordinary in the sense that its residents are far from perfect. A superficial harmony lies over the neighborhood. Author...
I don’t know what I’d do without book ads to help me find new treasures. I had never heard of John Ehle until I saw a BookBub blurb about The Land Breakers, which was published in 1964. If you’re not familiar with Ehle, you should check him out. His deep respect for nature and rustic life shines on every page of this captivating novel.
In 1779 Mooney Wright and his new bride arrive in the North Carolina mountains. Determined to build a cabin and live off the land, they work hard to prepare for...
It’s not every day that a typewriter is the hero of a novel. But for a writer with a good imagination, anything is possible. Author Allie Millington puts hers to work with great skill in Olivetti.
The typewriter belongs to Beatrice Brindle, who has used it to record her feelings after a bout with cancer. But her husband Felix and their four children retain scars from the trauma. One of the boys, Ernest, has withdrawn into himself to the point that he rarely speaks. Felix hides in his career...