BookBrowse | Book Reviews and Recommendations

Reviews by Cathryn Conroy

Power Reviewer

Local Souls
by Allan Gurganus

Three Novellas, One Small Town: The Plot Summaries Sound Good, but It's Slow Read (5/20/2025)

Local Souls
By Allan Gurganus

Imagine a small Southern town where everyone knows each other and on the surface, it's a beatific, innocent place. A visitor might look around this town, named Falls, North Carolina, and see happily married couples, successful children, thriving …more businesses, and churches of every denomination. Okay, now scratch the surface. What do you see? Everything isn't as perfect as it seems. That is the subject of these three loosely connected novellas by Allan Gurganus.

Each story focuses on characters who have a deep yearning to form a connection with others.

• "Fear Not": When Susan was 14 years old her father accidentally died in a horrific, very public way at the hands of his lifelong best friend, Dennis, who is also Susan's godfather. Dennis, the married father of three, is wracked with guilt—just consumed with it. Susan is grieving. Her mother has checked out mentally having witnessed her husband's death and takes to her bed. Dennis spends a lot of time alone with Susan, and before you know it, he gets Susan pregnant—and she's only 14. What happens to her in the ensuing years is the soul of this heart wrenching story.

• "Saints Have Mothers": Caitlin Mulray is a bit much. She is a high school junior who is perfect. And I mean perfect: Kind to everyone (and she's a teenage girl!), brilliant, musical, talented in every possible way, and gorgeous. She is also compassionate, working tirelessly with and for those who have less. The summer before her senior year, she goes to Africa to teach. While she is there, something horrific happens that sends her mother reeling, as well as her father and stepmother in California, her twin 11-year-old brothers, and basically the entire town of Falls, North Carolina. She is, after all, their golden girl. This melodramatic novella is written in the first person by Caitlin's less-than-perfect mother, Jean, who is having an identity crisis all her own. It's a difficult story to enjoy because Caitlin and Jean are tough characters to like.

• "Decoy": Bill Mabry has a bad heart—so bad that it was diagnosed as a ticking time bomb when he was just a child. But the small town of Falls, North Carolina has one of its own as the favorite physician, and Doc has sworn to care for Bill with great care and keep him alive. Told in the first person from Bill's point of view, this is a love letter to Doc and life in a small town. All is well, almost idyllic, until tragedy strikes Falls when the normally placid river overflows its banks after a hurricane, causing death and destruction.

This is a slow read. Yes, the stories frequently drag, getting bogged down in mindless details. But it's more than that. There is something about the writing that makes it difficult to read at times. Hence, three stars. (less)

James: A Novel
by Percival Everett

A Triumphant Masterpiece: Sophisticated Storytelling That is Provocative and Profound (5/16/2025)

Oh, wow! This book gave me goosebumps. Quite simply, it's a masterpiece.

Brilliantly and imaginatively written by Percival Everett, this is the other side of Mark Twain's 1885 novel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." It is a treatise on the inherent evils of slavery, the …more significance of abiding friendship and romantic love, and the deeply human need to be respected and free. It rightly won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2024 National Book Award.

In Twain's novel, Huck frequently goes off on adventures, leaving Jim alone, mostly to tend the raft and canoe, their mode of transportation as they both escape their former lives as they float down the Mississippi River. What was Jim doing all that time when he was left alone? Everett has reimagined "Huck Finn" to tell Jim's side of the story, and it's a story that is so compelling, so enthralling, so mesmerizing that you likely will stay up long past your bedtime to read just one more chapter.

Mark Twain portrays Jim as a befuddled, ignorant Black man, liberally using a much harsher and derogatory epithet than "Black man." In Percival Everett's book, Jim is an educated, erudite man who can read and write. He expounds complex philosophical ideas. He speaks English properly, as do all the slaves, except in the presence of White people when he speaks in a put-on Southern dialect common to slaves. They call it slave language. But Jim is trapped as a slave, until he escapes Miss Watson. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has been abused by his no-good father one time too many, and he, too, escapes, leaving an ingenious trail so the townspeople will think he was murdered. The two serendipitously find each other on a deserted island in the Mississippi. Everett sticks fairly close—but not entirely—to Twain's story of Huck and Jim's adventures. In this book we see a whole new side of Jim, as he cares for and protects Huck, who is, after all, just a child.

About two-thirds of the way through "James," which is the beginning of Part II, Everett bids farewell to Twain's "Huck Finn" and strikes out on his own in a page-turning story that is riveting and remarkable and filled with surprises—especially one stunner. (No spoilers here!) Everett wisely abandons Twain's version when it got to be silly and farfetched as Huck and Tom Sawyer try to rescue Jim when he was captured as a runaway on the Phelps family's plantation. This second part of "James" is the strongest and most electrifying part of the book.

This is a fast-paced novel that is more plot than philosophy, but taken as a whole it is one of the most powerful and profound novels I have ever read. Most notably, Everett, unlike Twain, treats slavery as the violent, bloody, abusive, and inhumane institution it was.

And the ending? I will only say it was amazing. It's the best ending, albeit unexpected, I could ever have imagined.

"James" is truly an extraordinary novel with sophisticated storytelling that is provocative, haunting, and triumphant. Read it.

Just a thought: Consider reading (or rereading) "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" before reading "James." I did this, and had I not, I wouldn't have appreciated or even understood not only certain plot turns, but also many subtle references. That said, because "James" does veer from Twain's novel, it's not absolutely necessary to read "Huck" first. (less)

The Stolen Queen: A Novel
by Fiona Davis

Richly Imagined and Captivating with Page-Turning Suspense: I Was Spellbound! (5/12/2025)

Clear the decks! Order takeout for dinner. Turn off your phone. This is a riveting, unputdownable history-mystery by Fiona Davis that had me mesmerized from the first chapter. Yes, it's ChickLit, but it's intelligent ChickLit.

This is the story of two very different women, a …more priceless ancient Egyptian artifact, and the challenges smart women have endured in a man's world.

• Charlotte Cross is 60 years old and is the associate curator of the celebrated Department of Egyptian Art at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her specialty is Hathorkare, a rare female pharaoh whom most other Egyptologists deem unimportant. It's 1978, and Charlotte has a big secret she has been guarding for decades. In 1936 as an undergraduate college student, she worked on an archaeological dig in Egypt, making an extraordinary discovery—one that may have cursed her for life. Charlotte also fell in love, got pregnant, and then got married (big taboo then) until tragedy struck. What happened on that fateful night has haunted her ever since, but repressing the memories has left her a somewhat broken woman.

• Annie Jenkins, who is 19, has spent her life since her father died when she was five years old caring for her high-strung and unstable mother. Instead of college, she took on small jobs—waitressing and cleaning houses—to pay the bills for them because her mother refuses to work. Quite surprisingly, Annie receives an opportunity to work as the personal assistant to the revered and feared Diana Vreeland, the legendary former fashion editor of Vogue magazine. Now 75, she is chairing the annual Met Gala, which is a week away. Annie is thrilled because the Met is her favorite place to visit, and her favorite display is the fragment of a statue known as the Cerulean Queen in the Egyptian Art collection.

On the night of the Met Gala, everything goes wrong—terribly, terribly wrong, and the ramifications of what happens send Charlotte and Annie to Egypt to solve the mystery and the crime, a place Charlotte has deeply feared since she left in psychological tatters 42 years ago.

Very loosely based on historical fact and prodigiously researched, this richly imagined and captivating book is filled with unlikely twists and turns. With its superb pacing and page-turning suspense, I was spellbound! (less)

Swift River
by Essie Chambers

An Intriguing and Well-Written Novel: It's a Slow Start, but Stick With It (5/8/2025)

This is a good book…a very good book. But…and there is a big "but" here: It took about 70 pages before it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. For many readers, this is way too long and too much effort to grasp that literary foothold. Stick with it! It's worth it.

Written by …more Essie Chambers, this is the story of Diamond Newberry, an obese Black 16-year-old girl living in abject poverty in the horribly racist fictional town of Swift River, Massachusetts. Her mother is White. Her father is Black. And after her father mysteriously disappears in the summer of 1980—although his shoes, wallet, and house keys are found, his body is not—Diamond is the only Black person in Swift River.

The poor mill town has a reprehensible history. One night in the early 1900s, forever known as "The Leaving," all the Black citizens fled before they could be violently expelled by the Whites, which was the original plan. Because they did so on their own terms—all at one time in one night—the White citizens were enraged. Only one Black person remained, a nurse named Clara. The town doctor desperately needed her as his nurse and housekeeper, but she was only allowed to stay in Swift River if she was off the streets by sundown or risk death. And just like that, Swift River became a "sundown town" like 10,000 others in the United States, mostly in the North and Midwest.

But 1987 marks seven years since Robert Newberry seemingly walked off the face of the Earth, and his wife, Annabelle, is determined to have him legally declared dead so she can collect the life insurance money. One day that summer, Diamond receives a letter from her father's cousin Lena in Woodville, Georgia, who wants to teach the child about her family and ancestors, including their Aunt Clara. The two secretly correspond, and Diamond learns her family's history of prejudice and abandonment, as well as love and caring. Meanwhile, Diamond is plotting her own leaving in a town where she endures overt racism and microaggressions from so many—from her classmates to the cops.

Some of the novel—and this is by far the best, most compelling part—is epistolary, told through letters from Lena and Clara. This is only a minor part of the overall book, but it is so good that I was wishing this was the story that was being told.

This is an intriguing and well-written novel that gets better and better with each page turn, a big improvement from the uneven and sometimes flat early chapters. It's a touching book about beginning again, focusing on the perils and regrets, as well as the expectations and dreams, of leaving and starting over and all that entails. (less)

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
by Edward Kelsey Moore

Literary Comfort Food for the Soul: A Little Treasure and an Absolute Delight (5/2/2025)

I laughed. I mean I really, really laughed out loud. Several times. And I cried. Oh, I needed a tissue or two. And not just once. This is just one of those books that hits every emotion.

And I loved it!

Written by Edward Kelsey Moore, this is the story of three longtime …more friends: Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. They are now in their mid-fifties, but they met in high school in the 1960s and became inseparable. They were dubbed "The Supremes." One of their favorite places to go—then and now—is Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner where lots of folks who live in the quiet little town of Plainview, Indiana also go. Good food, good gossip. But it's more than that. It's community, security, and solace.

And quite often, our three Supremes are the subject of that good gossip at Earl's, like it or not.
• Clarice, who is a superbly talented pianist, is married to Richmond, and Richmond has a very active love life—just not always with his wife. She has just about had it with him and his adulterous shenanigans. People are talking, and she is hurting.

• Barbara Jean, who was born to a single mother who had no idea who her daughter's father was, grew up in poverty but married Lester, a wealthy entrepreneur who loves and adores his beautiful wife. But years ago, their only son, Adam, tragically died when he was eight years old. After Lester dies, too, Barbara Jean suffers both losses terribly, drinking far too much while she pines for a long lost love who has suddenly returned to town.

• Odette is very happily married to James, but she has a few problems of her own. In addition to frequently seeing and talking to the ghost of her dead mother, Odette receives a scary health diagnosis that she tries to keep secret—until she can't.

Each of the three Supremes experiences great joys and great sorrows—just like in real life—and they are there for each other through it all, a testament to a friendship that has endured through the decades.

This is an engaging and captivating novel with colorful characters and often hilarious plot points. It is a little treasure and an absolute delight. Just like the dishes served at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner, this is a literary comfort food for the soul.

Just a note: When I bought this book, I thought it was ChickLit. It's not. Men: If you want to understand women better, read this book. (less)

The Women: A Novel
by Kristin Hannah

Provocative and Haunting: A Testament to the Brave Women Serving in the Army Nurse Corps in Vietnam (4/27/2025)

This is going to sound odd, but I didn't want to like this book. Why? I have only read two other Kristin Hannah books, and both of them played deeply with my emotions in a way I felt wasn't a fair way for an author to treat a reader. And, of course, this one did the same …more thing. But it is a good book! Very good. So many people—from my best friend to Bill Gates—highly recommended it, which is why I gave in and read it.

This is the fictional story of one young woman who served as an Army nurse from 1967 to 1969 in Vietnam, and her tale—of moving from insecurity and naivety to confidence and heroism—that is meant to be the story for every brave and patriotic woman who served in that conflict and then came home to a nation that was not only ungrateful, but also openly hostile.

Frances Grace McGrath, or as Frankie as she is better known, grew up in a wealthy and privileged home on Coronado Island, California. The beach was her front yard and earliest sandbox. Frankie and her beloved brother, Finley, were inseparable as children. After graduating from the Naval Academy, Finley is sent to Vietnam, earning the respect and admiration of his father. When Frankie is challenged by one of Finley's classmates to go, too, she does. She has just graduated from nursing school and knows there is a desperate need for combat nurses. While her parents are proud of Finley, they are horrified with Frankie. But she goes anyway, joining the Army Nurse Corps.

The novel, which is a rat-a-tat-tat of action and plot twists and turns, is the story of Frankie's experiences in Vietnam, the other nurses and doctors she befriends, her impassioned love affair, and her transformation from the "good girl debutante" to one who is independent, confident, and opinionated. There is tragedy. There are gruesome wounds. There is death. (So much death). Throughout it all, there is the constant, unrelenting brutality and violence of war.

After two tours of duty, Frankie comes home to parents who reject her and a country that betrays her. But just as she relied on her best buddies in Vietnam, Ethel and Barb, so she relies on them when she comes back to the United States, a changed woman with barely controlled rage, irrational mood swings, and inexplicable anger. "She'd gone to war a patriot and come home a pariah. 'How do I get back to who I was?'" And, of course, the answer is, no one who went to Vietnam can ever get back to who she (or he) was.

Bonus: The detailed descriptions of 1960s and 1970s fashion and music add a lot to the ambiance of the story.

And while readers will take an emotional beating reading this book (keep a box of tissues handy), it is a page-turner that is hard to put down. Wrenching as it may be, this provocative and haunting book is a testament to the brave women who put their own lives at risk to help save the men fighting in Vietnam. (less)

Wild and Distant Seas: A Novel
by Tara Karr Roberts

An Ingeniously Plotted Novel Filled with Intrigue, Secrets, Lies—and a Wonderful Touch of Magic (4/22/2025)

The subtitle of this enchanting and riveting debut novel by Tara Karr Roberts could be the famous Winnie the Pooh quote: "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you'll ever know." This is the story of four …more generations of brave, strong, smart, and beloved women very loosely interwoven into the story of "Moby Dick" and told with a light touch of magical realism.

And it's a delight!

The novel opens in 1849 on Nantucket Island. Evangeline Hussey has a psychic gift that she keeps a secret: She can see people's recent memories. And one day when her fisherman husband, Hosea, doesn't come home, she knows exactly what happened to him because she can see it in her mind. He fell off his boat and drowned. New to the island, Evangeline's marriage to Hosea was not viewed with approval by his large family and many friends, so she realizes she must do something drastic in order to keep hold of the Try Pots Inn they ran together, her only form of livelihood. Her bizarre plan works…for several years. And one day a man named Ishmael arrives on the doorstep of the inn, asking for a room and bowl of chowder. Before long, Ishmael is sharing Evangeline's bed. On Christmas morning, he and his buddy Queequeg ship out on the Pequod with the eccentric Captain Ahab, but he has left Evangeline a parting gift: She is pregnant.

Her little girl, Rachel, grows up saucy and sassy with a psychic gift of her own. She can place spells (which she calls "curses") on people forcing them either to remember something or to forget it. Rachel is nine years old when she learns about the mysterious Ishmael and is determined to find out who is. One day, she reads a column about whaling adventures in a Boston newspaper and realizes the author is her father, Ishmael. Rachel travels to Boston in search of him, but it's not easy tracking down an itinerant sailor. The story continues with Rachel's daughter, Mara, who has her own psychic gift: She not only vividly retains her own memories, even from very early childhood, but can sometimes see the darkest, most secret memories of other people. Mara's daughter, Antonia, has an uncanny ability to envision other people's paths and where they have been, seeing every stop along the way.

One thing all of the women have in common is the seemingly fruitless search for Ishmael because somehow, someway they believe it will lead them to family. This quest is what drives each of them, but secrets and lies—oh, so many lies—abound. Eventually, it is Mara and Antonia who realize the most important quest of all, and once those secrets are revealed and the truths divulged…well, let's just say that I (really, truly) got goosebumps.

This ingeniously plotted novel jumps from Nantucket Island to Boston to Brazil to Italy to Idaho and back to Nantucket Island, and each stop in this unusual historical travelogue is filled with intrigue, hope, fear, and touch of magic as the age-old mystery of Ishmael continues to haunt this family through the generations.

This is a sweeping epic that is creative storytelling at its best. (less)

Held: A Novel
by Anne Michaels

Haunting and Deeply Philosophical: A Lyrical, Exquisitely Written Novel About Life and Death, Love and Memories (4/14/2025)

This is a haunting, deeply philosophical, and almost otherworldly novel, written in elegiac prose that feels poetic. It's short and succinct, and every word counts. It can also be confusing at times, but stick with it.

Masterfully written by Anne Michaels, this is the story …more of a single family covering more than 120 years—a family shrouded in tragedy but encompassed in a deep and abiding love. It's also a romantic story, but brace your heart because it's also incredibly sorrowful.

The novel, which was shortlisted for the prestigious 2024 Booker Prize, opens in 1917 on a snow-packed field near the River Escaut in Cambrai, in France during World War I where John, a British soldier, lies half-buried in the snow. He can't feel his legs, and he is hallucinating, remembering bits and pieces of his life, especially his one true love, Helena. We are then propelled three years hence when John is home with Helena, trying to restart his life, including his photography business. And then John begins taking photos of ghosts, an event that has a devastating impact on him. Again, a big jump in time to Anna, John and Helena's daughter…and then a jump in time to Anna and Peter and their daughter Mara…and then another jump in time to Mara and Alan.

It can be confusing because it bounces back and forth in time, introducing new characters whose connection to the characters we already know can be a bit murky at first. It can almost feel like a mirage until suddenly it clicks into place and meaning and you'll see clearly. Each chapter is labeled for location and year. Pay attention to that.

This is a story about life. And death and dying. And love and romance. And memories. Throughout the book are lyrical passages and plotlines about the spirituality of death and dying and the soul living on in a new and different state.

An example of just such a passage: "Everywhere the dead are leaving a sign. We feel the shadow but cannot see what casts the shadow. The door opens in the hillside, in the field, at the sea's edge, between the trees at dusk, in the small city garden, in a café, in a tram in the rain, on a stairway."

Exquisitely written with many passages that just beg to be read over and over, this is a novel that will likely offer hope and solace to those who are grieving. (less)

Julia: A Novel
by Sandra Newman

A Haunting, Incendiary Tale That Is Truly Chilling. Could It Happen Now? (4/13/2025)

Chilling. Very, very chilling. And considering the times we are living in (I write this in April 2025), this book is terrifying. The dystopian idea of Big Brother watching your every move, governing your every action, paying heed to your every word has never before seemed …more so possible.

Written by Sandra Newman, this is a creative feminist retelling of George Orwell's classic novel "1984," told from the perspective of Julia Worthing, Winston Smith's illicit lover.

Julia is 26, smart, and an ideal citizen—doing everything she is supposed to do with a smile and only a little (private) cynicism. She is living an uncomplicated life in Air Strip One (formerly England), residing in a women's hostel, sleeping in a large dormitory room with dozens of others, and working as a mechanic in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth. The Fiction Department is where books are "written" by machines that spout the party doctrine. Julia fixes the machines when they break, and she is good at her job. Because she is bored, she begins an illicit affair with Winston Smith—just for the clandestine excitement of trying to outwit the ever present telescreens of Big Brother. One day the manipulative and charismatic O'Brien, a high-level member of the Inner Party summons Julia to his luxury apartment with an offer she can't refuse. And while she really couldn't refuse it, the work she is then assigned is nefarious, ugly, and duplicitous, but she does it willingly. And that is when everything changes…and eventually falls apart.

What makes this rewrite different than the original is the female focal point. Not only do we see things through Julia's perspective, but also we learn much about how other women live in this restrictive government, both caring for and betraying each other. Still, it's not as strong as Orwell's classic.

This is a haunting, incendiary tale with a provocative and searing storyline that catapults from emotionally devastating to emotionally resonant. It's appalling and horrifying because it doesn't seem so farfetched as "1984" once did. And this sense that pieces and parts of it could really happen right now and right here is more terrifying than any horror novel.

Note No. 1: There are somewhat explicit sex scenes and very explicit scenes of violence and torture.

Note No. 2: Do read (or re-read) "1984" or at the very least look for a plot summary online before you begin this book so you can better appreciate the different perspective. (less)

Eventide
by Kent Haruf

A Literary Masterpiece: This Book Will Own Your Heart. It Certainly Owned Mine (4/8/2025)

It's impossible not to love this book. And I mean love it like a favorite blanket…this is one of those books that I read with a smile and a frown, a laugh and a tear. This book will own your heart. It certainly owned mine.

Brilliantly written by Kent Hauf, this is the second …more in the three-part Plainsong series that begins with "Plainsong." And, yes, you need to read them in order because there are spoilers in this second book that you don't want to know if you haven't already read the first one.

This novel is the story of three groups of people living in the fictional rural setting of Holt County, Colorado. While they are very different, they have one thing in common: They are all emotionally damaged, but through their interactions with each other they achieve a level of healing:
• Raymond and Harold McPheron are elderly brothers who live 17 miles out of town on a cattle ranch. Orphaned at a young age, the two have always lived together and neither ever married. Two years ago, they "adopted" the then 17-year-old pregnant Victoria Roubideaux. The three became a family, and Victoria's little girl Katie is like a granddaughter to Raymond and Harold. And while they are proud and supportive of Victoria going away to college in Fort Collins, they desperately miss her.

• The Wallace family: Married couple Luther and Betty and their children Joy Rae, 11, and Richie, 6, are poor. Very, very poor. The parents are disabled and don't work so they live on welfare and food stamps. Rose Tyler, a devoted social worker, follows them closely, monitoring much in their lives. But Betty's Uncle Hoyt, a violent deadbeat, comes to live with them in their small, dilapidated, and (very) messy trailer, and nothing good comes of this.

• Mary Wells has two little girls, Dena and Emma. Mary's husband took off for Alaska, and as she gives up hope of ever seeing him again, she slides into a deep depression. Meanwhile, an 11-year-old boy down the street named DJ Kephart, who lives with and takes care of his grumpy, old grandfather, develops a deep friendship with Dena that may be the only thing that gives either of them a measure of happiness.

The writing, which is spare and sparse, reflects the equally spare and sparse landscape of Holt. But there is magic here. This spare and sparse writing seemingly transports the reader vicariously to become part of the spare and sparse setting. The plot is minimal. This is a character study about the deep truths of being human—the joys, the sorrows, the everydayness—but at some point just when you think nothing has happened, you will realize all that has happened.

I think this is a literary masterpiece. (less)

The Absolutist: A Novel
by John Boyne

A Haunting and Gripping Saga About the Conflicted Feelings of Wartime (4/1/2025)

This brilliantly written book by John Boyne is layered with tragic secrets that are slowly revealed. It's a palimpsest in novel form—that is, a manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. As the novel …more

The Illusion of Separateness: A Novel
by Simon Van Booy

An Ingenious, Riveting, and Truly Profound Novel (3/30/2025)

Oh, this book! It is an ingenious, riveting, and truly profound novel that is a brilliant statement on the interconnectedness of human beings even generations apart. We are not separate. We only have an illusion of separateness.

Do note: This is a short novel at 225 pages or …more so, but carve out your reading time carefully. Once you start it, you won't be able to stop. It's THAT good.

This novel is a series of stories that take place from 1939 to 2010, bouncing back and forth in time and between characters—from the battlefields of France to Manchester, England in the 1980s to the Hamptons in 2005 and Hollywood in 2010. It may seem like literary whiplash, but it's literary brilliance. Author Simon Van Booy is always in tight control of the story, which I quickly realized could only be told this way.

The genius of the novel is that the characters are interconnected to one or more other characters, often without realizing it until the end when Van Booy pulls off the seemingly impossible by ending a novel in 1944 that began in 2010. (Yes, you read that right.)

We meet:
• John, an American World War II pilot of a B-24 bomber who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France and had to try to escape with a broken foot if he had any chance of survival.

• Amelia, John's 26-year-old granddaughter, who is blind and bravely trying to create a full life for herself, including finding romantic love.

• Mr. Hugo, a World War II soldier who was horribly maimed when half his face was shot off by a Nazi in Paris and along with it his memory. His only possession is a novel by Victor Hugo, so the medical staff name him Victor Hugo.

• Danny, a scared little boy from Nigeria who lived next door to Mr. Hugo in Manchester, England in the 1980s and grows up to become a successful film director.

• Sébastien, a dreamy child in Saint-Pierre, France in 1968, who finds the wreckage of a World War II jet on his family's farm, including photos the pilot stashed under the seat.

• Martin, a devoted orderly at the Starlight Retirement Home in Los Angeles, who has a startling secret in his past that his parents kept from him for years.

This multilayered story about war, love, resilience, imagination, and service is narratively compelling with bold and vibrant characters, but the secret sauce is the writing. It is lyrical. Tender. Magical. Magnificent. Read it.

Just a thought: This is an ideal book for someone who only reads occasionally. It's short, unputdownable, and suitable for men and women. (less)

Arcadia: A Novel
by Lauren Groff

Extraordinary Writing! Richly Imagined Novel Takes You to a '60s Utopian Commune and Beyond (3/27/2025)

This is a richly imagined novel that transports readers to a utopian commune in New York State in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s…until eventually, it becomes a disintegrating, dying, and problem-filled commune. What makes this so special is that the story is told through the …more perspective of a small child—basically from his birth until far into his adulthood long after he joined "the Outside" world.

Masterfully written by Lauren Groff, this is a vibrant and captivating story of life in Arcadia, a 600-acre forested plot of land on which sits a (literal) mansion. When the scraggly group of several dozen acquired the property for $1, they were astounded that the house existed. That said, the house was broken—rodent-infested, rotted wood, shattered windows, collapsed roof. But with years of work and a lot of scavenging for pieces and parts, the group managed to build it back up. Living in Aradia was never easy. The residents worked long hours to survive and basically lived in poverty.

The story centers on a little boy named Ridley Sorrel Stone, who weighed only three pounds at birth and quickly acquired the nickname Bit—as in the Littlest Bit of a Hippie. Bit, who is always small for his age, is brilliant, teaching himself how to read and write. He is extremely attached to his parents, Abe and Hannah, who adore him. Hannah suffers from clinical depression, especially in the dark winter months.

Arcadia grows and within 10 to 15 years, the population explodes to more than 1,000 and now includes the "Trippies" (drug-addicts), the Runaways, and the Hen House (pregnant women) who gravitate to the commune. The Newbies are not turned away as long as they adhere to the rules. But eventually this experimental society falls apart with infighting and theft, desertion and poverty.

And this is where Bit's story becomes even more riveting when at age 14 he is thrust into "the Outside" and must make a life in a world he has never known. It is as an adult that he suffers his greatest heartbreaks and greatest joys.

This is not just another failed commune, a failed experiment in living. It is the only life Bit has ever known, and we readers are plunged into his despair, his anger, his longing, his insecurity in a way that would not have happened had the novel not been told from his childlike point of view.

What makes this novel a five-star book is not the vibrant characterization or compelling plot. It's the writing. Lauren Groff has the gift. Some sentences are so lyrical, so extraordinary that I just had to stop, take a breath, and reread them.

Lauren Groff is and will always be one of my favorite writers. (less)

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts
by Louis Bayard

Ingeniously Plotted and Brilliantly Written: Reading This Is Like Being on Stage in an Oscar Wilde Play (3/19/2025)

Genius. Pure genius.

Written by Louis Bayard, this is a novel about one extraordinarily scandalous event in the life of renowned playwright Oscar Wilde and the effect the intense public notoriety and scorn had on his wife and two sons. Not only is the story riveting, but …more the style is so creative in that it is written—exactly as you would expect a novel to be—but within the shadow of a stage play.

Each of the novel's five "acts" is set (basically) in one place, making it easy to imagine it taking place on a stage. I could even see stage directions carefully disguised in the prose.

It is August 1892, and the Wilde family—Oscar, Constance, and 7-year-old Cyril—are vacationing in a rented house at Grove Farm in Norfolk, England. Their younger son, Vyvyan, is staying with friends in London as he recovers from whopping cough. Accompanying the family are their close friends Arthur and Florence Clifton, newlyweds who are on their honeymoon. One day, Oscar tells Constance that a new friend named Lord Alfred Douglas will be joining them. The aristocratic and flamboyant Lord Alfred, nicknamed Bosie, is years younger than Oscar, but the two seem incredibly close. Very, very close. For quite some time, Constance has wondered if Oscar truly loves her, and while it takes a while for her to figure it out, she finally does: Oscar is having a sexual relationship with Bosie. Her husband is gay! Constance angrily leaves Oscar, taking the boys with her. At this point, Oscar Wilde exits stage right and doesn't appear in the novel again—until the fantastical last chapter.

A pause for a bit of history: Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, highly disapproved of the relationship between his son and Wilde. He publicly confronted Wilde. That led Wilde to sue Queensberry for libel, but his plan backfired—big time. Because homosexual sex was illegal in those days, Wilde was arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for two years. His career was destroyed, and he died in 1900, two years after Constance died in 1898.

The book focuses first on Constance and her shocked and deeply hurtful reaction to the scandal and then later to their tormented grown sons, who continued to live in their father's shameful shadow.

And then, somehow, it gets even better in Act 5 when Bayard creates an alternative account of their lives that is wonderfully creative and possibly believable—if only Constance could have done in real life what she did in this final section of the book.

Ingeniously plotted with an exceptional eye for detail, this is a harrowing story and emotionally devastating tale that is brilliantly written.

Reading this book is a lot like ending up on stage in an Oscar Wilde play! (less)

The Red Book: A Novel
by Deborah Copaken Kogan

It May Be ChickLit, but This Is a Smart, Introspective and Good Read (3/15/2025)

What started out as an eye-rolling story about privileged, wealthy, entitled Harvard alumni going to their 20th reunion in 2009 morphed into a thoughtful, introspective, and smart novel about the ravages of time—of where we hoped to be in life by middle age versus where …more life's blows landed and what those blows did to us.

Four Harvard college roommates—Addison, Mia, Clover, and Jane—reunite in Cambridge for a weekend in June, along with their spouses, significant others, and children. They have kept in touch with each other and their classmates from the class of 1989 via "the red book," a publication that lists all the graduates and their accomplishments.

• Addison, who is a lesbian but couldn't imagine living life like that, is married to her prep school boyfriend, Gunner. She is an artist. He is a novelist, but he has only written one book that was published 10 years ago. They have three spoiled, bratty children. They live the high life all on his family's fortune. And guess what? His parents just invested all their money with Bernie Madoff. Poof! It's all gone. As if that's not enough to cause angst and stress, Addison's reunion weekend starts off horribly when she lands in jail for $100,000 in unpaid parking tickets she accumulated as a college student in Cambridge.

• Mia, a promising actress in her undergraduate days, is very happily married to Jonathan, a film director of romantic comedies. He is 18 years her senior, and they have four children, three boys and a newborn daughter named Zoe. Their children are polite, smart, kind, and compassionate. While Mia ponders all she personally and professionally gave up to be a stay-at-home mom, Jonathan is quietly worrying about their failing financial situation, reluctant to confide this to Mia.

• Clover, the mixed-race daughter of hippies who grew up on a remote commune, was laid off seven months ago from her high-paying job at Lehman Brothers when the 2008 housing industry crisis and recession hit full force. She is married to a man she loves, but he is incredibly self-centered. She desperately wants a baby—so much so that she'll do anything to get pregnant.

• Jane is a Vietnamese orphan, rescued as a child by an American physician and his wife. She has suffered so much loss in her life—first her entire family in Vietnam, then her adopted father, her husband, and her adopted mother. Jane is the mother of six-year-old Sophie, which is about the only thing holding her together. Jane makes some shocking discoveries during the reunion weekend—discoveries that rock her world and leave her staggering emotionally.

This is a time when long-held secrets come into the open, scores are settled, and relationships are forever changed. But it is also a time when all four roommates discover their authentic selves, and that is life-changing. The compelling plot points, the snappy dialogue, and the characters' wise and witty introspection make this a charming and insightful novel to read.

Bonus: Author Deborah Copaken Kogan, herself a Harvard graduate, has created her own version of Harvard's "red book" interspersed in the novel. Of course, the entries—each graduate writes a short essay—highlight all the alumni have accomplished, but what is missing from each entry is sometimes more telling. This may be the most entertaining and enlightening part of the book!

Granted, this is ChickLit and not award-winning literature, but it is a good read. (less)

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel
by Bernardine Evaristo

A Truly Extraordinary and Imaginative Novel, but It Takes a Bit of Literary Courage to Read It (3/11/2025)

It takes a bit of literary courage to read this 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel by Bernardine Evaristo because there are no capital letters to signal the start of a new sentence and no punctuation save a very rare period, question mark, or semicolon. But strategically- …more

The Bee Sting: A Novel
by Paul Murray

A Riveting and Compelling Novel About the Power of Secrets to Destroy Us (2/27/2025)

Secrets…oh, so many secrets! And when those secrets are revealed in a most horrifying way, life as they know it implodes.

Written by Paul Murray, this award-winning literary novel is the story of a smart but unhappy man named Dickie Barnes. Dickie is the elder of two sons, …more but he has always lived under the big shadow cast by his larger-than-life father, Maurice, and athletic, handsome, and popular younger brother, Frank. Cerebral Dickie is a bit of a misfit in his small and insulated Irish town where Maurice owns a successful car dealership and garage and Frank plays football for The Gaelic Athletic Association. It's always been known that Dickie will succeed Maurice in the business, whether he likes it or not.

Dickie is the first in the family to go to college, and while he is just as unpopular at Trinity College in Dublin as he was at home, he does well in school, until something horrific happens and sends him fleeing for home in sheer terror. Meanwhile, Frank is falling in love with Imelda, a gorgeous woman, albeit one with no education from a poverty-stricken, disreputable, and dangerous family. In addition, Frank has his own problems as he succumbs to drink and drugs and gets kicked off the team.

When Frank is killed in a horrific car crash, everything changes for the surviving members of the Barnes family and Imelda. It's not a spoiler to reveal that Dickie and Imelda get married and have two children, Cass and P.J. What happens 20 years in the future is when all Dickie's secrets from Trinity College and beyond, all Imelda's disillusionments, all Cass's worries for her future and bad-girl ways, and P.J.'s terror from two men who are trying to harm him come crashing down on the family, just as the Irish economy is collapsing in 2008.

The novel is written in five sections, four of which are told from the point of view of each of the four members of Dickie and Imelda's family, beginning with Cass. The fifth section is a mixture of all four telling their troubling stories as the novel climaxes with each character swirling into their individual tornadoes of big feelings and angst…until the ending, which is bone-chilling.

This is a novel of desperate secrets, disconnected loved ones who don't communicate, the brutality of inner demons, and shallow lives lived without true fulfillment. It is about love and distrust. It is about good and evil. Most of all, it is deeply tragic tale of dysfunctional family drama. But it is also a study in human nature: One person's reality can be wildly different from another one—even married couples and parents and children who all live together—when they erect walls of denial and secrecy between them.

The writing is remarkable. Most of the book is written as readers would expect, but not all of it. Imelda's tale is a told in a stream-of-consciousness with very little punctuation or capitalization, so it takes a bit of work to read, while the final section is mostly told in the second person, which is an especially tricky point of view for author and reader.

Checking in at about 650 pages, this novel is a commitment. And while it truly is high-brow literary fiction, it is also a compelling and riveting story about the power of secrets to destroy us. (less)

Mercy Street: A Novel
by Jennifer Haigh

An Unflinching, Sharp, and Triumphant Novel with Excellent Storytelling and Bold, Vivid Characters (2/16/2025)

This is an eye-opening book about the real world, but it's a world many of us have never inhabited. It's a scary world. It's almost an underworld. This is the world of an abortion clinic told from several points of view, but primarily from that of a dedicated clinic …more employee and two protestors, one of whom is on the premises and one of whom hatches online his peculiar form of terrorism against women.

The novel, which was published in February 2022 prior to the June 2022 demise of Rowe v. Wade, is set in snowy Boston, Massachusetts as the city is slammed with five nor'easters in five weeks. It opens on Ash Wednesday. Lent is the favored time for protesting in front of abortion clinics.

Written by Jennifer Haigh, this is the story of Claudia Birch Landau, a divorced 43-year-old who works as a counselor at a Boston clinic officially known as Women's Options but colloquially known by its address of Mercy Street. Claudia helps women, many of whom are teenagers or abused or poor or terrified (or all of the above), with their unplanned pregnancies. She views it as so much more than a job or even a career; it is her mission, her life's work. Claudia's mother, Deb, was 17 when she had her in 1971 and was shunned by her horrified parents. Deb and Claudia lived in an isolated town in Maine in a single-wide trailer, accompanied by Deb's assorted boyfriends and assorted foster children whom Deb took on for the extra money. It was Claudia's job—even as a little girl—to care for these fosters.

Claudia smokes marijuana to numb the anguish and fear caused by her job, making regular visits to her friendly dealer, Timmy, who is about her age. Timmy lives in squalor and smokes all day. He is always high and always on alert for getting caught. He dreads the day weed is made legal in Massachusetts, as he has no idea how he will earn a living. With an ex-wife and son living in Florida and no steady (legal) job, Timmy has a full-blown midlife crisis.

Anthony, whom Timmy calls Winky because of a facial tic, is 39 and lives with his mother. He was injured in an accident in the Big Dig and lives on his disability check. He spends his time going to early morning Mass at the local Roman Catholic Church, followed by coffee and doughnuts in the fellowship hall with elderly ladies, and then protesting outside the Mercy Street clinic. One day he shoots a video of Claudia who goes ballistic when she sees a sign that says: "Abortions Cause Breast Cancer." And then the 68-second video is posted online.

The video is posted by Victor Prine, a 65-year-old man living in "Nowhere" Pennsylvania, who is lonely, angry, and beaten down by life. While he desperately wishes he could have married and had children, he is a fierce, unapologetic misogynist. Using the screenname Excelsior11, he is determined that the white race populate itself and does all he can to fight abortions of white babies. He is filled with hate, angst, and anger against women. Now he is ready to risk everything for his beliefs.

This is a timely and perceptive novel about one of the country's most polarizing and divisive political issues, and it succeeds for two reasons: excellent storytelling and vivid and bold characters. The topic is harrowing and unsettling, but the story is unflinching, sharp, and triumphant. (less)

Pew
by Catherine Lacey

Chilling Fable About Identity: A Cross Between (2/12/2025)

An unhoused young teenager seeks refuge in a church one dark night and falls asleep in a pew. The child of indeterminate background, age, gender, and race is awakened when a family of five sits in the pew on a Sunday morning awaiting the start of worship services.

And so it …more begins. This chilling, haunting novel by Catherine Lacey is a cross between Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and the movie "Pleasantville," starring Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. On one level it is emotionally complex and introspective, but on another level it is dark and unsettling. It is a profound fable about the meaning and necessity of identity in human interaction.

It is the Bonner family—Steven and Hilda and their three sons—who find the child in the pew. Since the child won't speak and tell their name, the preacher names them "Pew." The novel takes place over one week—from Sunday to Saturday—in an unnamed Southern town. The residents think it is idyllic.

Pew is found on Sunday, but the whole town is abuzz about the annual Forgiveness Festival that will take place on Saturday, a ritualized event first organized years ago by the small town's churches. The week before this mysterious festival can be dangerous—and this is the week Pew has arrived—because some people think they can do whatever they want and then be forgiven for it a few days later. In addition, there is an unsettling rumor about the festival, one that is intensified by the presence of many police officers lining the streets on Saturday.

Pew's backstory is murky at best, since they can't remember anything about their prior life or parents—just fleeting glimpses and snapshots that don't lead to any kind of revelation. So even if Pew were willing to talk, there isn't much to share.

While some think Pew is an angel sent to them by God and one woman believes Pew is Jesus, the inability to identify Pew in the ways we humans think of as required causes misunderstandings and anger for some people. Almost everyone who encounters Pew one-on-one—from small children to the elderly—confesses their deepest secrets and thoughts. Pew takes it all in. Pew is able to see things in people that pierce through the protective masks we all wear; it's almost as if Pew can see into others' souls.

I'm not sure I understood the ending; it was as indeterminate as Pew's identity—confusing and ambiguous, which is a bit poetic since it aligns with everything about Pew. (less)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk

An Unconventional Literary Murder Mystery: Strange, but Highly Creative and Imaginative (2/11/2025)

This genre-defying novel by Olga Tokarczuk is a literary murder mystery and a fable and a philosophical discourse on life and death that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It is strange. Very strange. But it was also strangely good once I got into its rhythm.

The …more novel is charmingly told in the first person by the eccentric Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman living alone in the wilderness in a remote Polish hamlet near the Czech border. The story, which begins in winter and ends the following November, focuses on a series of unexplained deaths that look like accidents. Janina spends her days in these harsh winter months calculating horoscopes, reading and translating the poetry of William Blake, and caretaking the nearby homes that are only used in the summer months. She has a propensity of giving bizarre nicknames to those closest to her. Her only two neighbors she calls Oddball and Big Foot, while the manager of a resale store she calls Good News and a former student who regularly visits is nicknamed Dizzy.

Janina is devoted to her astrology and is convinced that she can determine an individual's date of death based on his or her horoscope. She is also devoted to animals, angrily screaming at hunters in the nearby fields and forests. In fact, Janina firmly believes that it is the animals who are murdering these men who turn up dead, taking revenge for their frequent abuse. She shares this quirky theory with others, including the police, a conversation that inevitably results in funny, furtive looks of ridicule. Janina truly thinks there is a special, almost sacred, relationship between animals and humans and that the animals understand us. Virtually no one takes her seriously. She knows that others think she is "just an old woman, gone off her rocker…useless and unimportant."

Most readers will figure out about halfway through the book not only that the deaths were not accidental and were, in fact, murders, but also the identity of the murderer. And the revelation of the murderer makes the story all that more creepy and sinister.

The style of writing was a bit off-putting to me at first, until I figured out that it is prose written in the poetic style of William Blake. That is, random words are capitalized in sentences, just as Blake did in his poetry. Each chapter begins with a few lines of Blake's poetry, making this book a love letter to the 18th century British poet and visionary. Even the title of the book is from Blake's poem "Proverbs of Hell."

This literary novel is indeed unconventional, as well as highly creative and imaginative. If you're looking for something a little different, do read it. (less)

BookBrowse Book Club

Lies and Weddings
by Kevin Kwan

A forbidden affair erupts at a lavish Hawaiian wedding in this wild comedy from the author of Crazy Rich Asians.

About Discuss
Daughters of Shandong
by Eve J. Chung

Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.

About Discuss
The Lilac People
by Milo Todd

For fans of All the Light We Cannot See, a poignant tale of a trans man’s survival in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.

About Discuss
The Girls of Good Fortune
by Kristina McMorris

Brave the Shanghai tunnels in this tale of love, identity, and resilience passed through generations.

About Discuss

Members Recommend

Songs of Summer
by Jane L. Rosen

A young woman crashes a Fire Island wedding to find her birth mother—and gets more than she bargained for.

Read the Reviews
Erased
by Anna Malaika Tubbs

In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.

Read the Reviews
Awake in the Floating City
by Susanna Kwan

A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.

Read the Reviews
The Original Daughter
by Jemimah Wei

A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Read the Reviews