Judith_G

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for its midnight-dark humor and deliciously dreadful cast of characters. There's not one of them you'd want to make your new best friend, but spending time with them in the novel was definitely entertaining. I had trouble putting the book down and getting on with life. Lancaster can be witty or downright funny while simultaneously managing edge-of-your-chair suspense.

It's nearly impossible to give a sense of this plot or even of what it's about without spoilers, but I'll simply say it's a fine, twisty one and the author plays fair. There are many surprises, but they have been set up subtly. Some bits strain credulity, but not too many, and ultimately, it's such a quick froth of good nasty fun, I didn't quibble or mind that.

The book is told through multiple points of view, and also through a script, a (long) list that made me laugh out loud of one of the character's mother's restaurant dislikes, and different fonts. This sounds confusing, but actually helps keep each character clear to the reader. Also, because you're baffled by the script that appears early on with no author or setting or explanation, you are pulled right into the mystery. And then, you happily stay there.

I'd definitely recommend Look What You Made Me Do.

Beth Ann Fennelly had me at the first page. Somehow, in a micro-memory of a folded oven mitt, one brief paragraph long, she conveys the love, humor, warmth, tenacity, patience and forgiveness that make up a good and long marriage.   
   
The Irish Goodbye is like a series of brief visits with a close friend over a fence, coffee or wine. Her anecdotes run the gamut of emotions from laugh-out-loud to heart-breaking. Sometimes her words stopped me in my tracks. (Fennelly was the poet laureate Mississippi.) For example, the title refers to an Irish habit of abruptly leaving a party without a goodbye, and Fennelly applies that to her beloved sister's unexpected, sudden death with: "How, without farewells, you slipped out the back door of the party of your life, O my sister."

This is a book to cherish. It deals with universal problems and joys. There are many treasures in it, poignant, moving, funny. The final piece is titled, "Dear Viewer of My Naked Body." Fennelly, a middle-aged woman living in the Bible Belt agreed to pose naked for an artist, and her telling of why she did and how it was and what it meant should become a classic.

I know I'll dip into this book many more times, and always with pleasure and appreciation.

postscript: Another book with the same title was recently released. I haven't read the other book, but I nonetheless am sure Beth Ann Fennelly's exceptional memoir is the one to add to your library.

The Botanist's Assistant is an enjoyable mystery laced with wit and featuring an unusual accidental sleuth, Margaret Finch. When we first meet Margaret, she's living a tightly regulated life. She literally schedules her every activity down to the second and expenditure down to the penny, buying only marked-down food, living a solitary existence, except for her work at the laboratory.

And then her beloved employer, Dr. Deaver, dies. His death is declared a heart attack, but Margaret, trained as a scientist, observes too many holes in this theory and sets out to find the truth.

As persnickety and rigid as she is, Margaret is oddly endearing. She has been 'driven by hope' her entire life, even though "it has been smashed and mangled and ripped by all the things that have happened to her…Who could be a scientist without hope?"
She's ultimately joined in her investigation and life by the laboratory's janitor and then by Tom, an endearing one-eyed cat.    

A special treat: Margaret shares fascinating botanical tidbits such as ""White snakeroot was what killed Abraham Lincoln's mother after she drank milk from a cow that had consumed the plant." And another favorite I won't spoil that concerns caterpillar saliva and parasitic wasps.

This is a pleasurable mystery told with gentle humor. There are a few too-convenient moments when I had to suspend disbelief a bit, but ultimately, what happened to Dr. Deaver is satisfyingly answered, and happily, it looks as if this won't be the last mystery the team of Margaret, Joe and one-eyed Tom will investigate.

GOING HOME: Tom Lamont

   Take an aging man, Vic Erskine, with a Parkinsonian-type degenerative disease, and two thirty-somethings, one of whom, Vic's son Teo, has fled the suburbs for a slick single life in London, and the other, Ben Mossam, who has stayed in town where he lives luxuriously in a mansion and does nothing because he doesn't need to do anything. Add to this, Lia, former lover of Teo's, and single mother of a toddler, (father unknown) and finally, a very unOrthodox rabbi, and you have the humorous and heartbreaking mix that is GOING HOME.
   One weekend, when Teo's visiting his father and friends, he agrees to babysit Lia's toddler, Joel. He does so the next day and while he is out with Joel, Lia commits suicide, apparently leaving Joel in Teo's permanent care, since no plans or arrangements were made.          
   The novel spins around the three men and the rabbi as they attempt to keep Joel out of foster care. Vic is eager to raise the boy, but his declining health makes this unrealistic. There is no room for a small boy in the life Teo's made for himself in London, and Ben is generous and charming and financially able, but totally unreliable.
   This is actually a novel about three boys—one only a few years old and the other two in their thirties. With all the good will in the world, neither of the boy-men comprehend what it means to grow up.
   Tom Lamont writes beautifully, with humor, charm and compassion. This situation could easily have lent itself to slapstick or sentimentality, but Lamont avoids both. The characters, including little Joel, are three-dimensional and complicated, and tagging along with them on their bumpy road is a pleasure.
    I would definitely recommend this book.

Isaac Dahl has indeed had a long life with enough strange—or at least unusual—episodes to justify the book's title, and at ninety-six, the former. journalist, decides to write a memoir. He tells his story in a series of single days set years apart, days when he experiences both natural disasters—an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake,—man-made disasters—the Dust Bowl, WWII at sea, Nuclear Tests in the Pacific, Civil Rights violence in Mississippi, AIDS—and more personal moments with his beloved twin sister and their best friend, his nieces and nephews, and the often painful drama of a gay man making his way through the twentieth century. Through it all, the author manages to weave together the personal and the historical so well that what emerges entertains, gives historical perspective to the century and also gives the reader a very human, warm and relatable story. I really enjoyed traveling through the twentieth century with Isaac and would recommend the book.

Ben Fountain's Devil Makes Three is a large book in every sense: large-hearted, large in sweep, large in memorable characters and stories, large in meaning (and physically large at 531 pp.). It's the story of an American and his Haitian partner whose diving business is appropriated by the state, and who turn to diving for buried treasure ships with horrifying results. It's the story of the Haitian's sister, a Ph.D. Philosophy candidate at Brown who instead winds up working in a desperately underfunded Haitian hospital. It's the story of an U.S. aid worker whose actual work in no way resembles her title. It's the story of voodoo. It's the story of a U.S. sponsored coup in the 90's, which removed Aristide, the democratically-elected president.

It's about the poverty in Haiti, the chaos, the drug-running, the corruption, the beauty, the resilience of its people. In truth, the main character is Haiti itself, and Ben Fountain embraces all of it—takes the reader right into its heart, lets us feel its pulse. There is so much going on here, the scope is so wide that although every part of it is compelling, it sometimes becomes too much of a good thing and makes the going difficult. But overall, Devil Makes Three is a beautifully written, unique and powerful novel that changed how I look at Haiti, at history, and at my government.

Kerri Maher's novel is loosely based on an actual underground feminist group called "Jane" that provided safe, inexpensive abortions when they were illegal, in the 1970s. Jane's members were always in danger of imprisonment and in fact were arrested and only escaped harsh sentences because Roe v. Wade became the law while the women were awaiting trial.

Maher's novel closely follows three women but includes a host of secondary characters as well. The reader has a clear sense of how intricate the secret network was, of the pressures on it and of the need for it. Each woman has her own reason for being dedicated to Jane, and the many stories are interesting although it is sometimes difficult to keep all the strands clear. Other than that one issue and despite the novel's serious concerns, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL is a fast-moving, enjoyable and thought-provoking read. And despite its events taking place half a century ago, given the Dobbs decision, its concerns are definitely relevant again.

Recommended!

Paper Names is a novel that asks--in engaging, absorbing and entertaining ways--big questions. Who are we and what shapes us? Is it our family heritage, or is it the world we move through, be it familiar or new? Are we the title of our jobs? What is justice? This may make the novel sound like heavy lifting, but it is anything but. Susie Luo writes so gracefully that it is surprising to learn this is her first novel.
The story is told through three points of view. Tony Zhang, once an engineer in China who sought a better life for his family, is now a doorman in New York. His daughter Tammy, whom we follow from age nine to adulthood, deals with her family's old world ways and her own new world hopes. The third story is Oliver Wright's. He's a charming lawyer with everything going for him except a dark family secret. A vicious street crime brings all three people and stories together.
There are no saints or true villains in these pages, only complicated, real people trying to find their way and sometimes tripping up.
I heartily recommend this book and will definitely read whatever Susie Luo decides to write next.