Book Reviews 2022

I’ve mentioned my approach to book reviews at the outset of my 2019 reviews, and so I won’t repeat it

here.  Suffice it to say that I give a book I enjoyed three stars and one that I found wanting gets two stars. I do my best to explain my rationale. To get four stars, a book has to be outstanding in terms of its characters, story, style or voice. Five stars will go to a work that is exceptional in all those areas. Typically I rate books higher if they have something to say about society at large, rather than only about individual characters’ lives.  My ratings for books I’ve read during 2022 are listed immediately below, with the full review of each following thereafter.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah 3*

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McClain 3*

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 5*

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult 4.5*

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney 4.5*

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles 4*

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan 5*

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley 4*

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan 3.5*

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult 3.5*

Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout 5*

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 4*

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell 5*

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson 3.5*

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds takes us back to the 1930s, when multiple years of drought combined with incorrect farming practices led to a “dust bowl” on the Great Plains. This in turn led to a massive migration of Americans from that region and elsewhere to the West Coast. As the novel shows, in California there was work for some of the migrants because the Mexican farm laborers had been driven out, but the wages that were offered were so low that people were forced to live in squatters’ camps, with no electricity, no bathrooms, inadequate food and poor sanitation. Making matters worse, the resources of the state were insufficient to meet the needs of the massive numbers of migrants, and the existing state residents tended to view the massive numbers of newcomers as less than human—sources of disease and criminal activity.

I appreciate Kristin Hannah for focusing her talents on the story of the dust bowl, the hunger riots, and the plight of the migrants. Yes, it was done by Steinbach in The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, but my sense is that the history of the dust bowl and the migrants has largely been forgotten. It should be remembered if only as a cautionary tale about what happens to human beings and human society when Nature destroys their settled way of life. It could happen again.

Craft Matters

As a novel the book leaves much to be desired. In a nutshell, everything about The Four Winds struck me as thin: the story, the characters, and the writing. From the first chapter on, I often felt like I was reading a sketch for a novel. For example, an early description of Elsa: “She was like one of those animals whose defense mechanism is to blend into the landscape and become invisible.” (p 27) Reading this, I couldn’t help wondering: what animal? All that came to mind, considering the setting, was a rattlesnake, and this just doesn’t fit Elsa. More generally, why doesn’t Hannah name the animal she’s talking about? Details count in good writing.

In terms of description, the early passages about clothes and food are adequate. Later, as the impacts of dust storms built up, I felt some sense of their plight, but was never caught up in it, I never felt it. There is also a patina of history here and there, as various characteristics of farm life in the 1930s are described. But there just isn’t much depth to any of it. My suspicion is that the author chose to cover so much time (from 1921 to 1940, although the focus was on 1934 and 1935) that she couldn’t afford to go into much depth or the novel would have been unacceptably long. (By comparison, The Grapes of Wrath covers about one year.)

A Lack of Drama

 At the same time, minor craft problems irked me. For example, when Else sneaks out of the house, “she paused, waited nervously to be detected, but no lights came on inside.” (p 32) Okay, but prior to this the novel reports that there is no electricity in Dalhart, so why is it worth noting that no lights came on? Not long after, when her parents discover that Elsa is pregnant, her father drives her to the Martinelli’s, drops her off, and goes away. (p 43) There is no drama to this drop-off, despite the fact that her father says he never wants to see her again. He just drives away and the scene continues almost as if nothing very significant has happened.

Not a Very Sympathetic Narrator

In terms of characters, the way Elsa is drawn is problematic. While she comes across as sympathetic because of the way her parents mistreat her (which is itself odd and not very credible), the fact that she has accepted their judgment of her essential worthlessness makes her unsympathetic. She never really struggles against her fate. Only when she sneaks out and has sex with Rafe does she become interesting, but even then only slightly so. She just doesn’t have much fire in her. Interestingly, Loreda turns out to have a bit of fire in her, and is thus a more compelling character. Only at the end of the novel, when Elsa speaks to the workers from the back of Jack’s truck and gets shot, does she stand up for herself and her life. But by then we’ve seen her turn away from confrontation for over 400 pages, so this sudden burst of courage isn’t very moving. It’s hard for a novel to succeed with a protagonist who just isn’t protagonistic.

SDT

Lastly, I felt that the novel involved too much TELL instead of SHOW. For example, Jack becomes a significant character in the last part of the book, but we really don’t get to know him except as a punching bag for the cops. Consider Loreda’s observation: “Although he was dressed like many of the migrants around him, in faded, stained overalls and a frayed denim shirt beneath a dusty brown suit coat, there was a vibrancy to him, an aliveness that was like no one she’d ever met before.” (p 382) Reading this, I could only wish that we were shown Jack in action because none of his scenes in the novel conveyed the kind of vibrancy and aliveness that Loreda apparently observed. Overall, I’d give The Four Winds 4 stars for story and 3 stars for execution – rounded down to 3.

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Note: This review contains spoilers.

In this novel, a San Francisco detective who is carrying a boatload of emotional baggage from her troubled upbringing  investigates the disappearance of a 15 year-old girl in the coastal village of Mendocino, California. Anna Hart has retreated to Mendocino, where she spent her teenage—and best– Foster Care years after a traumatic experience. At the outset of the novel she doesn’t share what that experience was with the reader. But we know she must have been at least partly at fault because her husband is so angry he has ordered her to leave their home.

The plot of the novel is simple: Anna, who is obsessed with finding missing children, spends several weeks searching for the 15 year-old, but her leads go nowhere. Finally she has an insight that leads her to the child’s abductor and, after a search, to the missing child herself. Later that night the abductor surprises Anna at her home. They struggle and she kills him.

Anna The Skilled Investigator

I particularly liked the way the author—through Anna—describes her investigation process. She demonstrates a mastery of procedures to follow, possibilities to consider, and the probabilities that those possibilities will prove correct. She also demonstrates an understanding of the psychology of people who kidnap and kill children. Additionally, I appreciated the way the novel detours at times into Anna’s own troubled childhood, so that the reader will understand her interest in saving children, as well as her fond memories of her last foster father, Hap, who was a teacher of sorts for Anna during her teenage years.

In addition to Hap, the novel introduces a large number of characters from Anna’s childhood and early life in Mendocino. Most of them are minor and appear so infrequently that I had trouble keeping track of who was who. Will, the sheriff that Anna teams up with, was interesting in his portrayal of the stress experienced by someone responsible for a high profile search. But the only really interesting character was Tally, a New Age Hippie-Psychic who has visions of the three missing children mentioned in the novel. Indeed, it was when Tally appeared on page 178 that the novel finally gained energy and interest for me.

Drab Writing

One of the reasons that the novel didn’t excite me was that the writing was rather drab. At sentence level, it was all adequate but ordinary; there is no literary merit here aside from an occasional simile. From time to time there is an attempt by Anna to offer words of wisdom, as in the following:

“I’ve spent time faulting her [Emily] for not keeping Cameron safe enough, not protecting her when she couldn’t protect herself. But what does it all add up to? What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?” (p202)

What? A pretty clunky stab at higher meaning. Logically, the second sentence doesn’t follow the first. And saying, “What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone?” is a pretty narrow view of suffering at best.

Verbal Mush

Later on Anna recounts one of Hap’s stories about a young boy who accidentally shot his brother while target shooting, and in grief at the thought that he’d killed him, dragged him into a hollow redwood tree and lay on him. Without knowing it, the weight of his body acted like a tourniquet, and prevented his brother from bleeding out. Hap says,

“That’s the most interesting bit as I see it. He thought he’d passed beyond forgiveness, but that was just a story. A terrible story, but believing it saved his brother’s life.” He looked at me to make sure I was with him. This was the important part. “You know, we don’t always understand what we’re living inside of, or how it will matter. We can guess all we want and prepare, too, but we never know how it’s going to turn out.”

Possibly this verbal mush was an attempt to make Hap sound folksy, though phrases like “passed beyond forgiveness” and “what we’re living inside of” struck me as pretentious more than folksy. Then there is the sentence, “This was the important part” which typifies the annoying habit that Anna has of telling us what she’s thinking and feeling on just about every page:

“I feel her looking at my face, my hair.” (p8)

“It’s hard work not to flinch at her kindness.”  (p8)

“The wall seemed to inch nearer as he spoke.” (p14)

“I could hear my voice tightening around the words and tried to slow down, to sound less desperate.” (p14)

“I feel a clamping sensation as each winding turn brings me closer to the past.” (p17)

“I feel as if I’ve squeezed sideways through time.” (p17)

“Listening to them gives me a weightless, unmoored feeling.”  (p20)

“If he only knew how little I do need.”

A Lack of Sympathy

The second aspect of Anna that compromises the appeal of the novel is that Anna isn’t a very sympathetic character. Early on, husband Brendan tells her, “You haven’t been here for us and you know it.” (p13) Anna doesn’t deny this. She is obsessed with her work: “It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, and also the most important, even if Brendan can’t ever forgive me.” (p27) At the end of the novel we learn that her obsession cost the life of her infant daughter, which was apparently the last straw for Brendan—the one that caused him to demand that she leave. Her obsession, which she doesn’t even want to control, makes her a distinctive character, but not a particularly likeable one.

Two Questions

The novel raises two interesting questions that are partially explored. First, it presumes that a child’s history of abuse, including parental abandonment, is what causes him to abuse, abduct and murder children. This sounds reasonable, although I suspect other causes might lead to such behavior, including poverty, genetic factors, and environmental stressors like lead poisoning. Anna isn’t much for seeing beyond her own unfortunate childhood, so she never interiorizes about other causes.

More interesting is the question of whether Anna was right to kill Caleb. She says, “But I’ve seen enough. Know enough now. He’ll never stop, not ever.” (p347) So, believing this, she kills him. But did she have to? When she shoots, she has the upper hand; she could tell him to freeze, and at least try to arrest him, and let the criminal justice system deal with him. Instead, she plays jury and judge, passes sentence, and inflicts his punishment.

Anna decides that she has to kill Caleb so that no one will ever again have to suffer because of him. At the same time, Anna also knows about Caleb’s abusive childhood and abandonment. Moreover, it’s similar to her own. Nevertheless, it earns him no sympathy.

Perhaps this is why I didn’t find Anna sympathetic: she experienced a bad childhood, and the effect of it was to turn her into such an obsessive protector of children that she not only caused the death of her own child, but is unable to see the humanity in someone like Caleb.

Believable But Shallow

I suppose what seemed most missing in this novel was any philosophical reflection on Anna’s part. Ultimately, she seems to believe that people are responsible for their actions, regardless of their history, and that, moreover, people never change. She tells Tally, “I don’t think I can get better. I’ve been this way a long time.” (p354) Tally tells her that anyone can change, and Anna later repeats that message to Will. But she never considers that perhaps Caleb could have changed, in prison, with help, and what giving him that chance would have meant for her—whether it would have helped free her from her own dark past. Instead, we get a set of Anna’s closing thoughts that are nothing more than superficial drivel:

“For the longest time I stand on Lansing Street, thinking about beauty and terror. Evil. Grace. Suffering. Joy. How they’re all here every day, everywhere. Teaching us how to keep stepping forward into our lives, our purpose.

“Long ago Corolla told me that it’s not what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it. I’m starting to understand the difference, and how maybe the only way we can survive what’s here, and what we are, is together.” (p360)

In creating Anna, the author has done a fine job of showing the shallowness and lack of self-control of one particular police officer. Anna is definitely believable, if not likeable.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

A work of astounding imagination, Cloud Cuckoo Land manages to tell three stories from three different time periods, and employs somewhat different literary styles in each. The story of Anna and Omeir occurs in the 16^th century and is largely a historical novel centered around the siege of Constantinople by the Saracens. The story of Zeno and Seymour and the fifth graders is contemporary in style and occurs in the present day. The story of Konstance occurs at some future time, after climate change has made Earth largely uninhabitable, and comes to us as science fiction. Despite the different time periods and styles involved, all of the stories read easily, and relate to each other in meaningful ways.

A Fast-paced Fantasy

In genre, this novel struck me as nothing so much as a fantasy. I think that’s probably because its focal point—a city in the clouds where life is essentially perfect—can only be a fantasy. It’s a kind of nirvana that people throughout history have dreamed of and written about. Indeed, as portrayed in the novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land was originally written millennia ago  by an ancient Greek named Diogenes.

Initially, the 600+ page length of the novel appeared daunting to me and, I think, to many readers. However, Doerr keeps most chapters and sections quite short. This produces a substantial amount of white space in the text, reducing the effective length of the novel to something like a 400-page novel. Moreover, the stories are fast-paced and engaging, so that once I got going, my reading moved along rapidly.

A Paean to the Written Word

Overall, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a paean to books, libraries, and librarians. The central thread of the story involves individuals who become captivated by Diogenes’ story, and who dedicate themselves to reading, translating, and preserving it. Even Konstance, locked in Vault One, writes out the story on scraps torn from Nourish powder bags.

Interestingly, the novel involves several characters with significant disabilities. Omeir has a harelip that causes superstitious people to drive his family from their village. Anna has learning difficulties. Seymour has severe auditory sensitivity. Zeno suffers by being gay at a time when homosexuality was largely unacceptable, and it’s only when he aids the fifth graders in dramatizing Cloud Cuckoo Land as a play that he finally enjoys love. Konstance, while having no physical disability, is perhaps the most handicapped of all, having been forced to live as a specimen in a perverse corporate experiment.

A Sharp Critique and an Optimistic Vision

Doerr delivers a powerful critique of the manmade impacts of climate change, and the potential threat of high technology, but does so briefly, and avoids sermonizing. Seymour is the conduit for these thoughts, becoming radicalized at a teenager into believing that someone named Bishop was about to unleash the overthrow of modern American culture. As his own contribution to the cause. Seymour plans to blow up the Lakeport library.

Despite its powerful indictment of contemporary society, the novel ends on a positive note, as the children re-write the ending of Diogenes’ play, having Aethon conclude that, “The world as it is is enough.” Similarly, Konstance finally learns the truth about her existence, manages to break free, and spends her life in a tiny village, where she has a son to whom she reads the tale she wrote on the scraps of Nourish powder packaging. A work of extraordinary imagination, keen human insight and important cultural criticism, I can only give this novel my highest recommendation. 

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

Diana, the protagonist and first person narrator of Wish You Were Here, has a plan for how she wants her life to go: “I wanted to be securely on a path to my career, to get married by thirty, to finish having kids by thirty-five. I wanted to speak fluent French and have traveled cross-country on Route 66.” She reports that her father laughed at her checklist, but to me it is less laughable than it is a death sentence, since how can you come alive if all you’re doing is following a plan? Indeed, this is a major theme of the novel.

The major reason why Diana is so rigidly committed to her plan is that she was effectively abandoned by her mother, a famous photographer. Originally she envisioned a career as an artist, focusing on drawing and painting, but when her father told her that she was “definitely your mother’s daughter” she quit painting because the thought of being like her mother was abominable to her. Instead, she immersed herself in the business of selling other peoples’ art, for Sotheby’s in New York City. Addressing and resolving her decades’ old mommy problem is essential to Diana’s liberation from her stifling plan, and another major theme of the novel.

A Medical History

Wish You Were Here is also something of a medical history of the Covid-19 pandemic as it took hold in New York City. Diana herself becomes infected with Covid, although that fact isn’t revealed until page 188. Prior to that, for about 150 pages, we read about Diana’s adventures in the Galapagos Islands, which she visits without her boyfriend, who was forced to stay behind because he’s a doctor and has been conscripted into the rising battle against Covid. But in a twist, we learn that Diana didn’t actually go to the Galapagos, but merely dreamed it during her five days on a ventilator in the hospital.

Diana’s dream of being in the Galapagos is so vivid that she can’t believe her trip didn’t actually happen, or that the man and his daughter whom she met were simply products of her dreaming mind. This leads into the second major portion of the novel, which is given over to a detailed accounting of the experience of having Covid. Much of what Picoult presents reflects the reality of Covid as it rampaged through NYC. Interestingly, the author goes into far greater breadth and depth than anything else I’ve ever read in news accounts or heard on TV. Picoult’s ability to research, digest and communicate complex phenomena have never been more impressive.

Diana’s Redemption

The story of Diana’s experience in the Galapagos and that of her experience recovering from Covid are both fully realized and engaging stories. To them, in the last portion of the novel, Picoult joins the story of Diana’s reconciliation with her mother, and her own personal redemption. Ironically, nearly dying from Covid is what, in a very real way, saves Diana’s life.

There is much more I could praise about this novel; indeed, the more I think about it, the more I see to appreciate. From a craft perspective, if there is anything that irked me, it’s the fact that much of the action that occurs seems to serve primarily as a platform for dialogue, rather than a source of meaningful drama. Overall, however, my sense is that this was necessary, since the novel deals largely in ideas, and complicated ideas need to be articulated, and clearly, in order to be enjoyed. Exploring those ideas in dialogue I very likely the best way to do so.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

It seemed to me that what Rooney did in this novel was just what she felt like doing – interspersing philosophical/political thoughts amidst a somewhat wandering story of two different love affairs. Ordinarily, writers are advised not to be preachy or to write “issues” novels.  Rooney does it, but people who adore her will either give her a pass or speed read through those sections. Too, most of the end-of-civilization and related missives occur in the first half of the novel, so that a reader can forget about them (if they prefer) by the latter half, where the principle focus, on relationships, is developed.

I think what makes people fans of Sally Rooney is the way her dialogue scenes expose her imperfect, troubled characters. Often they are thoughtful and considerate, and then at other times angry and hurtful, creating the impression that beneath their generally stable surfaces they are not in control, entirely, and not happy. In short, they are complex characters who are struggling with life.

Troubled Characters Reflect a Trouble World

What really came up for me as I read this was the question of whether the characters’ views on modern life, which are clearly negative, have deprived them of the sense of social stability that past generations took for granted. This, in any event, seems to be one of the causes of their inability to function successfully.

Of course, Alice is a successful novelist, so there is that. But she also  a recovering psychiatric patient who feels debilitated by stress. Boyfriend Felix seems like the most stable of the four characters, and yet he has stabilized at a pretty low level of functionality. I could not believe that a novelist like Alice would find Felix to be a meaningful companion. Doubtless she understands that he isn’t her equal, as he himself tells her, and yet they cling together like the last survivors of a shipwreck. This is not to say I object to any of this. The author does a wonderful job of portraying their moods and attitudes. The fact that they stick together says a lot about their crippled personalities, and this portrayal is the clear, beating heart of the novel.

The Dystopian Versus the Established Order

Eileen and Simon suffer from different problems. Both are handsome, and they are drawn inescapably to each other. They have been attracted for fifteen years. They enjoy sex with each other. The question of why these two, who are far more suited for each other than Alice and Felix, can’t get together, is a muddled one. Aside from modest conflicts with her family, it isn’t clear what the causes are of Eileen’s inability to find her place in the world. Her politics are those of a young idealist who views society as a dystopian failure, and who has therefore avoided taking a stake in the established order (and no, literary magazines don’t count). Her criticisms are sharp and thoughtful, but she hasn’t identified any alternative that she would want to work for. More than anything, she is afraid to take risks.

Simon, on the other hand, works for politicians within the established order. He knows what he wants—Eileen. Yet at the same time he holds back. He passively waits for her to call the shots in their relationship, and never demands anything of her. Eileen complains about this, about the fact that, while he’s always there when she needs him, he never shows that he needs her. He says that this is just the way he is, and from the rest of his behavior, I believe it. Simon is a character without any distinct flaws, which is fine, although characters without flaws tend to be minimally interesting.

Theme, and a Letdown

Overall, the theme of the novel seems to be about the preeminence of friendship over politics. As Eileen says, “. . . the state of the world being what it is, humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another email about sex and friendship. What else is there to live for?” (p 146) So, in the end, after several hurtful bouts of conversation, the characters reconcile. And in the denouement, eighteen months later, we see that Alice and Eileen’s concerns for the state of the world have been replaced by interests in their personal lives.

This ending for the novel struck me as weak. Perhaps it reflects a kind of growth and maturity of the characters. At the same time, it suggests that Alice and Eileen’s political beliefs didn’t run deep, and were easily cast off. This, no doubt, is precisely what happens to most politically aware twenty-somethings as they settle down. Still, the life seemed to go out of the novel in these last two chapters, which was disappointing.

Craft Matters

In terms of craft, Rooney does a couple of things in an unconventional manner. Dispensing with quotation marks in dialogue is one. Since other authors have done the same, it doesn’t take much getting used to. More innovative is her paragraph structure, which changes over the course of the book. In Chapter 1, Alice and Felix have a series of conversations which, though lacking quotation marks, follow the standard practice of beginning a new paragraph with each change in speaker. Later in the novel, Rooney frequently dispenses with this rule, incorporating an entire conversation in a single paragraph. To me, this approach seemed to draw me into the conversation more closely somehow, as if I were in the room with the speakers, perhaps a bit tipsy myself, as an omniscient observer. I suspect this may be part of the charm of Rooney’s style, this drawing in of the reader.

An even more affecting aspect of Rooney’s style is the way her characters speak their truths. While Felix is almost without self-censorship, and can say hurtful things to Alice with ease, the others are more restrained. The novel comes to a head in Chapter 28 when Alice and Eileen argue bitterly, and then Alice chastises Simon. Felix then criticizes Alice, but in an insightful and objective manner that calms her down. Simon does something similar for Eileen, and the crisis is resolved. These conversations are Rooney’s gift to readers.

Writing That Is a Pleasure To Read

Indeed, the novel includes a number of elegant sentences and passages that are pleasures in themselves. For example: “In that case we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something.” (p 101) Or: “A couple of nights ago, I was getting a taxi home on my own after a book launch. The streets were quiet and dark, and the air was oddly warm and still, and on the quays the office buildings were all lit up inside, and empty, and underneath everything, beneath the surface of everything, I began to feel it all over again—the nearness, the possibility of beauty, like a light radiating softly from behind the visible world, illuminating everything.” This image of light radiating softly from behind the visible world is what this book is all about, as well as the answer to the question its title asks.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

I enjoyed this book but didn’t love it. It didn’t wow me like A Gentleman in Moscow, or even like Rules of Civility. But then, few books do.

Characters Are Preeminent

One of the best features of this novel is that Towles does a good job of giving each character a unique personality. Emmett is the most “normal” of all the main characters, and his actions show us who he is.  He’s a son of middle America and reflects its values of honor, self-reliance, and hard work. When he punches a man who goads him into it, and the fellow falls and hits his head, eventually dying, Emmitt doesn’t even try to  explain in court that he’d been egged on by the dead man. He accepts responsibility.

Duchess is more compelling, in part because he comes to us as a first person narrator, and his voice is loaded with witty observations. For example, when he breaks into former warden Ackerly’s home in South Bend, he notes that in the kitchen, “There is enough canned food for a bomb shelter.” Not only does his language reveal his personality, it does so with references appropriate to the 1950s—in this case an allusion to bomb shelters. Indeed, Duchess’s voice makes him a more interesting character than the nominal protagonist, Emmett.

Woolly and Billy and Sally also have unique personalities. Woolly is emotionally fragile, and largely broken by sad events that have cost him the people he held dearest. He desperately wants to create happiness, perhaps in an attempt to recreate a lost past, and doesn’t recognize when his pursuit of happiness may upset others and lead to the loss of that which he so wants, as happens when Duchess decides to hold a feast for their group at Woolly’s sister’s house.

Billy and Sally

Billy is nothing if not precocious—perhaps excessively so. Yet he has a refreshing ability to say and speak the innocent truth. Sally is, like Duchess, presented in first person, and although her named chapters are few, I thought Towles did a superb job of capturing the personality of a young woman who is trapped in a farm life with no future, and who rebels against it. Her voice, as she becomes frustrated, is both ascerbic and humorous, as shown in passages of the section that runs from page 381 to 385:

“How on God’s green earth, you may rightly wonder, does a man turn twenty minutes of errands into a five-hour excusion? Well, that’s an easy one: yakking.”

“It didn’t take long for me to figure that a woman had somehow worked her way into my father’s routine. Especially since she was partial to perfume, and I’m the one who has to wash his clothes. But the question remained: Who was this woman? . . . And it wasn’t Esther who keeps the books at the feedstore, because she wouldn’t’ve recognized a bottle of perfume if it fell from the heavens and hit her on the head.”

A Simple Story With Small Stakes

From the perspective of story, the Lincoln Highway struck me as pretty simple. It’s a boy’s adventure story that is of modest interest. It never generates much tension. Even when Pastor John comes upon and attempts to rob Billy—twice!—I always felt sure he would be foiled.

I think another reason I felt little tension throughout the novel was that the stakes were small. What was most at risk was Emmitt’s plan to go to California and become a homebuilder, and Billy’s related plan to search for their mother at a Fourth of July fireworks celebration in San Francisco. Neither of these plans had any life-or-death criticality to it. (Indeed, the fact that the novel ends with the boys still in New York suggests that they weren’t very important to the author, either.) The boys were going to survive whether they got to California or not. Given Emmitt’s character, I would expect that, even if he fails to get back his car and his money, he would still pursue his homebuilding plan, and would succeed, though it might take a little longer.

A Romp Through 1950s New York

Nevertheless, the story was entertaining. The description of New York City in the 1950s was thoroughly engaging, particularly the description of the transient camp on an abandoned part of the railway, the circus in Brooklyn and its associated brothel, and the visit to Professor Abernathe in the Empire State Building.

Troubles at the End

The novel struggled a bit at the end, when the future direction of the characters had to be revealed. Woolly’s ending made the most sense to me, while Duchess’s ending seemed like an abandonment of the book’s most interesting character by the author. Perhaps Towles just grew tired of the story, but it seemed to me that the novel would have been far more rewarding if Duchess (that scoundrel!) had managed to escape his predicament and ride off—with his fifty thousand dollars—in pursuit of some new scheme.

Emmitt’s ending was similarly unsatisfactory for me, and somewhat surprising. Throughout the novel he has been, by and large, an honorable young man. But in his ending, he chooses pragmatism over honor. Yes, if he wants his and Billy’s loot, as promised by Woolly, then he opts for the action most likely to ensure they will get it. Still, it seemed out of character, with its main advantage being to avoid the complexities of family conflicts over inheritance that could have kept the story going for several more chapters.

Perhaps most disappointing to me, from the perspective of story, was that the brothers and Sally never get to San Francisco. Did Emmitt’s plan to become a builder work out? Did they find their mother—or not find her—at the fireworks celebration? Who is she now? And what happened to Sally, who was so intent on starting a new life, and who seemed to have the gumption to achieve it. The novel created an expectation that questions like these would be answered, and they weren’t. Do I hear a sequel?

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House is a work of art offered to us as a collage of different stories and different styles. Some of the stories and characters are familiar, having appeared in A Visit from the Good Squad. Usually these come to us in Egan’s polished literary writing style. Others are stories that see our current cultural evolution some years into the future. These are sometimes presented in styles borrowed from self-help manuals and text messaging. Lastly, and most fun, there is the chapter DROP. This comes to us as the stream of consciousness of an insecure 13-year-old Molly Cooke.

The Candy House is also a metaphor for activities which are pleasurable but entail harmful effects. Like the witch’s candy house in Hansel and Gretel. Or cocaine and other illicit drugs. Here, the pleasurable activity is engagement in social media.

Bix Bouton, Creator

A key character in The Candy House is Bix Bouton, who creates Mandala, a fictional version of Facebook. In the novel Mandala is the genesis of social media creations that go beyond those presently available. Bix’s Own Your Unconscious is a tool that allows user to upload and share their entire consciousness with others. In this brave new world, people who prefer to remain private are called eluders. Eluders refuse to upload their lives and become part of the consciousness collective. These folks are a distinct minority, but are buttressed by Mondrian, kind of an anti-Mandala non-profit created by Chris Salazar. Interestingly Bix, when he dies, leaves much of his fortune to Mondrian. It seems he regrets what he’s created and wants to make amends.

A Novel of Ideas

While The Candy House includes a dozen or two characters and stories, it is largely a novel of ideas. Many of Egan’s core ideas become clear in the next-to-last chapter, Eureka Gold, which focuses on Bix’s youngest son. As the chapter opens, Gregory is in bed, suffering from a mysterious fatigue. An aspiring writer, he has no energy to write. Lying abed, he observes people in the apartment building across the street, and interiorizes about  Mandala and Mondrian. His thinking clarifies how Mandala has evolved, and how its effects, many of which were initially good, have changed.

Social Media as Inauthentic

Indeed, Mandala seems to have sown the seeds of its own demise with its latest offering, Skin-to-Skin. This tool lets people access each other’s consciousness directly if their flesh is touching. Mandala hypes this features as The End of Aloneness. It’s also the height of intrusiveness. Nevertheless, Skin-to-Skin offers a kind of connection that is more honest than that offered by social media. As Gregory reports, “Social media was dead, everyone agreed; self-representations were inherently narcissistic or propagandic or both, and grossly inauthentic.” (Authenticity, or the lack thereof, is also a key theme of the novel.)

The Anti-Vision

In Eureka Gold Gregory also interiorizes about something his father Bix called Anti-Vision. A-V is a mental emptiness that was eventually filled in for Bix by his idea for Own Your Consciousness. The chapter ends as Gregory stumbles into an Anti-Vision of his own as he walks through the snow:  “Gregory gazed, transfixed, as snow swarmed down upon him like space junk; like disarranged flocks of birds; like the universe emptying itself. He knew what the vision meant: human lives past and present, around him, inside him. . . Here was his father’s parting gift: a galaxy of human lives hurtling toward his curiosity . . . He was feeling the collective without any machinery at all. And its stories, infinite and particular, would be his to tell.” (p323)

Gregory’s literary resurrection dovetails with the theme of art, and the value of writing in particular. Thinking of his writing teacher, Athena, he volunteers to deliver pot to her on behalf of his roommate. “His craving to see Athena had more to do with the fact that those two years of graduate school had been the happiest of his life. . . . Alone by choice on Saturday nights, writing by an open window in his studio apartment, Gregory had experienced a kind of euphoria: a swelling, bursting, yearning hunger that had something in common with lust but included everyone, from the revelers outside his window to the carousers down the hall.” (p309) Later Athena suggests the source of his mysterious lethargy: “Maybe not-writing is what’s draining you. Maybe you’ve severed your energy source.” (p321)

The Power of Writing

It is after meeting with Athena that Gregory has his vision in the snow. From his vision, he understands that he has an infinite number of stories to tell. Moreover, he learns that he can tap into those lives without uploading his consciousness into the collective. To me, this seems to be a clear message about the power and value of writing.

This theme is capped off in the final chapter, where Ames Hollander is in a nursing home, 90 years old. An omniscient narrator who seems very much like the author tells us that, “We have these facts,” and describes Ames’s small world. She adds: “Thanks to Bix Bouton, all of this is in our reach. Even so, there are gaps: holes left by eluding separatists hoarding their memories and keeping their secrets. Only Gregory Bouton’s machine—this one, fiction—lets us roam with absolute freedom through the human collective.” (333) And so Egan’s novel serves as a clarion call to all would-be writers in the world to keep writing.

Complexity and Its Rewards

I’ve read criticisms of The Candy House asserting that it has too many characters and is too complicated to follow. I agree that the novel is complex. Egan weaves her ideas into the thoughts and actions of multiple characters, and most of those characters only appear in a small number of chapters, so making connections is challenging. In this respect, the novel is something of a puzzle that the reader has to solve. This takes effort. It takes re-reading and note-taking and thinking-through. This isn’t a beach read. But at the end of that work a reader has the pleasure of sharing the fullness of Egan’s extraordinary imagination. It’s a reward that more than justifies the labor involved.

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley

This novel began with about 100 pages of some of the best writing I’ve ever read. Then I ran into its chief enemy: plot.

Protagonist Lola is a former editor at Modern Psychology. Though highly-regarded, the magazine that folded when it’s advertising revenue dried up. Lola is alternatively funny, self-deprecating, narcissistic and innocent. Thirty-seven years old, she has engaged in serial monogamy throughout her adult life. As the novel opens she is in a relationship with Boots, who has asked her to marry him. Boots is amazingly accepting, undemanding, and easy to get along with. Plus, he loves her. Although she’s accepted his proposal, Lola knows she’s getting cold feet, though why she isn’t sure.

Amazingly Witty Writing

As I read this novel, I felt like I was riding an endless wave of humorous wit. Most of these wonderful passages blend into one another, and those involving dialogue are definitely too long to quote. But here’s one example, when Lola is having dinner with novelist-boyfriend Amos and his starlet cousin Kit:

“Kit flicked the straw wrapper she’d been balling into Amos’s face and he cackled. She unlocked a less captious Amos. He refrained from deriding the Hollywood industrial complex in front of her. When the bill came, Kit grabbed it like it was nothing. I’d never seen someone take a check like that, without momentarily losing track of what they were saying. Amos didn’t flinch. Whereas whenever I grabbed the bill, we had weird sex afterward.” (p 20)

The So-called Plot

The plot emerges when Lola’s buddy Vadis introduces her to a sort of New Age cult-business called the Golconda. Golconda was created by their former boss at Modern Psychology, Clive. Its intent is to sell experiences to its clients, particularly the experience of re-visiting former significant others as a means for achieving relationship closure. Lola is brought into the Golconda by Vadis as a test case for the new business.

Initially I was intrigued by this concept, but the more it went on, the more lame it seemed. Clive’s idea to commercialize this type of astral suggestion/relationship therapy was simply too dopey to believe. Slowly my interest, and my attraction to Lola, which had been locked into the novel by the literary excellence of the first few chapters, diminished. Interestingly, the author’s own interest in this odd relationship therapy seemed to wane as well. Initially, Lola’s encounters with past loves like Amos are detailed and engaging. Toward the end, though, she races through Lola’s last few exes as if in a bother to get the recitation over with.

Narcissism in NYC

I have read blurbs indicating that this novel contains smart insights about modern relationships. Perhaps it does for millennials living in cities where the population of attractive mates is large, thereby creating the conditions for serial lovers. Chief among these insights seems to be the suggestion that too many such options leads to narcissism, confusion, and the inability to choose. Lola is apparently so wrapped up in herself that she has never been able to build a relationship that will endure. This narcissism is what, I think, undermined my sympathy for her. What she really needs, it seems, is to get out of NYC, which as portrayed in this novel is inhabited by too many self-centered types who only feed her confusion. Until she does, I’m afraid that the bizarre happy ending tacked into the novel will remain as unconvincing as if it featured an out-of-the-blue arrival of Martians.

Overall, this novels gets 5+ stars for literary merit and a 3- stars for story, leaving me at 4 stars, and hoping that the author will grow an interest in the many important subjects out in the world, so that she may use her prodigious literary talent to enlighten rather than simply entertain her readers.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

This novel starts out slowly. Anna Kerrigan goes with her father Eddie to visit Dexter Styles. Because the POV is 12 year-old Anna’s, the reader never learns why her father went to see Styles. We get some background information: it’s 1937 during the Great Depression, Eddie has lost his union job, Dexter Styles lives in a fancy house on Manhattan Beach. Most notably, we sense Anna’s strong love for her father. But the events are not propulsive. The plot moves slowly.

A Novel of Stories

The novel doesn’t delve deep into character the way Egan does in other novels, and particularly in her intricate short stories. There, she focus on revealing the mysteries of human desire and human behavior. Here, the focus is on three stories: Anna becoming a diver, Dexter Styles’ rise and fall as a mobster, and Eddie Kerrigan’s disappearance.

Anna’s story of becoming a diver is only moderately interesting. Her motivation to become a diver is thinly developed. When she first sees divers at the Navy Yard, “she watched, spellbound . . . There was something primally familiar about the diving suit—as if from a dream or a myth.” (p 62) Later she tells us, “It was clear to her now she had always wanted to be a diver, to walk on the bottom of the sea.” (p 63) In effect, the author simply tells us that Anna was motivated to become a diver rather than showing it develop from elements in her background.

Once Anna’s desire is in motion, the historical details that the author provides in her depiction of diving, the diving suits, the training, and the experience of diving, were excellent. The men who either help or hinder Anna in her quest were well drawn and credible. The onerous, prevailing attitude that women couldn’t handle physically demanding work came through loud and clear.

Why Does Anna Want to Be a Diver?

The essential difficulty I had with Anna’s portion of the novel was Anna. She was realistic but unexciting. In a way, this dovetails with and reinforces the depiction of the then-prevalent attitudes toward women. Anna has grown up in a world that denies her anything more than the role of child-bearer and mother. As a result, her personality has been suppressed. Those constraining societal attitudes become clear later in the novel, when Anna realizes what it would mean to be pregnant and unmarried: how society and even family would reject her, how she would be “ruined” and have to “go away”, how she would likely end up in a convent because she hasn’t enough money. Clearly, this was not a time favorable to women. A good point.

The story of Dexter Styles is less interesting. We do get some of his background, notably how his father warned him to stay away from the gangsters, who would “own” him. Although he kowtows to the demands of his wealthy father-in-law, he nevertheless fails to obey his more powerful master, the mob boss Q, and as a result is executed. A standard mob story. His dalliance with Anna was diverting but again not convincing.

What Happened to Eddie Kerrigan?

The most engaging mystery of the novel is: why did Anna’s father leave the family? This happens early in the novel. There are intimations that something he did, after taking a job for Dexter Styles, went wrong. But that is all we learn at that point. Then, surprisingly, mid-novel chapters present him as freely choosing to ship out as a merchant marine sailor. Finally around page 350 we learn that he had to leave New York after surviving being dumped in the ocean to drown.

But exactly what Eddie did to be deep-sixed by the mob we never learn, which struck me as odd. We get Eddie’s POV describing his sailing career beginning on page 247, and it would have been natural to learn what happened with the mob then. Yes, the overall novel requires that Anna remain ignorant of what happened, but the author could have enlightened the reader while still keeping Anna in ignorance. Not doing so merely to sustain the tension of mystery seems like literary cheating.

Excellent Historical Detail

Despite its three main strands and various other subplots and characters, the novel’s best attribute is that it is a historical novel. Egan does a good job of portraying life in NYC during World War II, the activity of the navy shipyard, the club scene in Manhattan, the colloquialisms of the era, and most notably society’s attitudes toward women. Her research shines in the many details that enter her descriptions; her mastery of so many minor details is astonishing. Frequently  this multitude of minor details slows the pace of the novel.

Overall, Manhattan Beach is well written but slow, and suffers from an underwhelming plot and characters. For me, it’s 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

In Sing You Home Picoult dramatizes a conflict between two divorced individuals over the disposition of three embryos that they had frozen while attempting to get pregnant.  She heightens the drama by having the divorced wife, Zoe, remarry, but to a woman. Zoe then wants to use the frozen embryos to allow her new wife, Vanessa, to bear a child for them.

Meanwhile, her former husband, Max, initially became lost in alcohol after the divorce, but was rescued from his descent by the intervention of Pastor Clive of the Eternal Glory Church. The pastor, along with Max’s brother Reid, helped him replace his dependence on alcohol with a dependence on born again Christianity. It is when Zoe asks Max for permission to use the frozen embryos that the novel’s central conflict begins. Heavily influenced by his evangelical church, Max decides gay marriage is immoral and that he can’t abet a child being raised by lesbians. He decides that he wants to give the embryos to Reid and his wife, Liddy, so that they can have a child and raise it in a traditional Christian family.

Gay Rights Versus Religious Intolerance

At the time this novel was written, it was perhaps more topical, since gay marriage was not the law of the land, and various traditional religions were adamantly opposed to it. Today this situation has changed, at least for the moment (who knows what the twisted minds on the Supreme Court will come up with in the future). Nevertheless, the religious right has become even more emboldened in their  demented righteousness. Consequently, calling out the ignorant bias of evangelicals like Pastor Clive, as this novel does, continues to be important. (Balancing the evangelical church with the inclusion of a more accepting Christian congregation would have been good, but would have muddled the issue as well.)

Character Flaws

Overall, this novel didn’t grip me the way some of the others by Picoult have. For me, the characters were problematic. Zoe was clearly good, and sympathetic, but I had trouble understanding how she could have been in a heterosexual relationship for at least nine years, and then immediately become a lesbian just because she meets a woman she can talk to. Picoult did a good job of showing how Zoe developed her love and desire for Vanessa, but I still wasn’t convinced it could be so easy.  For her part, Vanessa seems like a minor character in the drama, even though roughly a third of the novel comes through her point of view. Max also voices a third of the novel, and his weakness for alcohol, his boyish escapism with surfing, his passive conversion by Pastor Clive and his seduction of his brother’s wife are anything but admirable qualities.

The most interesting aspect of the novel was its depiction of the grueling requirements of in vitro fertilization. The medical procedures, including regular injections for Zoe, were brutal, and the financial cost was overwhelming. Max and Zoe basically gave up everything in order to try and have a child. It was the kind of all-consuming commitment that explains how Max and Zoe could become so emotionally ravaged by their failure that they were unable to stay together.

Craft Matters

As usual, Picoult’s writing is very good. Her descriptions of people, places and things are clear and often exceptionally detailed. Her similes are always appropriate, fit the voice of the character who is recounting them, and aren’t excessively abundant.

Plausibility and a Happy Ending

As noted above, the characters were not overly sympathetic, but more importantly they were realistic. Max, in particular, seemed most interesting because he went through several changes. On the downside, his seduction of Liddy seemed an unlikely twist. Moreover, the idea at the end that he becomes a fixture in Samantha’s life also seems odd. Would Max, with his inherently weak character, be capable of this kind of open sharing? And wouldn’t Vanessa always see him as a threat? This is likely the reason for Picoult creating his new connection with Liddy: to add stability to the group.

Perhaps this amalgam of relationships is plausible, and Picoult believes that human psyches are more flexible than people (and society in general) assume. But it seems forced. What it ultimately produces is a happy ending, but I can’t help thinking that a less happy ending would have been both more realistic and more impactful.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

Like its predecessor, Olive Again is a book of short stories involving a number of the denizens of Crosby, a village on the coast of Maine.  Central among these characters is Olive Kitteridge. Many of the stories are told from Olive’s point of view; in most others she is a secondary character. In all the stories the author reaches into the souls of her characters and shows them experiencing moments of enlightenment.

The Burden of the Mystery

“Helped” is one of the stories without Olive’s presence that left a strong impression. Suzanne Larkin, middle-aged, comes to Crosby after her 83 year-old father dies when his house burns down. She meets with Bernie, the family attorney, to discuss handling the estate and other matters. She is troubled because she’s had an affair. She fears that if she confesses it to her husband their marriage will end. As she and Bernie talk, they delve into personal matters, including the death of his parents in the Holocaust. They end up discussing God. Bernie tells her, “It’s more an understanding—I‘ve had it all of my life—that there is something much larger than we are.” Suzanne responds that she used to have a feeling like that, but she’s lost it. Bernie assures her it will return, and she tells him that she’s decided that it is their duty “to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

Suzanne and Bernie live very different lives. Nevertheless, in sharing their deepest feelings, they validate them. As they say, their conception of God is something they’ve not shared, really, with anyone else. But having shared it between themselves they are both, at the end of the story, renewed. And for Suzanne, this gives her the strength to refrain from confessing her affair.

On Aging

The strongest impression this book left me with was that it is one that should be read by people who are aging. A number of the characters in the stories are elderly, and experience what might be called the “indignities” of old age. Olive is center stage here. First, her husband Jack dies unexpectedly. Later, her own body begins to fail, and she has a heart attack. Returning home, she is assisted by aides for a time, but eventually their tours are up. After that she suffers from so much loneliness that she finally agrees to move to the Maple Tree Apartments. An assisted living facility, the MTAs are affiliated with a memory care facility. Olive dreads the thought of deteriorating mentally, as she sees people do. She fears being sent, as they say, “over the bridge.”

Although she isn’t, in this collection, sent “over the bridge”, Olive experiences other problems. She has a great deal of trouble making friends at the MTAs. Her unhappy loneliness remains until at last another new resident arrives, Isabelle, and they become friends. But her relief is spoiled when she begins to lose control of her bowels, and is forced to buy Depends.

Most distinctive about Olive, Again is that all the “indignities” of aging are presented without fanfare or drama. The deaths of characters, including her husband Jack, essentially occur offstage; indeed, Jack simply dies in his sleep. The effect of this approach is to convey these changes as the natural result of the passage of time. Thus, while Olive isn’t happy about needing Depends, she accepts it as part of the natural course of life.

Accepting Her Mortality

And so Olive comes to terms with her mortality, though haltingly and with resistance at first: “Whenever she entered and left the Maple Tree Apartments, Olive looked—naturally—at the whole thing with different eyes. The people seemed so old. Godfrey, there were men shuffling along, and women all bent over. People with walkers that had little seats in them. Well, this was to be her future. But in truth, it did not feel real to her.” (p 262)

Later, she changes. And at the very end, as she takes delight in the appearance of a new bud on her rosebush, she thinks, “And then she sat back and thought about her death, and the sense of wonder and trepidation returned to her. It would come.  “Yup, yup,” she said. And for many more minutes she sat there, not even really knowing what she thought.” (p 289)

Much more could be said about this wondrous novel, including the way in which so many characters live in loneliness. As such, it is reminiscent of another great work of loneliness, Winesburg, Ohio. Hopefully I will have time to come back and focus on both in the future.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

This novel was an enjoyable page turner, even if in the end it turns out to be much ado about nothing. The novel takes some time to get going. The initial section of about 35 pages centers on Edwin in 1912. By his own admission, he has no idea about what to do with his life. This makes him a passive and thus uninteresting character. He does, however, experience the “anomaly”—a.k.a. the corruption of the timeline—the investigation of which forms the plot of the novel.

The Matrix Redux

While the novel is science fiction, it also has feet firmly planted in the mystery genre. It is essentially an investigation of the anomaly and whether it confirms the simulation hypothesis—the idea that all the characters are living in a simulation. This conceit differs from that in The Matrix in that there, when the characters entered the digitized realm called the matrix, they knew it was a digital construction, and that their real physical world was elsewhere. Here, the characters apparently live in the simulation and never leave it. Whether or not they themselves are simulations is a question that is never asked, but the novel seems to assume they aren’t.

The novel’s central character is Gaspery, a rather unaccomplished individual in a nowhere job. Bored, he  begs his way into becoming a time traveler for the Time Institute. It is his appearance at different moments in the past, while investigating the anomaly, that ties the novel together.

As Gaspery trains to become a time traveler, he is admonished repeatedly not to do anything during his travels that will alter the timeline. Thus, although he knows that Olive is to die three days after they meet, he must do nothing to change her fate. This admonition creates a moral dilemma for him. He resolves his dilemma rather easily, however, by violating this Prime Directive (to use the Star Trek name for it) and warning Olive.

The Triple Timeline Corruption

The climax of Gaspery’s investigation comes when he decides that he himself is the cause of the anomaly because he inadvertently interviews himself in the Oklahoma City airship terminal in 2195. His dual presence apparently can’t be handled by the simulation software, which also somehow detects him in the forest in Caiette in 1912, resulting in a timeline corruption.

This “triple timeline corruption” may actually be an original contribution of the author to the stock of Sci-fi tropes. There were various Star Trek episodes where multiple Captain Kirks appeared, often in good and evil pairs. However, while those dramas were invariably resolved through physical and psychological struggles, the corruption in this novel creates no violence. Like Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, this novel is characterized by a seemingly abnormal but pleasing peace.

In the end, the story peters out when Gaspery says that the correct response to the news that they’re living in a simulation is “So what.” And the very last paragraph in the novel exemplifies this attitude by portraying Gaspery as having become a still point. To me, a better ending would have had him ask the obvious question of who or what is creating the simulation, and maybe the question of whether they themselves are simulations. But perhaps the author, like Gaspery, has “already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further.” (p255)

Character Development

When I first checked Goodreads for this novel. I found this as the descriptor: “A novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.” My immediate reaction was: No, the idea that it provides something as grand as “a story of humanity across centuries and space” is one of the most exaggerated claims I’ve ever read.

I think my principal objection to the foregoing claim is that a story that purports to represent humanity needs to have meaningful human characters. The characters in this novel are all pretty flat. We learn almost nothing about Gaspery and his sister other than that they grew up in the Night City, their mother talked about the simulation hypothesis, Gaspery is divorced and Zoey has nothing going on in her life. What is good about this novel is the Sci-fi story and the way it is told. The characters merely play their part.

Craft Matters

In terms of structure, the novel is deftly put together so that the reader can follow along as it moves from century to century. Its confusion quotient is low.

The writing is spare, clean, and clear, which befits science fiction. Not often did it strike me as literary, but moments of lyrical description and thoughtful reflection appear periodically. Here is a passage that combines both: “I watched the pale streets slipping past, the old stone buildings with missing pieces of masonry and the ramshackle illegal dwellings pressed close against them—the influence of the Night City seeping in, a whiff of disorder that I found invigorating—and I had a strange, wild notion that she might be dead. She worked too much and drank too much. In that first year after our mother died, my thoughts often veered toward disaster.” (p139)

This novel offers us a puzzle of sorts, pulling the reader in as a participant in figuring out what is going on. With its clean and occasionally literary language and its effective recasting of Sci-fi tropes, Sea of Tranquility provides hours of enjoyment.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

In the Marriage Portrait Maggie O’Farrell brings to life the highest reaches of society in 16^th century Florence and Ferrara, Italy. In literary technicolor the author introduces us to the power and glory of the Medici and Este dynasties. In particular, we see how those two families treated women and children.

In the case of women, Cosimo di Medici treated his wife with great respect, and even left her in charge when he had to be away. Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, on the other hand, treats Lucrezia’s offers of advice or assistance as not only unwanted but insulting, and not to be tolerated. Similarly, in the Medici household all children, girls as well as boys, are given an education, while in Ferrara the daughters are left unschooled.

Much of what the novel reveals highlights the gross mis-treatment of women in that era. Particularly in Ferrara, noble women are treated as tools for creating political alliances between dukedoms via marriage. In this novel, Lucrezia’s sole and critical role is to produce a male heir for her husband Alfonso. Indeed, her life depends on it. Although she clearly has intellectual and artistic gifts, Alfonso is uninterested in them. He even orders the removal of her art supplies when told that they are hindering her ability to conceive.

Repression as Social Policy

Beyond relating the misogynistic treatment of noble women, the novel also portrays the two-faced nature of Duke Alfonso. Initially the Duke appears kind and solicitous toward Lucrezia. Eventually, however, he is revealed as willing to do anything, including commit murder, to maintain his grip on power. Alfonso’s repressions may well reflect the real world threats that he faces. Nevertheless, he never expresses any qualms or regrets for his brutality, making clear that he is morally corrupt.

Lucrezia is surprised by her husband’s barbarous violence. She can scarcely believe it when he has his sister’s lover Contrari strangled to death in front of her. But she learns. She is also aware of how powerless she is to change her husband’s mind. When she tries to get him to enjoy a dramatic thunderstorm he instead chastises her for getting wet. At this point, early in their relationship, she fears being sent back to Florence by Alfonso, and so she placates her husband: “With a small sigh, she reached out a cold hand and ventures to take one of his. This is what is required: this is the only exit from this scene.” (215) Later, after she realizes Alfonso’s essential heartlessness, she writes to her mother, begging to come home, but is told to save herself by getting pregnant.

Can A Noble Woman Learn to Act?

This novel tells a tale in which the protagonist, Lucrezia, is largely an observer. Young and essentially helpless, she is the recipient-victim of decisions made by others. A noble daughter, she wasn’t trained to fight as her brothers were, and knows nothing of treachery or manipulation. She doesn’t expect to act for herself, and toward the end resigns herself to the death that she sees coming. Because of this passivity, the novel generates only modest tension, even though the threat of poisoning appears at the outset. Tension finally grows over the last forty or so pages when Jacopo forces her to recognize—if not accept—the need to save herself. After that point, the reader becomes galvanized by the question of whether this heretofore helpless child will do so.

The Gold Standard in Literary Fiction

Story aside, The Marriage Portrait is another literary tour-de force by O’Farrell. Indeed, her sentence-level writing, with its rich sensory detail, is stunning. Her depiction of highborn Lucrezia, intelligent and artistic, proud and independent, is equally so. As Lucrezia learns to disguise her thoughts and feelings from her dangerous husband, the author’s skill reveals her inner life. Although the entire novel  could be used as an example of her literary chops, I  will offer only the follow excerpt. Here, Lucretia awakes, poisoned:

“Her head pulses with pain, as if her jaw is hinged too tightly to her skull. The muscles in her neck have snarled themselves into bright, fierce knots that press at the passages of blood through her head. She can feel the bone sockets of her eyes, the roots of her back teeth, the cavities of her nose—they seem to be inscribed on the darkness in glaring ink; they seem to sing with a high-pitched agony. . .

“Her mind is sheer and startled. Whatever is in her will come out. She crouches on all fours, like an animal, coughing and vomiting until her stomach is hollow, until she is spitting blood and bile from a sore scalded mouth. . .

“Moments later, she starts to shake. It begins at her feet, a tremble that seizes her ankles then her legs, causing the blankets to be disturbed, releasing pockets of warm air making her whimper and curl into herself. Then it is as if the malady has taken her by the scruff of her neck. It is angry with her—this much is clear. It is furious. She has done something terrible and unforgivable to it, something that has riled it to a towering temper. It rattles her back and forth in its grasp, it shakes her teeth in their gums, it makes her arms and legs flail and thrash. The bedclothes are tossed to the floor, her hands are knotted into themselves, wrists turned back, the muscles in her legs convulse and solidify. She is unrecognizable to herself; she is a creature entirely at the mercy of a stronger power, a flea on the back of a rabid beast, a plucked quince in a pot of bubbling water. . .” (p92-93)

I understand if some readers feel that passages like this make the novel over-written. Contemporary society has accelerated the satisfaction of our desires to such a point that, like addicts, we crave quick-hitting, dopamine-inducing word-bites. To them I would say: slow down. O’Farrell is fine wine, not to be gulped, but relished. Your soul will thank you.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

I enjoyed this novel about a young woman who abandons her dead end job as a supermarket clerk. In its place she agrees to become the caretaker for a wealthy former friend’s two stepchildren. In a plot twist that comes early, the two children are revealed to spontaneously catching fire when upset.

Lillian, the novel’s protagonist, comes from a poor fatherless family in Tennessee. Ambitious and smart, she earns a scholarship to Iron Mountain, a private prep school for girls. There she rooms with Madison, a rich girl who dislikes other rich girls but likes Lillian. Madison wants to be powerful and, believing that Lillian also wants power, befriends her. What Lillian really wants is to escape from poverty, but Madison always sees everything from her own perspective.

Eventually, Madison is caught with cocaine and faces being expelled from Iron Mountain. Her father believes that expulsion will ruin her life. He believes that her proper destiny is to graduate from Iron Mountain, graduate from Vanderbilt, and marry a university president. To keep this possibility alive, he pays Lillian’s mother ten thousand dollars to have Lillian say the cocaine was hers. Lillian complies, is expelled, returns to public school and becomes mired in her enervating life. Then, ten years after high school, Madison, now married to U.S. Senator, calls with her offer.

Abundant and Effective Humor

Every page of Nothing to See Here is light and humorous. For example, Lillian interiorizes: “I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.” (p5) When she spends her first night at Madison’s mansion, we read: “She led me to a room that looked like there should be an exiled princess in the bed. Every single piece of furniture seemed like it weighed a thousand pounds. . . . I’d lived in apartments that were one-third the size of this single room.” (p34)

One the novel’s set-up is complete, and Lillian is ensconced with her charges in the mansion’s guest house, the plot proceeds smoothly and predictably. Although having children who can catch on fire provides the novel with a unique lever for creating drama, the author wisely resorts to it sparingly. Of greater interest is the gradual development of trust on the part of the step children, and love for them on the part of Lillian.

A Kind Heart , A Happy Ending

This story has a kind heart. Indeed, there is really no antagonist in the novel. Madison is rather selfish in her desire to occupy a place beside power, but she is also considerate of Lillian and her step children, and competent as an aide to her senator-husband. Even the senator, who is majorly  distressed when his youngest son Timothy catches on fire, is a softie. He proposes to send all three kids far away to school, he quickly backs off when faced with Madison’s opposition.

If I have any quibble about his novel, it is that the lack of a real antagonist along with the absence of anything more dramatic than an silly family fight renders this novel lightweight.  As such, it lacks much in the way of a moral of emotion punch. Nevertheless, it was a quick, easy, and enjoyable read.