Last week I posted the first half of a two-part review of my July reading. As I mentioned at that time, it seemed all I did in July was read, although in retrospect I can say that mostly I read and I slept. Not a month marked by ambition in any sense. Or was it? My body may have been fighting its own battles, but my mind was at least grasping at something, anything.
First, I shall repeat the list.
68. Thomas Seyfried, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease.
69.Eric Kossoff, Ketogenci Diets: Treatment for Epilepsy and Other Disordors.
70. Lee A Reich, Uncommon Fruits Worth of Attention.
71. Leofranc Halford-Stevens, A Short History of Time.
72. Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady.
73. Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.
74. Robert A. Weinberg, One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins.
75. C. S. Wilkins, Bandera Bound.
76. James Hillman, Healing Fiction.
77. Herbert M. Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Fasting.
78. Peggy Knickerbocker, Love Later On
79. Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction.
80. KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning.
81. Neil McKinney, Naturopathic Oncology.
82. Joanne Fluke, A Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.
83. Scott Zesch, The Captured.
84. Herman Pontzer, Burn.
85. Toni Dwiggins, Quicksilver.
86. Karin Slaughter, False Witness.
87. Kristen Hannah, Firefly Lane.
88. Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap.
89. Amy Greene, Long Man.
In this post, I am discussing the groupings of books coded red (mysteries and suspense), purple (other literature),and turquoise (uncategorized, memoir, or "hell I don't know what to call this but I loved it").
First up: mysteries and suspense.
First was Margery Allingham's Look to the Lady. I had not read Allingham in many years, but as mentioned last month, I had recently found myself interested in looking back to the great mid-twentieth century grand-dames of mystery, and I wondered how my memories of youthful perceptions would mesh with my current experience. I found the novel to be a grand romp: interesting, fun, light-hearted, and at times surprising. The story is almost more quest than mystery, with many interesting and overlapping themes — callow young lordling about to come of age; a criminal gang out to steal a priceless medieval chalice; hints of mysticism and ancient rites — but all is tied together quite satisfactorily in the end. I tend to think Albert Campion has aged well, but I suspect this may be because he is witty and charming, reminding me perhaps of Nick Charles. This is perhaps more a mark of the time; both Campion and Charles hail from one particular style prevalent in the 1930s when criminals were deviously psychological and the detectives were charmers who relied on a wealth of informants. Also of its period is the strong emphasis on the mystical, and, perhaps more difficult for modern reader, the disconcerting class differences. I personally think these are linked, and it is easy for this reader, with the advantage of history on her side, to look back to the changes in the British class system that were already well underway, if not yet fully recognized and accepted, at the time this novel was written. Perhaps what actually draws me in is Allingham's ability to tell a story without taking herself too seriously. She is a master storyteller, one whom I feel is perhaps under-appreciated, and I continue to enjoy her novels.
The next couple of mysteries were not such successes. I read Joanna Fluke's Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder simply because I have on occasion enjoyed the Hallmark series based on these books and found them a lighthearted mindless escape. Initially the characters appeared more complex than they do in the series, appearing less saccharine, and I was encouraged, but that perception rapidly changed. I was expecting a light-hearted, fluffy read, and I got that, but I also felt like I was getting a load of sanctimonious crap about how women should and should not behave, look, think, etc. In the novel, as opposed to the series, thank goodness, the brother-in-law cop goes out of his way to encourage his sister-in-law, the local cookie baker, to do his work for him while he reaps all the credit. In what world could this even begin to be acceptable? I found all of this, the belittling of the slightly overweight but well-meaning, unmarried, and obviously therefore a failure, baker, who's talents and kindness were taken advantage of, if not outright used, by all of the characters and never given credit for her accomplishments, difficult to swallow. I suppose none of this was as overt as I make it out to be, but still, not a role model for women and not the kind of novel I want to read.
I suppose I felt the same way about Toni Dwiggins's novel, Quicksilver. I read the book because I found the premise interesting: a pair of forensic geologists solving mysteries through scientific knowledge. However, although I thoroughly enjoyed the geology, I found the plot to be over simplistic and the actions of the main characters to be improbable. I just couldn't believe that people who could be so smart about their science, could also be so utterly clueless, and goodness knows I've known a few clueless geniuses in my time. The female lead was even worse than the mail scientist and all of the men in the story treated her in a rather patronizing way. Given the idiocy of her behavior, and the simplistic clues left her by the others, which she still missed, this may have been partially deserved. The scientific side of this book was highly detailed and well done, but not particularly well integrated with the story. This is the first of a series, and perhaps the author has managed to integrate the characters and the science more fully, and interestingly, in future volumes, but at this point I am not certain I am inclined to find out.
Despite the fact that it is not light and entertaining, I thoroughly enjoyed Karin Slaughter's new novel False Witness. I preordered the book upon finishing the last novel in July and dove in to it as soon as it arrived. Once again, abuse against women is a central focus of this story. But don't let that idea lead you think that this novel is so narrowly conceived. The novel opens with our main protagonist, Leigh, a woman who appears to have it all: a legal career at a blue-chip firm, a daughter she adores, an ex-husband with whom she is able to maintain a close relationship. She is the woman everyone envies. Or is she? Slaughter deftly upends the narrative as Leigh is thrown into a case that reveals a deeply troubled childhood which she thought she had escaped. We watch Leigh as her neatly compartmented life crumbles, as she reconciles with her sister, Callie, who never managed to escape their past, and as she fights for those she loves and prays that the life she has built does not come crumbling down around her. Slaughter captures the relationship between the sisters well, both in its sisterly normalcy as well as its dysfunction. All of the characters are complex and multi-faceted, even the sociopathic serial rapist Leigh is called to defend. This is a terrifying and deeply disturbing novel, but it is also gripping and difficult to put down. Slaughter pulls no punches on how abuse and violence rips apart the fabric of childhood, the fragile psychology of the surviving adult, or even an entire culture built on denial. But Slaughter is also a master of plot, and she keeps the reader on edge.
False Witness is a hard-driving and compelling novel, but there is a lot of food for thought here: violence against women; drug culture and the way the war on drugs has fractured society; regret over lost relationships and the stupid mistakes people make without ever meaning to do so. The novel is set currently. The Covid-19 shutdown has interrupted the court system. Characters are masked. Although Slaughter does not slap us in the face with this, there is a sad and shocking sense of the toll the pandemic shutdown has taken on those segments of society where the struggle for survival is marginal at the best of times. In fact, I think this book is worth reading again as it is compelling, entertaining (if one can tolerate the darker side of life) and thought-provoking.
Like Karin Slaughter, Ann Cleeves' mysteries are character based, but there all similarities end. The Crow Trap is the first of Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series and it is an interesting, if a bit odd, introduction to the character. Stanhope does not really appear until half way through the story, and although the reader gets a good introduction to the detective's unorthodox ways, she does not always come off as particularly in control of the investigation here. I admit this may be a feint.
The story takes place at the site of a proposed quarry where three scientists, all women, have been called in to prepare an environmental impact statement. The initial portion of the nivel goes over the same events from the perspective of each of the women. These events begin with the suicide of a neighbor, Bella, shortly before the women arrive, to the murder of Grace, one of the three scientists. Cleeves successfully fleshes out the background to the mystery from the three different perspectives of the women, Rachel, Anne, and Grace, allowing us to get to understand the characters from their own individual points of view. DI Stanhope, when she finally entered the story, appears to be a highly unusual and intelligent detective. Even as I write this, I can see more clearly, how Stanhope's actions, and manipulation of the characters, deviously sets the stage for the murderer to be revealed. I still think this is an odd introduction to a set of serial mysteries, but a devious and well thought out one. I must also admit that I have never watched the PBS mini-series based on these novels, and although I may well do so, it will wait until after I have more fully caught up with the reading.
Next up, those pesky turquoise books that I don't specifically know how to categorize although I suspect I am placing them both in the memoir category. First up, Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks, Wow is an essay in book form. It focuses on the development of gratitude, humility and a sense of wonder (the three essential prayers). This book was given to me when I started chemotherapy and although I wanted to read it immediately, somehow it disappeared into the stack and re-appeared later on, just when I was ready to read it as it happened. I have long been aware of this book, and even longer been of the opinion that all prayers fall into these same categories, although we are often more cognizant of praying when we are asking for help. But that is not the point of this book. Lamott's book is more of a memoir with a spiritual bent, and a reminder of what we all already know but too easily put aside and forget, that not only do we need help in this world, but that we also need to hold onto a sense of wonder, something we all to often suppress as we move from childhood into adulthood, and something that we cannot become fully developed as humans without embracing. I love Lamott's books, primarily because they explore things we all already know but are inclined to shove aside. In short they are books about things we should not need to read about in books. And that, precisely, is the point.
Peggy Knickerbocker's Love Later On is another memoir, this one about falling in love later in life. Knickerbocker is a character, and she appears to be comfortable with writing about who she is, or was, and the process of allowing herself to upend an otherwise comfortable life to find something unsettling but perhaps more rewarding. Knickerbocker's life is not my life. There is a lot of name dropping and discussion of San Francisco food culture, which does not bother me because I am food-obsessed anyway, even though I am not at all a part of that world. This was a light, refreshing book that made me smile.
The last three books, coded purple for other literature have nothing in common except the fact that they are fiction and I enjoyed all three albeit to different degrees and in different ways. The first, C. S. Wilkins Bandera Bound, is a romance, the second in a trilogy revolving around the Buchanan family in Bandera Texas. I loved this book. It is a light read with a strong story-line and well-developed appealing characters. I admit it is not like most of the books I love, and yet it appeals in a way that moves my heart, and makes me think of home.
The next novel, Kristin Hannah's Firefly Lane is a bit more complicated, as is my reaction to it, although I did end up enjoying it in the end. When I started the novel I had an uneasy feeling I had read it before; then I remembered that I had watched the first few episodes of the Netflix series based on the book before turning it off in frustration. My frustration with the series probably did not help my attitude about the book. And yet, I kept reading. I will admit that I found the characters two-dimensional; they never really changed, never really grew up, and the. story line and dialogue were predictable, manipulative and boring. In short, typical chick-lit, except that Hannah is a better writer than that, and parts of the book was surprisingly well written given the obvious attempts to exploit an emotional response in the reader. I enjoyed the way Hannah captured the atmosphere of growing up in the 70s and 80s in the Pacific Northwest, as it added richness to the story, even though her experience, or the experience of these characters is nothing like my experience of the same period in a different part of the country. I cried, I finished the book. Hannah has stated that this novel is based on a personal storyr, the story of her mother, and as I read my feelings about the book softened. I felt there was something obviously heart-felt on the writer's part, and that this inner struggle contributed to the lapses into poor writing and cliche. In the end, I am wiling to give Hannah that. There is something here that is meaningful, perhaps more meaningful, because I find this novel somewhat at odds with the author's other novels. I accept my complicated response as a good thing, and found this was worth reading.
Last, but far from least, we come to Amy Green's novel Long Man, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It is a historical novel set in rural Tennessee at the time the TVA was erecting dams on the Tennessee River. The writing is lyrical, moody, tense and powerful and Greene captures the sense of place and time beautifully. The story takes place over the course of three days in 1936, in a place that is soon to be flooded. Most of the residents have relocated but a few remain, especially one family, that of Annie Clyde Dodson, her husband James and their three year old daughter, Gracie. All the characters are well developed and we do get into their thoughts, but the portrayal of Annie Clyde is particularly powerful. Or perhaps I am biased, because as I read Annie Clyde's thoughts and her interactions with James, I could hear my maternal grandmother, also a southerner, slightly older than Annie Clyde, from Mississippi rather than Tennessee, of a completely different background. Yet her stubbornness, her sense of history, of place, of belonging, and her inability to suffer the interference of others struck close to home. I understood Annie Clyde in a way I might not have otherwise, and I understood how deeply she loved James, how deeply she felt tied to that particular place, and the terrible threads pulling at the center of who she was.
At times the writing is choppy, and transitions between characters are not always smooth, but how could they be? Part of the power of this book is the very contrast between the beauty of the setting, the rawness of poverty, and the pain and fear and lack of communication that drives so much of the story. That very sense of disruption gets into the skin. The child, Gracie, disappears in a storm, and a search is mounted. Everyone comes out, but the search centers more around the fears of the searchers than any reasonable thought about what might have realistically happened to the child. We are given strong hints about what happened to Gracie early on, and the astute reader will worry that she may not be found in time. But the stories, the recriminations, the fears and loss, poverty and absence of any attempts at understanding will also resonate with the reader. In many ways the search for Gracie is the archetypical search for that which has been lost. Gracie will be found, but her life will never be the same. Annie Clyde and James will move on as well, but that which is lost is not so easily replaced.