Reviews

If you enjoy learning about history and foreign places through your fiction reading, then A Long Petal of the Sea by Chilean author Isabel Allende, will have you riveted. This is a family saga that spans seven decades and is set against the world stage. The action begins in Barcelona in the late 1930s, as Spain is torn apart by General Franco and his fascist forces as they attempt to overthrow the government. The middle class Dalmas family, who are on the side of the Spanish Republic, will be forever changed by this civil war. Son Victor, a former medical school student who has been treating the injured soldiers, must flee Spain along with Roser, the pregnant fiancee of his brother who stays behind to fight. Allende does a masterful job of detailing the plight of the refugees, as they risk violence, disease, and starvation to seek safety.

Eventually, Victor and Roser will arrive in Chile, deemed "a long petal of the sea" by native poet Pablo Neruda. They will forge new lives in this strange country on the other side of the world, and live safely until political upheaval and violence will arrive many years later in Chile...this time in the figure of General Pinochet and his military coup.

Allende is a very gifted storyteller, and she is able to weave many historical facts about people and events, without ever making the novel boring or pedantic.

No doubt there were high expectations for Yaa Gyasi's followup novel after her critically acclaimed debut, Homegoing. Transcendent Kingdom should prove that her literary stardom is in no danger of fading. But fans of her first novel, a sweeping historical saga, may be surprised by the quiet, domestic family drama portrayed here. This novel follows the story of Gifty, (a prophetically fitting name for her brilliant mind), a Stanford medical researcher studying addiction in lab mice. We also get to know Gifty as a young child of Ghanaian immigrants, growing up in practically the only Black family in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father, disenchanted with life in America, has returned to Ghana, essentially deserting Gifty, her hardworking mother, and her beloved older brother, Nana. It is Nana's own set of gifts, on athletic fields and courts, that will eventually lead to his destruction...an opioid addiction after being prescribed OxyContin at the age of 15 for a basketball injury. After his eventual death from a heroin overdose (not a spoiler), Gifty's seemingly indefatigable mother succumbs to a depression that will change her forever. 

Raised as an Evangelical Christian, Gifty must make sense of a God who allows such tragedy to happen. She abandons the religion of her childhood, searching instead for answers in the mystery of the human brain. This theme of faith versus science is just one of the Topics with a capital T that Gyasi  so masterfully explores in this novel...such as Family, Mental Illness, Addiction, Spirituality, Racism. This is indeed a heavy book, but as Gifty grapples with the trauma both she and her mother must endure, there is incredible beauty in the truths that she uncovers. Not to mention the exquisite writing that graces every page. Highly recommended.

 Shiner is an luminous debut novel, set in the truly "off the grid" mountains of West Virginia, where coal mining jobs are disappearing and locals now turn more often to opioids than moonshine to dull their pain. At its heart, this is a story of the power of female relationships, both mother/daughter and friendships, and how these connections help the characters survive the abject poverty and despair of their lives.

The central character is Wren, a young teen, living in a ramshackle cabin with no indoor plumbing and a shed full of snakes. She is the daughter of Ruby, her beloved but downtrodden mother, and Briar Bird, her serpent-handling preacher father. Local legend has it that Briar survived a lightening strike, and awoke from this accident with mystical religious powers. He is madly in love with his wife and tolerates his daughter, but his paranoia of the outside traps them in a life of almost total seclusion.

The true love of Ruby's life, however, is not her husband but her best friend from childhood, Ivy. Despite her own fervent desire to flee the rural mountains for a new future in town, Ivy refuses to leave behind Ruby once she marries Briar. Instead, she finds herself in an equally miserable marriage to a drug addict, with more sons than she can properly care for or afford. When Briar "miraculously" heals Ivy after she accidentally falls into an open fire, a series of even more tragic events will alter the lives of both families.

The beginning and end of the story is told through Wren's voice, as she experiences both devastating loss and the sweetness of first romantic love. Other sections of the novel are told through Ruby, Ivy, and Flynn, a former friend of Wren's parents who is a "Shiner", an illegal moonshine producer and eventual savior for Wren. It is an interesting narrative choice, but I don't think it adds to the novel's strength.

Author Amy Jo Burns's descriptions of the mountain community, its natural beauty and strong inhabitants, are wonderfully evocative. I've read many other books set in Appalachia, but none as memorable or atmospheric as Shiner. The author grew up on the edges of this world, and the authenticity of the world she creates, full of beauty and ugliness, shines through on these pages.

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, carries on  the tradition of the classic Gothic horror novel, complete with the moldering mansion, hostile caretakers, and the naive outsider who must confront the unknown terror inside.  The heroine in this tale is Noemi Taobada, a beautiful, smart, but spoiled debutante, who must leave glamorous 1950's Mexico City for the remote countryside, where her recently married cousin has been posting strange letters pleading for help from her family. When Noemi arrives at High Point, the dilapidated estate owned by the menacing English family of her cousin's husband, she encounters enemies both human and possibly otherworldly. This highly atmospheric novel starts off slowly, and takes a turn for the seriously bizarre about halfway through. But fans of novels such as Rebecca and The Little Stranger should enjoy this creepy addition to the Gothic genre, made all the more interesting with a Latin American twist.

Brit Bennet's second novel, The Vanishing Half, is worthy of all the pre-publication buzz it was receiving. The writing is beautiful, and the story is refreshingly unpredictable. Desiree and Stella Vignes are twins born in Jim Crow- era Louisiana, identical in appearance only. They live in the town of Mallard, really more a settlement of light skinned African Americans, where the residents look down at Blacks with darker skin. Yet, the girls' own father is brutally murdered by a gang of white men, a crime they in part witness as young children. Longing to escape her claustrophobic hometown, bold and impetuous Desiree convinces quiet, studious Stella to run away to New Orleans with her. From here, their lives will take radically different paths. One sister decides to secretly "pass" for white, marrying into wealth and privilege, while the other returns to her mother's home after escaping an abusive marriage. They both carry the burden of these decisions, passing on their guilt to their daughters. The novel also follows the daughters, brilliant, dark-skinned Jude and spoiled, white Kennedy from childhood into adulthood. While ambitious, I didn't enjoy these story arcs nearly as much as the first part of the novel...but I was still happy to go along on the journey. Britt Bennett is amazingly gifted, writing such eloquent words that you want to keep rereading a passage, while at the same time wanting to race ahead to see what will happen next. 

If the tv shows Desperate Housewives and True Blood could give birth to a book, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires would be it. This horror story by Grady Hendrix also has a good bit of humor and domestic drama thrown in. Definitely not for the squeamish (ironically, I count myself in those numbers)...there is plenty of gore, killer rats, sexual violence. But all of this is balanced by the female friendships of the protagonists, who go from secretly reading true crime classics in their book club, to being immersed in investigating the  terrible deaths of young children from the "wrong side" of their sleepy, genteel Carolina town. Patricia Cambell, a former nurse who is now stay at home mom, knows that the evil all stems from a handsome stranger who has moved into his dead aunt's house down the block, but getting everyone to believe her is another matter. Dark but campy good fun, this book hooked me from the start.

Valentine is a haunting debut novel by Elizabeth Wetmore, set during the Vietnam war era in the unforgiving landscape of the Texas oil country. The story follows the interconnected lives of five female characters after one of them survives a brutal rape. This is a dark read for dark times. Wetmore gives an unflinching look at the rampant racism and misogyny in Odessa, as prevalent as the dust that blankets the bleak countryside. But readers will be touched by the humanity and resilient spirit of these girls and women, especially motherless child Debra Ann and rape victim Glory Ramirez. 

This is a hybrid of a novel, part murder mystery, part family drama. A young police woman, Mickey, becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer, while meantime patrolling a neighborhood in Philadelphia that is all but destroyed by drugs. Sadly, her sister Kacey is one among many that have fallen prey to addiction. While I felt the story may have gotten a bit bogged down in the hunt for the killer, the rest of this novel soars... brutal in its depiction of the impact of the Opioid crisis on families and once vibrant neighborhoods. There is also gentle beauty in the relationships between sisters and mother/child. Not to mention a kicker of a plot twist that I truly didn't see coming. This one is worth the buzz..highly recommend.

Elizabeth Gilbert began writing City of Girls after losing her partner to cancer, and she had remarked in her journal that this book was to be her "medicine". And while sad things do occur in the novel (it is, after all, set mainly during WWll), City of Girls manages to be a joyous and effervescent coming of age tale. Vivian Morris is a spoiled debutante, who at age 19, has managed to flunk out of Vassar, much to the chagrin of her waspish, distant parents. They banish her to live with her Aunt Peg (an off Broadway theater owner, and the black sheep of the family) in New York City...and it is here that Vivian's true education begins. This book is a celebration of female sexuality, and a love letter to NYC. I listened to the excellent audio version of City of Girls, and even though it was over fourteen hours, I was so sad to have it end.