The Magic Kingdom, by Russell Banks*****

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Some writers may fade as their bodies begin to fail them, publishing books that aren’t quite up to their usual standards; Russell Banks, on the other hand, seems to have saved one of his best for last. The Magic Kingdom tells the epic tale of Harley Mann, a boy that spends most of his boyhood on a Shaker plantation in Florida, and then becomes a real estate mogul later in life. My thanks go to Net Galley and Knopf Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Harley’s father dies when he is young, and his mother is forced to take him and his many siblings elsewhere. At first, they land in a religious cult on a plantation that works them like slaves; then Elder John, the head of a Shaker Colony in Florida, rescues them. Harley’s mother and most of his siblings become Shakers and remain with the colony until its eventual demise, but Harley has his doubts.

Nobody can craft character the way that Banks has, and he has melded a fascinating setting, one which begins over a hundred years in the past and follows Mann into his dotage in 1971, and which also incorporates a fair amount of Florida geography and history. Most of the story centers around Harley’s deep and abiding love with Sadie Pratt, a young woman being treated for tuberculosis in a nearby sanitarium. Sadie is not a Shaker, but is friend to them, and visits often when her health permits; Harley, just coming of age, falls for her hard. There’s a good deal of tension between Harley and Elder John, who despite all of his adherence to Shaker beliefs and practices on the surface, is also privately building himself a personal stake that only Harley knows about. By the time the book is over, I find myself wondering whether Harley’s character represents a real historical figure. No indeed; this is just the kind of magic that one finds in Banks’s novels, his capacity to build characters so real that they are nearly corporal.

The little shots off the bow that are fired at the Disney Corporation—by Harley, of course, and his representative after his demise, not by Banks—add a tinge of edgy amusement.

Because I had fallen a bit behind, I procured the audio version of this book from Seattle Bibliocommons, and so I can tell you that the narrator does a fine job, and it’s as easy to get lost in this story listening to it as it is reading it from the text; I did some of each.

This novel is brilliant, and all that love excellent literary fiction or historical fiction should get it and read it.

Poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond****

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“Hungry people want bread. The rich convene a panel of experts. Complexity is the refuge of the powerful.”

Desmond is the author of Evicted, the Pulitzer winning examination of urban homelessness. Desmond himself grew up poor, and his family was forced out of their home when he was a child. These things give him a different and more authoritative perspective than most urban ethnographers.

 My thanks go to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public tomorrow, March 21, 2023.

This book is written for a general readership, and it’s more readable than any other nonfiction work I’ve seen on this subject. His tone is conversational, and his research is impeccable, drawing from a wide variety of sources, well integrated and organized. He addresses the past and present roles of racism, explaining how the overtly discriminatory statutes and policies of the past have morphed into more subtly framed, yet still ubiquitous ones of today. He tells us “why there is so much poverty in America and…how to eliminate it.” He speaks to an audience of middle and upper class readers, warning that we must “…each of us, in our own way, [must become] poverty abolitionists, unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.”

In revealing the roots of American poverty, Desmond is thorough. He discusses the role played by medical costs, and the many workers that still cannot afford health care; the withering of unions, and the way that gig workers and independent contractors have replaced permanent employees; incarceration, and the debilitating effects it has, not only on the person sent away, but on their families for generations to come; the way that government assistance programs have been legally diverted to programs having nothing to do with the poor; the way that poor people are forced to pay more for the same goods and services that the better off pay. He discusses the ways that those living in poverty are cut off from political and economic opportunities. He does these things better than anyone else is doing them right now, and it makes me mad as hell, seeing millions of ruined lives all laid out so starkly.

It is when he approaches solutions that things become a little muddy. There are a few of his suggestions that I genuinely disagree with, but most of them are sound; the problem is that, despite his assurance that all of these changes can be made without much incursion into the lives of the wealthy and powerful, the chances of these people agreeing to implement such changes are somewhere between slim and none. He assures us that he is no Marxist (and that’s the truth, alas,) and that the rich can still have plenty; yet in reality, it’s clear to this reviewer that the kinds of changes that are needed are ones that working people will have to force from the tightly closed fists of the rich. This is where the fifth star falls off of my rating.

Nonetheless, Poverty by America is well worth your time and money, and I recommend it to you.

The Answer Is, by Alex Trebek*****

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I first sought to read this book when its author was still alive. I couldn’t get the galley, and so I obtained a copy of the audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons, by which time Trebek had left us.

It’s a curious thing, the attachment so many of his viewers, myself included, felt toward him. He was a game show host. There are other game shows that have longstanding hosts, but when they die—if they haven’t already—it will register as nothing more than a footnote, a handy answer in Trivial Pursuit. But somehow, with his polished yet soothing demeanor, Trebek found his way into our hearts. Go know.

The audio is read alternately by Trebek and by Ken Jennings, a record-breaking champion that found a measure of fame himself. It works nicely. Here are the things that surprised me. First, Alex’s family lived in a small town in Canada near Ottawa. They struggled financially, and so in order to pursue higher education, Alex had to have a scholarship. He got one, but while enrolled, he got into a power battle with a particularly hated teacher. Alex was expelled. That was a good school, though, in spite of the man Trebek so hated (and about whom he never changed his mind!) In the end, he and his father returned to the school, met with the administrator, and begged. A more sympathetic teacher/mentor agreed to be in charge of young Alex, and he was able to go back and complete his degree.

His career started in radio, working as a disc jockey. He had a love of classical music, and found his way to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Later, he was invited to audition for a game show in the States. So much more money! From there he hosted quite a number of game shows, finally landing his berth in Jeopardy in 1984. Later on he briefly considered trying to move into acting, but he came to know some actors that worked on the same set where Jeopardy was filmed, and he soon found out that they were making the same money as he was or less, but he only worked for a couple hours each day, home in plenty of time to eat dinner with his family and pursue hobbies and whatnot, whereas the actors were keeping grueling schedules. At that point, he decided he liked it just fine right where he was.

In parting, he reminded his listeners that everybody dies, and he is in his nineties. He’s had a good life. It’s time to go. I found this tremendously graceful, because pancreatic cancer has a reputation for being one of the most painful forms of the disease. But maybe that was Trebek’s magic:  always putting the other person at ease.

Highly recommended.

Kunstlers in Paradise*****

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4.5 stars, rounded upward. My thanks go to Net Galley, Henry Holt Publishers, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. This magnificently quirky novel is for sale now.

Julian Kunstler is kind of a mess. He’s a twenty-something New Yorker whose girlfriend has just dumped him. He has no job, and he doesn’t want one; at least, not the low-paying, entry-level variety of jobs for which he is qualified. He takes himself home to his parents who have been paying his way, confident that they will understand his plight and increase his allowance. Instead, he hits a wall. What are your plans for the future, Julian? (None.) What do you plan to do for money? (Get it from you.) Just as a dramatic situation has begun to unfold, they hear from his 93 year old grandmother, Mamie, who lives in Los Angeles. She wants him to come to stay with her awhile; she needs assistance. He’s not so sure that he wants to go, but when his parents insist, he gets on that plane. Once there, the pandemic strikes, and he is trapped in lockdown with his grandmother and her elderly companion, Agatha.

Mamie has always been fond of Julian, and although she does need a driver for doctor appointments and the like, what she wants, more than anything, is to tell her life story. Most of it, anyway. It begins in Austria, as Jewish artists like her father, a successful composer, are being pushed out of public life by the Nazis. (Here, I emit a small moan; I am heartily sick of Holocaust stories. Happily, we don’t stay there long, and this story is worth it.) She goes on to describe the shock she experiences in suddenly being transplanted into a completely different climate, language, and culture, and much of Mamie’s story is droll. And Julian, who never would have sat still for these tales had they come from his parents, listens. At first, he listens impatiently, assisted by Mamie’s generous liquor collection. As time goes on, he begins to listen with greater patience and understanding. And by the end of a year’s time, he listens with genuine interest. His own exile from New York is pale, after all, in comparison to the exile his predecessors endured.

The most dynamic character is, of course, Julian, but through Mamie’s stories, we see how life has already changed her. Agatha is enigmatic until the book is nearly over, and I love what Cline does with her, too.

If I were to change one thing, I would edit down the material about the genius composer friend that emigrates from Austria and is close to the family. This reviewer was a music major once upon a time, and if this part of the narrative is a bit much for me, then probably many others will feel the same. Of course, if the reader comes to the book with a deep interest in Schoenberg, then it may prove quite satisfying.

I am fortunate to have access to both the digital print galley and the audio version, and reader Jesse Vilinsky is hands down the funniest, most skillful voice actor I have ever had the pleasure to hear. Cline’s book is very good, but in the hands of Vilinsky, it is infinitely better. Her interpretations of Mamie and Julian are spot on, hilarious at times, moving at others. The way she voices Agatha is absolute comic genius!

For those that love quirky humor and historical fiction, this book is highly recommended.

Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter***-****

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3.5 stars rounded upwards. My thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Eliza has always been close to her father, a man that runs a fleet of pearling vessels. Her mother is gone, so it’s only Eliza, her father, and her brother. Then one day, the fleet comes back, but her father isn’t with it. He’s gone missing! Did he fall overboard? No, not that anybody saw, but if he isn’t on the ships, it seems the logical explanation.

For a variety of reasons, Eliza doesn’t believe it. She is determined to find him herself; yet to do so, she must go places and do things that are absolutely unacceptable for a woman in Western Australia in 1886. Fortunately—and conveniently—a young German man wants to go these same places, and he accompanies her. From there, things proceed in about the way you might expect.

Other reviewers that came before me say that this story is beautifully written, but terribly sad. I steel myself, but though the story is melancholy in places, I don’t find it depressing. However, I am also less impressed than I anticipated.

The good: I love the setting, and the setting plays a large role in this tale. Australian pearl divers! I have never read anything like this before, and I learn some things. I have never thought before about how the pearls that jewelers sell are collected. Though I would imagine that the process has changed over the past 150 years, it is still interesting to me. Along the same lines, I appreciate the amount of detail in the author’s notes.

On the other hand, the character development is underwhelming. Neither Eliza nor Axel is much different at the ending of the story than at the start. Eliza is a bit wiser, and she has learned things about her father and brother that had been kept from her before, but I can’t call hers a dynamic character; Axel is even less so. The same applies to the quality of the writing. It isn’t bad, but after the buildup, I expected it to be better than this. But the worst thing is a plot twist, right within the climax, that is jaw-droppingly improbable. My mother used to warn me that if I roll my eyes up into my head, they may stay there, so I am grateful to have emerged from this novel with my vision intact. Ohhh, brother.

So for a bit I consider that this is a three star read, but the resolution involving Eliza and Axel is very nicely done, and it wins me back enough to round it up to four. I recommend this book to those interested in the setting.

Waco Rising, by Kevin Cook*****

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Waco is a disaster that will be remembered for a very long time, one of the most egregious uses of excessive force against a group of people in the history of the United States. Kevin Cook’s new book, Waco Rising, is well researched and documented, yet is also written in a way that is accessible to a general audience. My thanks go to Net Galley and Henry Holt for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The religious compound at Waco was headed by the charismatic David Koresh, and Cook takes us there, through the evolution of this sect, various splits and skirmishes among the faithful, and its final structure. Unlike many cults and other religious offshoots, this one was largely middle class, and numerous members brought their assets into the group. But the most distinctive aspect of it, compared to other such oddball organizations, was its fondness for munitions. The compound at Waco was armed to the teeth.

Koresh’s organization drew the attention of the Federal government when a disaffected former member leaked the news that Koresh was practicing polygamy—nobody else, just him—and that many of his wives were children:

“One Davidian remembered [Koresh] ‘approaching Michele in the dead of night.’ The word “approaching” was a euphemism. Describing the encounter later as if he found it amusing, [Koresh] told some of the men that he’d invited Michele, who had recently celebrated her twelfth birthday, into his bed “to get warm.” When he tried to pull down her underwear, she resisted. He kept going, he said, because God told him to.”

Initially, the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) saw this situation as an opportunity to redeem themselves after the debacle at Ruby Ridge. This time, they would get it right, rescue the little girls, and their reputation would be restored. It didn’t shake out that way. The ATF, and eventually the FBI and the armed forces were deployed, surrounding the Davidians from the land and even the air in a siege of fifty-one days. When it was over, the compound was a smoldering ruin, and seventy-six people, including twenty-five children, were dead.

I was initially unsure if I wanted to read this thing. I knew how it was going to end, after all, and did I want the details in my head? However, Cook paces the story expertly, punctuating the first two-thirds with the occasional darkly funny vignette. But the ending is nothing but grim, and that’s because there’s no other honest way to tell it.

The conversational way it’s written makes it a quick read, and there are a lot of excellent quotes. Cook uses material that hasn’t been reported previously, and he does a fine job. I highly recommend Waco Rising to anyone that is interested in this topic.

The Wonders, by Elena Medel***

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Elena Medel is a Spanish award winning poet, and this is her debut novel. My thanks go to Algonquin and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review.

I am initially excited to be asked to read a work of fiction that “brings a half century of the feminist movement to life,” but in most regards, the magic has escaped me. I suspect part of this may be cultural, and/or a matter of translation, because the style is very different from North American and British novels. A single paragraph may last for pages, and there are vast swaths of internal monologue that leave me checking the page count.

And yet, there are some fine moments here. I can’t recall having seen a novel that demonstrates so decisively what happens to a woman that is not given the choice to terminate a pregnancy, or what kind of life the child is likely to have. We begin with Maria, who is completely disinterested in her baby, and almost immediately leaves her with her mother, parenting only by sending money home as she is able. She works the night shift, facing danger and harassment constantly.

Her daughter Alicia is not only disinterested in motherhood, but never develops human attachments. She takes joy in hurting other people, physically and emotionally, from an early age. She makes no true friends, and she doesn’t want any. Her character chills me to the bone.

Although it isn’t an enjoyable read for me, I recommend it to a niche audience, those that have a particular interest in international feminist literature. It will be available to the North American public tomorrow, March 1, 2023.

Unnatural History, by Jonathan Kellerman****

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Unnatural History is the 38th entry in the wildly successful Alex Delaware series. I began reading it soon after the first volume was published; When the Bough Breaks came out in 1985, so the series has been going strong for close to forty years, and very well may continue for many more. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

For the uninitiated, Delaware is a child psychologist; Kellerman is also a child psychologist, and his earlier books incorporated his area of expertise, placing him in a subgenre all his own. I’ve wished many a time that he would write more books along these lines, but he hasn’t done a lot of it lately, and in this book,  there are only glimpses of it. Nevertheless, the story held my attention.

I’m not giving you much of the plot, because there’s a synopsis for that, but in large strokes, the story is about the murder of the son of one of the world’s wealthiest men. He’s an odd duck, not terribly bright; his mother is dead, and his father is a hands-off parent, to say the very least. Our victim has unlimited access to money, and that’s about it. He makes a splash in the art world by photographing homeless people in costumes that reflect their deepest dreams. Find a derelict street person, and find out what they always wanted to be. A pilot? A surgeon? A ballerina? Offer them the chance to be photographed as if that’s what they are now, and give them a juicy wad of cash for their trouble; then send them back to the streets where they came from.

The family structure for this strange young artist is truly bizarre; the father marries, and he fathers a child. One child, no more. Then, a couple years later, he divorces his wife and does the same thing again. The children of these unions are never introduced to one another.

Thus, Milo has plenty of meaty material to work with, and with such strange circumstances, Alex is tapped to analyze the participants.

Delaware works part time as a kiddie shrink, often consulting when there is a court case involving insurance claims or divorce. However, he still has plenty of time to work for the Los Angeles Police Department, consulting on cases where a psychologist’s input is valuable. His BFF, Milo Sturgis, is a homicide detective, spurned by others in the department because of his sexual orientation. Often as not, Delaware ends up riding along as an unofficial partner.

This aspect of the series—the almost-a-cop—is usually where things start to slip a little, when anything does. I want to buy the premise, and so I can go along with it as long as it doesn’t become too obviously unrealistic. We all want to be entertained, right? So when Alex trots out to the patrol car and slides in beside Milo, I smile and nod, and I push away the little skeptic within me that says, “But really…?”

There have been a few Delaware books that have gone sideways for me for that reason, books where Delaware puts on his Kevlar vest and packs a revolver. I am happy to say that this isn’t one of them. In fact, the manner in which these details are dealt with is one of its strengths. First of all, there are times when Milo wants Alex to go with him, but Alex is busy. He has to be in court that morning. Thank you! Then later on, toward the climax, there’s a situation that (no spoilers) shakes out in a way I find the most believable of anything Kellerman has written. It’s satisfying, without sacrificing the fun of the story.

The whodunit at the end might be the nicest touch of all.

I recommend this mystery to Kellerman’s faithful readers, and to those that love the genre.

When the Moon Turns Blue, by Pamela Terry*****

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Once in a while the odd thing happens,

Once in a while the dream comes true,

And the whole pattern of life is altered,

Once in a while the moon turns blue.

The tiny Georgia hamlet of Wesleyan is preparing to bury one of its own, and Mother Nature is preparing to cover the entire town in ice. But nobody—well, almost nobody—knows that a source of local tension is about to go nuclear, as someone is planning to topple and destroy the statue of a Confederate general in the park inside the boundaries of Old Man Griffin’s land. “The fight was just getting going good, and now somebody’s declawed the cat.”

This riveting, curiously charming and sometimes hilarious novel is the second by Pamela Terry, whose outstanding debut novel was The Sweet Taste of Muscadines. This one may be even better. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

With the death of Harry Cline, we find ourselves at his funeral, a massively attended affair. But his wife, Marietta, develops a disabling, blinding migraine, and although they have been on the outs for years, Butter, her (former) best friend, comes to the rescue. By the time they’ve snuck out the side door of the church, we already know at least a little about both women, and now we want to know everything.

With just two novels published, Terry has already proven herself to be among the best authors when it comes to character development. Soon we’ll meet others—Marietta’s obnoxious brother, Macon and his beleaguered wife Glinda, who will have a large part in this story and is one of my favorite characters, as well as a host of others, who have smaller roles but are each so unmistakably established that it’s no work at all to keep track of them. But perhaps her finest achievement here is in creating a masterpiece that is ultimately a feel good book, despite the use of a red hot real world controversy within its pages.

I generally read several books at a time, and this one is the one that I saved for bedtime, because I wanted to be able to read it uninterrupted, and it is the one I wanted in my head when dreams came. It didn’t let me down.

This inspirational work of Southern fiction stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest classics, To Kill a Mockingbird and Fried Green Tomatoes. I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout*****

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Lucy is a widow, and she misses her second husband, David, terribly. Her entire life, or most of it, anyway, has been marred by deprivation, cruelty, and tragedy. Then finally she meets and marries a lovely man, and they are happy together until death parts them. She thinks of him constantly. But now the pandemic has taken hold, and although she isn’t really paying attention, her first husband, William, is. William is single now, too, and he and Lucy see one another from time to time because of their two daughters, both grown now. And so in this, the fourth of the Lucy Barton books, William obtains the keys to a friend’s cabin, clear up on the coast of Maine, and he swoops in and takes Lucy away with him, away from the contagion. Just for a week or two, she figures.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Penguin Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

I must confess that after reading the first two in the series, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible, I decided to give it a rest. Strout is a literary genius, of that I have no doubt, but the stories she wrote were so grim, and her formidable authorial skill only made them sadder. I decided for my own good to walk away.

But then I was invited to read and review the third, Oh William, and early reviews suggested more joy and less wretchedness, and after I read it, I was glad I had done it. That holds true here as well, although, like Becka and Chrissy, Lucy and William’s daughters, I am a little concerned for her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

William is more alert than Lucy, or perhaps, like so many, she has been in denial. “It’s odd how the mind does not take in anything until it can.” She is reluctant to go. A friend has died; what about the funeral? She shouldn’t miss that! The friend, however, has died of COVID19, and William tells her there won’t be a funeral. But then…what about her hair appointment? Her lunch date? Cancel them, he tells her.

The most delicious thing about the Lucy books is the depth with which Strout develops character. In fact, there’s almost no action taking place. The books are eighty or ninety percent character. So naturally, the reader that needs an intricate plot to be happy won’t find satisfaction here, but those of us—and I am one of them—that are happiest exploring rich, dynamic characters are in for a treat.

It’s a strangely nostalgic journey. So many of the attitudes and expectations that gripped us during the early days of the pandemic are in full flower in these pages, and though it’s only been a couple of years, it was such a unique period that I find myself nodding when one character or another says something that sounds exactly like me, or a family member, or a friend.

But back to Lucy and William. They were married for nearly twenty years before he ran off with someone else, and now they have been divorced for about the same length of time. When Lucy asks William why he invited her to go with him, he tells her that he wanted to save her life; but in fact, there’s more to it, and this becomes clearer as we progress. And as much as I want dear Lucy to be happy, I also want to remind her that a man that will up and leave after twenty years for no reason other than an infatuation with someone else, is unlikely to be trustworthy on an emotional level. Watch yourself, Lucy. It’s good that you’re out of the germ pool, but hang onto your heart.

As for me, I look forward to seeing how things develop; the ending leaves little doubt that there must be an Amgash #5.

Faithful readers will want to read this book; for newbies, you can read them out of order and they’ll make sense, but because Strout is building her character as we go, it’s better to read them in order if you can. And also for newbies: Lucy and William are both Caucasian Boomers, and so the most enthusiastic readers will probably come from this demographic. Highly recommended.