Category Archives: feminist fiction

The Wind Knows My Name, by Isabel Allende****

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Isabel Allende is a living legend, a literary genius and fierce defender of human rights, foremost of women and immigrants. The Wind Knows My Name is a novel that features the struggle of two generations of immigrants, those that came to the U.S. during the Holocaust, and those that are coming here now from Latin America. Allende moves us seamlessly from one set of characters to the next, and then back again.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I have been reading Allende’s work for decades. To read her stories is to be transported. In this case, the protagonists include two small people designed to possess the human heart. Samuel is a Jewish violin prodigy, still quite small as this story unfolds; his parents send him to safety when the Nazi occupation of Vienna takes hold, thinking that they will square things away and join him later. Of course, they are never able to do that. Our present-day protagonist is Anita, a Guatemalan immigrant child that is nearly blind. She is separated from her family at the U.S. border, and does her best to stave off loneliness by talking to her sister, Claudia, who is dead.

On the one hand, Allende is, to my way of thinking, on the side of the angels here politically. She always is. But if this feels a bit lecture-like to me, a diehard fan, it seems unlikely that she will reach a lot of newer readers. Usually I bond with her characters and carry them around with me for some time after I have turned the last page, but this time I find I am watching the page numbers go by. The person I feel most affinity for is Samuel, the tiny child clinging to his precious violin, but he disappears quickly and when he returns, he is an old man. Another reviewer commented that too much is told here, and too little shown, and that sounds right to me. And as much as I love Samuel, I also am burned out on historical fiction set during World War II. I hope in her next project, the author will turn in another direction.

To Allende’s many devoted readers, this book is recommended with the above caveats.

No Mistaking Death, by Shelley Costa*****

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I love a wry mystery series, especially when it features a wry female sleuth. Kinsey Millhone is done and there’s nothing I can do about it, but Marian Warner is here, and this series is just getting off the ground. My thanks go to Net Galley, Level Best Books, and Shelley Costa for the review copy.  This book is for sale now.

Marian is a private eye, mostly; when there isn’t enough custom to pay the landlord, she does other things on the side. But now, her sister Joan is sending her to investigate whether a former Jesuit Mission house in Carthage, Ohio qualifies for National Landmark status. Carthage is a tiny little hamlet in the middle of nowhere, but it contains Marian’s old flame, Charlie. She goes.

The first book of a mystery series poses extra challenges to its author, who must simultaneously spin out the mystery itself while also introducing and developing its protagonist and any repeating secondary characters, all without slowing the pace. Costa does both splendidly.

By the time Marian hits town, things have grown more complicated; you see, the possibly-historical mission house now sports its own murdered corpse. From here, the story builds in a way that is undeniable, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. In particular, there is quirky figurative language sprinkled throughout, and it jumps at the reader unexpectedly.

By the story’s conclusion, I feel as if I’ve just stuffed myself with something delicious. Nothing here is predictable, and I can’t wait to see more of Marian Warner. Highly recommended to those that like a cozy mystery with a bit of an edge.  

Zero Days, by Ruth Ware****-*****

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What would spring be like without another Ruth Ware mystery?  I hope never to find out. My thanks go to Net Galley and Gallery Books for the review copy.  This book goes up for sale Tuesday, June 20, and those that love a fast-paced, high octane read should order a copy.

One of the finest things about Zero Days is the premise. Our protagonist is Jacintha “Jack” Cross, and she and her husband, Gabe, run a pen testing business. I had never heard of pen testers before; these are people that are hired by corporations to hack into their systems and then report their areas of vulnerability so that they can be corrected before unfriendly hackers find them. Jack is the physical penetrator, and so while Gabe is home worming his way into the client’s network, Jack is on site, physically breaking into the business’s building.

This reviewer has two immediate family members that are fairly high on the IT food chain, so I asked both of them whether this is a real thing; they assured me that it is, although they had never heard the abbreviation. Most penetration testers don’t physically breach the physical building; usually it’s a tech breach only.

On this occasion, Jack meets up with a security guard that doesn’t believe she’s there legitimately, and by the time she straightens things out and gets home, her husband is dead.

When I read my notes, I can find plenty to criticize. At the outset, as Jack is breaking into the site, she has her earbuds in and Gabe is talking to her, and there is some conversation about the sex they’re looking forward to after the job that I find jarring and out of place. Yes, the purpose is to let the reader know that their marriage is strong, but I would have preferred greater subtlety. Then the cops decide Jack is their number one suspect, and when I see that Jack is going to investigate in order to clear her own name and find Gabe’s killer, I actually groan, because this is such a tired, overused trope. And the vast majority of this novel is Jack being chased, Jack running, Jack hiding, Jack running some more.

However, when it’s time to read–and I have several books going at a time, some galleys, some not–I find myself reaching for this one every time. Ware’s pacing never flags, and there’s creativity in the choices Jack makes that are reminiscent of Thomas Perry’s legendary Jane Whitefield series, but with technology added. I love that it’s the woman in this pen business doing all of the physical work, and Jack is a genuine badass, which makes my feminist heart beat harder. She is injured badly in one escape, and I fret over her and even wonder how she’s carrying it off, given the severity, but Ware convinces me that Jack is propelled by adrenaline and a complete indifference to her own safety and health, now that Gabe is gone. There is a small twist thrown in at the end that I find annoyingly predictable, but it’s almost an afterthought, and so it doesn’t impact the main body of the story. And there are occasional brilliant, original bits of figurative language that I love.

In point of fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing Jack Cross again.

For those that love an adrenaline rush, this book is recommended.

When Women Were Dragons, by Kelly Barnhill*****

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I read Kelly Barnhill’s The Ogress and the Orphans, and I loved everything about it, so I was pumped when I saw she’d published another book last fall. I was disappointed not to get the galley, but I pulled my socks up and got in line at Seattle Bibliocommons. I was able to get the audio version, and narrators Kimberly Farr and Mark Bramhall do an outstanding job, so perhaps it was for the best. This book is for sale now, and it is a true delight.

The story is set in the American Midwest during the 1950s, a time known for its stifling repression of women. Some women can take it; others turn into dragons. It’s not always by conscious choice; when you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough.

The tale centers on one family, with a mother, father, daughter Alex, and the devoted Aunt Marla, who visits frequently with her adorable baby, Beatrice. Marla is a physically strong and imposing woman, and she raises eyebrows by sometimes showing up in overalls instead of a dress or skirt. The most important person in her life is her sister, a gifted mathematician whose talents are withering away while she focuses on making the perfect pot roast, getting tough stains out of the laundry, and creating endless patterns in her knitting.

Alex is the narrator for most of the story, with the occasional change to the points of view of various bewildered men that live locally. It is the characters here that make this an outstanding story rather than a manifesto. Alex has so many questions as a child, and as she grows up, she struggles to absorb the predominant values of the time, which seem unfair to her. She wants to be a good daughter and play by the rules, but so many of them baffle her, and we feel that struggle with her. For reasons that I won’t share, little Bea comes to live with Alex’s family, and we see Alex try to help raise Bea to be responsible and obey all of the requirements of the time, whether written or unwritten, but Bea struggles with them even more than Alex has, and because of this, Alex is forced to think critically about the things she’s been sweeping under the rug in order to get along. And ultimately, Alex learns the lesson that all parents and older siblings face to some degree, that to help a child grow, we must let go.

Teachers and librarians must especially love this book.

I have read a few unfriendly reviews that insist that this message has already been conveyed by The Stepford Wives. I loved the Stepford Wives, too, but seriously, are we saying that once a novelist drives home a point, that’s it, and nobody else can have a go at it? If it comes down to it, I’d take this novel over the other anyway, for nuance and character development. My favorite grumpy review asks why a dragon needs a purse! I ask you, would you be the one to take that dragon’s purse from her?

I love this book with all my fiery heart, and I highly recommend it to feminists, and to those that love us.

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, by Tom Hanks*****

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Tom Hanks has more than one talent, that’s for sure; or perhaps he is an artist that’s ridiculously talented at telling stories, whether they be on the page or screen. One thing I’ll tell you now: I am completely convinced that he did indeed write this book himself, and it’s damn good, too.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Alfred A. Knopf Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The story begins with a child prodigy, an artist living in Lone Butte, California, who as he matures, becomes a comic book illustrator. Fast forward about thirty years, and that comic becomes a movie.

Our story doesn’t have just one protagonist, and it is intentional, or so it appears to this reviewer. We have the big boss, Bill Johnson, his assistant, Candace, and the assistant she recruits in Georgia, Allicia. We learn something of their backgrounds and their personalities, but mostly, we see how important they are to the success of the movie. When the movie is finished with Atlanta, Allicia, who now goes by Al, comes along and is eventually promoted; she then finds someone to take her place. We learn more about other people that are working the production, and I am amazed by the sheer number of people involved, and how much must be done to keep everyone on an even keel. Eventually we meet the two big stars of this action movie; one is hardworking, cooperative, and comes up with a host of useful ideas; the other is an egotist, a Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am type, and everybody walks on eggshells in an effort to make him happy, and to make him want to show up and do his job.

In the hands of a less talented writer, this whole thing might feel list-like, but Hanks sculpts these characters so that I feel I know them, and I care about what happens to them.

There’s more than a little wry humor in this tale, and the copious footnotes at the end of each chapter are a part of that. I read them all, because some of them are hilarious, but readers that lack the patience for it can breeze right on by them without missing anything critically important. And here’s a nugget that cracked me up:

“Of late, Bill had been using military-style call words rather than expletives. Fuck was Foxtrot. Asshole was Alpha Hotel. Cocksucker? Charlie Oscar Charlie Kilo Sierra.”

As a bonus, artist Robert Sikoryak has written the comics themselves, and they are included in the book. Those that love comics should probably get this book in hard cover, because a lot of the detail is hard to see in the digital version that I read. As for me, I don’t give one single poo about comics, and I skipped them.

Movie buffs will be fascinated with the vast amount of movie making minutiae here. I am not a big movie viewer, but I eat it all up, anyway, because I had no idea of the amount of time, personnel, and materials necessary to creating a major movie, masterpiece or otherwise.

Although he doesn’t beat the drum hard enough to distract from the overall story, Hanks’s message is crystal clear: everyone involved in creating a movie is important. If the crew doesn’t have enough restrooms, it affects the movie. If nobody brings lunch to the set, some people will be miserable and perform below par, whereas others will slip away in search of food and not be available when needed. And if just one person is a horse’s ass and drags his feet, or if he blabs things to the press that aren’t supposed to be released yet, he can add millions of dollars to the cost of the production. Here’s a perfect quote:

“What advice can you give us to make it in Hollywood?” She talked about the great divide between solving problems and causing them, and the importance of being on time.”

Through all of this, I keep wondering when we will see the young artist that made the comic again. If we started with him, it makes sense we will see him again at some point, right? Yes. This detail—along with every other—is done beautifully.

There’s not one thing about this book that I don’t love, and the feel-good ending is icing on the cake. Highly recommended to those that love movies as well as excellent fiction.

Bad, Bad Seymour Brown, by Susan Isaacs*****

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Susan Isaacs has been writing bestsellers since the late 1970s, and she’s hilarious! I’ve been a fan since then. During that earlier time, a period of third wave feminism, her tales often featured rotten husbands and ex-husbands reaping what they’d sown. Her creativity and trademark snark have always kept me running back for more. Her new novel, Bad, Bad Seymour Brown is the second in the Corie Geller detective series, and it’s deeply satisfying. My thanks go to Net Galley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Seymour Brown was an accountant for the Russian mob. “I’ve never heard of a violent accountant before,” my mom observed. “At worst, they’re a little pissy.” But by all accounts, Seymour was a rotten guy. “He made regular bad look good.” Bad to everyone, that is, except his five year old daughter April, his only child, for whom the sun rose and fell. But Seymour’s family was tucked away for the night when an unknown assailant came and burned the house to the ground with the Browns inside it. Happily, April made it out the window alive. The case was never solved.

Now April is an adult, a professor in film studies. She’s put her past behind her, and now, all of a sudden—someone is trying to kill her! She contacts the detective that was assigned to the murder investigation; he’s retired now, and he is Corie Geller’s father.

All of the things that I love about Isaacs’s work are here in abundance. The story is full of feminist moxie—Geller isn’t an assistant to her father, but rather retired from the FBI in order to raise her stepdaughter—she is his partner in this new investigation, and as it happens, in the new detective agency they’ve begun. But another thing I’ve always loved about Isaacs’s prose is her trademark snark, and I snickered and chortled all the way through this engaging novel. The pages flew by, and I found myself looking for extra reading time when I could sneak off to plunge in once more. Susan Isaacs writes the most creative figurative language I’ve seen anywhere. She’s funny as hell.

You can read this book as a stand-alone, but I’ll tell you right now, once you read the second, you’ll want to read the first one, Takes One to Know One also.

Highly recommended, particularly to feminist boomers.

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle*****

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“Queer folk, the Henrys.”

Adelaide Henry is “profoundly lonely,” growing up without siblings, with older parents that spurned the world around them. They had their reasons. And yet, in the opening chapter, as I see Adelaide pour kerosene over both of their lifeless forms and burn them, along with their house, I wonder…were they bad enough to deserve this?

But nothing is as it seems, and this is part of the magical spell that Victor LaValle weaves into this kickass novel, Lone Women. By the time I understand the why and the who and the what, I feel an intimate connection to Adelaide, as if I may be the only one trusted with her secrets.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the review copy. This is one of the finest novels to be published in 2023, and you should get it and read it.

Adelaide flees the California farm where she’s lived all of her life, and buys a homestead in Montana. Almost everything about her life changes; from the warmth of California to the frigid winters of the Northern Rockies, from life with her parents to one lived alone, and from an all-Black community to one that is almost entirely Caucasian. She brings very little with her, only what she can carry, but she is curiously possessive of her extremely heavy trunk, and though I initially assume that she keeps something of great monetary value inside it, I soon realize that isn’t it. My early notes ask the same thing over and again: “What is in that trunk?”

From there, our story unfolds and I can’t stop turning the pages. I’ve never read a novel of any genre that’s like this one, and I’m guessing that you haven’t, either.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t read the synopsis. Go into it blind. It’s a lot more fun if you learn of the characters and events at the times the author intends.

There’s a powerful message in play, but the story is so adroitly delivered that it never feels like a polemic.

I won’t say more, because I don’t want to ruin it for you, but believe me, the next time LaValle publishes a novel, I will be first in line to read it. Highly recommended, especially to feminists.

With My Little Eye, by Joshilyn Jackson*****

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Joshilyn Jackson is one of my favorite writers, first as an author of brilliant—and often hilarious—Southern fiction, with bestsellers such as Gods in Alabama and Almost Sisters, and now with acclaimed suspense novels. All of the latter have titles that use the names of children’s games to chilling effect. She began with Never Have I Ever, followed with Mother May I, and her current release, With My Little Eye. Jackson never disappoints.

My thanks go to Net Galley and William Morris for the review copy, though I’d have paid cold, hard cash if push came to shove. This book is for sale now.

Meribel Mills is an actor with a past and a problem. Years ago, she fled her hometown in Georgia and her marriage following a traumatic surgery, but she realized her dream of becoming a working actor. But a persistent stalker has caused her to flee Los Angeles with her adopted daughter, Honor, and now she’s back in Georgia, laying low, working locally, and stalking her ex-husband.

Wait. What?

This intrigues me, the notion that a stalker might also be stalked. Meribel’s intentions are benign, as she wistfully revisits the past, but she’s also over the line, obsessively following her ex’s social media accounts, mostly via his second wife, and at one point following them out to dinner. The heck? And so I wonder if that will be the focus of the story.

But Jackson never does anything predictable, and that’s part of what keeps me coming back.

Throughout the story, I am on the back foot, trying to ascertain which of her would-be swains is a genuinely nice guy, and which is the creepo. At one point I begin to wonder if she has multiple stalkers! And Jackson makes a strong point about the worthlessness of law enforcement when it comes to dealing with stalkers and women threatened with violence:

“Rape threats, abduction threats, death threats, and I got forms and tutting and sad jazz hands…I made copies [of the letters] and took them to the police, who filed them for just in case he killed me, later. Then it would be serious. Then someone would find his ass and get him into prison. It would make a great Lifetime movie, with a purely fictional, leggy lady cop as the necessary strong, female protagonist. And me? I’d be playing the dead girl, once again.”

But the best part of this novel isn’t Meribel or her stalker(s), it’s the children. Daughter Honor is Autistic, though very bright and relatively high functioning. Her new friend comes with baggage of her own; both of these girls is so well developed that I feel I would know them if I saw them on the street. They develop a friendship with a homeless teen who also has an important role here, and these girls are what make the story shine.

The resolution is believable and nothing comes from left field. This is an outstanding read, and I recommend it to you.  

Collateral Damage, by J.A. Jance****

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Collateral Damage is the 17th book in the Ali Reynolds mystery series by J.A. Jance. My thanks go to Net Galley and Gallery Books for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

As fans of the series know, Ali is married to B. Simpson, and together they run a small but increasingly prominent cybersecurity firm called High Noon, appropriately named given their Arizona home base. In this installment, B. is on his way to the airport when he’s run off the road. He and the man driving him are badly injured, and the police take the lazy way out, assuming that Ali is behind the crime. Who could better benefit from his death? The business is worth a lot of money, not to mention B’s fat life insurance policy. Soon Ali and her trusted High Noon employees investigate, assisted once more by Frigg, the nearly sentient AI that can go where no one is supposed to go, and find out things that aren’t legally obtainable.

Jance is a veteran mystery writer, and she’s produced bestselling novels for decades. This time around, the novel is better than what most authors can do on their best days, and yet it’s not Jance’s most riveting story. The pacing is on the sedate side, and it’s not until we are well and truly at the climax that it feels urgent. I suspect this is because the story’s protagonist, Ali, and the other repeating characters that I have enjoyed so much over the past few years are sidelined here. Once Frigg ferrets out the critical information that suggests that the crime is the work of a longtime serial killer, Ali provides the cops whose unsolved cases are involved, and we mostly follow them, alternately with the baddie.

A side note, but one worth mentioning: Jance has a couple of long-running series that are set in Arizona, and there have been times when I’ve reported that I dislike the tinge of stereotyping that I have seen in the way her Latinx and Black side characters are depicted. I feel as if she’s turned that around here, and having registered complaints in the past, it’s only fair to recognize that this time, she’s done well.

Fans of the series will want to read this in order to enjoy continuity between the last, Unfinished Business, and whatever she writes next. For new readers, I advise beginning the series with number 11, Clawback. Going back to the first entry—which of course, you can do—requires reading the series before it develops into a strong vehicle. If you start the series here instead, you will have the information you need to move forward, and the quality is as uniformly excellent as any other series I have read.

I recommend this book to Jance’s readers, and I recommend it to new readers as suggested above.

Swamp Story, by Dave Barry*****

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Dave Barry’s new novel, Swamp Story, should come with a warning label: Danger. Do not read in area where explosive laughter is not permitted. Fans of Barry’s will be pleased to hear that this is possibly the best thing he’s ever written. Readers new to Barry will want to read more. This book will be available to the public May 2, 2023.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review.

Our protagonist is Jesse, a lovely person that has made a huge mistake. She feel hard for Slater, a young man with a smokin’ hot body, a limited brain, and a solipsistic world view. Now she’s stuck in a cabin in the Everglades with him and his camera wielding buddy Kark, and oh yes—their baby, Willa; not to mention all of the flora and fauna that live here:

“Kark! You need to get this!”

“What?” said a voice, as hoarse as Slater’s, maybe hoarser.

“Big fucking snake,” said Slater. “I mean big.”

The snake slid forward another two feet, directly toward Jesse and Willa. Jesse saw that she now no longer had the option of even trying to run past it.

“Slater!” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, not wanting Willa to pick up on it.

Slater held up his hands in a Calm down gesture.

“It’s cool,” he said. “This’ll be good. Good footage.”

“Good footage?” said Jesse. “Are you—”

“Goddammit, Kark,” yelled Slater, “get the camera out here!”

“OKOKOK,” said Kark, emerging from the cabin, holding the video camera. ” Fuck. The battery’s dead.”

Things appear to improve for Jesse when she stumbles across a cache of gold bars hidden in the glades, but this proves to be a mixed blessing, as some truly bad men learn of her good fortune and seek to take it from her, using any means necessary. However, the first such men, Billy and Duck, are not only evil, but also hilariously bumbling at times. And then, of course, there are the others.

Meanwhile, the owner of Bartle Brothers Bait and Beer decides to give his languishing business a shot in the arm by manufacturing an internet hoax. The Everglades Melon Monster is a sketchy, low budget creation whose star is an inebriated fellow wearing a Dora the Explorer head, and yet, somehow it works. Now it seems that everyone is descending on the Everglades, and almost every person that arrives is “batshit crazy.”

I’m not telling you how this thing ends; you’ll need the book for that. Don’t wait for the movie. You can thank me later!  As for me, I’m off to order a Bartle Brothers Bait and Beer tee shirt.