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Category Archives: fiction
Best of 2016: Mystery
This category includes everything within the same zone: thrillers, suspense, detective fiction, crime fiction. If it’s related, I’m rating it here. I expected this to be my toughest call because I read so many books of this genre, but when I had a look at the original titles I’d seen this year, and then eliminated those crossover novels that had already been awarded as the best of some other genre on this site, it was down to three books. Unbelievable…but not at all mysterious.
MY TOP THREE:
Best of 2016: Historical Fiction
There weren’t a lot of outstanding historical novels this year, but those that are good are oh, so good. Every single one of these five titles owned me until the story was done; for awhile afterward; and a little bit still.
#1 
HONORABLE MENTION:
Gone to Soldiers, by Marge Piercy*****
Brevity isn’t possible here. Settle in and get comfy. Here we go.
The word “epic” gets overused in the world of advertising, and so as a reviewer, I have learned to take the promise with a grain of salt. However, Piercy is renowned, an iconic presence for feminists and for anyone that approaches life from a class perspective. I read this book when it first came out in the 1980’s for no discount whatsoever, and I loved it. Books come and go at my house, since space on the bookshelf is itself a commodity, but Piercy has a permanent shelf all her own; when I saw that Open Road Media had released this book digitally, I jumped on it, even though the release date had passed and even though I already had the book, because I wanted to help promote it, and I was happy to read it again. I rate it 4.75 stars and of course, round it upward.
There are two myths that get told, are believed by others, and then they are retold about World War II. The most recent one is that told by Holocaust deniers, who say that the whole death camp thing was just a huge exaggeration. Yes, there were prisons; yes, guards were mean sometimes; yes, people died, because nobody was getting enough food in Poland and other non-German parts of Europe anyway. This is a lie, but as eyewitnesses grow old and die, it takes a certain vigilance to keep this damnable untruth from gaining a toehold. Piercy tells the truth, and she does it really well. More on that in a moment, but let’s deal with the other lie first.
The second myth, one that’s understandably popular as patriotism grasps the human heart and we wish that our rulers, past and present, were truly noble, is that the USA joined its allies in a quest to preserve democracy and save those poor Jews and other unfortunates tucked away in those hellish camps. Piercy approaches this palace of straw from many different angles and razes it to the ground. Jews that wanted out faced tremendous obstacles, from nations—the USA included—that were extremely choosy about how many Jews they would take. The US and UK governments were more obstructive than helpful, and countless men, women, and children died because of these exclusions.
Piercy is a brilliant storyteller, and in her hands, the period and its people are so believable, nearly corporal, that I carry them with me still.
This story is told through the eyes of ten characters whose narratives are staggered. There are French characters, British, and Americans; men and women; straight, gay, lesbian, and bisexual. They hail from a variety of socio-economic circumstances and are affected by the war in different ways. It’s miraculous to see a writer develop even one of these characters as fully and thoroughly as Piercy does; how is it that she does so with a wide range of characters, yet has never been nominated for a prestigious award?
Those of us that are old and perhaps cynical may consider that the very political perspective that makes her prose so rich may be what kept her from landing on a short list. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Piercy is a scholar and she approaches this historical period with sources in hand. She doesn’t interpret loosely, and her note to the reader tells us in what instance she has taken liberties, for example not wanting to have a whole string of people that have the same first name. Always she is aware of the subtext, the stereotypes that women aviators faced, for example.
My most beloved characters were Jacqueline, a hero of the French resistance, along with her lover, Jeff, and her little sister Naomi, one of the fortunate few who’s sent to live with American relatives before it’s too late. I liked Louise’s moxie, and I loved what happened to Duvey. I also really enjoyed the unusual perspective that Daniel and his fellow code-breakers shared, becoming so familiar with the Japanese point of view that they bonded with the men whose communications they were deciphering.
As we discuss the Japanese, we come to the .25 that I deducted. I did this as a token objection to the use of the racist vernacular that I know was commonplace during the time. This reviewer grew up with a father that served during this war, and reminiscences among the guests he and my mother entertained were so frequent that I, in youthful ignorance, rolled my eyes and decided they were impossibly dull. And my mother taught me that the terms he and they used to speak of Germans, of Jews, of Japanese were never, ever to be used in my own conversations with anyone at any time. And so yes, racist references and ethnic slurs were common to this era.
But I note that whereas our author has had the good taste and the good sense not to repeat the ugly terms by which Jewish people were called, and seldom repeats the anti-German slurs, the “J” word is used dozens of times, usually by the character that fights in the Pacific. And I have to say, it really stings.
There were fewer Asian Americans during the period when Piercy wrote this than there are today, particularly in the author’s own New England home. For anyone writing this today, and for anyone less venerable and also less influential for me personally during my formative years, I would lop off at least a couple of stars from my rating. It’s ugly to repeat these epithets, and it’s particularly painful to me to read them. This is my husband we’re talking about; it’s my daughter, too. It’s my in-laws, one of whom fought, as good Japanese citizens were expected to, for the Japanese Imperial Army. So I would not care to see her go back and insert the horrible terms hurled at Jews and Germans for the sake of consistency; I’d just rather see the “J” word used less often. She could mention it in her introduction if she feels the reader needs to know that she’s made an adjustment. That’s my viewpoint, and I’m sticking to it.
But it’s also true that when I was young and confused, Piercy was one of the bright feminist lights in literature to whom I looked for guidance. So I am moved not only by the excellence of this work, but also by the shining legacy she has provided for women during an uncertain time.
One further note: though I have a degree in history and have taught it, I have seldom seen much written—at least in English—about the French Resistance. This part is arguably the most deeply resonant part of this novel, and though I had read the book before, it’s amazing what one can forget over the course of twenty or thirty years. I don’t read many books twice because there are so many I haven’t read at all yet; and still this is one that I may read a third time, as I feel my recollection of the fine details already slipping away.
For those that treasure excellent literary fiction; that have the stamina for a novel of this length; that love outstanding historical fiction; that enjoy stories that are told from a feminist viewpoint and that recognize social classes and the way they affect us; this story is unparalleled. Get it and read it.
The Roanoke Girls, by Amy Engel*****
Amy Engel makes her debut as a writer of adult fiction with this title, having begun her career writing fiction for young adults. The Roanoke Girls is smoking hot, a barn burner of a book, diving into some of society’s deepest taboos and yanking them from the shadows into the bright rays of Kansas sunshine, where the story is set, for us to have a look at them. It’s not available to the public until March 7, 2017, and frankly I don’t know how you are going to wait that long. I received a DRC for this title from Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the purpose of a review.
Lane grows up in New York City, raised by a mother that shows no sign of warmth or affection, a woman that seems to either cry or sleepwalk through most hours of most days. When she hangs herself, Lane bitterly wonders what took her so long. But then a surprise comes with the social worker assigned to her case. It seems there are grandparents in Kansas, who not only are willing to have Lane, but that actually want her.
Soon Lane finds herself being driven up the private drive to Roanoke, the family manse, a rambling, welcoming hodgepodge of a house, complete with a same-age cousin waving with manic joy from the front porch. Allegra is spoiled, and now Lane will have all the same luxuries. The ostensible farm on which they live is more of a gentleman’s farm, as it happens; the real money comes from oil. And so Lane, who has scraped for every scrap of clothing and food alongside her struggling mother for 16 years, suddenly has the whole world at her beck and call. Allegra takes her to their grandfather’s study and shows her where all the credit cards are kept, and she assures her this is not something they are sneaking or stealing; it is assumed that if they want something, they can buy it.
It seems almost too good to be true…and it is.
There is so much simmering just below the surface, unspoken but thick and almost tangible. Take, for example, the portraits of the Roanoke girls that have gone before them, whose photographs line a main hallway. The collection begins with Grandfather’s sisters, continues with their daughters, the mothers and aunts of Lane and Allegra. What has become of all of them? Allegra explains:
“Roanoke girls never last long around here…In the end, we either run or we die.”
Lane’s picture isn’t included among those in the hallway, and she isn’t sure she wants it there. And as time goes by and the contours of the family’s pathology become clearer, Lane decides it’s time to save herself, and she hits the road, covering her tracks to the best of her ability. She stays away until ten years later, when her phone rings. Her grandfather tells her that Allegra has vanished; they need Lane to “come home” to help the family search for her.
Lane’s interaction with her grandfather is mesmerizing. When he calls her with the news of Allegra’s disappearance, the first thing she asks is how he got her number. Yet once she is back in the Roanoke house, she recognizes that
“…behind the secrets and the horrible truth, under the shame and anger that beat like a heart, there still lives a terrible kind of love.”
The fascinating, intimate narrative Engel weaves is a thing that can’t be taught. There’s no degree, no series of workshops that gives a voice such clear authority. She plays out the story’s thread in careful increments, and the bone-c hilling tone is heightened rather than lessened by the fact that we have a very good idea of exactly what happened to Allegra. I know whodunit halfway through the book, but it doesn’t matter. The author binds me to Lane’s story in a way that is completely undeniable, and I have to see this thing through with her. Toward the end of the book, instead of commenting to myself about aspects of the book or particularly compelling passages to quote, I’m engaging with the text itself. More than once my notebook simply says, “No.”
The reader should know that there are triggers all over the place. Those that are in a sensitive place may want to have someone else read the book first and tell you whether they recommend it to you. But for those that want a chiller of a mystery, and for those that care about women and the ways that society turns people into products for consumption, this is a must read. Or you could just read it because it’s brilliant, and no one else is writing anything like it.
Best of 2016: YA
Young adult novels are no longer my life’s work, and I was looking forward to putting the genre behind me entirely. However, once in a rare while a YA title will generate such buzz that I reach for it anyway. My rule for myself with YA books is that for me to feature it, it has to be strong enough to stand on its own with adults as well. This year’s best YA novel is a slam-dunk:
Small Admissions, by Amy Poeppel*****
I received an advance reader’s copy of this darkly amusing novel from Net Galley and Atria Books. It’s funny as hell, and even more amusing to teachers, school counselors, and others that have dealt with high maintenance parents and the aura of entitlement they carry with them. I rate this title 4.5 stars and round upward. It comes out December 27, 2016, just in time to chase away your post-holiday depression.
I sat on this book for more than three months, which is a rare thing for me. I kept starting it, not liking it, and deciding to set it aside and look again with fresh eyes later. Finally November came, and I realized the book was not going to change; I’d given my word to the publisher I’d review it; it was time to suck it up and get the job done. And this is a little ironic all by itself, since that’s the position in which our protagonist found herself, but more on that in a minute.
The issue with the first part of the book is that it reads like a very lengthy introduction, steeped in character introduction and overlong inner narrative. After I had read—and loved—the rest of the book, I went back and reread that 15%. Was it just me? What was wrong with it? And once I had read the book and become familiar with all of the characters, it seemed perfectly fine. In fact, it seemed a lot like the voice-over at the beginning of a movie. Then I read the author’s biography, and discovered that this novel was first written as a play.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
Our protagonist is Kate, and she’s come undone. Her French boyfriend has dumped her:
“When he’d encouraged Kate to follow her heart, he hadn’t meant she should follow it to Paris.”
Meanwhile, upon departure she’s left her position at NYU. She was studying anthropology, and now she isn’t, and her family doesn’t know what to do about it. Enter Angela, her sister, who moves heaven and Earth in order to get Kate’s life going again; once Kate’s out of the woods, Angela can’t stop maneuvering and controlling. She’s good at being a white knight, and she can’t give it up. We have Vicki and Chloe, her friends from college, and the old boyfriend from France lurking offstage.
The fun commences when Kate gets a job in the admissions department of a small, private secondary school. She’s misrepresented her skill set to get it, but she’s determined to give it a try:
“Kate viewed Hudson Day as an unknown culture that required her exploration.”
It’s time to start interviewing and selecting students, managing interviews with demanding, sometimes aggressive parents. I’ve taught honors students in a public secondary school, and I thought my experience took fortitude; Kate’s experience was similar to my own, but on steroids.
There are hilariously dysfunctional parents, kids whose folks don’t have a clue what they can do and what they can’t, and in the midst of it all, relationships among Kate’s nearest and dearest become unstuck and reconfigured in ways that mirror those Kate works with, and even Kate herself. I can’t tell you anymore, because it would ruin it for you, but this snarky romp is not to be missed. It’s cunning, wickedly bold humor at its finest.
The Whole Town’s Talking, by Fannie Flagg*****
Happy release day to Fannie Flagg! This one is a treasure. If you’re buying Christmas or Hanukkah gifts, consider this book, which is bound to make your loved one smile…especially for those over 40.
“Up on the hill, Lucille Beemer said, ‘Good morning, everybody.’
“Two hundred and three people just waking up answered, ‘Morning’.”
Fannie Flagg is legendary, and rightly so. In fact, at one point in my reading of this DRC, I reflected that someone with her power to move people has power indeed; how fortunate that she uses her gift to benefit the rest of us. I don’t know about you, but I am ready to read something that provides a level of reassurance that all has not gone sour in this world, and that everything passes, sooner or later. I was fortunate to read this free and in advance thanks to Random House and Net Galley, but it’s one of the very few books for which I’d have paid full freight if it came down to it. It hits the shelves November 29 and is available for pre-order right now.
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Her Nightly Embrace, by Adi Tantimedh*
I was invited to read and review this title by Net Galley and Atria Books. I thank them for the opportunity. The first two chapters showed signs of promise, but in the end, this book is poorly written and for most, it will also be offensive. I can’t recommend this title. That said, it’s about to become a television program, so perhaps you will enjoy it more than I do. But I have to call them as I see them, and if they give this writer a host of awards, I will still say this book is worth one star and nothing else.
Ravi Singh is our protagonist. He has dropped out of a program of religious studies, to his father’s profound disappointment, and become a detective. He had something of a breakdown, and under stress he sees Hindu Gods that no one else can see. An added pressure is financial; he has bills to pay, and his mother has racked up some gambling debts for which she may be harmed if not paid soon. I warmed to the unlikely loan shark, and I thought this was going to be a fun read. And if it had been well written, it would have been.
In other reviews, I have occasionally noted the way in which a tired, overused plot device may become brand new and almost magical in the hands of a capable writer. This one works the other way around. It’s a unique, if somewhat gimmicky idea, but the author will have to develop a vocabulary before I can enjoy his work.
Profanity has never been a hot button for me. I’ve been known to toss the “f” word into my own reviews when feeling particularly warmly. Unfortunately, Tantimedh uses the word the way I’ve heard teenagers do it; when someone is too lazy to consider what word might be interesting and hasn’t been overused yet, the “f” word can become noun, verb, adjective, and interjection. Everything, everything, everything in this book is said, by either narrator or in dialogue, to be “fucked up”. By the 40% mark I was so distracted, and it was so obvious that I wasn’t going to engage with the text as I had hoped, that I started keeping track to see whether my perception was accurate. Was I being snarky, or was that word—and a few other similar ones, especially the mother-f word—all over the place? And as I started highlighting, I was amazed to find it on almost every page. Some pages were miraculously free of it, but then there’d be another page where I found it twice, or thrice. At this point I gave myself permission to skip to 80% and see whether something wonderful would happen at the end to redeem this thing. It’s been known to happen; just not here.
I’ve only panned a title I was invited to review once before, and that was because of ugly racist references throughout the text. I’m generally a generous reviewer. But suddenly I felt as if I were before a class of eighth graders once more, explaining that not only will profanity offend some readers, but when it’s overused, it’s often because the writer doesn’t want to do the work to find a more specific or eloquent term.
Whether the issue is due to a translation issue—I didn’t check to see if this was published in something other than English originally—or laziness, or a lack of facility as a writer is moot. The end result is the same. This is bilge. Save your money.
Earth for Inspiration and Other Stories, by Clifford D. Simak*****
Clifford D. Simak wrote for decades during the mid-twentieth century. His close friend, David W. Wixon, has undertaken, with Simak’s approval in his declining years, to collect all of the stories that were published in various magazines and anthologies beginning in the 1930’s and ending before the digital age was off the ground. This one is volume 9, and it’s an interesting hodgepodge of the very best—which is most of it—and the very worst, which is just two stories. Needless to say, I thought a lot about how I should rate such a collection.
Finally, I decided that price would be the deciding factor. If it was going to set you back twenty or thirty bucks, then I’d have to cut it down the middle and call it three stars, which would be sad but fair. However, I logged onto the big A and found it’s sold digitally for six bucks. At this price, you’re paying a buck each for six absolutely stellar short stories; there are three more good ones thrown in; and you can afford to skip the two stinkers. Given that factor, I’m rating this 4.5 stars, with just half a star gone for the two missable stories, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
Thank you Net Galley and Open Road Media for the DRC, the fifth Simak collection I have received from them. I sat on this one for a long time because I’d been reading a lot of his work, and was beginning to get grumpy at the similarities among some of them. Just how many different characters can a writer name “Doc” and remain credible? But then I realized that when Simak submitted his stories to various periodicals, names were about the least important aspect of his work, because he wrote them never dreaming that his writing would be important enough to appear in an entire series, back to back. Who knew he would become so successful?
During the 1940s and 1950s, as Wixon points out, science fiction was barely off the ground—pun intended—and Westerns were massively in style. I guess you could say they were the zombie apocalypse of their time; if a writer wanted to pay his rent without having to work a day job, he had to write some westerns. And since Wixon is publishing all of Simak’s stories rather than the best-of, he has to insert the few losers somewhere also.
So let’s just get the bad stuff over with so I can tell you what’s great here. The bad ones are sandwiched midway through the collection and appropriately flanked by good writing before and after. “Hellhound of the Cosmos” is bad enough that Wixon’s preface—a brief paragraph appearing before each story—says he “…will not try to excuse this story’s failings” by pointing out that Simak wrote it in 1931, at the very get-go of his career. Fine; don’t. But it’s a really dumb story, and I’d hate to see you use it as a yardstick by which to measure this man, who would become a Grand Master of sci fi. Read it or skip it, but this is not the story I recommend.
Further along we have “Good Nesters Are Dead Nesters”. This one is actively offensive, and if it were written today, I might well shoot down the entire collection because of it. But I know from the things I heard during my childhood that the language used here, while truly offensive, was also commonplace back then. The US was a lot whiter; the interstate was a new thing; satellite communication wasn’t yet dreamed of. People lived in isolated areas and got stupid ideas about what other people were like, largely due to stereotypes promoted in the news, on radio, and on black and white television.
So although I—married to an Asian immigrant—am as pissed as anyone about the singsong caricature of the Chinese cook, I also know this was a widely accepted way to regard people from China and Japan. As if that’s not terrible enough, a disabled person is referred to as a helpless, “twisted cripple”. Ohhh, no thank you. As you can imagine, I quickly gave myself permission to make a note and then skim till I reached the next story.
However, the stories that flank the collection, starting with the title story and ending with “Full Cycle”, are outstanding. The latter is written in the 1950s, and reflects both the reality of a pair of Atomic bombs having been dropped in Japan eleven years before it was written, as well as the anti-communist hysteria so prevalent in the news. The idea is that all cities are decentralized, because a bomb might be dropped on a large urban center, but the USA is a very big place, and so small, mobile communities, all of them having traded their houses for trailers, is now the way Americans live. It’s very cleverly put together conceptually, and Amby, the protagonist, is so well drawn that at times, I wanted to weep for him.
“Honorable Opponent” has to do with a US planetary colony that has just been defeated by another planet’s military. The result took me entirely by surprise, and I think I’ll remember this story after I’ve read other science fiction by other authors. The same is true of “Carbon Copy”, a fine tale combining science fiction, ruthless capitalism, and brilliant imagination. “Desertion” is another stellar story. If you want to read science fiction that makes your dreams sweet, read this one at bedtime. “Golden Bugs” is equally clever.
So for the price you pay, there is too much good writing here to turn your back on. My records tell me that over time I have read over 100 short story collections, which is about 90 more than I ever expected to read, and yet this one is outstanding among them. For those that love old school science fiction, this one, with the caveats mentioned, is highly recommended, and it’s available now.
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