How to Summon a Fairy Godmother, by Laura J. Mayo*****

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“She was Theodosia Balfour. Good things did not happen to her.”

Theo is engaged to be married, despite her wishes; her mother has bartered her to an ancient, badly behaved duke for the prestige of his title and the money she must have to keep the family manse. Beggers can’t be choosers, amirite? Her stepsister and the prince have barred her from their castle due to her own unseemly behaviors, and her sister is about to be wedded to a more desirable man. There’s only one way out of it: Theo needs to find her stepsister’s notes on summoning a fairy godmother. Only magic can possibly get her out of this mess.

My thanks go to Orbit Books, Hachette Audio, and NetGalley for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Because I am lucky enough to have both the print and audio galleys, I pair this book with my morning regimen on my exercise bike. While my feet are doing the work, my eyes and ears are on a pleasure cruise, listening to the story as read by the talented Josie Charles. At the outset, I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy it. After a handful of quick laughs, the story and voice actor seem to be a little over the top, perhaps trying too hard. However, a number of other reviewers that I respect have really enjoyed this thing, so I keep an open mind, and sure enough—about a third of the way in, I realize that I’m bonded to the protagonist. As I follow the narrative and become accustomed to the writing and narrative styles of the author and performer, the whole thing grows on me, and before long I find myself looking forward to my wretched exercise bike, because Theodosia needs me.

Once the fairy has been summoned, Theo is magicked away to fairy land, and she is provided with a set of tasks she must accomplish in order to be freed from the loathsome old toad to whom she’s betrothed. She is provided with some assistants and supervisors, and it’s a good thing because she needs rescuing now and then. The hardest part, perhaps, is the caveat that as she completes the steps required, she must behave respectfully—at all times!

The chapters are brief and have hilarious titles. A couple of examples: “Chapter 5 Where Theo Should Probably Think of Something Before She Ends Up Married,” “Chapter 11 Where It Becomes Quite Clear Theo Was Never Trained as a Lawyer.”  There’s lots of snarky dialogue, with a tender moment or two tucked in here and there.  There’s a twist at the end that I absolutely did not see coming.

Should you listen to the audio, or read the printed version? There are some American readers that don’t like a British accent, and Ms. Charles’s is a heavy one. Once I’m used to it, I rather like it, but you know what type of reader you are. Follow your usual go-to. If you enjoy an audiobook, this one could make your commute much pleasanter.

Highly recommended to those that enjoy fantasy and/or humor.

Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead*****

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The Ray Carney mystery series is among the most exciting new series to emerge during the past decade, and that is hardly surprising, given that it’s written by Colson Whitehead, who has two Pulitzers and a host of other prestigious awards to his credit. The first in the series is Harlem Shuffle, which came out in 2021. Crook Manifesto is his second. I was unable to get the galley this time, but happily, my son bought it for me for Mother’s Day. I mention this because it’s rare that I pursue a book once I’ve been denied the galley. In this case, it was worth it!

Ray Carney, when we met him first, was a man who’d sometimes been known to bend the law in the past, but as a family man, it was important to him to lead a straight, steady life now. Carney owns a furniture store, financed by money his father had socked away before he died. Ray politely refused to deal with the sort of merchandise that, you know, fell off a truck. That had been a big part of his father’s life, but it wasn’t his.

The place is, of course, Harlem, in New York City; the time is the 1970s.

Ray’s dad had lived on the wrong side of the law. Decent, above board jobs were hard for a Black man to come by in Harlem, so when something needed to exchange owners, or a decrepit building needed to be set ablaze, Mike Carney was your guy.

But not Ray.

I seldom read a book printed on paper anymore, so when I do, I put it in the bathroom. No novel that remains in the bathroom from start to finish can have five stars. In the case of Crook Manifesto, it emerged immediately, but after a few chapters, it went back in, and it managed to stay there until an electrifying moment at the 78% mark, when I sat bolt upright and dragged the book over to the bed.

It all starts out with a corrupt white cop who forces Carney to accompany him on a shakedown. There’s the carrot, and there’s the stick. On the one hand, he can give Carney tickets to see the Jackson 5 live in concert; Carney’s daughter has a birthday coming up, and would give a great deal to see that concert. Tickets are impossible to get, but the cop has some. And then there’s the stick; the cop can make Carney’s life very, very difficult. And so Carney has no real choice.

But among all of the wrongdoings occurring in Harlem, there’s an arson that nearly kills a boy, puts him in the hospital. Carney is obsessed with this. It’s over the line, and he wants to find out who did it and make them pay. And in the process, which involves side business and some interesting new characters, he is forced to reckon with exactly how his own father managed to support his family.

And so that whole middle section of the story, which is atmospheric but relatively low key, is the calm before the storm, but oh honey, that storm is coming. Believe it!

I cannot wait for the third book in the Ray Carney series to come out. When it does, I’ll be ready. If you love this genre, you should start with Harlem Shuffle, then advance to Crook Manifesto directly. Highly recommended.

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, by Kirsten Miller

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Lula Dean is a deeply unhappy woman. Neglected by her children, alone and unappreciated, she strikes on a way to gain the attention she knows that she deserves. She embarks on a crusade to remove books she deems objectionable from local libraries, and she sets a sterling example for her town by erecting a little library on her lawn, a collection of the wholesome material she thinks is most appropriate. Little does she know that one of the town’s youths has snuck out in the dead of night and inserted banned books inside the dust jackets of the books she originally placed there. Her library becomes wildly popular, and Lula hasn’t a clue why.

My thanks go to NetGalley and William Morrow for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The moment I saw the synopsis for this novel, I knew I had to read it. The First Amendment is a hot button for many people in the U.S., and as a language arts teacher, it’s been at forefront of my mind for most of my adult life. And I think I can safely say that Lula Dean is a soft sell; readers are generally a receptive audience, and so any novel containing the word “book” or “library” in its title should, I would argue, be held to a slightly higher standard. It’s not that hard to preach to the choir.

I love the premise of this story, and I laugh out loud more than once at the beginning. After that, though, things flatten out a bit. There are a lot of characters here, and whereas I have no difficulty keeping them straight, their numbers may have prevented author Kirsten Miller from fully developing them. I feel as if I am reading, for the most part, about cartoon cutouts rather than real people;  had I felt as if the characters were real, I would have been more deeply invested in their outcomes. However, everyone in this thing is either a fine, enlightened character or a despicable, ignorant blowhard. It accurately represents the way many Americans regard those around them, blue versus red, and that is not helpful. Two characters that stand out better than others are side character Beverly Underwood, and the young Elijah. However, even these are not dynamic characters. Nearly everyone here is the same going out as they were coming in.

Those looking for a short, funny novel to toss in their suitcase over the holidays could do worse; they could also do better. The sad thing is that had this been written in a more intentional way, with the literary standards one would hope to see in any novel, it could have been impressive, might even have changed a few hearts. This book isn’t going to do that, and so I see it as an opportunity squandered.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern*****

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Augusta Stern is about to turn eighty, and she’s being forced into retirement, darn it. Her beloved niece persuades her to leave New York and spend what remain of her golden years in a Florida seniors’ community. From there, a wave of surprising events unfolds, changing Augusta’s life.

My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Loigman’s debut novel came in 2016, and as of now, she’s published three more. Every single one is golden. This author writes with warmth and intentionality, and although the first was wonderful, each subsequent one has been better than the last. And so, although I have gone on to read other novels by other authors since I finished this one, this is the one I’m still thinking about.

You see, in 1922, Augusta’s mother became gravely ill. Try though they might, neither the doctors nor her pharmacist father were able to help her, and she died. Augusta, her sister, and her father were all plunged into a dark and terrible place without her.  Great Aunt Esther showed up to run the household, and she brought with her a case full of herbs and tinctures; Esther was an apothecary. Her methods, which were sometimes unconventional, put her at odds with her nephew, but they got results, sometimes where conventional medicine had failed. Soon Augusta was spending her hours after school helping her father in the pharmacy, and sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to observe Esther devising natural concoctions of her own. Esther declared Augusta to be her heir; she had a loving heart and a healer’s instincts.

Her social life was very limited, absorbed as she was with the family business, but the brightest spot in her day was when Irving Ripken, her father’s delivery boy, came to work. Often, they would talk as they worked; in time, they fell in love. Imagine her horror, then, when he abruptly married someone else and moved to Chicago! Augusta never recovered from the blow, and so she has never married.

Now, imagine her astonishment when sixty years later in Rallentando Springs, Irving shows up at the pool!

Much of what follows is what a reader might expect, but the details and character development take the story to a higher plane, and as we follow it, we also see the events of 1922, and these enable us to understand these characters and what drives them. There’s an unusually clever twist at the end, and it’s one that I absolutely do not see coming.

Ordinarily I would include ways in which the novel fell short or could be improved, but that’s impossible in this case. Loigman has spun magic for us from start to finish, and all I can do is bow in appreciation, and recommend this novel to you.

Identity Unknown, by Patricia Cornwell*****

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Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series is among my favorites. Identity Unknown, the 28th in the series, is every bit as riveting as her earlier ones, and I am thrilled to have received a review copy. My thanks go to Grand Central Publishing, NetGalley, and Hachette Audio. This book is for sale now.

First, I have to offer a shout out to January LaVoy, who reads the audio version. I was unsure how I would feel about this one, because I read the first 27 installments with my own eyes, and so I had developed the voices for each character in my head. Would I be thrown by the way they were voiced by a professional? As it happens, no. The protagonist and her ever present sidekick, Pete Marino, who is now her brother-in-law, sound exactly as I had thought they would. Of course, much of this comes down to excellent writing. The voices of her niece, Lucy, who now occupies the top echelons of governmental spookdom, is softer and slightly higher pitched than I had expected, but it fits, and I made the mental transition easily. Kay’s husband, Benton, doesn’t have as deep a voice as I would have thought, but to make his voice that deep would require a second, male reader. All told, LaVoy does a fine job, and I didn’t feel distracted from the story.

I have begun reading the DRC when I am provided the audio, and so from there forward, I switch to the audio, referring occasionally to the DRC to make notes or highlight possible quotations. Once the climax comes, however, the tension gets the better of me, and because I know I can read faster than LaVoy can talk, I switch back to the text.

The premise is that there have been two deaths. The first is an old boyfriend of Kay’s, a man named Sal Giordano. They have remained friends over the years, and she saw him recently when she dropped off a basket of goodies for his birthday. He has been the victim of a death flight, which is new to me but apparently, according to Wiki, is a thing. It involves killing someone by dropping them from a plane.

Holy crap!

Now we get into aspects of the case that make it an even better October read, as well as darkly funny. The prose itself doesn’t appear to be intentionally humorous, and yet I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that Cornwell didn’t snicker a bit as she wrote it. The area where Sal is dropped is inside an abandoned amusement park with a Wizard of Oz theme. It’s been vandalized, and is seriously creepy. The higher ups within the U.S. military are in on the investigation, and so:

“’Let me make sure this is clear,’ General Gunner says to me. ‘He landed on the Yellow Brick Road in the middle of an apple orchard.’

“’Inside the Haunted Forest. Yes.’”

I couldn’t help myself. I squawked out loud!

Soon another corpse is identified, a child belonging to a pair of wealthy, powerful people that are also terrible human beings, and as it happens, horrible parents. The two deaths are connected. The parents throw their weight around and try to manipulate the investigation, but of course, they don’t succeed.

Ultimately it seems that one of the guilty parties is Kay’s nemesis, Carrie Grethen. Carrie was once Lucy’s true love; later, her evil nature became apparent, but nobody can seem to keep her locked up, and she has become Kay’s Moriarty. I mention this here because it is raised early in the story, so I don’t think it can be called a spoiler, but I won’t say more about that.

To the faithful readership, I will also say this. As the book opens, two of Cornwell’s old standbys, ones that I’d be happy to see her retire, appear. First, she has to be driven to the scene in a helicopter, but oh no, there’s a storm coming. I was irritated. Can Kay not go anywhere without there being a storm? Just once? Please? And then something has to be retrieved by diving, which harks back to an earlier book in which she’s attacked with a spear gun. But friends, neither of these turns out to be key to the story, and we’re done with them in a heartbeat, so be patient.

I like to read a few books at a time for variety, but once this one began, it edged out the others—except at bedtime, because when I go to bed, I need to sleep! It’s among her finest work, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to you.

The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates****

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is an eloquent writer, and I look forward to reading whatever he publishes. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

This book is brief, and it consists of four essays. The first and briefest is about returning to Howard University to teach writing. The second details his first trip to Africa, specifically Senegal; it’s surprising that it took him this long, he says, what with being raised in an Afrocentric home, the child of a Panther. But it’s expensive, it’s time consuming, and now, he can finally do it. As I read both of these, I admire the way he crafts an essay, but at the same time, I also feel as if I am not his intended audience; at times I feel almost as if I am listening in on someone else’s conversation. But I remind myself that I am reading this thing at the publisher’s invitation, so I push on, and it’s outstanding material.

The third essay is the one I enjoy the most, particularly because I had just finished reading a harrowing memoir about book banning. Coates attends a South Carolina school board meeting in which his own book, Between the World and Me, is being challenged. He’s invited by a teacher there that wants to continue using his book in her classroom, and he’s amazed at the assertions being made by some of the speakers in attendance, right in the shadow of George Floyd’s murder. And speaking of this, he says

“I understand the impulse to dismiss the import of the summer of 2020, to dismiss the ‘national conversations,’ the raft of TV specials and documentaries, even the protests themselves. Some of us see the lack of policy change and wonder if the movement itself was futile. But policy change is an end point, not an origin…and whereas white supremacy, like any other status quo, can default to the cliched claims and excuses for the world as it is—bad cops are rotten apples, American is guardian of the free world—we have the burden of crafting new language and stories that allow people to imagine that new policies are possible. And now, here in Chapin, some people, not most (it is hardly ever most), had, through the work of Black writers, begun that work of imagining.”

The final essay, which is also the lengthiest, is about his trip to the Middle East. At the outset he mentions his trip to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and seeing the vast Book of Names, which catalogs all of the nearly 5 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. But a few pages later he gets to the meat of the matter and decries the way that Israel is treating Hamas. No wait, that’s not the way he words it. He dislikes the treatment of the Palestinians that chose to be ruled by Hamas. Whatever. All I know is that when he states flatly that he isn’t interested in hearing the other side of this conflict, completely ignoring the pogrom that set this entire conflict in motion, he loses me. I skim the rest of the essay in case there’s a surprise for me somewhere in there, but of course, there isn’t. Bandwagons are easily joined, but I would have expected a writer of his caliber to think and write more critically.

So, should you read this book? There’s no denying that Coates is a skillful writer, and the essay regarding censorship is worth reading all by itself. And in that spirit, I won’t say that you shouldn’t read this because I happen to disagree with the last nearly fifty percent of the book; but when you do so, keep your brain engaged and don’t take everything he says at face value.

My Name is Barbra, by Barbra Streisand*****

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As I came of age in the late 1970s, Barbra Streisand was a tremendous star, and when it came to movies in which she sang, she was peerless. She still is. I was starstruck by her brilliance, her charisma, and her astounding voice, and even so, I didn’t know the half of it. She wouldn’t accept glass ceilings, and when she encountered one, she kicked it in, and she did it with style.

Once her place in the industry was established, Barbra tried to erect a few boundaries around her private life, but it wasn’t easy; when she declined interviews whose focus was her relationships with men, some members of the press chose instead to portray her in an unfriendly light. And some people were threatened by her. A woman director? A woman producer? Who did she think she was, anyway? And she showed them who, sometimes wearing multiple hats in a given film, directing and acting, or…well, you get the idea. And thanks to the resistance she encountered, she grew to be a fierce feminist activist as well.

The autobiography is done in linear form, which I appreciate. I chose not to request the galley, because the book exceeds 1000 pages, and I’d have had only a month till it was published. Instead, I put it on my Christmas list, and Santa delivered it both in print and audio. Both are wonderful, but the audio is read by the author, which makes it my favorite. One more thing I greatly appreciate: when she discusses her music, we get to hear a brief, seconds-long excerpt. A pet peeve of mine is when song lyrics are spoken on audio books, and it is triply aggravating when the book in question is written by and read by the musician that made it famous. I’m sure there are hoops that must be jumped through to be allowed to include these snatches of song, but I know it can be done, because Barbra did it.

We begin with her childhood, the loss of her father, the unavailability of her mother, and I marvel that she grew up to be a good person, and that she nevertheless found the inner strength and confidence to pursue a career as a performer.

A good person? How would I know? We’ve never met. Surely authors do their damnedest to shine the light on their better qualities when they scribe their memoirs. But ultimately, it’s the way that Barbra’s own character makes its way into her productions that convinces me. She has no use for pretension, for one thing, even after the millions she’s made (and given away a lot of.) And she’s spent decades as an activist, using her talents to raise funds for AIDS research, to combat climate change, and to promote women’s equal treatment.

One word about that: there are long passages, at least one whole chapter and parts of others, where she discusses her causes and the politicians she admires, and I must confess that her adoration of various Democratic politicians is my least favorite part of the book. I actually lean further left than she does, and as she gushes over the Clintons, I find myself arguing a bit with her in my head. Sure, Bill Clinton did A and B as president, but he also did C and D, which are dreadful. And so on. Ultimately, I skipped to the end of one such chapter, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the book just fine.

I was fascinated by her explanation of why The Way We Were, one of her massively successful movies, is curiously devoid of politics, even though that is the point of the movie. She tells us that there was a lot of excellent content that landed on the cutting room floor. Nixon’s people had leaned hard on the studio not to disparage the McCarthy witch hunt, for example, and they folded. Happily, Streisand thought to ask if she might keep the portions that were cut, and a new version is being published for its 50th anniversary, so that we can see what it was supposed to look like. And it was this travesty, the way the original film was butchered without her input or consent, that made her determined to direct, and not to make any more movies unless she could have the final cut in her contract.

In her old age—she is in her eighties now—she is willing to talk about her private life in ways she would not do earlier, and she finds just the right level of intimacy to describe it. She speaks well of most of her past loves and many, many fellow performers, and has met and spent time with just about every public figure you can imagine. At one point I challenge myself to think of someone famous that isn’t in her book. Ha, I’ve got it! Nelson Mandela. Then I flip through the vast trove of photographs at the end of the book, and there she is with him.

Her harsh words are very few, and even so, she can often find some positive words to round out her discussion. Sidney Chaplin, son of Charlie, was monstrous, and he terrorized her just as her career was taking wing. Her longtime boyfriend, the hairdresser-turned-producer, Jon Peters, is the other major entrant on her unhappy list, but she recognizes the good things that he did, too, and the fact that he—and every one of her exes—sends her flowers on her birthday says it all.

I could go on even longer about this book, but it won’t be as fun for you as if you get the book for yourself, and I want to go back and re-watch her movies, especially Yentl. As for you, this audio book could make your daily commute much more enjoyable. Highly recommended.  

Phantom Orbit, by David Ignatius****

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“When we know a secret that could have devastating consequences, what should we do?”

David Ignatius writes spy thrillers, and is one of the most reliable authors I’ve read within that genre. I can always count on an absorbing read. Phantom Orbit centers on Ivan Volkov, a young man from Russia that goes to Beijing to study science, and an American CIA officer named Edith Ryan. They come together and then part, because while their interests and personalities draw them together, their obligations to the lands of their births pull them apart.

My thanks go to NetGalley and W.W. Norton and Company for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Our chief protagonist, Ivan, is courted by the Chinese, who want to recruit him and his brilliant mind to their space program, but he is summoned home when his mother becomes ill, and once he is there, he comes under intense pressure to remain in Russia. Later, once he has lost almost everything, he finds a chance for redemption.

Edith, on the other hand, is faced with every possible glass ceiling and endless sexism in her work, and nobody will take her ideas seriously. Eventually she gives up on the Agency and returns to civilian life in the States.

This story grabbed my attention from the get go and held it all the way through. I wasn’t able to guess what the resolution would be.

That said, this also isn’t the best he’s written. For those new to this author, I recommend The Quantum Spy. For Ignatius’s faithful readers, and for those fond enough of espionage thrillers to want more than one such novel, this book is recommended.

Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout*****

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“Lucy said, ‘So what is the point of this story?’

“Olive laughed. She really laughed at that. ‘Lucy Barton, the stories you told me—as far as I could tell—had very little point to them. Okay, okay, maybe they had subtle points to them. I don’t know what the point is to this story!’

“’People,’ Lucy said quietly, leaning back. ‘People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.’

“’Exactly,’ Olive nodded.”

Elizabeth Strout’s fifth entry into her Amgash series, Tell Me Everything, feels like a homecoming of sorts, as she integrates the main characters from all of her earlier novels, or most of them anyway, into a single volume. Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, the Burgess Boys—both of them! It’s a wonderful thing to put them, or some of them, together in the same room for a conversation, or have two of them become friends and take walks together. It’s a lot of fun for her readers, and it was probably a lot of fun to write, too.

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

As is true with most books by Strout, the book isn’t—as the quote above suggests—so much about events as it is about the characters that live them. Publicists can call this a murder mystery if they want to, but if you are a new reader and you believe them, you will be disappointed, because the mystery is almost incidental to the story as a whole. The man under suspicion is living his life, and we read about him; the fact that his mother died under suspicious circumstances isn’t nearly as important as the life this poor fellow has been living. Meanwhile, there are a number of other plot threads that are just as important, and most of them have nothing to do with him or his family.

In fact, if I were to draw a theme from this story, it would perhaps be friendship; you might also make a case for fear. For example, Lucy tells Bob Burgess on one of their walks that “none of us are on sturdy soil, we just tell ourselves we are.” And then “when Bob thought about the state of the country these days, he sometimes had the image of a huge tractor trailer rumbling down the highway and the wheels, one by one, falling off.”

This is an easy theme to relate to; much of the polarization of the United States right now has to do with two main ideological camps, and a few smaller ones, being utterly terrified of what will happen next if the wrong people come to power; of course, opinions vary on exactly who the wrong ones are.

Nevertheless, I don’t see that as the main theme. The earliest Amgash books absolutely oozed anxiety. I felt as if I needed to take something before I read them, they were so fearful in their essences. But this story isn’t like that. Here, there’s a sense of acceptance, and also a sense that friendships, and the people inside of those friendships, can help one another.

So despite the mystery thread, this is what Lucy and Olive say that their stories are about: people and their lives.  It follows that those of us that have loved the earlier volumes will love this one even more, because Strout is doing what she does best: she sculpts characters so visceral that I feel I would know them if I passed by them in the grocery store.

Can you read this one as a stand-alone? Well, sure you can. I won’t try to stop you. But your experience will be richer and more satisfying if you treat yourself to some of the earlier stories. Some of them are rough reads, and I myself haven’t read everything this author has written, but if you grab a couple of them at least, particularly the Amgash and Olive books, you’ll appreciate this one more.

Highly recommended to all that cherish outstanding literary fiction.