Tag Archives: fiction

Everybody Rise: a Novel, by Stephanie Clifford****

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everybodyriseAll Evelyn has ever wanted is to please her mother; all Barbara, Evelyn’s mother, has ever wanted is for Evelyn to be accepted into elite Eastern society. Barbara doesn’t care whether Evelyn is well read, but she had sure as hell better know which spoon to use, and what to wear to every occasion…and most of all, she had better know “everybody who’s anybody”. In other words, Clifford’s skewer of high society hits the mark in ways both wry and hilarious. This terribly amusing little tale goes on sale August 18—oh wait, was my rhyme a trifle tacky? Anyway, you can buy it soon, or you can order it in advance, but I was lucky and got a copy free from Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for this humble review. Thank you to both of them.

Evelyn’s parents want different things, and it’s just her luck—she is their only child, so all their expectations fall on her shoulders. Her father, an attorney with egalitarian notions and a folksy Southern manner, is often out of town, working for the clients he represents and sticking it to the big pharmaceutical companies. So most of the time, it’s Evelyn and her mother. And her mother is relentless in her need for social stature.

Evelyn is sent to Sheffield Boarding School, which should provide some relief, but her mother obtains a copy of the student directory, and has tracked the social value of every child there. Evelyn is friends with Charlotte, a young woman of high ideals and great loyalty, but she has pigtails, a social no-no, and the wrong damn family. Evelyn is conflicted, because she is close to Charlotte, but her mother wants her to drop her. Her mother has chosen the people Evelyn should cultivate. Imagine!

Over the course of time, Evelyn manages to worm her way into the upper reaches of the social echelon, but she can’t financially afford the lifestyle she is expected to lead. And worst of all, she comes to realize, once she is rubbing elbows with the cream of society, that her mother is actually pretty embarrassing. Her mother does not have as much upper-crust social sense as she thinks she does.

She’d better avoid her.

You may think I have spoiled the surprises, but you haven’t heard the half of it. There are so many choice bits along the way, and then the ending is something else entirely. At times I felt that I was watching a train wreck I was incapable of stopping, but the thing is, I really liked watching it, and the ending, which seems obvious as it approaches, is a surprise after all.

If you’re heading for the beach this August, or just need entertainment for a good long holiday weekend with the air conditioner cranked and a nice drink ready to hand, this is a gift you should get for yourself. It’s absorbing and vastly entertaining.

Off and Running, by Philip Reed****

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offandrunningOff and Running is a comic caper set around Y2K. Jack is a writer looking for his lucky break; Walt is an old man, a beloved American icon who hasn’t published a memoir yet. Garrett is Walt’s ill-begotten, bad-tempered adult son, the worst celebrity brat imaginable. Reed tosses them all into his literary blender and what comes out is both hilarious and at times, genuinely suspenseful as well. Thank you once more to Brash Books and Net Galley for permitting me a sneak peek; this amusing tale will be for sale in August.

Jack has had one project after another not work out. His wife, Sarah, has had it with him, and wants him to go out and get a real job. Every day she schleps out to her full time job, coming home tired and ill tempered, and she doesn’t want to hear anymore about how Jack’s latest book proposal will make money for sure. She has a change of heart when Jack’s agent sends him out to see the venerated, universally loved comedian, Walt Stuckey. Walt is choosey about who he sees and what he talks about, but over time, Jack builds a genuine rapport with him. They become friends, and Jack is accepted as Walt’s biographer. Just as Walt invites Jack and Sarah to come stay the weekend with him and his girlfriend, Mary, the unthinkable happens: Walt has a stroke. The son-from-hell Walt loves but has been unable to develop a positive relationship with takes charge. Walt is held virtually a prisoner, and it soon becomes clear that Garrett does not really want Walt to recover. He wants Walt’s financial empire, and he will be the executor of Walt’s estate when he goes.

So the first thing Garrett does is to isolate Walt. Since his own memoir is the one thing Walt is truly excited about and could give him reason to live, Garrett uses his power-of-attorney privilege to fire Jack and cancel the memoir. Mary isn’t having any of it, and once he thinks about it, neither is Jack. Jack is determined to finish this book. It’s what Walt wants, too. And most of all, Jack wants to know why the reference to Bebe Rebozo in Walt’s comedy routine caused his over the top hit comedy show, which was “funnier ‘n hell”, to be cancelled without a moment’s warning. He’ll find out, or die trying.

So Jack and Mary launch a rescue mission to free Walt from his rotten son-turned-captor, and the result is alternately suspenseful and hilarious.

There are several events in the book that strain credulity, but it’s okay, because this is not literary fiction; this is a caper. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended, and I was sorry when it did. A considerable portion of the story is set in Death Valley, and the heat, the inescapable sun, the gritty sand were all so palpable that I nearly resolved never to leave my cool damp domicile again.

We all need something ridiculous in our lives now and then. Humor relaxes us and puts our own worries into perspective. Do yourself a favor and order this book when it comes out digitally August 4. Then, you’ll be off and running!

A Grown-up Kind of Pretty: A Novel, by Joshilyn Jackson ****

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agrownupkindofprettyMosey Slocumb’s mother, Liza, has had a stroke. It’s a good thing both of them live with Big. Big is the name given Ginny, mother of Liza, grandmother of Mosey. The ladies in the family tend to give birth early and unexpectedly; both Ginny and Liza had babies at fifteen. In the inner city, this happens so often that most folks don’t care, but in their tiny southern town, the judgments fall hard and fast. They are not welcome in the homes of their other relatives, nor even at church. They are “the ones who had been put out like bad cats. Outside, all Liza and I could hope for was the dark, ass end of Jesus,” according to Ginny.

The town does not only judge sins that have taken place; it also anticipates sin. Mosey is fifteen now. She can feel the eyes of her classmates, her teachers, and even Big and Liza keep her under close scrutiny. Although she is a virgin, she has taken to using home pregnancy tests…just in case.

All of this changes with the discovery of the silver box buried beneath the willow tree.

All that Ginny, Liza, and Mosey have, really, is each other, and when their family is threatened, all of them–even poor, damaged Liza–come out swinging.

This is a fun book once the early part is past, or at least that was my take on it. Jackson is a courageous writer, but some may find her style too abrasive to enjoy. She takes conventional religion apart, no doubt about it, and whereas I was fine with this, those that enjoy a family-like church relationship may easily be offended. So then, this is for the more leftward-leaning among us, yes?

Yes but no. There were several passages at the start of the book that also sounded a lot like life-begins-at-conception, and abortion-is-murder. It wasn’t said, but it was implied strongly enough to raise my hackles. Had I not already really enjoyed this writer’s later work (Between, Georgia), I think I might have slammed the book shut and tossed it onto the yard sale pile.

Even the most brilliant author must make sure that when she takes a stand, or two, or three, she has an audience left after those she has offended fall by the wayside.

That much said, I really enjoyed this story once I was past the initial rough patch. An engaging story, mostly, about three generations of women who stand by one another through whatever comes.

Boy: A Novel, by James Hanley ***-****

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boy3.49 stars, and my thanks go to Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media for the DRC. The digital version of this story became available yesterday, and you can get a copy of your own if you’d like.

Boy, a tragic story that reads like a hybrid between Dickens and Melville, was originally published in 1930, and ran into all sorts of censorship. There are passages that contain sex that would not even be considered erotica now, since they avoid much specificity, but for the bourgeoisie of that time period, it was way too much. The censorship fight was where my interest came from, because I don’t generally seek out tragedy. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Any time anyone tries to keep the printed word from being accessible, my curiosity is piqued.

Arthur Fearon is an academically talented student whose parents make him leave school at thirteen even though at the time, the legal drop-out age in Britain is fourteen. His father has been on strike and had no income for awhile, and is bad at bringing his paycheck home when he has one. An only child, his parents both look to Arthur to become the family bread winner. His father finds him a position on the docks, and Arthur hates it so much that he stows away on board a ship, with the notion that he will emigrate away from England, maybe land in the United States and get a fresh start. Young as he is,it never occurs to him to learn which ship is going where. The ship he hides on isn’t even headed that way.

Issues of child abuse and in particular the way this youngster is turned away by every adult from whom he seeks help are hard on the eyes and hard on the heart.

The writing style is one that may not work for a lot of people in 2015. This was written in more or less the same era as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and it has a lot of stylistic similarities. Inner narratives run on for much longer than one might expect, because the reader of 80 years ago had a much greater attention span. There is a fair amount of repetition that was considered acceptable then but might not be appreciated by today’s readers.

One thing I can tell you for sure: if you are feeling sorry for yourself, this book will make all your own problems look like nothing at all. Just right for the reader that wants a good three-hanky novel.

The Last Word: A Novel, by Hanif Kureishi *****

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thelastwordKureishi is a writer of considerable renown. Here he has created a story that is not only savagely funny, but the closest I have seen to technically perfect. A million thanks to Net Galley and Scriber for the DRC.

This wonderful gem will be available for purchase March 10.

Kureishi chose the title partially because he had planned it to be his final novel; to see what he has to say about his book, go here:

That said, there are several other spins you could put on this title. I don’t want to blow the ending, but the title is much more wry than Kureishi lets on, although he does point out in the above interview that it’s partly about the awkward nature of the biographer’s work, and how one might feel about “…having your story told back to you by an idiot.”

Harry is either a biographer or a parasite, depending upon one’s point of view. He has been sent out to stay as a guest in Mamoon’s secluded home out in the back of beyond, to interview him and those who love him, those who hate him, and anybody else who has any good dirt on him. Says Rob, his publisher: “Extreme biography. That is your job.” The stakes are high: if Harry should fail on his mission, he will be doomed to the halls of academia. He could even be forced to teach creative writing.

Dear god; the humanity!

But Harry is up for the job. He needs the money; he wants a career. And when one considers the number of women Mamoon has left unhappy, it would seem that there is a great deal of material to be mined. So nervous though he is, he rolls up his sleeves and tiptoes out to conduct interviews and write some trash.

For awhile the plot sort of hums along, and then it appears to wander. If you are foolish enough to stop halfway through the book, you may come away unimpressed.

But Mamoon is not merely the passively uncooperative subject he appears to be. The man is sly as hell. In the end, what will each of them become, and more to the point, who will do a hatchet job on whom?

As the ending unfurled I could only drop my jaw in amazement. It was so damn smooth! How did Kureishi turn that whole thing around that way? I don’t want to ruin it for you, so I will only tell you to read this book when it becomes available in March, and prepare to bow at the feet of the master. He’s somewhere on that highly literary “sinking rock” known as Britain, and he’s a better writer than you are. Well, probably.

The Refuge, by Sue Henry ***-****

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therefugeSue Henry has two series. One is about Iditarod participant Jessie Arnold. The other is about Maxie McNabb, a widow who travels during Alaska’s coldest season and sometimes at other times also, usually in her Winnebago, and usually in the company of her miniature dachshund, Stretch. As she makes her way around the USA, the reader picks up all sorts of minutiae about the culture, history, flora and fauna of various places in the United States. For those of us who are curious yet sedentary, it’s an added benefit to reading the story, and she works her discoveries in as a natural part of what her character learns, so it doesn’t have the false, abrupt quality of (my pet peeve among cozy mysteries) dropping recipes into stories. *Shudder!* The Refuge, which I obtained free of cost at the local library to lighten up an otherwise heavy-duty reading load, is a Maxie and Stretch book, the third in the series.

I was disappointed to see that Stretch was left out of this book, except for a brief bit at the end. Maxie goes to Hawaii to assist a friend-of-a-friend who is attempting to move herself and her belongings back to Alaska, her original home, from Hawaii. She is laid up with injuries and has two weeks to get out of her rented home. Since Maxie didn’t especially want to go to Hawaii, it seemed odd she would do this for someone that wasn’t a close friend, but she does so, and then finds herself stalked by a strange man, who becomes more menacing as time goes by.

The good thing about this story is that the tone is congenial and the pacing is about right for bedtime. It is interesting yet not so heart-stopping, as some thrillers are, as to affect one’s dreams or ability to go to sleep once the book is set aside.

Once her obligation to this irritating, helpless-behaving woman is dispatched, Maxie has a few days remaining before she can return to Alaska. (Once again, one cannot help wondering, since she yearns to return to her own home and hound, why she doesn’t simply go to the airport and inquire about an earlier flight, but whatever.) She decides to rent a camper and see more of the Big Island, and her sight-seeing adventures include a place known as The Refuge. Historically this was a place built behind a wall of “lava rock” and was considered a sacred place which, if a criminal guilty of a capital crime could reach it without being apprehended, he was considered safe and permitted to live out his days. So it was rather a clever place to have the criminals follow Maxie and her travel guide and companion, and for the showdown to unfold.

As you can probably tell, I would not pay full price for one of these books, and I won’t read the other series after having tried it once and been bored in the extreme by Iditarod details. (If you think this might be interesting try the books, but I have to say that I read one with the same notion and came away glazed.)

Nevertheless, when a low key interlude is needed, Maxie and Stretch (when he is included) fit the bill, at least for me.

Recommended for cozy mystery fans that are ready to buy the premise in return for a soothing bedtime story.

The 19th Wife, by David Ebershoff ****

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19thwifeEbershoff is a strong story teller. In The 19th Wife, he weaves the stories of polygamy in and out of one another, often to hilarious result, and at other times thought provoking.

Ann Eliza Young was the 19th wife, at least according to some accounts, of Brigham Young, famous pioneer leader of The Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, referred to by members as LDS, and to most others as Mormons. Ann Eliza was a rebel, and she left Young, refusing to be stuck in a polygamous marriage. Ebershoff has used this real-life bit of history to create a fictional journal for her and other historical figures that played a role in her life, some of whom were real, and others who weren’t.

The formal prose that he uses in spinning her first person narrative, and that of others in her story, creates a startling juxtaposition with his present-day characters, chief among them Jordan Scott, one of the so-called lost boys who have been booted out of a current day polygamous sect in order to scale down the competition for young, nubile brides so that the old farts can have a greater supply of women. But the geezers didn’t really have to worry about Jordan taking their ladies, since he is gay. So honey, go from the formal speech of religious people in the 19th century, to that of a gay Californian in the year Y2K, and well there you go. The leaps that Habershoff depicts between their speech mannerisms almost have to make you laugh out loud.

I accidentally read this book twice, once around the time it came out, and then, having forgotten I’d already read it and given it away, I got another copy from the library and was almost done by the time deja vu struck.

Both times I read it (oh yes, I remember now) the story and dialogue were drop-dead funny at first, but by the end I just wanted to be done. Since I have a greater than average attention span and am generally fine with a really long book, I took a day to think about why the joy went out of this juicy novel toward the end.

There are two reasons, I think (though it is still a really good tale) that it loses steam. One is that Ebershoff goes from building situations for their hilarity, to trying to solve his character’s problems in a way that makes sense. My own opinion is that if he was starting with chaos–and the set-up is that Jordan’s mother has been framed for murdering his father, and he sets out to Utah in order to rescue her–then he should have stuck with chaos. It’s all outrageous in the beginning, but toward the end we seem to be veering toward a reasonable ending, at least in many ways, and a moral to the story that isn’t needed and is almost out of place.

The other reason is that the toxic waste that is polygamy isn’t something I want to steep in for very long. It’s a little like a trashy tabloid that momentarily excites our curiosity but leaves us feeling a little soiled if we flip through it for too long. For me, then, had this been wrapped up more quickly, the pacing would not have been lost and I could have emerged laughing as hard at the end as I was at the get-go.

All told: a fun romp that could have been even better.

The Mermaid Chair, by Sue Monk Kidd *****

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themermaidchairJessie Sullivan has a twenty-year itch. She’s stifled, confined, and irritated by her husband, Hugh, a psychiatrist whose professional knowledge makes him automatically correct in any difference of opinion. When the phone call comes telling them that her mother has deliberately chopped off her own index finger, Hugh tells Jessie to go, and once gone, she finds herself unwilling to return home.

Jessie tells Hugh she has to take care of her mother, but the truth is that she has to take care of herself. And the other truth is that she has fallen madly, deeply in love with a monk who lives at the friary next door. And it’s mutual.

Beneath the surface of her romance, old family business percolates, heats, expands. And something is about to blow.

Merely telling you the outline of the plot fails to convey the magnitude of this writer’s magic. If you have read anything else by Sue Monk Kidd, you have at least an idea of what she’s capable of. A few writers are capable of speaking to the reader as if there is no other reader; the whole thing has been written for you, and you alone. It’s deep, and it’s personal.

In my retirement years I have been devouring books the way I once did bags of chips. Sometimes a few months later I look back at the list of books I have read, and have to get online and remind myself what some of them were even about.

Yet there are others that strike a chord so deep and true that years, decades may go by and I’ll still remember them almost as if I had just read them. And this is one of those; I know it already. I actually stopped breathing a few times, I was so struck by her prose.

It’s possible that this may appeal most to middle aged women and those who are older, since that is the gender and stage of life of the protagonist. Yet in some ways such labeling is unfair, because women often read and are spellbound by novels whose chief protagonist is male, so it seems as if the reverse should be true sometimes. All I know for sure is that it really worked for me.

My copy came from the local library, but if I had paid full jacket price for this little treasure, it would have been worth every penny.

Pretty Ugly, by Kirkus Butler ****

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prettyuglyIt’s vulgar, utterly tasteless, and very, very funny. Pretty Ugly, by Kirker Butler, a man who is no stranger to edgy comedy, skewers a whole herd of sacred cows within the confines of its humble two covers. Just be ready!

Thank you and thank you again to St. Martins Press and Net Galley for the DRC.

The Millers are a good Christian family. Naturally, they would never send their children to public schools; instead, they are home-schooled by grandma Joan, who receives personal messages from Jesus, with whom she has a personal relationship. Papa Ray is never home; he works as a nurse, popping whatever narcotics and other prescription meds happen to be lying around, treating them as his own personal escapist lottery.

Miranda, now a mother, was once a beauty queen herself, and she’s made daughter Bailey into the family’s own teensy beauty queen industry. Hey, who doesn’t love a good kiddie pageant?

“Fifty scantily clad prepubescent girls scampered about like the main attraction in a Bangkok coffee shop: sexy children marketed as wholesome family entertainment. The room reeked of anxiety, tanner, and schadenfreude.”

Ray has found every conceivable way to avoid going home. He’s taken a second job as a hospice nurse, working five nights weekly, imbibing his patients’ pain medications and waiting for them to die so he can put another notch on his belt.

And now there’s Courtney.

This won’t be a novel to everyone’s taste, but if you lean slightly to the left and like your humor dark, Butler’s soon-to-be-released gem may be right up your alley!  Watch for it in bookstores at the end of March 2015.

Alexander’s Bridge, by Willa Cather ****

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alexandersbridgeYour reviewer is presently finishing up a couple of ARC’s; meanwhile, let’s look at a classic that has kept its appeal over the years. There’s nobody who writes like Willa Cather.

Alexander is an architect who designs bridges. Right now he has two problem bridges. One is in Canada. Stunning, innovative, and unusual, it draws a great deal of publicity. The problem is that it’s flawed. In fact, as he comes to realize with horror, it isn’t actually safe.

The other problem is his relationship bridge; he has two women, one of whom he is married to in the USA, the other in London. That great big pond isn’t quite large enough to keep the two sides of his life from banging into one another. He loves both and doesn’t want to lose either of them, but he is essentially a monogamous person, and he doesn’t feel so good. He’s cheating on his wife and she doesn’t know about it; he keeps meaning to end it with Hilda, but when he sees her, he can’t.

The whole thing is resolved in a manner both brilliant and unanticipated until it is upon us. A novella rather than a novel, but quite well done. I do love Cather’s work!