Tag Archives: literary fiction

Where All Light Tends to Go, by David Joy*****

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WhereAllLightTends“Dead men tell no tales, Jacob. The ones left to living are the ones who write the history.”

I received my DRC courtesy of Net Galley and Putnam Penguin publishers in exchange for an honest review. This title is available for purchase.

Jacob McNeely is a teenager in Cashier, North Carolina, a tiny  town deep in the crags and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains. His mother is a crank user recently released against his father’s wishes from a psychiatric hospital. Jacob has always wished she might turn into a real mother, but it isn’t going to happen.

His father is the local drug czar, with cops on his payroll and a wide variety of other employees as well. He uses McNeely’s Auto Garage to launder his drug money. If any clueless tourist should come by, he gives them a quote so outrageous they take their business elsewhere. Locals foolish enough to cross him or get in his way find themselves and their vehicles in a deep, watery grave yard. That’s if the abused, underfed Walker coonhounds that are tied up at intervals throughout his property don’t kill them first.

Jacob walks a careful tight rope just in order to stay alive. He doesn’t like the life he leads, but he doesn’t see a way out. That is, unless he can run away with Maggie, the girl he has loved since childhood. Maggie is cut out for greater things; Maggie should go to college and escape the danger and poverty of Cashier.

If only Jake could go with her.

Joy is a gifted writer. His stark prose is chilling yet poignant, and so arresting that the reader will be hard pressed to set it down once it’s begun. But you may think twice about reading it at bedtime.

Where does all light tend to go? The allegory is heavy but sophisticated. Perhaps all light goes toward heaven, the candle that reminds us of the existence of God.

Or it’s possible that all light just goes out.

Searing, wrenching, and deeply affecting, this is a book to remember long after you’ve forgotten everything else you’ve read. Highly recommended to adults. Definitely not for children or adolescents.

Simply brilliant!

 

The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke*****

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thetinroofblowSometimes people say they “ran across” a book, and that is close to how I came to read James Lee Burke for the first time. I had been tidying up for company, and my daughter had selected this book from the “free” pile at school, then decided she didn’t want it. She is a teenager, so instead of finding our charity box and putting it there, she dropped it on the upstairs banister. I scooped it up in irritation..then looked at it again. Flipped it over…read the blurb about the writer. This man is a rare winner of TWO Edgars. Really? I examined the title again; I hadn’t read any novels based on Hurricane Katrina, so why not give it a shot?

There are about a dozen writers whose novels I will read just because they wrote them. This man is now one of them. I appreciated his ability to develop characters, deal respectfully but realistically with the tragedy and travesty that was Hurricane Katrina (followed by Rita) and recognize it as such; and keep about a million plot threads going without ever dropping anything. In fact, the complexity of the character line-up–somewhere between a dozen and fifteen important people to remember, when I was on the verge of falling asleep for the night–gave me pause, but then this is #6 in a series, so it is possible that if I’d begun with #1, some of them would have been old friends by now, with just a few new ones introduced (and some disposed of before the story was over).

The setting was entirely unfamiliar to me; I have never spent time in the deep southern part of the USA, unless you count a trip with my family to Disney World, and have never set foot in Louisiana. Burke knew it well enough for both of us. His word work was sufficient to lay the canvas before me,and the devastation that was visited upon those who had previously been poor but stable was laid bare:

“They drowned in attics and on the second floors of their houses. They drowned along the edges of Highway 23 when they tried to drive out of Plaquemines Parish. They drowned in retirement homes and in trees and on car tops while they waved frantically at helicopters flying by overhead. They died in hospitals and in nursing homes of dehydration and heat exhaustion, and they died because an attending nurse could not continue to operate a hand ventilator for hours upon hours without rest.”

He gave due credit to those who, in an official capacity or otherwise, worked tirelessly for up to 72 hours on end to save the lives of the vulnerable who had been unable to get out in time, or whose parents had made the wrong choice for them. But he also tells the truth about the condition of the levee that was supposed to protect the residents of New Orleans, and how it had been permitted to deteriorate, when Federal funds were dropped by 50% without a moment’s notice or explanation, and permitted to deteriorate worst in the Black part of town. The narration spills out with disgust the “latent racism…that was already beginning to rear its head.”

Meanwhile, our hero, cop Dave Robicheaux, is trying to find out the whereabouts of a “junkie priest” who perished trying to evacuate his parishioners, but died in the flood waters when criminals stole his boat. He also keeps track of his best friend Clete, a bail bondsman and private detective who will follow him around if he is not included in the search, because some of the people Robicheaux is trying to locate are also bail skippers, and therefore also his bread and butter. Clete is an alcoholic and makes some really bad decisions; Robicheaux tirelessly tries to keep him under his wing and under control, all the while also trying to keep his wife and daughter safe from a local mercenary he’s investigating. The bad guy knows that Robicheaux’s family is his greatest treasure, and threatens them as an attempt to make him back off.

While parts of New Orleans appear untouched by Katrina, others have had their entire infrastructures destroyed, and there are virtually no navigable roads; the waters are treacherous as well, with downed power lines and debris just below the surface. In short, he has his work cut out for him.

Burke’s bad guys are complicated characters. All come from hideous family situations, and childhood has left its unalterable mark on them, but they are layered in the depths to which they will stoop in seeking wealth, power, or simply revenge. One is capable of property crime, violence, even rape, but finds he cannot look an unarmed man in the eye and shoot him; another can do it without a hitch in his heartbeat. The street smart voices I heard within these chapters felt real to me.

But the consistent thread which lies at the core of the story, of the storm, of everything that takes place between its covers, is one which the writer has hold of like a pit bull with a rat. He has his jaws around it and shakes it without ever letting loose of it, whatever other events weave in and out of his pages, the racism that caused the most harm to be brought upon those with the fewest resources, intentionally and maliciously. He will not let go of the racism that rules New Orleans.

“The original sympathy for the evacuees from New Orleans was incurring a strange  transformation. Right wing talk shows abounded with callers viscerally enraged at the fact evacuees were receiving a onetime two-thousand-dollar payment to help them buy food and find lodging. The old southern nemesis was back,naked and raw and dripping–absolute hatred for the poorest of the poor.”

I can see why this guy has a pair of Edgars to bookend his mantel. He spins a compelling, absorbing tale, and the values and priorities that lay at the core of his work are ones I share and appreciate. It was in reading this novel that I became a die-hard James Lee Burke fan. I wrote this review before I had a blog on which to put it, and this book is a must-read for those that love good fiction, good mysteries, or that care about social justice.

Miller’s Valley, by Anna Quindlen*****

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MillersValeyMiller’s Valley is an intimate, poignant story so personal that it is hard to remember that it’s fiction rather than a memoir. Thanks to Net Galley and Random House for the DRC. Though I usually read several DRC’s at a time, this was the one I saved for the end of the day, for that time when the phone stops ringing, the dogs quit barking, the family doesn’t need my attention, and there’s nobody at the front door. During those deep, silent hours I immersed myself into the life of Mimi Miller, hypnotized as if my best friend were perched on the bed spilling out her secrets.

If you love good literary fiction, you have to read this book!

The Millers are a family of working farmers. Day by day, inch by inch, water is claiming their land. Shifty business is going on between a developer, who wants to build and sell a waterfront community in what is now rural land containing farms and woods, and the government, which is interested in increasing the size of the local dam. Visitors come to all land owners in the valley, slick people ready to wheel and deal, threaten and cajole.

The Millers are having none of it.

The reader sees all of this through the eyes of Mary Margaret “Mimi” Miller, who grows up amid the tension, the resistance to the governmental takeover of their land, and the pride…above all, the pride. Her family mucks out the mud when the floods come, and they persevere. They resign themselves to the notion that wall-to-wall carpeting can never happen because water comes into the house so often. You can shovel the muck off of wood or linoleum, but a carpet would be ruined the first time the flood came.

Woven in and out of her story is that of her family members and closest friends, including reclusive Aunt Ruth, her mother’s sister who lives in a separate house on the property. Ruth is agoraphobic, and would not come out of her house if she believed it to be on fire. Ruth says that getting out of the house is “overrated”. We also see her older brother, Eddie, who is “the glory of Miller’s Valley”, the perfect son who goes off to college and makes good; we also follow her other brother Tommy into a host of trouble, trouble, and more trouble.

We view each setting as individual snapshot; she paints it, and we are there. Character development is likewise outstanding. As Mimi grows older, we see the same characters with deeper layers of complexity, just as our understanding of those around us grows fuller and deeper as we age. And as she grows into her adulthood, Mimi becomes so similar to her mother in so many ways that I have to remind myself continually that this is fiction, not memoir.

Quindlen is a veteran writer, and when I started to pass this galley by, I realized it was for a foolish reason: I had been required to read her essays and stories sometimes in teachers’ workshops, and so when I ran across her name, my instinctive response was to associate it with work. But those required-readings were some of the best workshops I ever sat through, and now that I am reading on my own time, I find her novel suits me down to the ground.

And I agree with Mimi’s conclusion that “Maybe everyone stays the same inside.”

Those that love good literary fiction as well as stories of finding ourselves through our heritage will appreciate this beautifully told story as much as I did. It is available for purchase April 5, 2016. Highly recommended.

Pilgrims: A Lake Wobegon Romance*****

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PilgrimsOh my stars. Keillor is at his finest here. I’ve never read anything funnier. Every now and then I permit myself to read a title that isn’t a new release but that I’ve been considering reading for a long time. This is one of those.

By now you probably have an idea whether or not you are a Keillor buff. His appeal is largely (but not limited to) the boomer generation. His trademark capacity to satirize people from rural Minnesota, and in particular Lutherans and Norwegians and most of all himself, is legend. He somehow manages to tug the heartstrings occasionally and evoke bittersweet feelings that are experienced by those of us who grew up in the USA during a particular time period, even if we are not from his part of the nation or his culture.

Keillor seemed to me to be sort of a hit-or-miss writer for awhile, but lately, he’s been hitting, at least for me. Liberty, Pontoon, and this one, which parodies Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, carries on without slowing or hitching or ceasing to be interesting and at many times (especially the end) a total crack-up.

If you have never read Chaucer and don’t intend to, that won’t wreck it. The basic contours: Chaucer wrote about people going far away, in a limited group, and Keillor uses the same style of poetry Chaucer used to mark the beginning and end of this book. If there are other parallels, then I am not deep enough to find them, but if I found this to be a good bedside read with only that much recollection, then it will likely suffice for you too.

Here are the story’s components. (I actually flagged fifteen hilarious passages, and then realized that if I quoted them here, it would ruin it to you, so I’ll just give you the basics and set you free.) Margie is 53 and very unhappy. Life has sort of ground to a dull halt; the nest is empty, and husband Carl has moved to a different bedroom. She doesn’t know why. She hopes that if they take a romantic trip to Italy, it will rekindle the flame.

Writer Gary Keillor comes to town. No one includes him in anything. They all assume he is being standoffish by not coming, and he is hurt that no one invites him; very Scandinavian. Before he knows it, he has livened up the speech he is giving (and which is obviously boring his audience senseless) by offering to fund the trip to Italy. Holy smokes! What has he done?

On top of all of it, the town hero, Gussie, their fallen Norwegian soldier who fought in World War II, should have his grave decorated. His daughter Margo, born in Italy outside the sanctity of wedlock, has never gotten around to coming to the USA to meet him, and his remaining brother, very elderly and in a nursing home in another part of the USA, has long wanted someone to convey a photo of Gussie to his grave site. A simple request, and nobody would do it. Now, Margie calls to tell him she’ll be happy to help, and joy of joys, he sends her a big pile of money, and on his deathbed, he refers to her as his “daughter, Margie.” She is entirely untroubled about taking his money as the little band from Lake Wobegon sets out on its vacation and its mission to decorate Gussie’s grave.

This should give you enough information to decide if you want to see the rest. I will only tell you this: the story has some surprises in store at the end; it is not as predictable as it appears to be at the 75% mark.

I found my copy during an annual pilgrimage of my own, to Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon. It has been available to the public for some time.

Hilarious, and highly recommended!

The Children’s Home, by Charles Lambert*****

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thechildrenshomeLambert is a brilliant writer, and his absorbing new novel, The Children’s Home, is the best literary fiction I have read in some time. Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review.

We start with Morgan, a bitter recluse rattling around in his immense family mansion, afraid to leave its walls for fear someone will see his face and ridicule him. His sister Rebecca runs the family business, and she hires Engel to serve as housekeeper and cook to him. Moira and David are two children that magically appear at his estate. Unlike normal children, they don’t leave messes lying around, whine, or need to be cleaned up; Morgan notices that whenever he wants to concentrate or not have the children around, they seem to vanish, appearing again when wanted.

Motherhood should be so sweet.

But back to the manse. Soon more children come, first in ones and twos, then in waves. Eventually Morgan can’t tell how many children are on his estate. Investigators show up eager to find that he’s breaking the law; they sniff around and leave without seeing anything. And to the burgeoning household a doctor is added. Morgan wants someone discreet and trustworthy to deal with his medical issues, and soon Dr. Crane is not only making house calls, but has a room of his own. And subtly, the power dynamics start to shift. A seismic change is in the wind.

Morgan doesn’t dare leave the estate. At first, the reader believes it is because he is afraid his appearance will be ridiculed, but then others also mention fear for his safety should he leave the walls of his property. And eventually we see the flipside of all this bitter privilege, the big house with the on call servants and medical care. Because someone has to pay in the end; there’s not enough wealth to go around when the few get so much of it, and we learn what is taking place outside those walls. That said, this is not a simple nod to social justice, but a juicy tale full of surprises.

I won’t take you any farther than that, but I must say that Lambert is a writer of undeniable talent. The Children’s Home is brilliant literary fiction. The allegory is a mite on the heavy handed side, but it doesn’t matter when the spell woven is as magical as it is here. I was expecting something along the lines of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but this is so much more than that.

Parents may want to be aware that there’s a great deal of violence inherent here. For some adolescents, it will be all the more delicious for it, but it is written for an adult audience, and some parents may want to read it themselves before passing it on to younger folk.

When you come down to it, you want to read it anyway. It comes up for sale January 5, 2016, but you can order it now, and you know you want to!

The Fugitives, by Christopher Sorrentino****

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The fugitivesSandy Mulligan is a renowned author, but he’s hit a crisis. He’s left his wife and children for someone else, and it didn’t work out. Now he’s taken to the hinterlands to try to write the book he’s contracted to produce. Meanwhile, he runs across John Salteau, who claims to be an Ojibway storyteller, but it doesn’t ring quite true. Like Mulligan, Salteau is hiding from something. And if that isn’t enough, we have Kat Danhoff, herself a refugee of sorts, and she has landed in the same tiny burg, first to write about Salteau, and then to write about Mulligan interviewing Salteau. And before I can say more, I need to tell you that this clever satirical work was given me free of charge by Net Galley and Simon and Schuster in exchange for this honest review. It goes up for sale on February 9, 2016.

Early in the book we read of Mulligan’s infidelity, and I have to tell you, reader, that the explicit sex scenes and above all, the words selected to describe them, are not words that I am comfortable with. I am from the Boomer generation; if you are younger and don’t mind passages of erotica dropped into your novel, you might find this is a five star read for you. I was horrified, and read through it quickly.

Where are my smelling salts?

Where were we? Ah yes, the story. The dialogue in this thing is absolutely hilarious at times, and although Mulligan’s literary agent is a secondary character, I loved the sly, deliberate way Sorrentino crafted what we must regard as the typical agent, one who just wants him to write something, anything for heaven’s sake, so they don’t lose the deal. If Mulligan needs to retreat to the wilderness of Northern Michigan, then fine. Go. “Go walk in the footsteps of Hemingway, catch a trout or something…”

Mulligan does a lot of walking, alrighty, but what he does not do, is write. The internal dialogue is rich in many places; in a few, I wanted a red pen to edit it down a bit. The fact is, Mulligan is an exasperating character, but that’s okay; he is intended to be so. Not every protagonist is supposed to be lovable.

And so he ruminates endlessly, thinking of everything except his book. He recalls his affair, the one that snapped his already-fragile marriage like a twig. When the whole thing is over, he realizes that he could as easily had a conversation with the other woman’s underwear as he could have with her. But it’s too late now; water under the bridge. A lot of it.

Kat is from Chicago; she is married but also restless. She cheats in her marriage, but doesn’t turn it into a spectacle the way Mulligan does. Her work involves travel, and what Justin doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Underlying all of this is the question of the storyteller, John Salteau. He’s a fake. Danhoff can smell it a mile away. At one point she witnesses him telling school children a Nigerian folk tale. What the hell? Her journalist antennae twitch, and she is on a mission.

Sorrentino is not a novice, and has been nominated for the National Book Award for Sound on Sound, a novel he published in 1995. His experience shows. His capacity to render setting immediate (and sometimes really funny) is important, because he constantly changes it up, bouncing us back and forth to the points of view of three different characters, switching from first person to third in the wink of an eye. If he isn’t proficient, the reader will get lost. As it is, this is a hyperliterate read, which suits me just fine, but if your mother tongue is not English, you might want to consider something else.

No one could possibly predict the way this story ends!

Recommended for those that love strong fiction.

Breaker: A Windy City Dark Mystery, by Richard Thomas*****

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breakerawindycityRichard Thomas is a monstrously great writer. In Breaker, a Windy City Dark mystery, he presents us with Ray, a man of unusual and intimidating appearance; a sinister stranger in a white van who victimizes Chicago’s working class school girls; and Natalie, the girl that lives next door to Ray. Though this is the first Windy City Dark mystery I read, I fell in, only extricating myself close to bedtime, because this is not the kind of thing you want entering your dreams. This smashing thriller came to me free of charge from Net Galley and Random House Alibi.

The first thing I usually look for in fiction is strong character development. In excellent fiction, sometimes the setting drives the character; sometimes the setting and character drive the plot; sometimes the plot is driven by character. Breaker definitely falls into the last of these categories. Told primarily in Ray’s first person and counterpointed by Natalie’s, along with a narrative that pops in and out surrounding the white van, the suspense is almost unbearable. The character is so palpable that I impulsively reached into my Goodreads account and checked the “literary fiction” box among my own library categories. The story is dark and haunting; fans of Stephen King, a writer Thomas lists among those that have influenced him, won’t want to miss out on this story. Though it is not driven by the supernatural, the tone and level of nightmarish suspense are quite similar.

Part of the hook is the affinity the reader must feel for Ray after just a short time. He lives alone; others are often afraid of him on sight because of his enormous size and ghastly pallor. His mother is dead, and we learn more about this eerie aspect of Ray’s past as the story progresses. He lives in the city’s gritty underbelly, spends almost nothing of what money he makes as a cage fighter—a sport so much more horrible than boxing—on himself, and he is constantly alone.

Meanwhile, Natalie, the 15-year-old next door, is being stalked by the white van. Because Natalie is kind to him and does not fear him, Ray reaches out to her in an uncharacteristic way and teaches her the self-defense tips none of her high school teachers will ever be able to provide. Their friendship is platonic but the bond is tight.

Meanwhile, the white van has Chicago even more on edge than it usually is; girls are disappearing, and no one knows who is taking them. Every white van begins to look sinister. I found myself gripping my electronic reader, and though I had been resting the arm that held it on a pillow, I found myself holding it up in the air because my hand had nearly tightened into a fist.

It’s that creepy.

I marked a number of really stellar passages—this guy is fantastic with gripping figurative language—but at the end of the day, I am not supposed to reveal any quotes till the book is on the shelves, and I want you to know about this one right now.

It’s up for sale January 5, 2016, and it will help you forget all about your post-holiday blues. Get this book!

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout*****

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mynameislucybartonElizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys. Her new novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, may be her strongest work yet. I was lucky enough to get my DRC free of charge from Random House and Net Galley in exchange for this honest review. My thanks go to both of them.

Right about here is where I often start examining various aspects of a new novel: setting, plot, character development, as well as its political undertones, if there are any, and there usually are. But this book defies that sort of compartmentalization. If you want a label for it, we could call it a fictional memoir, but that doesn’t really do it justice either. In fact the entire work is a gloriously detailed character sketch. The setting exists only to develop the character. The dialogue exists for the same purpose. Lucy Barton is developed as much by what is not said—or maybe more so—as by what is. The plot, which also exists to develop character, is fluid, apart from the fact that Lucy’s story begins in the hospital following an appendectomy and she is out by the conclusion. But in between, we bounce around to various times in the character’s life; we share her dreams, her memories, her phobias…and because Strout is part author, part magician, we just can’t put it down.

Well, that’s not completely true. I was reading the first half at night, and suddenly realized that this was not a story I wanted impacting my own dreams, so I deliberately put it aside, choosing to reread a celebrity memoir before I turned off my light. I could fall asleep with Tom Petty in my head, but I would surely have nightmares with Lucy Barton.

Lucy is so pathetically lonely that she hangs on the kind words of the doctor in the hospital, almost as if he were a surrogate father. There has been so little affection in her life.

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

Strout uses repetition as figurative language in a way I haven’t seen done before. I’ve seen it used many times by other writers for emphasis; I’ve seen it used in a house-that-jack-built way by a couple of really strong writers to create suspense. Strout writes in the first person, as should be clear from the title, and in this case, repetition is used to build mood; in a number of places, I get the feeling that repetition is being used to make us believe something that may not be true. She protests too much; she is repeating herself either to convince us, or to convince herself. Hell, maybe it’s both. She repeats the same thing about a character from her past so often that I am half convinced the person she speaks of is imaginary; one has to wonder.

Barton’s back-story is one of stark, terrible white rural poverty. The protagonist and her entire family lived in a rented garage; one room, freezing cold. The children in the family were so badly dressed, so badly groomed that other children would not sit next to them on the school bus, and they were whispered about at school, “equally friendless and equally scorned”.

To some extent this could be called a mother-daughter novel, because almost all of the dialogue and much of the plot consists of the shared memories between Lucy and her mother, there in the hospital. As they echo one another, there is a cadence that shows that no matter what happened while Lucy was growing up, there is closeness between the two of them; Lucy would have more if it were offered. But the conversation is a kind of almost church-like call and response, a sort that is often seen among family members in smaller snippets. Much of the conversation is just neighbor gossip, but so much more is said in the way that Lucy and her mother speak to each other.

Barton is thrilled to have her mother there, nearly cannot believe she has actually come to sit with her, and as they converse, bits and pieces tumble out, and other bits are suppressed, but our protagonist thinks about them, and so we are in on all of it. And the sense of horror builds, builds, and builds some more. Brief snapshots of horrific events blink in and back out again, juxtaposed with that which is common and normal—the terror of being locked in the truck as child, and then we are talking about Lucy’s own children going to a play date, and about Lucy’s appendix. And by giving us the briefest glimpse of the horror, and letting us know in the author’s own brilliant way that this snapshot is not the half of it, there’s oh, so much more—the effect is tremendously chilling, and at the same time, oh so human.

And ultimately, whether her mother visits her or not; whether Lucy is financially well off or stone cold broke; whether she is married or single; Lucy is alone. Her solitude is positively visceral.

This novel won’t be available until January 2016, and that’s a shame, because it’s an amazing October read. But we will take a good case of the shivers along with stellar literary fiction when we can get it, and this novel comes highly recommended. Absolutely brilliant!

City on Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg*****

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cityonfireLuminous, epic, and brilliantly scribed, City on Fire is the buzz book of the year. I would be hard pressed to find a story of greater genius published this century. Those that love literature have to read this book. It will be available to the public for purchase October 13.

I received my copy early from Knopf Doubleday Publishers and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. In doing so, I feel as if I struck oil.

The story, some 992 pages of it, is a complex story, and like an onion, the reader can decide how many layers of interpretation they wish to uncover. What the reader cannot do, however, is skim, or make the story make sense without reading it in its entirety. It is the thing that makes this story great that makes it complicated, and so those that lack the stamina for a book this length will probably not find it fulfilling. A college-ready literacy level is required in order to understand it.

First, the reader will want to know who committed the act of violence that sets so many things into motion, and how the planned escalation by her friends will unfold. But ultimately, the story is a much broader one, and its genius is in the way each character, even its most peripheral ones, is developed, usually within the same space that the setting is described, and how both of these things drive the plot forward rather than slowing it down. This reviewer came away with hundreds of flagged pages, eloquent quotes, and fifty notes to myself, most of which say exactly that; in fact, eventually I was too engrossed in the story to write a full note anymore, and began using “ch dev, setting” as a shorthand that meant, look! He’s done it again! And by the 80 percent mark, the author had so consistently developed so many characters that I began to ask myself who had not yet been included. Those I watched for were also developed by the conclusion.

In looking for a writer’s purpose, it’s easy to choose one part or another of a storyline and home in on that, and it’s particularly dangerous when the writer touches upon one’s own particular fond subject, or one’s own pet peeve.

In her memoir, Amy Tan remarks upon having stumbled upon a set of Cliff Notes for her own first novel, and discovering that she had intended as metaphor or message passages that actually, she had included for the sake of telling a good story. It’s a cautionary reminder here. If we want to know the author’s purpose and we aren’t sure, we should probably just ask him.

Yet the emphasis on the city, and the development of the characters, seems to point to one thing above all else: “I see you”. For though the author includes the diverse races, genders, ethnicities, and classes that make up a great cosmopolitan city, the story isn’t really about race, and it isn’t really about being gay or straight, and it isn’t really about the entitlement that comes of great wealth and capitalism unfettered, or anarchy and cataclysmic change, or cops, or the disabled, or addiction, or any of the story’s other facets. Rather, each is a foil to show the common humanity of all.

And at a time such as this one, with our social fabric strained and our political ideas polarized, it isn’t such a bad thing, I think, to have an author come forward and say, in a way far more compelling than anyone else has managed to do for decades, that we are all of us just people, after all. All of us will grow old or sick or both, and eventually die. All of us will grieve. Most of us will be injured, and we will forgive it to the extent that we are able. And if any of that sounds trite, it is only my own failing in this review rather than the author’s work, which is breathtaking in its scope and mesmerizing in its capacity to weave so many threads and perspectives into one intricate, flawless story.
If you read one great book this year, let this be it.

The Sunken Cathedral, by Kate Walbert ***

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thesunkencathedralMy three stars here are a compromise. Try as I did, I could not enjoy this novel, but it is marketed more toward New Yorkers than others, and although I like a good urban setting and have enjoyed New York, have friends and family from there, I don’t live there and never have. Also, the plot is oriented toward the art world—Marie and Simone are senior citizens studying art, and there are a lot of references to art that went right past me. So if you are a New Yorker interested in both the history of Manhattan and art history, then this might be your book. And thank you once more to Net Galley and Scribner for permitting me to access a galley in advance for the purposes of review.

Some writers have a taut, urgent writing style that leaves their readers perched, sometimes literally, on the edges of their seats. Some have a sumptuous, painterly style that takes its time, and one should sink back into a soft place by the fire or in summer, perhaps on the beach, and prepare to drink it all in. Walbert uses the latter style, and I wanted to sink back, wanted to drink it all in, but for me, the description was the whole thing. I found myself bogged down with description that did not appear to serve much plot, and it never felt as if it was moving forward. There was a lot of inner dialogue, remembrance, but so very little actually seemed to happen. I have never found myself dissatisfied for this particular reason, and so I thought surely it must be me. I went back and started it over three times, and in the end, I came away frustrated. The over-long footnotes (in fiction?) were a distraction, and the style, in the end, felt pretentious.

But then again, remember that I know almost nothing about art. I know of a couple dozen famous paintings, and I thought I would like this story because I loved The Goldfinch, whose most critical scene is set in an art museum. And maybe that was my own problem as well: trying to follow a Pulitzer winner like The Goldfinch is indeed a heavy burden. I came away from reading that book and Toni Morrison, so perhaps my expectations were a trifle high. But I can’t honestly say I liked this book.

If you are a New Yorker, especially an older one, and if you lean toward the art world, you may enjoy this novel, by an award-winning writer. It has just been released, so if you would like to order it, you can do that now.