The Wilf family— physician father, his beautiful wife and two ideal kids — live in a quiet, leafy commuter suburb of New York City. A tragedy opens thThe Wilf family— physician father, his beautiful wife and two ideal kids — live in a quiet, leafy commuter suburb of New York City. A tragedy opens the book, shattering their idyll even as the family works to forget it ever happened. The kids, Sarah and Theo, grow into adults whose lives seem shiny from the outside. Sarah becomes a powerful Hollywood screenwriter and Theo a celebrated chef. But inside lurks a rotting core of shame and bewilderment. Back in New York, Dr. Wilf is packing up their beloved house, preparing to move to a retirement community where his wife is already residing in the memory care unit. Next door live the Shenkmans, neighbors for a decade who the Wilfs hardly know, except for a chance event nine years before: Dr. Wilf delivered Waldo Shenkman in the kitchen, saving his life in an emergency delivery as the ambulance sirens could be heard screaming into the neighborhood. The baby boy grows into a child with special gifts, but his curious intelligence frustrates his conventional dad. Waldo's search for meaning leads him literally into the night and back into Dr. Wilf's life in a full circle of love and tragedy that brings an estranged family back together again.
Signal Fires eschews chronological storytelling, instead dropping the reader into decades past and present: 1970, 1999, 2014, 1985, 2010, 2020. We see these families' futures before we understand their pasts, and then once we know them, we live in their present, omniscient and anticipatory. Shapiro balances plot and story as a teacher of craft should: one is there to move the other along at an unhurried but unflagging pace.
This is Dani Shapiro's first novel in a dozen years and it's well worth the wait. Like her memoirs, it is a story of families and secrets, rendered in beautiful, clear-eyed prose. Her style is intimate — the characters feel like friends and family, their stories told at the kitchen table with hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea or in a quiet corner of your favorite restaurant over a glass of wine. It is a compassionate and lovely meditation on chance and choice. Highly recommended....more
I admire the crap out of Taylor Jenkins Reid. Her stories have so much energy, her characters constantly in motion, ambitioning through their lives atI admire the crap out of Taylor Jenkins Reid. Her stories have so much energy, her characters constantly in motion, ambitioning through their lives at full-tilt. It's what makes her novels compulsively readable, why she has legions of fans. Her work is delightfully entertaining. And so it goes with the cringely titled Carrie Soto is Back.
The plot here is simple: Carrie Soto retired in 1989 as the GOAT of women's tennis, with a record of the most career Grand Slam titles. Five years later, at age thirty-seven, she's back on the court to defend her title from a new champion, power player Nicki Chan. Whether or not she succeeds, and at what cost to her mental and physical health, is the central mystery.
Her coach is her darling father, Javier, once a tennis pro himself before he left his Argentine homeland for Los Angeles. Carrie was a ruthless competitor, earning the nickname Battle Axe, if only because the press couldn't just call her Bitch. She made no friends on the circuit and eschewed romance for short-lived affairs with her male counterparts on tour.
Most of the story takes place on the court as Carrie trains relentlessly for her comeback, and then begins competing. The matches are breath-stealing; I had to force myself not to let my eyes jump ahead to the end of the page to learn the outcome before I'd read each player's moves. TJR fully inhabits the tennis pro's psyche and body. The reader lives each decision and swing, agonizing over the volleys as the competitors battle every point.
Introspection comes in the interplay between characters. TJR uses the moments of coaching to reveal a father-daughter relationship, co-training between Carrie and another veteran player, Bowe Huntley, to advance a romance, fierce competition between rivals to show Carrie's deep emotional conflicts and her self-inflicted loneliness.
You do not have to be a tennis fan or know anything about the sport to be enthralled by the suspense and enchanted by these characters, even the oft-maddening Carrie. Taylor Jenkins Reid serves up an ace of a read!...more
Put this on your list of books to curl up with on a dreary winter's day. There is something deeply comforting about historical fiction, particularly oPut this on your list of books to curl up with on a dreary winter's day. There is something deeply comforting about historical fiction, particularly one so rich in detail and intelligent in design. The slow burning plot weaves the thrill of the chase with a precise rendering of colonial America and royalist Britain.
After the Stuart monarchy is restored in 1660, a campaign of revenge against the followers of republican revolutionary Oliver Cromwell is undertaken with religious zeal. Richard Nayler, a minor administrator in the court of King Charles II, accepts the task of tracking down the signatories to the death warrant of Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649. Those captured meet a hideous fate: hung until unconscious, then revived, eviscerated while still alive, their entrails burned in front of them, and then finally beheaded, their heads mounted along prominent roads in London as a warning to any and all who would defy the primacy of England's throne. Nayler's hunt is personal: his wife died in childbirth after Nayler was arrested by Cromwell's soldiers.
Act of Oblivion is the built around the manhunt for two of the remaining fugitives: Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, William Goffe. The story opens with their 1660 arrival in the Massachusetts colony and unfolds over many years, moving back and forth across the Atlantic as Nayler's determination to capture them becomes an obsession.
Robert Harris imbues the events occurring on both sides of the Pond with rich and vivid detail, bringing the reader along the harrowing sea voyage from England to New England and into the cold rooms and muddy streets of 17th century England and pre-Revolutionary America. He electrifies episodes of the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the hardcore, hardscrabble of colonial life with exacting imagery. All the while the plot moves with velocity as Whalley and Goffe elude capture. But for how long? Although the colonies are full of republican sympathizers, bounty hunters and royalists abound. Whalley and Goffe are forced into hiding, a fate that become more claustrophobic and tragic as the years pass and their families back in England lose hope. The story also follows Goffe's wife, Frances, who reflects the trials of living in the lion's den as she and her family are forced to hide in plain sight in London, constantly evading Nayler's reach.
This is 5-star historical fiction, immersive and breathtaking in scope and detail....more
I'll come in at a 3.5 star rating here. The crime(s) and their unfolding mysteries are the least interesting and most muddled of the series. I think tI'll come in at a 3.5 star rating here. The crime(s) and their unfolding mysteries are the least interesting and most muddled of the series. I think there was a missed opportunity not playing up the Bishop of Augustine/Julian of Norwich subplot more, or leaving it out entirely and building another book around it; it's a fascinating premise. The Smith family and their horse farm was annoying to the point of being completely unbelievable. The repatriation of bones stolen from Aboriginal lands in Australia did work well, but it got lost in the impossible silliness of the Smiths. I would love to have more interaction between Ruth and Bob Woonunga- he is a great character.
What worked beautifully was the continuing jab and parry between Ruth and Nelson. At the close of Book 3, Nelson's wife, Michelle, realizes that Kate is her husband's child (at Kate's christening, gulp) and Book 4 opens on Kate's first birthday with Nelson forbidden to have any contact with his daughter, or with Ruth. The chemistry between Ruth and Nelson is SO well done, as is Nelson's devotion and attraction to Michelle.
Okay, Book 5 will await some rainy winter weekend- although I feel as though I'm so far behind..
Super Juicy Premise: inspired by those annoying chain letters that promise certain disaster to the receiver if they break the chain and do not forwardSuper Juicy Premise: inspired by those annoying chain letters that promise certain disaster to the receiver if they break the chain and do not forward the letter to (x) number of recipients, Adrian McKinty creates a chain of crime. His isn't a missive, however; it's a missile of terror.
A child is kidnapped by parents whose own child has been kidnapped. The kidnapper's child will not be released until the most recent victim's family pays a large ransom and also kidnaps a child, carrying the chain forward, ad infinitum. If law enforcement is called, a child dies, another is kidnapped and the chain is continued. If the parents seek help from another source or simply tells anyone what's happening, a child dies, another is kidnapped and the chain is continued. Families who have become unwitting links to the chain could be all around you and you would never know. Until your son or daughter disappears and you get a phone call informing you that you must do the impossible, or your own child will be killed.
The deus ex machina is a villain or villains that is gradually revealed as the story progresses, entities skilled in tech and finance that can tap into home computers and mobile phones, track cars and calls and bank accounts. But the real brilliance here is the turning of ordinary people, mothers and fathers who would do anything to save their children, into monsters. Men and women who are coaching soccer one day and chaining a neighbor kid to a basement water heater the next.
This is a terrific idea that McKinty spins out handily, using a cash-strapped single mother recovering from breast cancer as his protagonist, her smart, gritty pre-teen daughter as the primary victim, and a cast of minor characters that includes a brother-in-law dishonorably discharged from the Marines and battling an heroin addiction. It takes Mom about 24 hours to go from weakened-by-chemotherapy community college professor to buying guns and making Bitcoin deposits, breaking into a house and stalking families on social media, but desperate times and all that.
Sounds over-the-top melodramatic? Of course it is, as is the deeply implausible plot. But you don't read these types of thrillers to learn about the human condition. You read them to escape the human condition. You are thrown into a what would I do? plot, but the high-speed thrills and perfunctory inner lives of the main characters, along with gadgets and Swiss bank accounts save you from too much existential introspection.
That this would be a best-seller is a given. That I'd read another Adrian McKinty novel is not. But I'm not saying never....more
Sweet and tender, full of outrageously privileged and silly people living dreamy lives. A light but captivating read that will see you through the intSweet and tender, full of outrageously privileged and silly people living dreamy lives. A light but captivating read that will see you through the interminable air travel delays and insufferable flight, should you decide you simply have to be on a plane during these nightmarish days of sort-of-post Covid travel. Not that's this is where I read One Italian Summer: mine was an armchair journey on a summer's afternoon with a glass of ice cold Campari and soda. A frothy delight of a book, easily consumed while you're waiting to arrive somewhere else. ...more
Dirt Creek is the wry nickname for Durton, a red-dirt town on the road to nowhere in the western arid plains of New South Wales, Australia. There's noDirt Creek is the wry nickname for Durton, a red-dirt town on the road to nowhere in the western arid plains of New South Wales, Australia. There's not much there: a school, a pub, a one-man police station, a motel with a mangy dog tied up out back. Farms are failing in the relentless drought. The residents are grim, iron-jawed folk, evoking a Dust Bowl determination to hang on. In late 2001, during a spring so hot the roads are crumbling, a young girl walking home alone from school vanishes.
Two investigators are sent from Sydney to investigate: Det. Sgt Sarah Michaels, whose girlfriend has just walked out on her after a fight that turned violent, and her laconically smartass partner, Wayne. There's fear that this case may be related to another — twins gone missing elsewhere in the state — and the investigators work to stay one step ahead of media frenzy.
Hayley Scrivenor's Australian noir debut combines police procedural with psychological thriller in a multi-layered, nuanced story that grips, pulls, slaps and surprises. Secrets are kept buried for fear of fracturing friendships that make life in dead-end Durton bearable. Bruises are kept covered to preserve what dignity remains to those too vulnerable to stand up for themselves. There seems to be little point to this town except as a permanent way station for those who are determined to wring life out of its red dirt and to matter to someone who acknowledges their existence, even if that acknowledgment is meted out in pain.
Scrivenor writes with intelligence and deep empathy. Her characters, revealed in points-of-view shifting chapters, are rich, real, fully-fleshed out with past and personalities, and her landscapes are as breathtaking as they are devastating. She employs a Greek chorus literary device to give voice to the town's children, which I found cloying and unnecessary. It's a jarring note in an otherwise smooth and sonorous plot. There is also a complete lack of indigenous characters or even any mention of their existence, which gives the story a white suffering pioneer affect that makes martyrs out of settlers no one invited in the first place. But that could be me projecting my values and ignorance of the area into the story and so I give the author the benefit of the doubt.
Cork O'Connor may have had enough adventures for eighteen previous books, but I jumped in right here at #19. William Kent Krueger is such a skilled stCork O'Connor may have had enough adventures for eighteen previous books, but I jumped in right here at #19. William Kent Krueger is such a skilled storyteller that it didn't matter. I felt welcomed into Cork's circle of family and friends, offered enough backstory to round out Cork's past without bogging down the present, and was immediately engaged in a great story.
As a writer, landscape is as important to me as any sentient character, and as a reader, I need to be grounded in the story's surroundings. Krueger is a kindred spirit. His settings are integral to every story and he creates rich, real landscapes that help shape the arc of the plot. Northern Minnesota and the Boundary Waters wilderness are either heavenly or hellatious, depending on the character's particular journey-literal or internal.
The mystery here was somewhat beside the point for me: a man is missing, Cork and Friends are compelled to track him down. Cork's wife, Rainy, along with an ancient Ojibwe healer, Henry, and the missing man's wife, Dolores, are soon fleeing for their lives deep into the Minnesota forest. In hot pursuit are some very bad men with guns, including a Native American tracker who honed his skills as a mercenary in the warzones of Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Now Cork's sense of duty is overcome by his panic to save his wife and the beloved Native medicine man.
Cork is part Irish-American, part Ojibwe, a former Chicago cop turned owner-of-small-town-diner, and Krueger does a tremendous job weaving in First Nations cultures and issues into his characters' realities and the story's tension. In this particular story, he reveals the push-pull of identity and assimilation, the failures of federal policy and the deep need for independence by indigenous fighting to reclaim ancestral lands and existing cultures. All without preaching or objectifying Native characters.
There is something of an over-the-top nature to the hunt and chase, like everyone made it way more complicated than it needed to be, but my mild exasperation was second to the enjoyment I took from a great crime read. It's nice to know there are 18 more Cork O'Connors I can dive into!...more
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