Tag: American settings

Book Review: The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda – an atmospheric thriller with plenty of twists

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Megan Miranda’s always a safe pair of hands for a solid psychological thriller. There’s usually an atmospheric setting and that’s the case here with The Only Survivors. The story follows a group who went to the same high school, who in their senior year were on a school trip that went horribly wrong. Of the original nine survivors, seven are left, meeting up once a year for a week to check in with each other, to make sure they’re all OK.

It’s now ten years since the accident that saw two vans of kids drive off a twisty bit of road into a river. Twelve people lost their lives, but no one really knows what happened. Amaya’s lawyer parents stepped in; their firm produced an acceptable story and that was that, no blame, no repercussions. Just a tidy payout to the survivors, a memorial library in honour of those who died.

As the anniversary looms, with their usual week away at The Shallows, a rambling beach house on a sandy peninsula, Cassidy has almost decided to stay home. She has a new relationship, which unlike those before, might be going somewhere, and she has been trying to distance herself from the group, changing her contact details. However an email telling her that one of the survivors has taken his life gets through. Ian was always fragile, and Ian was the one Cassidy was closest to. Driven by guilt for not being there for him, Cassidy changes her mind and packs her bag.

The story follows Cassidy’s growing unease at The Shallows, a feeling that someone is watching them. Woven into this are switches back in time to the hours following the crash. It soon appears that those who made it out aren’t just suffering from survivor guilt but have other reasons for remorse. There’s finger pointing and blame hovering just under the surface of their interactions, particularly now there’s the threat of a new inquiry.

As an older reader, you can’t help but imagine how your eighteen-year-old self would cope in a life and death situation like this accident. It’s easy at first to forgive – they’re so young and did well to get out alive. Ten years on they’ve made good lives for themselves career-wise but have they really moved on? Secrets emerge in the snippets from the accident that have you guessing – secrets involving arguments and a knife – nicely upping the tension.

As the man called 911, he counted them in the beam of the headlights. “Seven, eight, nine kids – “
“We have to go back,” Clara sobbed. “There are – ” But Joshua pulled her tighter, so tight, her cries were muffled into his shoulder.
“Shh,” Josh said, close to her ear.
They’d all heard the violence of the river. The crash of the water flooding through the gorge, close at their heels. They knew there was no surviving it.
Amaya saw it all, a montage: the people they had left behind – injured, huddled along the base of the cliffs. The haunting look in their eyes. It was too late for them, she knew. She’d known it from the start.

In the present day, as another weather emergency threatens, it’s hard for Cassidy to know who to trust, especially when Amaya makes an early departure. Megan Miranda does a nice job of working the psychology of the different characters, the way they bicker and lurk alone in their rooms, or clump together at the local bar for hours in apparent solidarity. Everyone seems to have secrets.

Tension builds nicely, helped by the atmosphere of the house, with its unlatched doors that blow open in the wind, the creaky floorboards and ramshackle balconies, as the story works to a surprising and shocking conclusion. But the most shocking thing of all is that you can just imagine how this could actually happen. The Only Survivors is a terrific page-turner, and a four-star read from me.

Book Review: More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen – a warm and witty novel about family, friendship and DNA

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

Anna Quindlen’s new book has some similar themes as Ann Patchett’s Whistler. And while Patchett’s obviously the heavyweight here, both authors have a wisdom and warmth about them with a real empathy for their characters. More Than Enough follows forty-two-year-old English teacher Polly Goodman who belongs to a book group where no one is allowed to read the book. They buy the book, each taking turns to choose the book, but no one is to read or talk about the book, because their monthly get together is a chance to talk about themselves and share what’s important.

It’s her three friends from her book group that have bought Polly a DNA kit as a kind of joke. Perhaps if she’d had a happier relationship with her mother, if her father wasn’t in a care home for early onset dementia, she would have hesitated longer before sending away her sample for analysis.

When Polly discovers she has a match with someone outside her family, the sceptre of a family secret emerges and she agrees to meet Talia, a troubled young girl she instantly warms to. Garrison, Polly’s brother is gay and insists there isn’t a chance of his fathering a child – I love Garrison, who’s both worldly wise and hilarious. She can’t talk to her father about it, and her mother’s a formidable, high-flying judge who doesn’t inspire confidences.

Meanwhile, Polly and her lovely husband Mark, a large-animal vet at the zoo, are trying desperately to have a child, have had several disappointing rounds of IVF, to the point that it begins to seem impossible. There are more book group meetings, and Talia introduces Polly to her grandmother, a wise and empathetic breeder of alpacas, which she uses for her absurdly expensive range of knitwear.

Polly and Mark are lovely characters, you want the best for them and you get the backstory of their relationship. There’s Polly’s school teaching and her growing up with that tough-cookie of a mother – something Polly has always resented. This reminded me of the mother-daughter relationship in Whistler, along with the sense of a mother keeping secrets. Again, we have characters that are well-meaning – there’s nobody whose nasty or manipulative , nobody driven to do something terrible – maybe because there can be enough things going on in ordinary lives to create the tension a story needs to keep you reading.

Each term I put a poster on the old cork board with a quote from a writer. This year it’s from Louisa May Alcott: “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” At least a few of my first-years will copy it down, worried that it will make its way onto the exam. Every time I look at it, I will think to myself, Lies, lies and damn lies. But that’s just me, still afraid of storms, and of capsizing.
“Who is George Eliot?” I’ll ask them right out of the gate so that I can get a snapshot: the ones who had researched the writer, the ones woh hadn’t, the ones who didn’t know who I was talking about, even occasionally the ones, usually transfers from other schools, who thought George Eliot was male. I loved my job, and I loved Windsor, but I had to start playing intellectual chess day one.

Over all, this is a warm, gentle read, laced with sad moments as well as humour. Although it may seem a little slow going, it’s well worth it as you become invested in the characters. I had to put it aside for a few days when I was away for a weekend – I don’t like taking library books on holiday – and couldn’t wait to get back to Polly’s story on my return. I’ve enjoyed other novels by this author and More Than Enough did not disappoint – a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Whistler by Ann Patchett – a surprise reconciliation and the story of a family

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

A new Ann Patchett novel is always such a joy, and this one did not disappoint. Whistler is written from the point of view of Daphne, a teacher at a private girls’ school in her fifties. She admits to being popular with older men, so it’s not surprising that Jonathan, her husband, is a seventy-year-old retiree. They’re at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when Jonathan notices an elderly man following them. It turns out to be Eddie, the stepfather Daphne hasn’t seen since she was nine.

The two reconnect – Eddie was always the nicest stepfather you could imagine and the pair had been close in the two years they’d known each other. But it all came to an end when Daphne’s younger sister, Leda (their mother had gone through a Greek mythology phase), developed appendicitis and Eddie was left to collect Daphne from school while their mother stayed at the hospital. A car accident on a snowy night ended with Eddie being sent packing and ever since Daphne felt it was her fault.

The story dips back into the past to recreate that night and also tells the story that Eddie was hoping to develop into a book – he’s an editor at a major New York publishing house. The story has a similarity to this one, and involves a horse named Whistler – in case you were wondering where the title came from. We learn about the girls’ father Buddy, who left his family when the girls were small, beckoned back to a life at sea; the resilience and mental toughness of their mother; and of her third marriage to the author of books about positivity, who has become an oddly bitter old man.

A lot of the book is Eddie’s story too. He’s a wonderful character, a genuinely nice guy who makes a strange pact with Daphne’s mother, which hampers his emotional life enormously. But out of it Daphne gets a fabulous dad and friend. Books are his life too, and this he passes on to Daphne. So this is a great novel for book lovers and writers too.

Eddie Triplett had been cut from an entirely different piece of cloth, and it was the same piece of cloth that Daphne came from, or that’s what she told herself. He read constantly, and not just finished books. He read books that were loose piles of paper and marked them up to make them better. “A work in progress,” he liked to say, as if the novel needed some help getting on its feet. At her insistent begging, he once marked up a theme paper she had written for English class, correcting it the way a teacher would so that she could write it out a second time, fixing her mistakes before handing it in. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this,” Eddie said, circling her misspellings, her word repetitions.
“Other parents to it,” she said. And they did. Not her mother but other people’s mothers. Never the fathers as far as she knew.

Segments of the accident as it is recounted are placed strategically through the book and the story builds to a satisfying ending. There’s a thread of grief that runs through it for the years of wasted time, and guilt too over how it all happened. I found this an enjoyable read with good company, but less compelling, less gritty than some of Patchett’s earlier books, in particular The Dutch House, Commonwealth or State of Wonder. The characters so well-heeled and comfortable, even if the past does shake them up a bit – but not for long.

It’s interesting to delve back into a family and see the difference between what a child sees compared to what really happened. I’m sure that the book echoes real life in this way for many of us. So while this is a quieter story than earlier Patchetts, there’s more than meets the eye. With that in mind, Whistler is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Wreck by Catherine Newman – a funny and relatable novel about the trials of modern life

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

So I never got around to reading Sandwich, Catherine Newman’s earlier novel about Rocky, a woman going through menopause and what happens when her family are on holiday together at Cape Cod. It was on my to-read list for ages, but you can’t read everything, and I somehow didn’t read Sandwich. Now, I’m seriously tempted.

In Wreck, Rocky is back and it’s another summer. She and her husband have a busy household, with Willa, her PhD student daughter, living back home, as well as her ninety-two-year-old dad in the cabin in the garden. Rocky and Willa both suffer from anxiety and a few things happen which bring this to the fore. A train accident when a young man is killed, someone they know vaguely who went to the same school as Rocky’s son Jamie, has her caught up in the social media storm that erupts. And then there’s the rash.

Rocky’s skin condition seems to defy medical explanation and she goes through a ton of tests. Time passes, and it’s Halloween, then Thanksgiving and Christmas and these issues threaten to unbalance Rocky’s world. This might sound a bit grim, but it never is because Rocky is such good company and Newman is such a witty writer. The way she and Willa bounce off each other, her father’s random comments about modern life, memories and non-sequiturs, her good-humoured and sometimes goofy husband, all add to the fun.

An email dings in, and I click over to it. It’s a new message from the patient portal EarlyGateway, which shows up in my inbox as ppearlygateway. Pearly Gateway! Like it’s a missive from the afterlife I’ll be arriving at ASAP. You have new test results, the message says. I hover my finger over the link, sigh, click back over to the Internet. I don’t even want to know just yet. It’s Schrödinger’s rash: Until I look at the results, I simultaneously do and do not have skin cancer. I’ll just loiter around scrollingly for a bit.

At first I wasn’t really sure where this slice of life book was going. Is it about the rash? Is it about the accident? And yet it’s all so entertaining. Can we really laugh about this stuff? The medical stuff is brilliant though – the calm indifference of the patient portal and its raft of lengthy latinate terms, the backwards and forwards between clinic and specialist appointments, the scans and blood tests. The endless wait for results, for a diagnosis. We can see why Rocky gets anxious. On top of everything, Rocky and her dad in particular, miss their mother who has died a year or so ago.

Somewhere in the middle the threads come together and the book suddenly has a lot more substance. Rocky is so vividly written you can’t help wondering if there’s something of the author in her. Both thoughtful and humorous, Wreck is by the end, a life-affirming read, fairly short – a short book is nice every so often – and very relatable. Wreck is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Buckeye by Patrick Ryan – a sweeping and emotional historical read

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Patrick Ryan’s novel, Buckeye, haunted me for days after I finished it. The story takes us to the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, starting off during World War II. We follow the lives of two couples, Becky and Cal Jenkins, and Margaret and Felix Salt, through the events of the war, and on to the lives of their children. Events of the twentieth century, wars certainly, but social changes too disturb their lives, but nothing compares to how they deal with events themselves.

All four of them have something that makes them different. Cal has one leg shorter than the other. This exempts him from military service, so he drifts into marriage with Becky, who has a gift. She can communicate with the dead. Astonishingly beautiful Margaret hides the secret of being abandoned as a baby at an orphanage, while Felix, who is gay, tries to lead a conventional life with her. The war shakes them all up, well and truely.

The story begins on the day victory is declared in Europe (VE Day), 1945, with a young Cal working in his father-in-law’s hardware store. He’s interrupted by the arrival of Margaret who has to know what all the commotion is all about and asks if Cal has a radio. They listen to the news together and exchange an unexpected kiss. From there we dip back into the past to discover Cal’s story and Margaret’s, each of which is tragic in its own way.

When he read, heard, and watched the news, he wondered how many people were out there doing the same thing he was—scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how to prioritize their worries and confront their prejudices; drawing their own maps with their fingers crossed.

Cal’s father Everett lives out of town, traumatised by a previous war as well as the loss of two children and his wife to illness, becoming irascible and a hoarder. I really enjoyed the character of Everett, particularly the way he writes angry letters to whichever president is in office at the time. His war service has made him fiercely against war and this theme recurs during the book as more wars upend people’s lives.

Margaret is an interesting character in that she never reveals anything about her upbringing, determined to appear ordinary – if only she knew what that looked like. And it’s hard to quietly figure that out when everyone, particularly men, see nothing but her stunning good looks. So she has secrets from Felix, who likewise hopes for a normal family life. If only the war hadn’t got in the way, he might have kept up the pretence.

Cal keeps on trying to make the best of things, dealing with a demanding father-in-law, as well as his own difficult father, who never shows him any affection. He struggles to understand his wife’s talent which puts her in demand for readings with people who have lost loved ones, some from WWI, and more when the next war rolls along. The complications of children put the characters through even more, with more secrets, but also possibilities.

Therein, she thought, lies the unbearable solitude of a lie: you’re alone when you tell it, alone when you live it, alone when you try to dismantle it.

Like many who lived through the twentieth century, the characters of Buckeye have had their lives overturned by world events. There’s trauma and the tragic losses incurred by war. The prosperous post-war period that imagined a bright future for people but with that a restrictive social order. The changing times with the Civil Rights movement, while gay rights and feminism also get a look in.

It all adds up to a gripping read and an emotional one, certainly enhanced by characters you sympathise with. And then there’s the fine writing. I shall certainly be looking out for more by this author. Buckeye is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Wedding People by Alison Espach – a witty comedy-of-manners and second-chances novel

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I must say I was a little dubious about the premise of this book, but I’d heard so many good things, I hesitantly plunged in. In The Wedding People, life has hit rock bottom for our protagonist, Phoebe Stone, an academic who teaches Victorian literature, but has never finished her dissertation. She’s stuck in a low paying role at the same university as her ex-husband Matt. He’d left her for her best friend after he and Phoebe had tried and failed to have a child. Already at a low ebb, the discovery of Harry, her cat, dead in the basement is too much and she plans to kill herself. What better place to do it than the Cornwall Inn.

The Cornwall Inn was a holiday destination Phoebe had hoped to enjoy with Matt, but he’d had other ideas. It’s a luxury hotel on the coast, so she books herself into the penthouse suite and arrives in her best dress and with no luggage, Harry’s painkillers in her handbag. She’ll order room service, watch the sunset and pass gently away on the canopied bed. The thought of reading about someone about to take their life was a little daunting but, as Phoebe waits to check in at the hotel’s reception, I soon realised this novel was going to be fun.

Also at the hotel, people are gathering for a wedding. Lila is throwing a huge, million-dollar affair to celebrate her nuptials to Gary, and thinks she’s booked the entire hotel for her guests for the week. She’s not pleased to find an interloper in the penthouse suite and challenges Phoebe about it in the lift. The two strike up an odd kind of alliance over the days leading up to the wedding, and Phoebe finds herself a confidante to all manner of concerns Lila has, which for some reason she doesn’t share with her bridesmaids. Lila seems to be as much alone as Phoebe.

“I never understood why my mother was so obsessed with art. I studied it for four years, and honestly, I get it even less now. Like seriously, what’s the point of it?”
Again, the bride looks at Phoebe and waits.
“Are you asking me?” Phoebe asks.
“Have you never been in a conversation before?”
“It’s been a while, actually.”
“I can tell.”
“And to be honest, I’m not sure I get the point, either.”
When Phoebe left for graduate school, she had very clear and beautiful ideas about art, how art is what elevates us, art is the magnificence wrung from the ugly dish towel of existence. Art helps us feel alive. And this had been true for Phoebe – Phoebe used to read books and feel astounded. She used to walk around galleries, inspired by the beautiful human urge to create. But that was years ago. Now she can’t stand the sight of her books. Can’t bear the thought of reading hundreds of pages just to watch Jane Eyre get married again.

As the wedding draws closer, Phoebe becomes swept into the wedding preparations, filling in for a missing maid of honour and taking part all kinds of events – from the bachelorette party to learning to surf – and develops an unfortunate attraction to the groom. Without a charger for her phone she is quite cut off from her old life, and starts to imagine something new. I loved how her area of expertise appears in the book, her knowledge of Victorian heroines like Jane Eyre and also the Mrs Dalloway she decides to finish when she finds it on the hotel bookshelves.

There’s also a host of humorous characters that you get to know, like Jim the best man who Lila finds a bit over-friendly, and Patricia, her mother, accused of drinking in the afternoon. Phoebe gets to know them and learn their secrets. Weddings, it seems, don’t bring out the best in people, and Phoebe discovers all sorts bubbling away under the petulant exterior of Marla, the groom’s sister, or the sullenness of young Juice, his daughter. You can talk to someone like Phoebe, who you’ll probably never see again after the wedding, a bit like talking to a priest.

Which is the other thing I love about this book – the dialogue, which is hugely entertaining. I can just imagine the book would be terrific on screen (apparently, film rights have been sold). The Wedding People is probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read this year – it’s fun, clever and resonates emotionally too. So it’s an easy five stars from me.

Book Review: Go Gentle by Maria Semple – a smart comedy caper that gives you something to think about

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I confess I still have Where’d You Go, Bernadette on by bookcase, unread, but hope to rectify that soon, having just finished Maria Semple’s new book: Go Gentle. This was such a fun read, although on opening the book, I hadn’t a clue what to expect. And I’m still not quite sure what kind of book it is, as it seems to blend a lot of genres: mystery, romance, intrigue, family relationships, and comedy.

The narrative is all from the point of view of Adora Hazzard. Now in her mid-fifties, she’s planning her later years by ensuring the other people moving onto her floor of the New York apartment building where she lives are like-minded older women she approves of. Known by some as the coven, the idea is that they’ll look out for each other as they age, avoiding aged care facilities and sharing costs.

Adora has a stipend with an old-money family, the Lockwoods, Layla and Lionel, tutoring their young twins in things philosophical in their extraordinary glass house, or at work across the road at the Lockwood Library, with its amazing art collection. For a confirmed stoic, there’s a lot of abundance on show. Her stoicism comes from a dark part in her life when she was a twenty-something comedy writer in Hollywood. The story dips back in time to fill you in, along with Adora’s recovery and path to philosophy.

Nietzsche said, Amor fati. Love fate. You have to love what happened to you. I actually got that tattooed. When it truly clicks, no matter what the universe throws at you, you’re like, Please, sir, I want some more. I’m not talking Wagyu beef and béarnaise, I’m talking the grand parade, the whole catastrophe, I’m talking life.

Adora is an interesting character with many layers, which Semple reveals little by little. She’s not always likeable – to start with she’s got a smart stoical answer for every situation, something her fifteen year old daughter endures not so stoically. If there wasn’t an art heist, a fascinating handsome stranger, a flit to Paris, and a close call with danger, there’s still plenty to keep you turning the pages. I enjoyed the balance between the two. The way Adora tries to live a planned life of the mind, but also how events take her by surprise and shake some of that out of her.

The story is rounded out with a wide cast of characters – the people in Adora’s apartment building, including staff; the Lockwoods and their entourage. I loved meeting landscape gardener Blanche and her South American contractor Dorris, who are full of surprises. These characters are all shown through Adora’s perspective and in the lively dialogue, which as a non-American did sometimes challenge my knowledge of American slang. But in the end I decided to just go with the flow and still found heaps to enjoy.

Go Gentle is due for release on 14 April. I enjoyed this novel courtesy of Negalley and Hachette Australia in return for an honest review. It’s a fun, intelligent novel that gives you plenty to think about even after the last page – a four-star read from me.

Book Review: This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum – an original and riveting L.A. thriller with all the feels

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I hadn’t a clue what to expect from this debut novel, and even looking back having turned the last page, it still seems an interesting mix of genres – by turns a psychological thriller, a dramedy and a love story.

This Story Might Save Your Life is named after the massively successful podcast hosted by besties Benny and Joy. The idea behind the show is life-threatening situations, and how to survive them. Each episode describes one such event researched by one of the team, who then asks the other, how would you escape – for instance, being caught in the mouth of a humpback whale. So yes, we’re not just talking house fires and boats capsizing.

There’s a lot of comedic banter, and it’s really the personalities of the two that make the show work. Neither Benny or Joy ever thought they’d be still doing the show years later but subscribers write in with their own near-death survival situations and it goes from strength to strength. Joy’s husband Zander has helped grow the brand, running the business side of things and even taking the show on tour.

The situation is complicated by Joy’s medical condition. She has narcolepsy, which means those closest to her are aware that she might just fall asleep at any moment. With care and meds she leads a fairly normal life. The other complication, which happens right at the start of the book, is that during the season that the Santa Ana winds threaten trees and cause general mayhem, Joy and Zander disappear from their home.

We get Benny’s story about the disappearance, the police investigation and the growing concern that the two may be in danger. Benny’s not a big fan of Zander – there’s some jealousy there between them – so his main concern is for Joy whose narcolepsy makes everything tricky anyway. Interwoven with the all the CSI, the search teams and suspicious looks from a probing Detective Keller is Joy’s story. She and Benny have a publishing deal to write a two-person memoir, so this is her story, going back to her learning to deal with her illness, make a life for herself, her meeting Benny and then Zander.

The switching between the two stories makes you beaver through the chapters desperate to see what happens next. Joy’s backstory is just as interesting as Benny’s search for clues, slowly bringing us up-to-date with potential reasons for the disappearance. The plotting is excellent, but the characters are engaging too. Joy and Benny are charming and funny – Joy captures our empathy because she’s just so positive in spite of her medical condition, while Benny’s a bit of a goof, but also intense. He’s also been through some difficulties and has a temper.

Zander is a bit of a dark card, and there are other characters who have emotional connections to the two MCs – among them Zander’s sister Mallory, and Benny’s ex, Luna, which adds further complications. It’s quite likely someone’s lying, but who? And even Benny and Joy seem to be hiding something. So there are plenty of twists that keep you eagerly reading to the end. I also loved the L.A. setting which Tiffany Crum helps you visualise – a place I’d be happy to revisit.

I read this novel courtesy of Netgalley and Hachette, Australia for an honest review. It’s a great story, and I’d certainly be keen to read more by Tiffany Crum. This Story Might Save Your Life is due for publication on 10 March and is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: Back When We Were Grown-Ups by Anne Tyler – revisiting an old favourite

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

While there are so many terrific new books out there to tempt and distract, I like to come back to old favourites now and then. A favourite author for me is Anne Tyler. Back When We Were Grown-Ups was first published in 2001 but has a kind of timeless quality which I find very appealing. It follows Rebecca who wonders how life would have been different if she hadn’t been swept off her feet by Joe Davitch all those years ago; if she’d finished college and gone on to marry her childhood sweetheart instead.

At barely twenty, Rebecca had met Joe at a party venue his family ran called the Open Arms, a large terrace house with high ceilings in a slightly rundown part of Baltimore. An odd coincidence makes her laugh, and Joe is drawn towards her apparently cheerful nature. But all the while, Rebecca had always seen herself as a fairly serious girl, intent on finishing her history degree.

Not only does she marry Joe instead, but she also takes on his three daughters, has one of her own and, when Joe dies in a car crash six years into their marriage, she runs the Open Arms as well. This doesn’t even include the elderly folk she looks after, first Joe’s mother, then Poppy, his uncle. The Open Arms needs constant repairs, and as the decades pass, there are grandchildren to babysit too.

She’s fifty-three when we meet her at the start of the book, organising a family barbecue and trying to make everyone happy. Which isn’t always easy – the Davitches are a prickly, discontented bunch at times, particularly the girls, who are prone to squabbling or disapproving of their sisters’ choices. Circumstances trigger Rebecca into wondering what happened to the boy she dumped for Joe, and she decides to look him up.

Min Foo turned to Rebecca. “I was thinking about your dream,” she said.
“My dream,” Rebecca echoed. In the flurry of lunch, she had started to forget her dream. Now it came back to her, but with the boy more distant now, more of an other. “What about it?” she asked Min Foo.
“If you dreamed you had a son, not daughters, and if the son was blond, not dark …” Min Foo was shepherding the children toward the front of the house, so that Rebecca had to follow her. “Well, it seems to me,” she said, “that you were dreaming how things would be if you’d chosen a different fork in the road. You know what I mean? If you’d decided on some different kind of life than you have now.”
This struck Rebecca as so apt, and so immediately obvious where it hadn’t been before, that she stopped short. Oh, her girls could surprise her so, every now and then!

This really is a novel of characters – the four daughters all with their own set of problems are constantly in and out of the Open Arms, also the Davitch home which Rebecca still shares with Poppy, now approaching his 100th birthday. We’ve got the girls’ partners and offspring, as well as Zeb, Rebecca’s goofy brother-in-law, a hospital doctor who’s never married.

They’re all interesting and entertaining, but I particularly loved Poppy with his memories and enjoyment of food, his discourse on what it’s like to be so old and so on. And Peter, who at eleven is a new arrival into the family via his father’s marriage to one of the girls. He sticks out for being pale compared to the dark haired Davitches as well as shy and nerdy. Tyler captures beautifully the bickering dialogue of sisters, the way conversations waft in and out between characters, between topics as people pounce on ideas or lose the thread of what they were saying, with all the humour that results.

The story takes its time as Rebecca rethinks her life and tries to reconnect with her old flame, now a divorced physics professor, and ponders her choices. Was Joe ever in love with her, or was she just useful when he needed help? Some readers may find the pace a little slow as the scenes, often party scenes, pile one on top of the other. A baby is born, there’s a wedding and Poppy has his birthday bash, meals are served and tradespeople called in.

But without being an out and out comedy, I found myself chuckling my way through them all. I once came across a comment Tyler made about the fiction of Barbara Pym in which she stated: “she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life”. The same could be said of this novel, the way Tyler captures all the muddles, missteps and misconceptions. I loved it, finding it well-worth a reread, both relaxing and hugely entertaining – a four star read from me.

Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore – a stunning thriller about family secrets and lost children in the wilderness

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I found myself unable to put down this mystery-thriller set at a summer camp in the Adirondacks during the 1970s. The God of the Woods begins when thirteen-year-old Barbara goes missing towards the end of camp. Barbara’s parents, fragile Alice and autocratic Peter, are part of the wealthy Van Laar dynasty who own the camp and pay the staff who run it. They thought camp would be a good idea for Barbara as she’s been showing concerning behaviour at school and dresses like a punk.

Fourteen years before, the Van Laar’s son Bear also went missing, thought murdered by a local man who seemed to have a strange obsession with the boy. His grief stricken parents idolised Bear, who was by all accounts a popular and cheerful boy, his death something Alice could never get over. Unfortunately the suspect was never tried in court as he died suddenly – the case closed, leaving questions unanswered.

When a search is organised to find Barbara, young state trooper Judyta Luptack is determined to do her darnedest not just at finding Barbara, but in also discovering what happened to Bear, whose body has never been recovered. She suspects the Van Laars are hiding something. There’s also the recent escape of a serial killer from prison, who had been in the area when Bear disappeared. Could he have taken Barbara too?

Eight campers. Nine beds. She counts and counts again.
At last, when she can no longer defer it, she lets one name bob to the surface of her mind: Barbara.
The empty bed is Barbara’s.
She closes her eyes. She imagines herself returning, for the rest of her life, to this place and this moment: a lonely time traveler, a ghost, haunting the cabin called Balsam, willing a body to appear where there is none. Willing the girl herself, Barbara, to walk through the door. To say she has been in the washroom, to say she forgot the rule about taking the flashlight, to apologise disarmingly, as she has done before.
But Louise knows that Barbara won’t do any of these things. She senses, for reasons she can’t quite articulate, the Barbara is gone.
Of all the campers, Louise thinks. Of all the campers to go missing.

The story dips back and forth through time, to when Alice first met Peter Van Laar, and her struggles to be seen as a person worthy of more than producing a Van Laar heir. The story is told from various perspectives, including Louise, one of the young staff running the camp who is hiding a secret. There’s also Tracy, the awkward girl who became Barabara’s friend, sent to camp following her parents’ divorce.

The story, weaving its way through these characters’ lives, and the suddenly changing timeline takes a bit of getting used to. I found myself having to really concentrate to keep up. But the sudden revelations, the cliff-hanger chapter endings and the issues each character carries with them, to say nothing of fears for the young Van Laars, keeps you on the edge of your seat as you read.

Class, power and money seem to be at the centre of things with the Van Laars and their wealthy friends, their alcohol-fuelled parties and casual disregard for the locals, their determination to keep their good name – all of which makes them unlikable. Although you can’t but help feel sorry for Alice. Other families have problems too – Judyta’s conservative Polish family are reluctant to let her live away from home, which means a long commute every day. Louise is worried about her alcoholic mother and her inability to properly care for her twelve year old brother. There’s also TJ, who has taken on the burden of running the camp, trying to fill her highly-regarded father’s shoes.

The God of the Woods is very much a literary thriller – it is so well put together, its characters all so interesting and complex, the natural wilderness setting, so peaceful one minute, full of danger the next, an evocative backdrop. The 1970s era gives us a glimpse of changing attitudes, but there’s still the paternalist misogyny lingering in the police force and wider society. It all gives you a lot to think about as you whip through the pages to find out what has really happened. It’s a brilliant mystery and a four and a half-star read from me.