June 2026 Reading

 

June was an unusual reading month for me. I wasn't really in the mood to read, and I had less time to read, because it was summer and I had other things to do. Also, what is going on in the world is distracting to say the least. But I ended up reading 11 books this month which is about the number of books that I read each month on average. I think the fact that I read a few literary fiction books that I really liked and a few mysteries that were fast paced helped with the totals. 

These are the books I finished in June.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

A beloved high school history teacher, in a long term happy marriage and with a loved son, comes to realize that he is lonely and frustrated with his life. Then something happens to him, and a long time secret is revealed to him, both of which make him re-think his outlook on life. As usual, Elizabeth Strout digs right into the psyche of her main character in accessible prose. My Quick Take is here. Recommended. 

The Star from Calcutta by Sujata Massey

The sixth in the Purveen Mistry series, set in 1920's Bombay, this mystery novel finds Purveen and her father taking on the legal representation of an Indian film company. Almost immediately this turns into a murder investigation when a guest at a preview showing of the latest film is murdered and then the star disappears. Purveen as usual has to deal with the sexism of the Indian Police who find it hard to believe she is a solicitor (lawyer). It is interesting that I've now read two mysteries this year, each set in 1920's India (one in Calcutta and one in Bombay), that involved the Indian film industry and took as their inspiration, among other things, Merle Oberon. I like this series and recommend it. While this novel could easily be read on its own I always recommend starting with the first in a series. 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Sybil Van Antwerp would rather write letters than talk to people in person. She even prefers letters over emails although she will email when necessary. So she writes lots of letters and we learn all about her through her letters. This novel had been recommended to me by so many people I was slightly worried it wouldn't live up to the hype. But I enjoyed it tremendously. Evans managed to create letters that sounded like a real person wrote them not as if they were written by an author wanting to write an epistolary novel. My Quick Take is here.  It has since won the Women's Prize for Fiction, awarded annually to a woman author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the UK. Highly Recommended.

A Lesson in Dying by Ann Cleves
A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleves

Before Ann Cleves wrote the Vera series or the Shetland series she wrote two other series: the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series and the Inspector Ramsay series.  These were re-issued last year and I found them under new books on my Libby app.  Each starts with a forward by Cleves explaining where she was in life when she wrote the books. A Bird in the Hand was the first mystery she wrote and her "detectives" are a couple called George and Molly Palmer-Jones.  Molly is a retired therapist and George is a retired something (something to do with the Home Office and perhaps the police force, it's very vague). In their free time they are bird watchers. When a well known bird watcher (called a Twitcher) is found murdered in Norfolk they are asked, informally, to solve the case. In her forward she admits that since this was her first book she can see where she might have done better. While I enjoyed it and think it was a good first-time effort, I don't think she stuck the landing. But it won't stop me from trying others in the series if they are available. 

A Lesson in Dying is set in Northumberland and is the first book in the Inspector Ramsay series although he is not a main character. Cleves explains that this is similar to the first Vera book in which Vera is not the main character. The headmaster of a local school is found murdered and, when his wife is arrested for the murder (by Inspector Ramsay), an old school friend of hers decides to prove she is innocent. It turns out the schoolmaster was universally despised so there is no shortage of suspects. I enjoyed this novel even though I thought it had a few loose ends at the end. 

In both cases, I think she got better with her plotting as she got older. 

Last One Out by Jane Harper

This is the fourth or fifth novel by Harper that I've read and I've enjoyed each of them. Set in New South Wales, this novel involves a missing person, Sam, who disappeared five years ago without a trace. It also involves a village that was once an idyllic place to live but has now turned into a nightmare because a big mining operation has destroyed it. Sam's mother and father split up after Sam's disappearance. His father stayed on and his mother moved to Sydney. But each year she returns on the anniversary of her son's disappearance. She has gone over and over the "evidence" of his disappearance, convinced that they all must have missed something and they will learn the truth of what happened to Sam. This is a good mystery but even better at character development and the exploration of different kinds of grief. My Quick Take is here.  Recommended.

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

This is the first in the Virgil Flowers mystery series (which I understand is a spinoff from Sandford's Prey series, which I've never read).  Virgil works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal apprehension (BCA) and is on assignment in the small town of Bluestem where an elderly couple, a doctor and his wife, were murdered in cold blood. But before Flowers can even get to Bluestem another elderly man is tied up in his basement, doused with gasoline and the whole house is set on fire.  It seems the homicides might be related, and this is just the beginning. I chose this mystery for the setting (I love Minnesota based mysteries) and that didn't disappoint. The plot was well plotted and kept the pages turning. My biggest problem was that all of the men involved, including Flowers, couldn't say anything about women without treating them like a piece of meat and the women all were stereotypes. I know this is a popular series and I might give another book a try to see if Sandford toned down the sexism as the series progressed but as of this point I can't recommend it. 

Walk by Courtney Conley, DC and Milica McDowell, MS, DPT

I don't remember where I heard about this book but I put it on my library reserve list because I've been doing physical therapy to improve my walking (I have osteoarthritis). In some ways it didn't tell me anything I didn't know - I already do backwards walking and sideways walking and I already do a lot of the foot/ankle exercises. But for anyone not in physical therapy it probably would be informative. These authors are really into getting people to work their way eventually into walking in "barefoot" shoes (they call them something else but that's what they are) which doesn't appeal to me at all.  They are very against, it seems, any form of padding or support in your shoes but realize you have to work up to that. But as an aside they said that when one of them went to New York and walked on the hard pavement and the hard floors of museums she wished she had some padding. Uh, yes?  Apparently they are out west and like to walk on natural trails unlike those of us who live in cities. I personally don't like the trend of VERY padded shoes but I need a slight bit of padding in my shoes since I walk on hard surfaces. So I had these criticisms about the book, but the book is otherwise full of good information. As an aside, I borrowed the audio version because I thought it would be great to listen to while walking.  I didn't realize that it had lots of charts etc. that would be read aloud, so I don't recommend the audiobook version of this book. Also, there is a PDF that comes with the audiobook that didn't come with my library borrow, so I couldn't look at the pictures. 

Meet me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

Tina Hopgood, an English farm wife, and Anders Larsen, the curator of a museum in Denmark, begin a correspondence. Each is suffering the loss of someone important to them and each feels that they are at a turning point in their life but don't know where to turn. Over the course of this epistolary novel each describes in detail their families and their personal relationships so that we feel we know those other people even though we only see them through the eyes of Tina and Anders. This is a novel about two people finding themselves because they find each other through the written word. I enjoyed this novel but it probably would have been better if I had not read it the same month that I read The Correspondent, another epistolary novel. One of the joys of The Correspondent was that the letters sounded like letters that a person would actually write (and they weren't always answered).  The letters in this novel sound like letters that someone who wants to tell a story through letters would write. There is nothing inherently wrong with that but I found it distracting.  My Quick Take is here. 

Moonlight Murder by Uzma Jalaluddin

Jalaluddin is back with the second installment in her mystery series featuring middle aged Kauser Khan as her intrepid "Detective Aunty".  This is a cozy mystery and as with most cozy mysteries it requires a certain suspension of disbelief but if you are looking for relaxing reads in these trying times you couldn't do better than trying the Detective Aunty mysteries. One thing I love these days is the featuring of middle aged women in these type of novels. Kauser Khan doesn't even drive (she knows how but her youngest son was killed in a hit and run and so she can't bring herself to drive) and she takes the bus and the subway. It's good that Toronto seems to have reliable public transportation. In this mystery Kauser, at the request of her granddaughter, is looking into the death of a high school student.  At the same time she continues to try to determine who was the driver of the vehicle that killed her son 18 years ago.  The ending required suspension of disbelief but otherwise the writing is good and Kauser is a delightful character. 

Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath

This is a debut novel that was well reviewed recently in the New York Times. so I thought I would give it a try. The story centers around the residents of Willow Road, a street in a south Asian enclave in New Jersey, who are in upheaval over the mysterious death of their friend Matthew Pillai. The two main characters are Anita Sharma and her daughter Leila. It was Anita's husband, a work colleague of Matthew, who introduced him to the neighborhood, with strange consequences. After his death the neighbors all gossip about him, Anita and Leila. Only we, the reader, know what their relationship was really like. Bansinath is very good at capturing the dynamics of a neighborhood, closely knit mostly by virtue of a shared ethnic background. This was billed as a darkly comic novel and it was darker than I expected and less funny than I expected. But that may be due to my own deficiencies in appreciating black comedy. Bansinath writes well but this did not make me want to read any more of her novels. 

Meet Me At The Museum

 

The Book: Tina Hopgood is a woman of a certain age whose children are now grown, although still living nearby. She has recently lost one of her best friends and feels bereft. She also feels trapped in the life that she chose for herself when she found herself pregnant as a young woman and married the father of her child, a farmer in the south of England. For various reasons Tina has always had an interest in Tollund Man, a man preserved in peat centuries ago. She and her friend had always intended to travel to Denmark to see Tollund Man and now that her friend is gone she writes for information to the museum where Tollund Man is kept. One of the curators, Anders Larsen,  responds to her and thus begins a relationship by letter. Larsen has recently lost his wife so they are brought together by grief and frustration over the circumstances of their lives. This is an epistolary novel, the story told only through the letters written by Tina and Anders. 

The Author: Anne Youngson

Genre: Literary Fiction

Length: 389 pp (ebook ipad mini)

One good thing:  Although the letters are only between Tina and Anders, each describes their family members and their relationships with each of them in great detail over the course of the novel and the family members end up being fully formed characters even though only seen through the viewpoint of one person. 

One not-so-great thing: This is an epistolary novel written in the style of letters that people wish they could write but that very few people actually can write (or if they can, it is unlikely that the other party would choose to respond with letters like this).  They are long, full of narrative information and highly literate (despite Tina claiming that she just jots things down as she thinks them and despite Anders claiming that he doesn't speak English perfectly). This probably isn't a problem for most people but I did find it distracting. I admit this is probably because I read The Correspondent a few weeks ago and that is a gem of an epistolary novel. So I don't recommend that you read this shortly after you read The Correspondent. 

Four Doorways*: Story; Characters; Setting; Language.  

The people who would most enjoy this novel are probably people who want well developed characters trying to break out of the ruts of their lives and perhaps people who are interested in esoteric information about pre-historic man.  There isn't really a well developed sense of place either in England or Denmark, but there is so much information about pre-history near the beginning of the novel that a reader may end up feeling a need to go see the places described. The writing is done well but see my note above under "One not-so-great thing".  There is a plot but this is not a page turner. 

"It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements."  Nancy Pearl on the Four Doorways.

    

A Streetcar Named Desire (Opera)

 

The Opera: Blanche DuBois arrives at the New Orleans apartment  of her younger, married sister Stella and Stella's husband Stanley Kowalski. A simple two room apartment in the French Quarter, it isn't really conducive to hosting a long stay but it becomes clear very early that Blanche has nowhere to go. The family's ancestral estate was lost to creditors. It also becomes clear that Blanche has some psychological issues and not everything she says is the truth. She and her brother-in-law do not get along (to say the least) but Blanche is hopeful of a new relationship with one of Stanley's friends named Mitch. This opera was first performed in 1988 and this production is a co-production between OTSL and Boston Lyric Opera.

Composer: Andre Previn
Libretto: Phillip Littel, based on the play by Tennessee Williams 

Principal Cast: 

      Sara Gartland (Blanche DuBois), soprano.  Sarah made an impressive OTSL debut last year as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus and this role couldn't be more different than that role. When this opera premiered, Renee Fleming sang Blanche and those are hard shoes to fill. But fill them Gartland does. Her performance of this very difficult part is exceptional, her voice powerful when needed and small when needed. Her performance makes attending the performance well worth the time. 

    David Adam Moore (Stanley Kowalski), baritone.  If you are expecting a Marlon Brando performance of Stanley you will be disappointed, Moore's Stanley is a thug without the sex appeal and I think this is intentional. Moore sings wonderfully though and his performance is powerful.  Originally it was announced that Thomas Glass would sing this role and I admit to disappointment because I would have liked to see what he would have done with it. 

    Lauren Snouffer (Stella), soprano. It would have been easy for Snouffer's performance as Stella to be lost beside the tour-de-force performance of Gartland as Blanche, but Snouffer holds her own. She has a lovely voice with a more bell-like quality than Gartland which is appropriate for singing the role of the younger sister. It is difficult to see why Stella would stay with Stanley given how he is played in this production but Snouffer manages to convey Stella's sexual attraction to Stanley. 

    Bill Bruley (Harold "Mitch" Mitchell), Tenor.  Bruley had a pleasing tone that mixed well with Gartland.       

Director: Patricia Racette (Racette was appointed OTSL's new Artistic Director last year).

Running Time:  3 hours with one 25 minute intermission.  Beware: the first act is 90 minutes so use the rest room before the performance. 

One good thing:  Sara Gartland is the reason to see this opera. Her acting combined with her powerful yet emotional voice is what made me stick it out to the end.

One not-so-great thing:  I'm sure many people love the Previn score but it seemed to me to be similar to much of the mid-to-late 20th century opera in that the notes being sung didn't convey (to me, at least) a range of emotions and I found it musically boring. Interestingly the incidental music between scene changes and the accompaniment to the singing was very beautiful but the actual notes to be sung by the characters sounded like the same old "modern" music that bears no relation to the words being sung. If you don't like modern you will tire of the music in this one fairly quickly.  I did. (Full disclosure, I like very little opera from the mid-late 20th century but I have enjoyed very many of the operas I've seen written in the 21st century.)

The Light in the Piazza

 

The Opera: It is the 1950's and Margaret Johnson has brought her adult daughter Clara to Italy, to re-visit some of the sites that Margaret and her husband visited after the War. They meet the Naccarelli family in Florence and young Fabrizio Naccarelli is enamored with Clara. Despite Margaret's best efforts to keep them apart, the two fall in love. But Margaret remains worried because her daughter is, as she says, a "special" child and the difference in languages is perhaps keeping the fact that she is developmentally disabled from being evident. This work is based on a 1960 Elizabeth Spencer novella and the 1962 film starring Olivia de Havilland. It premiered as a Broadway Musical in 2003. Because this is essentially a Broadway musical, albeit with music that is unusual for a Broadway show, many of the principal actors had Broadway experience. Note this production is amplified (at least in parts) which I think has never been done by OTSL before. 

Composer and Lyricist: Adam Guettel (Note:  He is the grandson of Richard Rogers and the son of Mary Rogers who wrote Once Upon a Mattress).
Book:  Craig Lucas

Principal Cast: 

    Katrina Galka (Clara), a lyric coloratura soprano, shines in the role of Clara. Her voice is crystal clear (and she has perfect diction). Galka's Clara is innocent but frustrated with her mother and with herself and Galka is perfectly believable in the role. We have seen Galka before, but not recently and it was a joy to listen to her. 

    Kate Baldwin (Margaret) was making her OTSL debut. She is perhaps best known for starring opposite Bette Midler in Hello Dolly as Irene Malloy. She is not an opera singer but her voice was strong enough to carry the role and her portrayal of Margaret was very believable. Margaret loves her daughter unconditionally and wants what is best for her but is also very protective. 

    Roy Hage (Fabrizio) was making his OTSL main season debut. He makes a winsome Fabrizio although his voice was not as strong as Galka's and so they did not seem evenly matched to me. Perhaps this was because the OTSL orchestra (part of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra) is bigger than a Broadway orchestra, although Hage seems to be a legitimate opera singer. Galka had no problem soaring above the orchestra but Hage was sometimes lost. But his portrayal of a young man struggling to express himself in English is very believable. (Note that his songs are in Italian and are not translated, although there are supertitles in Italian.)

    Paolo Szot (Papa) was making his OTSL main season debut. He had a lovely baritone voice and although he is Brazilian, not Italian, he made a believable Italian. In 2008 he won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical for playing Emile De Becque in the revival of South Pacific.  It seems that he is best known for being on Broadway (most recently playing Hades in Hadestown) but he has also sung at The Met and La Scala. He made Papa by turns funny, angry and a bit sexy.

    Debby Lennonn (Mama) is a local favorite, appearing in both musicals and operas at Union Avenue Opera but this is her first appearance at OTSL. (Also she is a graduate of my High School!). She sang beautifully and brought comedy to the show especially when Mama turns to the audience and says "I don't speak English but I have to tell you what is happening!")  

Director: Crystal Manich

Running Time:  2 hours and 30 minutes with one 25 minute intermission 

One good thing:  Although the singing was beautiful the real star of this production was the 1950's costume design by Ulises Alcala.  The hats!  The gloves!  The shoes! The dresses!  All out of a technicolor 1950's movie.  

One not-so-great thing:  The subject matter can be difficult as the audience wonders if it is the right thing to let Clara marry Fabrizio. I kept comparing it in my mind to the movie (although in my mind Deborah Kerr played Margaret when in reality it was Olivia de Havilland). In that screenplay the decision to allow the marriage seems reasonable because the Naccerellis are very wealthy so Clara would not have to manage anything and the alternative is eventually institutionalizing Clara. This was not made clear in this version and I think it would have helped the story if it had been included.

Last One Out

The Book:  Carralon Ridge, a village in New South Wales, was once a great place to set down roots and raise a family. But then ten years ago a big mining operation moved in down the road and began buying up properties. Now Carralon Ridge, covered in mine dust and with the constant drumming of the mine in the air, is little more than a ghost town with only a few residents hanging on. Ro has returned to the town to be with her ex-husband and daughter for the five year anniversary of the disappearance of her son Sam. Sam disappeared without a trace on his 21st birthday, while on a break from college, leaving only a rental car on the side of a road leading to some abandoned houses. After his disappearance his family fell apart. His father was committed to staying in Carralon Ridge, where he grew up, but his mother, Ro, moved away to Sydney. Now on the five year anniversary of Sam's disappearance, Ro wonders if they will ever learn what happened to Sam. She has gone over and over all the "evidence" from his case for the past 5 years, convinced that they are missing something.  But what?   

The Author: Jane Harper

Genre: Mystery

Length: 583 pp (ipad mini e-reader)

One good thing:  While Harper writes a good mystery, the joy of this novel is in her character development and representation of grief. There is the grief over missing Sam. There is grief over a failed marriage. Most of all there is the grief of the remaining villagers who have lost the community they once cherished. 

One not-so-great thing: Once the mystery comes to a climax, Harper goes back in time to show the reader what happened. This is one of my least favorite ways to end a mystery, I don't need a picture I just need someone to solve it. Other people may not find this a problem.

Four Doorways*: Story; Characters; Setting; Language  

This novel has a propulsive plot that kept me turning the page to find out what happened to Sam but it also is very much a character driven novel. Harper develops not only the main characters (Ro, her ex-husband and daughter) but many of the remaining characters in the village. I think that lovers of mysteries and lovers of character driven novels would enjoy this. 

While the village is very much a character in this novel I don't see the setting in Australia as particularly important. I kept forgetting it was Australia because it could just as easily have been a town in the American west. 

Harper is a very good writer. While there is nothing in the particular language or structure of this novel that is unique, Harper keeps the story flowing and her descriptions are vivid. 

"It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements."  Nancy Pearl on the Four Doorways.

    

  

2026 Walter Scott Prize

Somehow I managed to miss the announcement of the shortlist for Historical Fiction for 2026 which was published in April. This is my favorite prize to follow because I love historical fiction, although I get tired of WWII historical fiction. 

Back in February I blogged about the long list here.  Since that time the only additional book on that list that I read was Helm which I wrote about here.  It has been difficult finding the other books because my library doesn't always buy them or there is a long wait list.

The shortlist, which was announced April 16, 2026, was:

The Pretender by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury)

The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury)

Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon)

Once the Deed is Done by Rachel Seiffert (Virago)

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

Of that list the only one I've read was Seascraper which I read last year when it was on a Booker Prize list. I liked it very much. 

The winner for 2026 was announced June 12, 2026 and is The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly. 

I checked and of course my library doesn't have it but I put a "notify me" tag on it. 

The Pirates of Penzance at OTSL

 

 

The Opera: Frederic has turned 21 which marks the end of his apprenticeship with the Pirate King (he was supposed to be apprenticed to a Pilot but his nursery maid, Ruth, mis-heard and apprenticed him to a Pirate). Frederic has done his duty to the pirates but once a free man he will do his duty as a citizen and hunt them down. Frederic falls in love with Mabel the youngest daughter of a major-general but before they can be married a loophole is discovered in his indenture of apprenticeship that requires him to rejoin the pirates. As with most operettas, the plot is complicated and there are subplots.  The Pirates of Penzance was first performed at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, United Kingdom on December 30, 1879 and officially premiered at the Fifth Avenue Theater, New York on December 31, 1879.  It includes the classic "A Very Model of a Modern Major-General". 

Composers: Gilbert & Sullivan

Principal Cast: 

    Daniel Luis Espinal (tenor) sings Frederic and is making his OTSL main stage debut with this opera. He has sung with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition.  He has a beautiful voice but he looked older than 21 years (often a problem with opera). 

    Jana McIntyre (soprano) sings Mabel, the love interest of Frederic and the youngest daughter of General Stanley. She sang Tatiana in last year in OTSL's A Midsummer Night's Dream and is scheduled to be in Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera. She was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. She sang beautifully and played Mabel with appropriate coquetry.

    Robert Mellon ( baritone) sings (and steals the show as) Major-General Stanley. Last year he appeared at OTSL in Die Fledermaus and in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He pulled off "A Very Model" to the delight of the audience and was also very funny. Of all the principal cast he seemed the most comfortable as an actor. 

    William Socolof (Bass-Baritone) sings the Pirate King. He is making his OTSL debut.  He was very funny but I would have liked a bigger voice in the role. 

Director: Sean Curran

Running Time:  2 hours and 30 minutes with one 25 minute intermission 

One good thing:  James Schuette's bright set and colorful costumes evoke the music hall of the late 1800's and Sean Curran's stage direction and choreography make the most of the slapstick aspects of the operetta. This would be a very good Opera Theatre of St. Louis production for people who have never been to the Opera before. In fact, there were a number of children (wearing Pirate hats) at my performance. 

One not-so-great thing: Because this is an operetta there are portions that rely on the spoken word. Sometimes the singers (who are singers and not actors) speak a little bit too fast and words get lost. But this is a minor nit.