July 2026 Reading

July for me is usually split in two as far as reading goes. There are the first three weeks that are "normal" and there is the last week when I am usually out of range for much of wifi and the internet. So I usually combine July and August into one (very long) post. This time I'm switching things up and doing most of July in this post and will include the books I read during the last week of July in my August post. 

I recently decided that I wanted to start visiting the library in person rather than mainly getting books through Libby. I belong to two separate library systems so I have a good choice of branches to seek out (and of course I could always order books from the central locations if I really wanted to). Because some of the branches are small I decided I would visit a different branch each time to see what was on their "new fiction" shelves and what books the staff at that branch chose to highlight. I've only managed to visit two branches so far but it has worked out pretty well.  

These are the books I finished in July.

Mysteries

Holy Island by LJ Ross

This was something I found on the "new mysteries" shelf at the library. Despite the fact that it said on the front of the book that she was "the Multi-Million Copy Selling Author"  I had never heard of her. Looking at the copyright page it seems that she self-published this on Amazon UK back in 2015 and it was picked up by a publisher to be "reprinted" in hard copy in 2026. Since 2015 she has written at least 23 sequels to this series plus a couple of other series. Not to denigrate self publishing, but putting out that many books in 10 years makes one wonder about the quality. If she originally tried to get this published in the traditional way I can see why it was rejected, it definitely needed some editorial advice. But I guess you can't argue with success if you simply want to make money. This novel, the "first" in the DCI Ryan mystery series, is (as are most mysteries) plot driven. She introduces DCI Ryan who is a fairly uninteresting detective. She tries to give him a tragic back story but mostly it sounds like a writer giving a character a tragic back story. He does a lot of yelling, especially at the love interest the author gives him, Dr. Anna Taylor. Their  story is written like a romance novel (lots of arguments followed by make-up sex, although it is not particularly spicy).  All of which would be ok, but she also introduces secret satanic sects operating on Holy Island (which, by the way, only has 200 residents so it seems hard to believe that they could really be kept secret). In order to make her plot work she relies on a whole lot of coincidences occurring. There's more I could say but I think I've made my point.  Not recommended. 

A Bitter Cut by Anna Lee Huber

The latest in Huber's Lady Darby mystery series set in the 1830's, this installment finds Lady Darby at her father-in-law's estate together with her husband and baby. It is a country house party and Lady Darby, who has much social anxiety, is expected to hostess. Included in the party is the family of her brother's "intended" although they are not formally engaged. Unfortunately, this is a very difficult family. When the private secretary of one of the guests is found murdered, suspicion falls on this family. The mystery must be solved! I always love a country house party setting and enjoyed the story. I suspected the solution to the mystery early but wasn't sure until the end. These novels can be read alone but are better if you start at the beginning. 

Murder in Belgravia by Lynn Brittney

This was a serendipity pick from my trip to the library. It was labeled as a "Mayfair 100" mystery and was the first in what I supposed was or would be a series.  The blurb said it took place during WWI and I am a sucker for anything set during WWI. It turns out that "Mayfair 100" is a telephone number.  A murder has occurred (of course) and detective inspector Beech is fairly sure that the wife is innocent. But she won't talk to any man or be examined by a male doctor. So, Beech calls on his friend Dr. Caroline Allardyce at the Women's Hospital to assist. He then explains to his superior that, given the fact that the war has caused London to be filled with women holding down jobs and doing duties that before the war were done by men, crimes involving women have increased and they need women to assist the police (no women are allowed to join the police). His superior agrees to an "off the books" team that Beech assembles to solve the crime, including Dr. Allardyce and his longtime friend and war widow Victoria Ellingham, who studied law for three years before her marriage. Their base of operations (since they can't use a police station) is Victoria's mother's home in Mayfair (hence the telephone number).  I enjoyed this book. Although the author had previously written children's and young adult books, this was her first adult novel and she did a decent job. She is a good writer and her plot made sense and had a lot of action and tension (involving brothels, gangs and the underworld).  My only complaint is that she decided that all the peripheral characters who were poor and powerless should get a happy ending, which is completely unrealistic. So I guess you could class this as a cozy mystery even though most of it isn't particularly cozy.  I see that the library has one sequel which I will eventually read. 

Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill

Another library serendipity find. I'm a big fan of Sulari Gentill's Rowland Sinclair mystery series so I was willing to try one of her stand-alone novels and this was (I think) her latest. Gentill is an Australian mystery writer and in this mystery the story is told in the first person by Meredith Penvale, an Australian lawyer who has stepped away from her practice for a year or so to take care of her twin brother Joe while he went through cancer treatment. Joe is a best selling mystery writer and, now that he is on the mend, she is taking him on the trip of a lifetime aboard the Orient Express. Things don't go well however as there is a new Covid variant on the rise in Paris and shortly after the train leaves it is determined that a number of passengers tested positive and have to be quarantined in a separate car.  Then the man in the compartment next to Joe and Meredith disappears, presumed dead because of the blood that is all over his compartment. Then other murders begin to occur. Joe and Meredith join with a number of other passengers to try to solve these modern day Murders on the Orient Express while Joe uses the events as the start of a new novel. I enjoyed this novel even though I found it completely unrealistic. Because of the COVID positive tests the train is not allowed to continue to Venice and is forced to return to Paris (at gunpoint) but they are stopped at the France border because the borders have closed due to the variant and fear of the passengers on the train. In the original Murder on the Orient Express the train is isolated due to heavy snowfall so Gentill had to think of a reason for this train to be isolated. But a few years after 2020 it makes no sense that the authorities would not simply transport the COVID positive people off the train to be quarantined and treated somewhere. It makes even less sense that France would not allow the train to return to Paris since the variant started in Paris - it's not like they are bringing something NEW into France. There were other issues, but none of them really mattered. It was a fun read especially if you know Agatha Christie. 

Literary Fiction

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

In 1944, during the London Blitz, a bomb falls on the Woolworth's in Bexford High Street obliterating all the people inside, including five school age children. Apparently this concept is based on a real event. Spufford takes this as his starting point and imagines if these five children were NOT killed by a bomb. What would their lives be like? He picks up their story a couple of years later and then throughout the novel makes 15 year jumps to show us where they are in life. I am a big fan of Spufford's writing at the sentence level. He has the ability to put into words complex ideas in simple language. As I've said before, he has a way with a perfectly ordinary phrase that doesn't seem at all special and yet completely sets the scene or describes the character.  This novel is no different. He also has the ability to create fully developed worlds, historical and otherwise.  In this novel the readers can immerse themselves in the London of many different time periods. He also develops the five characters very well. Where this novel didn't completely work for me was in the story and that's mostly a result of my personal reading preferences. I don't particularly like short stories and I seldom like novels that are linked short stories. While that is not exactly what this novel is in form, it is in result. Each section (corresponding to a time period) is made up of separate chapters about each character. The characters seldom interact. Each section is like a set of short stories about the characters. For me, this structure lacks propulsion and I found myself putting the book down and forgetting to pick it up again or picking it up again because I felt I "ought to".  If I had to rank Spufford novels I would put this one last behind Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz and Nonesuch all of which I've written about. My thoughts on those are linked.

Vigil by George Saunders

Jill "Doll" Blaine may have died but she still has a job. 343 times she has ushered souls into the afterlife, usually bringing them comfort. But her latest charge, a multi-millionaire oil tycoon, is turning out to be a bit of a challenge. She cannot console him because he regrets nothing.  And that challenge is making her consider her life (or her former life) more than she has in the past. The blurb for this novel all seem to focus on K.J. Boone, the dying man and tell us that this is a tale of corporate greed and global warming and capitalism. But this novel really isn't, in my opinion, about Boone; it is about Doll who must consider life and death and the question of atonement. This is a very short novel, written exquisitely. The subject matter may not be for some people. Personally, I liked Lincoln in the Bardo better but this is a good companion piece. 

General Fiction

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

This was a choice by my book club. By all rights this is a novel that I shouldn't have liked all that much. It is (partly) set during WWII and I'm not wild about WWII novels. It is also one of those novels that takes place in two time periods (2018 and WWII) and the author switches back and forth in each chapter between time periods. I am so tired of this structure and wish that publishers would tell authors to get beyond it. Surprisingly, however, I did enjoy the novel despite the structure. The saving grace here is that the character in each time period is the same: Colette Marceau. We meet Colette in Boston in  2018 when she is an elderly woman. Colette is interesting because the world sees her as a sweet old lady but in reality she is a jewel thief. She learned to steal jewels from her mother Annabel but there are rules: steal only from bad people and use the proceeds to help those in need. Colette has anonymously used proceeds from some of the jewels to found a center for the remembrance of Holocaust victims, although Colette herself is not Jewish. We learn early on that, during the War, Colette lost her mother (killed by the Nazis) and her little four year old sister (found dead floating in the Seine). She has been searching for answers about her sister's murder for her entire life. A novel utilizing this structure can often, in my opinion, lack propulsion as the story switches between time periods. But since this is completely Colette's story Harmel does create a propulsive plot. Those people who only like historical fiction if it is a page turner would probably be fine with this novel. She also creates very interesting characters.  Harmel is a competent writer but there is nothing particularly special about her writing and it takes, in my opinion, a large suspension of disbelief to find that the ending hangs together. It's not the kind of ending I enjoy but I also know that what isn't for me often works for other people.  

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.