August (and some July) Reading

As usual, I escaped the heat and humidity of the St. Louis summer and took myself up to the Canadian/Minnesota border at the end of July. Because I am always gone at the end of July I usually combine my July and August reads into one very long post. This year, however, I broke with that tradition and I published some of July early. This post contains books I read the last week of July as well as the books I read in August.

Most people take light reading with them on vacation but because for so many years this time at the lake was the only time of the year when I had uninterrupted reading time, I’ve always brought longer and heavier books with me as well as the lighter reading. This year I took a number of books nominated for various prizes.  It was a lot of historical fiction and maybe it's time to read something more modern next month.

The following are the books I finished by the end of August.

Boundary Waters by Tristan Hughes

Arthur Stanton, living in Montreal in the early 1800’s, feels that he is a disappointment to his father and, on the spur of the moment, he signs on to be an apprentice clerk for The XY Company, a fur trading company. Setting out for Lake Superior with a group of Voyageurs to bring back a cache of furs taken from Missouri country, Arthur begins to learn the trade and also learn about the Company’s chief competitor, The North West Company. But when the furs turn out to be missing the trip turns into a quest to find them before the competitors can. When I saw this novel on the longlist for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize I knew I wanted to read it. And what better place to read a novel that partially takes place on Rainy Lake and the Rainy River than sitting out on a deck overlooking waters that flow into Rainy Lake? Hughes is very good at creating a sense of place and as far as I can tell (and I’ve read a lot on this subject) he gets the details of a fur trade expedition pretty correct. The plot is good. The “side” characters (the Voyageurs) are interesting. Where the novel falls down for me is in the main character. My biggest issue was that Arthur is an idiot. I get that having the point of view be from a novice is helpful because the reader can learn along with the novice, but I just found his ineptitude annoying. The other problem is the woman character. There is a half-Native American woman who Arthur and one other character pine over but we see her only through Arthur’s eyes and he puts her on a pedestal. He never understands her. In the end I can recommend this if you want to get a good feel for the early 19th century fur trade but only if you don’t mind an inept main character who regularly makes dumb decisions  

Benbecula by Graeme MacRae Burnet

It is 1857 on the Scottish island of Benbecula and the McPhee family (father, mother, four adult siblings and an aunt) is struggling. Like many of the people on the island, they are poor. Then the third son, Angus, begins to show signs of madness but the family does not have the funds to pay for his commitment and they are not poor ENOUGH to qualify for charity. Five years later, Angus’ brother Malcom is living alone in the house and thinking back to those days and the horrific crime Angus committed. But is Malcom also going mad? This is the second Burnet book I have read (the first was “His Bloody Project”) and in both he takes an episode of true crime from long (long!) ago and turns it into a novel, with an afterward that goes into detail about the documents he reviewed. This is a short novel (170 pages including the afterward) but because it goes back and forth between Malcom’s current state of mind and Malcom’s recollection of the events five years earlier, I thought the plot lacked propulsion. Because everything is told from Malcom’s point of view, and he is a somewhat unreliable narrator, I didn’t get a feel for the other characters. I thought it would give me a good sense of place and time and it does portray well the poverty at this time, but I didn’t particularly have a vivid picture of Benbecula (compared, say, to the picture of a Scottish island in John of John). It is well written on a sentence level and was shortlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize. It was also longlisted for the 2026 Crime Writer’s Association Silver Dagger Award. But it just didn’t do it for me.

The Artist and The Feast by Lucy Steeds

It is 1920 and Joseph Adelaide has come from London to the South of France to interview the reclusive (fictional) painter Edouard Tartuffe. Tartuffe lives in a dilapidated farm house with his niece Ettie who keeps house for him, handles all his mail and finds the props he needs for his paintings. Tartuffe, who has a temper, is uninterested in having visitors. But when Ettie points out that Joseph would be the perfect model for Tartuffe’s next painting he relents. As the hot summer goes on, Joseph and Ettie forge a bond that is partly the result of their relationship with the abusive artist. The characters in this novel are fictional but it is clear Steeds has done her research. The characters are well drawn and she creates a good sense of place. (I wanted to visit the south of France after reading this - but with air conditioning.) The plot holds together but her choice of structure is one I often have issues with - the novel is told through the points of view of Joseph and Ettie told in alternating chapters. As usual, I found that this alternating point of view structure stalled the forward movement of the plot a bit - at least for me. This novel won the Waterstones Prize for debut fiction and was Waterstones book of the year for 2025. It was also on the longlist for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction. If this type of structure does not bother you, I recommend it  

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

The Americans have entered WWI and Cyril Bagger, son of a bishop who perished on the Lusitania, unbeliever, con man, and failed draft evader, has managed to stay alive by keeping himself on grave digging duty  But then Bagger and four other men the commander considers expendable are given the task of entering No Man’s Land to find a wounded soldier, who is shrieking non-stop. However, it turns out this is no wounded soldier but an otherworldly being who could have the power to stop the conflict. But will each man’s greed destroy that possibility? And why does Bagger feel that he may have been specially chosen?  I loved this novel but I recognize it probably is not for everyone. The first wonderful thing about this novel is the structure, one long sentence with each paragraph beginning “and …”. Very early in the novel Kraus clues us in that this structure is meant to symbolize The War. 

… Bagger, already weighed down in mud and blood, further heavies in the dreary certainty that the shriek will never end, just like the war will never end, like the carnage won't ever end, it’s a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can’t ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later, will drag each and every person to their grave …

I worried that I would find this structure annoying but in the end I found it very effective. The second wonderful thing about this novel is how it puts the reader right into the absolute hellscape that was WWI. I’m a sucker for WWI books and have read many novels set during that period and immediately after. Many of them graphically describe life in the trenches. But this novel goes beyond graphic descriptions and piles it on until it becomes almost unbearable to read, the way it was unbearable for the men fighting the war. Again, very effective. The third wonderful thing is that the point of view character is American, an easily recognizable type of American. Few really good WWI books are from the American point of view. We came into that war late and it is overshadowed in our memories by WWII. We lost fewer men in WWI than the other fighting powers. In fact there is a portion of the novel where Bagger comes across a French deserter who taunts him about this. The next wonderful thing is that the plot moves along, as Bagger must save this otherworldly being and bring it to headquarters while the armies are on the move and the fighting goes on. Finally, and maybe best of all, this is a novel of ideas. So many ideas. Faith, family ties (and the lack), racism, greed, and whether there really could be an end to war  After all, The War to End all Wars didn’t do that. And it is a good reminder of the carnage and hell of war when those fighting today can do it by robot and drone hundreds or thousands of miles away and not live through the devastation on the ground. This novel won The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2025 and it was well deserved.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith 

This is the story of two families, the Jones family and the Iqbal family. The fathers of each became unlikely friends during WWII and after the war they return to England, marry and raise children. This is also the story of immigrants to the UK, from Bangladesh and Jamaica and their attempts to both assimilate and retain their heritage. This is also the story of people of different faiths. Finally, this is the story of modern scientific genetic advancements and possible repercussions. I’ve read a number of novels by Zadie Smith and have enjoyed all of them. But I had never read her debut, and much acclaimed, novel White Teeth. And … it is probably my least favorite of all of her novels that I’ve read. Like many of her novels, it is humorous but often the humor gets lost in the details of the story. Mostly I just felt that it was all over the place and needed more structure. This novel won a number of awards including the Whitbread First Novel Award.

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko

It is the 1850’s in Australia in the area that will become Brisbane. White settlers are impinging on the land of the aboriginal people. This is the story of Nita and Mulanyin, two people separated from their own people and living among the Yagora people. This is in part a love story but also the story of Mulanyin’s struggle with the white settlers. Part of the story also takes place in 2004 when Grandma Eddie Blanket, a 100 year old black woman, ends up in hospital telling her story to a journalist and haunted by a ghost. I admit I found this novel hard to get into mostly because Lucashenko uses words of the Yagara language throughout. I wondered if Australian people were simply familiar with these words. I could have used a glossary. But she brings to life the Australian landscape and her characters were very vivid and by about the 25% point I finally began to be comfortable with the language and got into the story. This book was longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize and nominated for 12 other prizes, winning the ARA Prize for historical fiction in Australia and New Zealand.

Metropolitan Mysteries: A Casebook of London’s Detectives edited by Martin Edwards

This is another volume of short stories published by the British Library Crime Classics. I generally do not like short stories but I did enjoy this volume. It included stories by Dorothy L. Sayers involving Lord Peter Wimsey, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle and a Margery Allingham story involving Albert Campion. Most of the other stories were also very good, especially the ones that were very short. 

Isola by Allegra Goodman

It is the 1500’s in France. Marguerite de la Roche is an orphan, heir to a fortune but her guardian has left her impoverished. Forced to travel with him across the Atlantic to New France she angers him and he maroons her on an island off the coast of Canada. This novel had a lot of publicity when it was published and became a Reese’s Book Club pick. I wanted to read it for its connections to New France. Goodman is very good at bringing time and place to life but I felt the characters were a little thin, even though (or maybe because) it is told in the first person by Marguerite. However, wanting to know the end of the story kept me turning the pages. This was a New York Times Notable Book of 2025.

God’s Country by William Kent Krueger

This year’s installment of the long running Cork O’Connor mystery series takes Cork deep within the Boundary Waters which was especially poignant this year given the bad fires in that area this summer. When we were Up North, a couple of times we were near where some of the firefighters were staying and the flags in the state were at half staff for a dead firefighter. This story has no fires but the purity of the Boundary Waters (or God’s Country as Cork calls it) is still endangered, this time by humans. I didn’t think there was much of a mystery in this one, we found out who the perpetrators were fairly early and the only mystery was to identify why they did what they did. The crux of this novel was Cork’s soul (I never believed his life was in danger, it’s a series) and the choices he had to make. Based on the ending I suspect the ramifications of this trip will live on to the next novel. Frankly I like it better when Krueger just does a straight mystery. 

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne by Elsa Hart

It is 1703 and Cecily Kay has arrived at the London home of Barnaby Mayne, a collector of great renown. Mayne seems to collect everything and his town home is packed with objects and books. Cecily is there to consult Mayne’s collection of botanical specimens and writings. To her delight, she discovers that a childhood friend, Meacan, is also staying there working as an illustrator for Mr. Mayne. But Cecily soon learns that the community of collectors in London is obsessive and cut-throat. When, on Cecily’s first day, Mayne is found murdered, Cecily is sure that the police have arrested the wrong man. But can she prove it? And what secret does Meacan hold?  This was a library serendipity pick for me, I had never heard of this author before. I liked that this was told in the third person so she didn’t have to make Cecily too stupid to figure things out. I thought the side characters were well developed. About half way through the novel I realized that, while I still couldn’t guess the ending, I almost had forgotten it was primarily a mystery because I was wrapped up in the setting and descriptions and the characters. The ending did hang together. It also seemed that the author intended to make this the start of a series, but there has been no follow up since 2020.

The Bookbinder’s Secret by A. D. Bell

It is 1901 and Lilian Delaney is working as an apprentice bookbinder in Oxford while still living at home above her father’s used book store. During a visit to a client she is given a partially burned book in which she finds, hidden beneath the binding, a more than 50 year old letter that mentions murder. Lilian is pulled into a search for more information about the letter writer and the murder that turns out more dangerous than she could have imagined. This book was on the new fiction shelf at the library and I believe it is a debut novel. Although not perfect, I thought it was very good. I liked the main character and the plot moved along at a good clip. I also learned a bit about book binding. My biggest criticism is that the various parts of the “confession” that Lilian finds are written like a novel and not a confession. They are complete with dialog in quote marks. Real people don’t write like that. But it didn’t ruin it for me, just distracted me. It looks like this is intended to be the start of a series .

 

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.