Here are some mini-reviews of books I read in January.
- A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin. I know, I know. I was going to read fewer mysteries in 2023. But Ian Rankin's Rebus mysteries are some of my favorites and I was surprised I missed it when this one was released a couple of months ago. John Rebus is back, and Siobhan Clarke and Malcom Fox (who has had a promotion) and, of course, Big Ger Cafferty. I remember there was a time I liked Malcom but I'm obviously not supposed to these days. Siobhan doesn't. The novel opens with Rebus on trial (!) and then goes back in time. I have to say I did NOT guess why he was going to end up in the dock. It will be interesting to see where Rankin goes after this novel. Recommended, but really you need to read the whole series to get the full story.
- Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett. Have you ever been on a really long car trip with a child? Say, a child of 7 or 8. And you make the mistake of asking the child about a TV show they have watched. The child takes a deep breath and proceeds to tell you every single detail about that TV show, with digressions about what she likes to wear when when she watches it and whether her dog likes it, and why her dog has the name it has, and how her grandma doesn't like the dog but how grandma liked the TV show and how her grandma bought her the tie-in toy from the TV show and it's her favorite toy, well except for another toy that is also her favorite toy, but her teacher took it away from her when she brought it to school but her teacher also likes that TV show and .... four hours later she is STILL talking and you are exhausted from listening to her. That's this book. (Not the plot, but the style.) It's exhausting and annoying and I should have DNF'd it. Emphatically NOT recommended. Don't waste your time.
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab. Hmmm. It probably wasn't a great idea to start a book that is over 600 pages (on my e-reader) right after finishing a book I hated. I should have read a "palate cleansing" book. But, I read it anyway. It was MUCH better than Checkout 19 (but that's not saying much, is it?). A mix of fantasy and historical fiction, this novel follows the titular Addie through 300 years of life. No she isn't a vampire. She is an ordinary young woman who makes a Faustian deal with the devil (who the novel never calls the devil and she calls Luc). She doesn't want to get married, have kids and never leave her French village. She wants to Live! So he gives her a life for as long as she wants it BUT the catch is that no one ever remembers her. If they leave to go to the bathroom and come back, they say "who are you?". It's a lonely life. Then suddenly she meets Henry who for some reason CAN remember her. Why? While there were moments when I enjoyed this book, it wasn't perfect and regularly annoyed me. Mostly my issues had to do with the plot and not the writing. The historical parts of it were too superficial for me to really get into. And I had no patience with the flirtation with Luc. I also thought it was a particularly bleak view of the world where the only supernatural being (god?) that responds to her cries is the evil one. I also thought it was too long by about 25%. But I can see where a lot of people (especially people more into fantasy than I am) would enjoy this more than me.
- Toward That Which is Beautiful by Marian O'Shea Wernicke. Girl from St. Louis in the late 1950's joins the convent and then in the early 1960's gets sent to their mission in Peru in the middle of nowhere. She falls in love (or thinks she does) with the priest there and questions her vocation. She also questions what the American missionaries are actually doing in Peru. This was a choice by my book club and everyone but me thought it was great. The author grew up in St. Louis and was briefly a nun. And taught in Peru (but didn't marry a priest). So there were autobiographical bits to it. That part was kind of fun. The main character grew up on Waterman Ave and went to St. Roch's grade school. My mom grew up on Waterman Ave and went to St. Roch's grade school (but didn't become a nun). My biggest problem was that I didn't like the writing. It was yet another book written in the first person that relied on the narrator to be very naive (at the age of 25) in order to make the plot work. So I found the character at best boring and at worst annoying. I would never have chosen this book on my own, but, while it wasn't my cup of tea, the rest of my book club enjoyed it. It does have a strong sense of place.
- The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi. I thought this would be my "palate cleansing book", something light after the last few books that I didn't care for very much. In fact, I thought this was a mystery because I knew it was part of a series. It is not a mystery. It was not what I expected at all. Set in post-independence India of the 1950's, it is the story of Lakshmi Shastri who supports herself as a henna artist in Jaipur, India. Lakshmi long ago left her abusive husband and disappeared from her village. She has worked hard to make something of herself and seems on the cusp of security. She is providing services to many high ranking Indian women, even managing to get an introduction to to the local Maharani. She also has a business on the side using her knowledge of herbal medicine. Enter a younger sister she didn't know existed, and things become complicated. I enjoyed this book very much. It is a story told in the first person but I didn't mind because Lakshmi is an intelligent woman. This is Joshi's first novel and although she has an MFA it didn't seem like the typical MFA novel. It was much better. There is a sequel already published and a third book coming out in March.
- Silverview by John Le Carre. This was Le Carre's last novel, finished before his death in 2020. I purchased it shortly after it was published in 2021 but waited to read it. I've always enjoyed Le Carre's writing. He has intricate plots with spare writing. He doesn't tell you everything that is going on, he trusts his readers. This novel was no different. It was much shorter than I expected, only 167 pages on my e-reader. I feel like it could have been slightly longer. On the other hand, it did what he wanted it to do in those short pages so why write more just to pad it? The ending didn't surprise me but on the whole I don't think Le Carre was really into surprise endings. He was more into process. I enjoyed it, although I wouldn't rank it up there with Tinker, Tailor.
- Murder at the Serpentine Bridge by Andrea Penrose. This is the latest installment in the Wrexford & Sloane mystery series. Set in the Regency period, the two principal "detectives" are the Earl of Wrexford (an aristocrat more interested in chemistry than aristocratic social life) and Charlotte Sloane (born an aristocrat but shunned by her family when she eloped to Italy with a penniless artist). Charlotte leads a secret life as what we would call a political cartoonist. This installment had a dearth of chemistry and only a few political cartoons, but it was a good mystery. It takes place at the celebrations of the British victory over Napolean and, in the afterward, Penrose tells us that her descriptions of the celebrations are historically accurate while her plot (stolen plans for a military weapon of great destructiveness) is fictional. I enjoyed it. I like this series. Not as much as the Sebastien St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris, which is set in the same time period, but I do like it. My biggest issue with it is that sometimes Penrose decides to have lots of narrative come out of characters' mouths. People don't talk like that. And sometimes the narrative is not needed - trust the reader to put two and two together on their own.
- The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair. I picked this up thinking it would be a fairly standard British mystery. I knew it was set in post-WWII Britain. I knew it involved two women solving a crime. But it wasn't what I expected. This was more like a novel that involved a mystery. It is 1946. London is in ruins. Iris and Gwen, who met at the wedding of a mutual friend, have decided to start a business. The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is basically a matchmaking business. Gwen, from the upper upper classes, is a war widow with a six year old son, forced to live with her horrible in-laws. Iris has a mysterious background from the War that She Can't Talk About. It's hard to start a business but even harder when one of your clients is murdered and the police arrest the man you fixed her up with. To save the reputation of the agency, Iris and Gwen try to prove he's innocent. I liked this novel because it gives a really good picture of London right after the War. And the characters talk like real people (albeit real people from the 1940's - there's a sort of 1940's movie dialog banter that goes on sometimes, but I don't mind that.) There are sequels. I will read them.
Those are my thoughts. Remember, of the four doorways into a novel (plot, character, sense of place and language), I'm looking for the language doorway to be the biggest door in order for me to love a book. (See my post about the Four Doorways).
