The following are the books I finished in November.
- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. It seems that everyone is reading this novel and I worried that it might not live up to the hype. The New Yorker called this Ann Patchett's "Pandemic Novel" but there really isn't much about the pandemic in it. The pandemic is the reason the whole family is together for the summer on the family cherry farm but they don't talk about it much and nobody dies of COVID. The novel is a memory novel in which Lara tells her three grown daughters the story of how she once dated a man who later became a famous movie star. Lara has long been content with her life on the cherry farm with her husband (who is secure enough to not care about the daughters' interest in the famous movie star) and doesn't regret anything in her life. Her daughters, like most children, find it hard to imagine their parents as young. This is a NICE novel. A PLEASANT novel. I never really cared much about the plot line (such as it is) although there were a few pleasing twists that caused me to smile. I never felt deeply invested in the characters, although I liked most of them. I enjoyed this book mostly for Patchett's use of words and the structure that kept things moving along.
- A Mercy by Toni Morrison. Not my favorite Toni Morrison book but still a wonderfully well written novel. Set in the 1600's, the main character is Florens who is sold as a slave to a man from New England (?) and separated from her mother who is a slave in Maryland. The sale is actually the mercy because this saves the daughter from the worst of plantation life. But the separation scars Florens. The novel contains multitudes - native american slavery, fear of witches, greed, mail-order brides. It is a little difficult to follow sometimes because Morrison switches points of view often. It is a good picture of 17th century America told from the points of view of persons from whom we don't normally get points of view.
- Chenneville by Paulette Giles. The latest book by Paulette Giles is about a Journey for Revenge. I don't much like revenge tales and this one ended up being something of a disappointment at the end. But Giles is VERY good at writing about the journey (as she was in Enemy Women). Her creation of a sense of place is excellent as the main character moves from the eastern battlefield hospitals of the civil war, back to St. Louis, down to Ste. Genevieve county Missouri and then a long trek through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Giles also is good at creating characters with interesting back-stories - in this case the main character begins the story waking up from a coma with only partial memories. But after creating interesting characters, it's as if she doesn't really know what to do with them. It's not that they don't grow, they do. But they grow in predictable ways without, in my opinion, having to actually do the work for the growth. I'm always left wanting more. In this case I was disappointed that at the end she took away from the main character the decision to act or not act that was, in my opinion, essential to having him actually grow. On the whole, not a bad read but frustrating in places.
- Fatal Legacy by Lindsey Davis. The latest Flavia Albia mystery. I always enjoy Davis' mysteries which are set in ancient Rome but have a modern feel to them. This one involved an investigation Flavia Albia does for a very complicated family. It involves slavery and emancipation in ancient Rome. This can be read alone but it is part of a series and the earlier books give more background on the main, continuing characters.
