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.

    

The Correspondent

The Book: Sybil Van Antwerp is a retired lawyer, long divorced with two living adult children who worry about her living alone. But she likes her house overlooking the river and her garden. Three days a week Sybil sets aside time for her correspondence. Sybil prefers writing letters to personal interaction. Writing helps her make sense of the world and helps her build connections with other people. She writes to her brother, her best friend, her neighbor, the young son of a former colleague, as well as famous authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry.  She even writes to George Lucas. And sometimes they write back. She talks about the books she is reading and what is going on in the world and in her life. Through all these letters the reader gets to know Sybil, her background, her hopes, her fears, the mistakes she thinks she has made and the successes that she has had. But when she begins to receive anonymous letters from someone who claims to have been harmed by her in the past, she begins to worry. 

The Author: Virginia Evans    

Genre: Literary Fiction

Length: 475 pp (ipad mini e-reader)

One good thing:  Evans has created a memorable, wholly formed character through the letters that Sybil writes and receives. She was a character I wished I could meet in real life. 

One not-so-great thing: At one point Evans has Joan Didion write back to Sybil (they clearly have been corresponding for years). They are discussing the death of a child. Of course Didion wrote an entire book about the death of her child (as well as a book about the death of her husband), but it made me a little bit uncomfortable reading a fictionalized letter from her on this subject. 

Doorways: Story; Characters; Setting; Language**

This is a character-driven novel, not plot-driven. There is a plot as we come to care about what will happen to the different people to whom Sybil writes, but primarily we are watching the arc of Sybil as she deals, over the years, with old age. She becomes very real through her letters, always her irascible self but deeply caring about the people she loves. The setting in Maryland is not particularly important to the novel although Sybil's garden and path down to the river are important to her. The Correspondent is an epistolary novel that covers a number of years. Some people don't like epistolary novels. I happen to love them because I think they are very good at revealing character if done well, and this is done very well. Through the novel Sybil stays truly herself no matter who she is writing to but reveals different parts of herself to the different people to whom she writes. And despite the fact that Sybil seldom leaves home, the letters have a propulsive sense that carries the story along. 

**"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.

The Things We Never Say

The Book: Artie Dam is a high school history teacher who loves his job and is beloved by his students who call him Damn-Dam. Long married to his wife Evie, they live in the house she inherited from her wealthy family, right on the water where Artie keeps a sailboat and loves to go out sailing alone. Their son Rob is grown, having survived a terrible car accident when he was a teenager. Artie seems to have everything and yet he feels isolated and lonely. He feels that no one really knows him and that he doesn't really know other people, including those closest to him. He feels that he is living a double life - outwardly jovial and inwardly suffering. Then he discovers a secret that has been kept from him for years and an incident occurs to him, both of which force him to rethink his approach to life. 

The Author: Elizabeth Strout 

Genre: Literary Fiction 

Length: 334 pages (e-reader ipad mini)

One good thing:  This is a novel of ideas and the big idea is that no matter what we think we know we can never fully understand other people and we can never fully understand how we appear to other people. As we travel through life we are blind but we think we can see. Within each human being is a vast, unknowable universe. In creating a character who appears outwardly ebullient to other people but who, inside, is dealing with loneliness and feelings of isolation, Strout makes this idea very accessible.

One not-so-great thing: As with many of her novels, Strout doesn't shrink from having her characters deal with recent real events. For instance, in "Lucy by the Sea" Strout had her characters deal with isolation because of the pandemic. This novel takes place in 2024 during the presidential election. While I found her characters' reaction to the election and its immediate aftermath realistic, in real life events move so fast that some of the things she writes about seem dated already.

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways": Characters; Writing; Story; Setting 

This is a novel focused on one character, painting a picture of him during a certain year of his life but during which he reflects on his past and the author occasionally gives us glimpses of his future. I found Artie to be a great character study while at the same time finding the other characters hard to completely understand (which I think is the point).  We mostly see the other characters from Artie's perspective although occasionally the narrator jumps in with an insight.  

I am aware that many readers find Strout's writing style off-putting. She writes in straightforward sentences that appear simple on their face. I think some readers feel she talks down to them. I find her style fascinating; it is as if she is sitting across from you telling you a story. She will straight-out tell you that a character only understood something later. I found this novel easy to read and yet full of ideas to think about. The story is relatively simple, the plot is not action-packed and yet I found it difficult to put down. 

Strout has set this novel in Massachusetts, a change from her previous novels, but unlike her novels set in Maine I didn't get a particular "Massachusetts feel" from this novel. In some ways it could have been set anywhere in New England.

Trigger warning:  There is a great deal of talk of suicide in this novel. 

  

John of John

The Book: Young John-Calum McLeod, known to everyone as Cal, has returned to the Western Isles of Scotland after finishing an art school degree that did not lead to gainful employment. Waiting for him at his home on the island of Harris is the small croft and sheep farm that has been in Cal's mother's family for years although his mother divorced his father and moved out long ago. Still living in the croft is Cal's ultra-conservative father, John McLeod, and Cal's maternal grandmother Ella. In this small community where people still speak Gaelic and English, the people adhere to a strict Calvinist tradition and Cal's father, a lay preacher at the local church, has definite ideas about proper behavior. He finds Cal's long, dyed hair to be sinful but what he does not know is that Cal is gay. It is a lonely life on the island; the nearest neighbors are two bachelor brothers who take care of their demented father. The next nearest neighbors have a daughter that everyone has always assumed Cal will marry. Cal longs for a connection he cannot have as he keeps his sexual identity a secret. But his father and his grandmother have their secrets too. 

The Author: Douglas Stuart 

Genre: Literary Fiction

Length: 787 pages on e-reader (ipod mini)

One good thing:  This man can write. I mean, really write. See below.

One not-so-great thing: There isn't much in this novel that is not great; if I had to pick one thing it would probably be the length. Or maybe that Oprah picked this novel for her book club which will scare off a lot of people because her picks tend to be viewed as depressing. I did not find this depressing.

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways": Characters, Story, Setting, Writing

Readers who will enjoy this novel: Readers who value characters above all else; Readers looking for a sense of place that makes them want to visit; Readers who value excellent writing; Readers who like a story that keeps them wondering how everything will work out. If you are a reader who demands a page turner, this probably isn't for you; this is a novel with a slow build.

Stuart creates his characters the way a painter creates a painting, slowly and stroke by stroke.  As the novel progresses, the broad, black and white outlines of the characters (seen mostly, in the beginning, from Cal's perspective) slowly develop into three dimensional, colorful human beings. There is not much narrative "telling" about the characters, the reader must discover them through their thoughts and actions which are often (as in real life) contradictory. Although this is not a plot driven mystery story, the main characters are all keeping secrets from each other and the reader is constantly wondering what those secrets are and whether the secrets will ever be revealed by the characters to each other. 

The heart of the community is the very conservative Calvinist Presbyterian church, in which those who are "saved" sit in the front of the church and the remainder sit in the rear, and those who are too sinful may be cast out. This adds tension to the novel as the secrets (as with most secrets) tend to be of the type that would be seen as sinful by the church and the congregation. John McLeod, Cal's father, is a lay preacher at the church and wants his son to repent his "sinful" ways, cut his hair and turn into a church-going family man. This is not the future Cal pictures for himself but he can't bring himself to directly tell his father. But Cal does not know that his father is constantly praying for forgiveness even as he regularly chooses what the church would see as sin.

The island of Harris is almost a character of the novel in itself. Stuart evokes its harsh landscape and life on a sheep farm, as well as the job of weaving the "Harris Tweed" woolens that are more profitable than the sheep. It is not a place I would want to live but by the end of the novel I wanted to visit just to see it. At the same time, the story doesn't shrink from the fact that tourism and holiday home buyers are changing the island.

Stuart won the Booker Prize in 2020 for his novel Shuggie Bain, which I never read as the story didn't appeal to me. (I also never read his second novel, Young Mungo.) So it was with trepidation that I picked up this novel. But what a joy it was to read his prose. Without a doubt, this is the best piece of literary fiction that I have read yet this year.

It would have been so easy for Stuart to make John McLeod the villain of the novel and, indeed, there are moments when his cruelty seems overwhelming. But while he is a complicated, deeply flawed man, there is no doubt that he loves his son. It is the contradictions that make  him so interesting. All of the characters have their flaws but Stuart is not a writer who judges, he simply presents.  And while the novel is specific as to the characters, it is universal in its depiction of the human desire to "belong" which exists in juxtaposition with the need to be oneself and discover one's own identity. 

 

 

 

The Gospel of Orla

 

The Book:   Orla, a young, teenage girl in England, is grieving the death of her mother from cancer and angry at her dad who drinks too much. Orla longs for connection but feels detached from her friends. She wants, more than anything, to escape her life and plans to run away to her aunt's home in Ireland. But just when she thinks she has all the logistics worked out her plan is thrown into chaos when her life literally collides with a homeless man who says he is Jesus. And ... maybe he is. 

The Author: Eoghan Walls 

Genre: Literary Fiction.

Length: 333 pages on ipad e-reader

One good thing:  Eoghan Wells is a poet from Northern Ireland and this is his debut novel. He manages to recreate exactly how a 14 year old, not-too-well-educated girl would write: bad grammar, run-on sentences, missing punctuation and complete self-absorption. This may sound annoying but it builds the character of Orla very well. 

One not-so-great thing: While the premise was interesting I kept wondering how he was going to write a believable ending for the story he had spun and, in the end, I don't think he quite stuck the landing.   

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story/Plot: While there is a plot, this is mostly a character-driven novel. But wondering if and how Orla was actually going to run away without being caught and wondering about her relationship with the strange man who calls himself Jesus, kept me reading although I would not call this a page-turner. I don't think that Walls tied together all the loose ends by the end of the novel and that may bother some readers. 

    Characters: The story is told in the first person from the point of view of Orla who is an interesting character for whom I had sympathy and annoyance (as with most teenagers). We see all the other characters through her eyes and there was no downside to seeing them, especially Jesus, from the point of view of a teenager. 

    Setting: Although the story includes a journey on foot across part of England, there really was no specific sense of place. 

    Writing: Walls managed to capture Orla through the way that he writes her first person story. The erratic punctuation and the run-on sentences may bother some people but it seemed very realistic to me. You won't read this book for beautiful writing but you may read it to enjoy how he built character through Orla's writing. 

    

  

February 2026 Reading

What a strange month of reading this has been: lots of audiobooks (which is odd for me) and fewer "hard" books.  This was also the month of the Winter Olympics and I found myself engrossed by them. What a nice break from reality; but that left less time for reading. 

The reason for all the audiobooks was that I spent the first week of this month traveling, including a 12 hour car ride to the place I was going and a 12 hour car ride back. So, I downloaded  audiobooks for the drive. We listened to two of them during the drives and I finished the others once I got home. All the audiobooks I finished were memoirs read by their authors. I generally like memoirs read by their authors because is sounds as if the author is telling you, the reader, the story of their life directly. 

These are the books I finished in February. 

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

This is the audiobook I listened to on my way down to the Gulf Coast. It was not what I expected, which is on me and not on the book. A memoir by the actress Mary-Louise Parker told as a series of letters to men (some real, some fictional), it was, interestingly, not much about  her career as an actress. She might mention that she was in NY to do a play but that was about it. It was almost completely about her personal life including her kids, her health and her love life. She has a very dry sense of humor and we chuckled along with some of her stories. On the whole, not the best memoir I've ever read but entertaining enough.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

This was the audiobook I listened to on the way home. This is essentially a diary that Stanley Tucci kept over a year journaling the food he made for himself and/or his family and what he ate (whether made at home or in a restaurant). He includes recipes (you need to like pasta). Along the way he talks about certain projects he was working on beginning with the filming of Conclave. He also talks about the death of his first wife, which is sad. He also talks about the celebrities he had dinner with throughout the year. It took me a long while to figure out that his second wife, Felicity, is the sister of actress Emily Blunt (maybe he said that early on and I just missed it).  He can be very funny and I enjoyed listening although I did get a bit tired of hearing about pasta. And I don't recommend you listen to it if you are hungry. But I think listening to this book made me appreciate the little spots he did for NBC during the Olympics about Italian food in the Milan area. 

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

The third audiobook memoir that I checked out of the library for my trip turned out to be something I didn't want to listen to in the car. Read by the author, it was a very quiet book and I needed something that would keep me awake. But I did listen when I arrived home. Geraldine Brooks (the author of Horse, among other novels) was married for 35 years to Tony Horowitz, a Pulitzer prize-winning author. In 2019, while he was on a book tour, he dropped dead suddenly while he was walking down a street in Washington DC.  This memoir is the story of Brooks' grief journey.  A few years after his death she retreated to Flinders Island in Australia (she is Australian) to consider what happened and work through her grief. The memoir is partly a memoir of her time on the island and partly a memoir of the time immediately following his death. It is not a long book but I found myself very affected at points. (I'm glad I didn't listen to it while driving.) There were also parts where I found myself as angry as the author - for instance when she discovered that the family's health insurance had been canceled the day after Tony's death without any notice to her. Or when she had to apply for all new credit cards because she had never thought to establish credit under her own name prior to his death. And especially when she received the call from the hospital unexpectedly telling her that her husband had died but the doctor was finishing her shift and couldn't take the time to answer questions. I hope the administration at GW Hospital read this and made some changes. 

The Book of I by David Grieg

If you have ever wanted to read a comic novel about slaughter by Vikings then this is the book for you. The island of Iona was often a target of Vikings and the novel begins in the year 825 A.D. with the landing of a Viking hoard and the slaughter of all but two of the residents - a monk who hid in a latrine and the wife of the smith who made such good mead from local honey that she is spared. The Vikings also leave behind one of their own, believing him to be dead. This is the story of the following year in the life of the three on the island. Although this is a very short novel, each of the characters has an arc. It examines issues of faith, love, and loyalty, all the while in language that is humorous. I have no idea if the end of the novel is historically accurate but it was satisfying. 

The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee

The next installment of the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in Calcutta in the 1920's, this novel is set a few years after the end of the last novel. Banerjee has returned from a stint in Europe but does not want to go back into the police force, he is working for Indian independence. Wyndham is still clean from his drug addiction but he drinks too much.  And he has lost the faith of the police force so he hasn't been assigned any good murders to investigate in a long time. The two come together again when Banerjee's cousin disappears at the same time that a rich local man is murdered. I always enjoy this series and you could read this without reading the previous novels, but of course it would be better if you started at the beginning. 

Helm by Sarah Hall

This is an historical novel about the only wind in the British Isles that has a name: Held.  Held is a character in the novel. There are also many other characters who observe Held through the ages.  In my Quick Take I said that if you like short stories you may like this, as this novel is more like a collection of related short stories but not told linearly.  For me, that slowed down the narrative arc of the whole novel. Despite that, I did like this novel and was very impressed by what Hall accomplished in anthropomorphizing Held. 

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

The last of the audiobook memoirs I got from the library. Levy is a staff writer for The New Yorker and she writes with The New Yorker style. You know.  Start the essay with something really personal that will grab the reader, then go into whatever it is you are intending to write about and at the end go back to the personal story. I don't have a problem with this form of essay - I am a subscriber to The New Yorker. But in my opinion this style works better for essays than for books.  And probably works better when read on the page rather than heard in audiobook form. This memoir starts with the description of a horrible moment in Levy's life without any explanation about how she got there and then goes back to the beginning of her life. This memoir did not grab me. It's not that Levy didn't have an interesting life; it was as interesting as any other woman who wants a career and a marital life and a baby.  Her's might even be slightly more interesting because she was in a same sex marriage that had issues with fidelity and heavy drinking. I usually like audiobook memoirs read by the author because it usually sounds as if the author is telling YOU the story personally. I think the problem with this audiobook is that Levy wasn't great at doing the reading and it often sounded like she was angry when I think it would have worked better if she had sounded ironic. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had read a hard copy of the book. 

The Hideaway by Nikki Allen

Full disclosure, Nikki Allen is married to a distant cousin of mine and I met her one time a number of years ago.

This thriller is part of the oevre of "country house murders" where a group of strangers are stranded together in a house where they can't escape and someone is a murderer. But in this novel, the "country house' is a house in Costa Rica and the group of five strangers end up lost in the rain forest. The action of the novel is related in third person omniscient, with the chapters alternating between the points of view of the different characters. (Regular readers will know this is not my favorite structure for a novel, but it didn't bother me too much here.)  Each character has come to the retreat in Costa Rica because they are dealing with personal issues (traumas?) and they want to get their life together and come back changed. In real life Nikki has worked as a therapist and she is very good at representing the various issues that each character is dealing with. In fact, the strength of this novel is the development of the characters. As far as plot, this is of course a thriller/mystery and it's pretty good but I thought it lost a little bit of momentum in the later chapters where there was a lot of narrative and less action (the opposite of what you would expect - although in the old murder mysteries the detective DID do a lot of narrative at the end explaining what happened). I thought it was an enjoyable book, the kind to  take on vacation. As a first novel it was promising and I do look forward to her future books. 

Helm

 

The Book: In the history of the world, certain winds get names. Think of the Santa Ana winds in North America. In Great Britain, only one wind has a name:  Held. This is the story of Held, as Held observes the formation of the world and the coming of peoples. This is also the story of the people who lived with Held including the neolithic people who considered Held a god, a medieval "wizard" who considered Held a demon, a Victorian scientist who wanted to study Held, a 20th century farmer's daughter who considered Held her friend, up to and  including a scientist studying plastic particles in the air. 

The Author: Sarah Hall

Genre: Historical Fiction

Length: 507 pp on ipad mini

One good thing:  Hall creates Held as an actual character. Held is curious, mischievous, egocentric, ferocious, and in some cases as close to loving as a wind can be. Hall uses third person omniscient with Held (as with all the characters) but the narrator, when talking about Held, has a real sense of humor. I sometimes thought that the narrator of the chapters about Held could actually be Held referring to Heldself in the third person. 

One not-so-great thing: There are many characters and their stories are strung out throughout the novel forcing the reader, with each chapter, to try to remember who the character was and where we were in their story. Although there is narrative flow I found my attention wandering at about the 75% point in the novel and didn't come back to it for a few days. 

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story:  There is a narrative arc for each of the characters (except possibly Held) but I would not call this a narrative driven novel. 

    Characters:  There are many characters and they are well drawn.  Each has a story arc. In fact the story arc of each character could be a single short story. If you like short stories you may like this. (I don't and found myself wanting more definitive endings for each character.)

    Setting: Hall does a great job in setting the scene in Cumbria and specifically the Eden Valley. If a novel with a great setting makes you want to see the location, you will be booking plane tickets immediately after finishing the novel. 

    Writing:  Hall's characterization of Held is the glue that holds this novel together. There were laugh out loud moments for me in reading about Held. The novel is structured as one of those novels that goes back and forth between characters but here the characters don't really have anything to do with each other. Most characters are unaware of the characters that came in time before them. It is their fascination with Held that ties them together.  In some ways this is really a book of interconnected short stories but Hall split up the stories into chapters so that no story is told linearly. If you like short stories this may not bother you. I don't particularly like short stories so I kept expecting something else that would hold the characters together or at least more definitive ends of their stories. 

Moby Dick or The Whale

 

 

The Book:  Ishmael, who already had a sea career on a merchantman vessel, decides he wants to join a whaling crew. He chooses to join the crew of The Pequod without meeting its captain first. What he doesn't know until the ship sets off is that the captain, Ahab, is on an obsessive quest to find Moby Dick, the great white whale who took off Ahab's leg on an earlier voyage. While Ishmael (and the crew) wait to find Moby Dick, Ishmael (or maybe it's the author) fills the reader in on the biology of whales, the politics of a whaling ship, the character of his crewmates and what it is like to kill a whale and process the whale oil.  And along the way there are digressions about life in general and critiques of other authors who have written about whales and whaling. But is this really a book about the search for a whale or is the white whale a metaphor for ... well, your choice.

The Author: Herman Melville

Genre: Fiction (Classic)

Length: 625 pp (paperback Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition); 24 hours by Audiobook (read by Anthony Heald).  About halfway through the book I picked up the audiobook and switched back and forth between the two. 

One good thing:  When they finally find Moby Dick the story becomes quite thrilling. And by that time you have been told so much about whales, whaling ships and how to kill and process a whale in the mid 1800's that it all makes sense and adds to the tension.

One not-so-great thing:  As DH Lawrence said: "it is a book of esoteric symbolism of profound significance, and of considerable tiresomeness."  It really can get tiresome if you aren't in the mood to know every detail about whales and whaling. 

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story: While reading this, I heard someone I follow on YouTube say that he read Moby Dick last year and hated it. He called it a short story padded to be a really long novel. If you are a plot oriented person who needs a page-turner, who requires fast pacing, you probably will hate this novel too. 

    Characters: If you are looking for a deep examination of the inner lives of characters this is not the novel for you. Captain Ahab is, of course, a famous character although, surprisingly, he isn't really much in the novel until the end. In fact most of the characters other than Ishmael, the narrator, aren't much in the novel. And Ishmael disappears into a third person narrator for much of the book. We don't even see Moby Dick until toward the end. You can go for many chapters without any real reference to any character. On the other hand, Ahab's madness drives the plot of the novel. 

    Setting:  If you have ever wanted to know what it is like to be a whaler on a whaling ship, this is the novel for you. Even if you never wanted to know, this novel will tell you. By the end you may feel that if you were magically transported back to the mid 1800's onto a whaler, you would do fine. 

    Writing:  This is an odd novel because it doesn't really follow any of the normal rules of novel writing. It is more like a treatise with a story hidden within it. Fortunately, Melville is surprisingly funny, often intentionally but sometimes unintentionally.  His descriptions are specific and even I, who have a difficult time visualizing things described in novels, pretty much understood his descriptions. I feel like most of the people who like this novel like it because of Melville's "turns of phrase" which can be very vivid. Be aware that this is a novel of its times and includes all the prejudices of its times. 

    

What We Can Know

 

The Book: The year is 2119 and the earth has suffered a series of cataclysms due to global warming and AI. What was previously the island of Britain is now an archipelago. But universities still exist and the humanities are still under siege. Thomas Metcalf is a scholar who studies literature from the early 21st century. He is primarily studying the poet Francis Bundy (a sort of minor Seamus Heaney) and his wife Vivien. Back in 2014, at a birthday party for Vivien, Francis presented her with a long poem said to be one of his greatest. She possessed the only copy. But what did she do with it? Metcalf wants to find out everything he can about Vivien and Francis but especially wants to find that poem. If this premise sounds similar to A.S Byatt's prizewinning novel Possession, it is. Both involve long dead poets and a scholar's search for information about their private life. But, in fact, it more resembles her much less acclaimed novel The Biographer's Tale which seemed to say that in the end all biography owes something to the creative ideas of the biographer - and wouldn't they just rather write fiction? In all three of these novels the premise is that scholars in the future can only know a limited amount about the life of someone in the past even when, in the case of Francis and Vivien Bundy, there are digital archives of every email, text and social media post they ever made. 

The Author: Ian McEwan

Genre: Literary Fiction 

Length: 301 pp (hardback)

One good thing:  McEwan creates a very believable 2119 which is similar and yet different from the early 21st century. Although he explains how the world ended up the way it did, he doesn't dwell on the "why" but focuses on how things are at that time. 

One not-so-great thing: The novel is divided into two parts. The first part, the longer of the two, is the story of Metcalf's research while at the same time the story of his relationship with his lover and colleague Rose. Metcalf creates a believable story about Francis and Vivien and their friends out of the information he has reviewed although Rose warns him that some of this story is just his own speculation. In the second, shorter, part we go back to the 21st century and learn what really happened. That section is very much a narrative with little dialog and action and in my opinion it went on too long. 

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story:  There is a story arc, although not a lot of action. This is a very cerebral novel.  And yet, as long as you are in the mood for a cerebral novel, the story does move along keeping the reader in suspense. 

    Characters: We see the character of Tom Metcalf through his first person narrative and while he has a bit of a character arc I don't feel that at the end of his story he is significantly different than he was at the beginning. The more interesting characters are the other "historical" characters that Tom is researching and they are interesting partly because Tom has made them interesting. If you are someone who dislikes when Ian McEwan reminds the reader that novels are FICTION, this might bother you.  

    Setting: McEwan is good at describing the world of the future where English people must travel by boat from island to island. But this isn't a true science fiction novel in which he creates a whole new world.  

    Writing:  As usual, the primary reason to read a McEwan novel is the writing itself. Even though there isn't a dynamic plot, he moves it along (until the end) and even though we are seeing characters through Tom's eyes, and therefore we cannot rely on it, they are interesting. And the world of the future is very cleverly created. 

The Rest of Our Lives

The Book:  Tom Layward lives in Westchester, New York with his wife Amy. His life may look outwardly good but Tom is dealing with some major issues. He has health problems that his doctor has diagnosed as Long Covid. He has been put on leave from his job as a law professor but he hasn't told his family. An old friend is pressuring him to get involved in a class action case for race discrimination against white people. But mainly he is dealing with a big decision about his marriage. Twelve years ago Amy had an affair and Tom decided that he would leave Amy as soon as their youngest child left for college. Now it is time to drive his daughter to school in Pennsylvania but after dropping her off Tom decides to keep going rather than returning home. He visits his brother in Indiana, an old friend in Denver, an old girlfriend in Las Vegas and his son in Los Angeles. Along the way he thinks about the rest of his life, both what came before and what will come next. This novel was a finalist for the 2025 Booker Prize. 

The Author: Ben Markovits

Genre: Literary Fiction

Length: 256 pages using ipad mini as e-reader

One good thing:  This is a very accessible novel, written in the first person almost as if Tom is having a conversation with the reader. This made me want to "keep the conversation going" and keep reading. 

One not-so-great thing:  The physical structure of the novel may be off-putting for some readers. The dialog does not use quotation marks, which I know annoys some people more than me. There are, also, only three very long chapters so there aren't many natural stopping points.

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story:  This is not what I would call a plot-driven novel. If you are looking for a typical "page turner" with a high action plot, this is not the novel for you. While there is a plot, most of the action takes place in Tom's head.   

    Characters: I would call this a one-character driven novel. The main character is, of course, Tom and we are in his head for the whole novel. Even though the novel is not plot-driven, I found it hard to put down. I felt a little bereft when the novel ended and I wanted to know more about what happened to Tom after we leave him. We see the other characters through Tom's eyes and we seem to discover things about them as Tom has realizations about them. 

    Setting: Although Tom is driving cross country this isn't a travelog. There are descriptions of places but "place" isn't really a big part of the story. 

    Writing:  Well written but written in every-day language. No sentence made me want to re-read it because it was so beautiful. On the other hand, Markovitz knew how to fill in back story without it seeming like exposition and there were a couple of moments of foreshadowing that were so subtle that I had to read them twice.