My Top Reads in 2018
There have been all sorts of end of the year “best” lists (See below for links.) and even columns about the various best lists. Washington Postbook reviewer Ron Charles considers the differences between the top choices on Goodreads versus those of the professionals – and to be sure, there are few crossovers! (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/goodreads-choice-awards-an-annual-reminder-that-critics-and-readers-dont-often-agree/2018/12/03/0ce76a26-f6f4-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html?utm_term=.1afeac39563a)
“best” list – a lot of 3 stars books appeared that were often entertaining page-turners but easily forgettable as well. Here are my recommendations:
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Perhaps the best book I read all year, it’s both a compelling page turner and a well-crafted novel that raises questions about the choices we all make about what it means to live a good life. The story begins in the ‘70’s on the lower east side of New York. Word has spread that a gypsy woman who can tell you the day you will die has come to town. The four Gold children pool their money and seek her out as much as for an adventure as any other reason. She speaks to them separately, giving each of them a specific date. The prophesies guide the choices made in the next decades as the novel follows each Gold as they grow up. Benjamin cleverly divides the book into four sections with each section following a sibling up until his or her death. The reader initially only knows the date for one of the characters, Varya, who is told she will live to be 88. The other dates are only gradually revealed but with the approach of each predicted date, the characters are haunted by the possibility of impending death.
Initially, both the reader and the characters are inclined to dismiss the psychic’s prophesies, like proverbial superstitions that we rationally know are silly, yet we still avoid walking under ladders or stepping on sidewalk cracks. There’s always that slim possibility that it could be true. As the novel tracks the characters, each section offers a different response to the foreknowledge that they have received.
Waking Lionsby Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Although the novel is set in Israel, the topic of illegal immigrants and refugees is very relevant to American readers and the focus on ethical responsibility is universal. Dr. Eitan Green, neurosurgeon, husband to a police detective and father of two young sons, is exhausted after a long shift at the hospital, but wide awake; remembering a challenging SUV track in the desert, he impulsively decides to drive there before going home. Turning up Janis Joplin to full blast and speeding to 120 kilometers an hour in the full moonlight, Eitan finds himself feeling liberated and happy. “It had been years since he had enjoyed himself so much alone, with no other eyes to share the wonder with him, with no one else to echo his joy” (21). His happiness is short-lived, however when he hits an African man walking in the dark. Jumping out, he realizes the man is still alive, but just barely, and likely to die before Eitan can get him to a hospital. Recognizing that if he calls the police, he will be charged with manslaughter, lose his medical license and upend his family’s life, and realizing that he cannot save the man, Eitan decides to save himself and drives off. The following day, he repeats to himself, “I ran a man over and drove away” (27), but with each passing hour, the memory seems more and more surreal. He assumes that with time, the pain of his action would pass. “Habituation. The gradual loss of sensitivity” (30). He would be left with unease. “People live entire lives with some measure or another of unease” (32). Eitan’s belief that the incident will gradually fade is short-lived when the dead man’s wife shows up at his door and hands him his wallet. She demands that he meet her that night at a deserted garage near a kibbutz and he shows up with money, planning to pay her off, but her price is more costly than what he brings; at the garage he finds other Eritreans in need of medical help and it becomes clear that she expects him to be a doctor to them – every night. The novel raises many ethical questions for both the characters and the reader.
Little Fires Everywhereby Celeste Ng
Ng’s second book has several key elements in common with Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth: two connected families blend and separate, individual members are forever effected by pivotal decisions, and flashbacks gradually solve mysteries. Unlike Patchett’s book, Little Fires Everywheretakes place over a relatively short span – less than a year occurs between the opening and ending scenes. About halfway through, the thread connecting the shifting points of view and backstories becomes apparent; it is a story about mothers and daughters and the sometimes atavistic nature of a woman’s feelings about her child.
Ng raises questions about parenthood that are complex and ultimately unanswerable. To whom does a child belong – the couple who have entered into a legal contract and fathered her or the mother who gave birth to her? How intentional does parenthood need to be? Is parenthood more than just biology? Ng also seems to suggest that choosing to have children and then being able to have them is more serendipitous than we may acknowledge.
Calypsoby David Sedaris
David Sedaris is not someone I think I’d actually want to spend much time with. He’s far too quirky, but I love reading his work or, even better, having him read me his work via audible.com. His latest collection (the only nonfiction book on my list!) features his family prominently and the stories are linked by his contemplations of aging and mortality. In the darkest essay, he writes about the suicide of his mentally ill sister, Tiffany; he returns several times in other pieces to the last time he saw her – at the stage door of one of his shows – when he told the stage manager to shut the door on her. Most of the essays, however, despite the acknowledgement of Sedaris’s own journey into middle age and the impending mortality of his 94-year old father, are humorous.
The thing about listening to Sedaris is that I start writing my own essays in my head and I feel inspired to sit down at the computer, thinking, “He writes about a lot of ordinary things. I can do that.” But I don’t. Well, not yet. He’s also very good at weaving together seemingly disparate anecdotes from different times and places. A story about a family trip to the house he has purchased on Emerald Isle (which he renamed ‘The Sea Section’) recalls childhood visits to the beach, memories of his mother, the rumor that James Comey was just down the island and arguments with his father about Donald Trump. My favorite essay, one he read at Wolf Trap when I went to hear him last summer, is called “Untamed,” about a little fox they named Carol. His relationship with her began when they threw chicken bones into the meadow behind their patio and the little fox came by and picked up a bone, and “at the sound of my voice, the fox. . .returned the bone to the ground, the way you might if you were caught trying to shoplift something” (149). But she returned the next night, and the night after that and soon Sedaris thinks of her as his. He and Hugh argue over his feeding of her. “Since we met Carol, our backyard has been a graveyard for pork chops and beef jerky and raw chicken legs” (150). When Hugh finds half a hot dog in a flower bed, he accuses Sedaris of manipulating Carol. “’That’s you, the puppet master. It’s the same way you are with people – constantly trying to buy them” (150-151).
The Destroyersby Christopher Bollen
I took this book along with me on my recent trip to Greece because it is set on one of the Greek islands, Patmos, and because I anticipated a compelling read. Although we did not visit that particular island, we saw Santorini, which provided ample visuals for the large cruise ships docked off shore and the crowded warren of pedestrian streets through the village cut into the side of the hill that are portrayed in the novel. Located in the Aegean nearer to Turkey than Greece, Patmos is a small island most famous for being the site of the vision given to John in the New Testament Book of Revelation. As such, Patmos has become a destination for Christian pilgrims who come to tour the cave and several monasteries.
It is against this backdrop that the story begins. Ian Bledsoe arrives on the island in a move of desperation; he’s lost his job, been disinherited and is unsettled by the recent death of his father. His childhood friend, Charlie Konstantinou, now lives on Patmos and is running a rental yacht business, and it is to Charlie that Ian flees in search of financial support for a new business venture and friendly emotional support. The story flashes back periodically to the boys’ adolescence in Manhattan. The sons of rich men, they live on the upper east side and attend chichi private schools, but both itch to become self-made men rather than glide on the coattails of their family wealth. Ian, in particular, is more interested in philanthropic causes and gets himself in trouble when he becomes involved with employees of his family’s baby food company who expose the horrific working conditions and less than sanitary products of the company’s Panamanian factory.
Significant to these flashbacks is Ian’s recall of an imaginary game that he and Charlie played endlessly, the titular “Destroyers.” One of them begins the game: “You’re in the Buckland cafeteria when six gunmen enter.” The other responds, “I dive below the table.” The first one says, Gunmen spray bullets under the table.” (14) The game continues with them taking turns, improvising “weapons and shields and intricate booby traps constructed out of Old Masters paintings or jugs of crab salad” (15). In Ian’s recall of the game, he comments, “It was Charlie’s tendency to make bad decisions, as if attracted to the deadest of ends and yet still expecting to escape without a scratch” (15). This sentiment proves to be significant foreshadowing.
Bollen explores the lure of wealth and the conflicts that arise around money – both having more than enough and the opposite, not having enough. He also asks readers to consider the intersection of morality, self-interest and loyalty to others. How much are you willing to sacrifice in order to do what is right?
The Punishment She Deservesby Elizabeth George
I can’t remember if I read one of George’s novels before or after I saw the PBS dramatization of her Chief Inspector Lynley stories starring the very handsome Nathaniel Parker. No matter, as I very much enjoy both as well-crafted mysteries solved by persistent, clever detectives. The novels, however, which always clock in at over 600 pages, are more than police procedurals. George deftly weaves themes that go beyond the crime to be solved. In this outing, her central motif is that of mothers trying to do their best for their offspring but not quite getting it right despite their best intentions.
The book shifts point of view between a wide cast of characters that inhabit Ludlow, a small British town near the border with Wales and the London detectives who are sent to investigate the death of a clergyman while in custody in the local police station. George takes her time building the stories of these various characters, and their relationships to each other, the crime and the central theme emerge gradually. There is a group of students who attend the local college, who drink heavily and among whom there are friends with benefits. Readers meet the families of several of these students and chapters are told through their mothers’ points of view as the parents struggle to protect (their word) and control (the young people’s word) their offspring. The policeman responsible for bringing in the clergyman for questioning begins the novel.
It helps to have read previous books in the series as the main characters’ own stories continually develop but it’s probably not a prerequisite for enjoying the novel. George’s writing is compelling, her language well-crafted and her characters sound like real people. Oh, and also there’s a tangled mystery to be solved.
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Pulitzer Prize winner Strout brings her A game once again to this follow up to her 2016 My Name is Lucy Barton(which should really be read first) in which she returns to Lucy’s home town of Amgash, Illinois, on the occasion of the publication of Lucy’s memoir (presumably Strout’s earlier book). In a series of related stories, Strout focuses on different community members who knew Lucy, either tangentially or well. It’s helpful to keep a list of who the people are and who they mention as these characters show up in later stories, referenced in conversations by other community members. You can read these as separate stories but seen collectively, they portray a community of people who have suffered in many different ways and who have, to varying degrees, never overcome the wounds of childhood . Lucy herself appears in only one story when, on a book tour that brings her to Chicago, she returns to Amgash to visit her brother Pete and her sister Vicky, whom she has not seen in the 19 years that she has been away. In My Name is Lucy Barton,Lucy talks about making excuses for not returning but admits that her childhood of poverty and abuse were so painful that she cannot bear to return.
I actually read this book twice, the second time taking notes and underlining significant passages. In both readings, I was amazed by and impressed with the realism of the world Strout has created and the deftness with which she interweaves her characters’ stories. The second time through looking for the thematic links, I was struck by the sadness. Many of these characters can be labelled “survivors” – survivors of their traumatic childhoods, survivors of their poverty, survivors of wars that left them broken. While some physically escape to other places, the geography of Amgash and the past seem tattooed to their souls. Their ability or lack thereof to move beyond is what determines their happiness.
How Hard Can It Be?by Allison Pearson
This was a hilarious, all too realistic account of a woman, Kate Reddy, turning 50 who is dealing with the onset of menopause, a hideous teenage daughter, a husband with a mid-life crisis, ailing parents, a renovation of their newly acquired fixer-upper and a return to the office she headed 7 years earlier, now as a junior assistant. As the pre-menopause symptoms set in – hazy memory, huge gushes of blood at inopportune moments, new facial hair- painfully funny scenes ensue. Kate pretends that she has a little librarian shuffling around the shelves of her memory in house slippers whom she refers to as Roy, and throughout the novel she parenthetically calls on Roy – e.g. “Roy, please find the name of the woman walking towards me. Roy, please add ‘Pick up carryout for dinner’ to today’s list.” Her encounters with her sixteen year old daughter are particularly funny if you have a)had a teenage daughter and b)said daughter has now grown out of that horrible phase. The book opens with her daughter having snapped a “belfie” (British, I presume, for bum or butt selfie) which has now been spread far and wide across the internet by her frenemy. This is a wonderfully funny read for any middle-aged woman who has juggled far too many balls and yet kept a surprising percentage of them in the air.
Beartownby Frederik Backman
Fredrik Backman had me with A Man Called Ove. His subsequent novels (My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry and Britte-Marie Was Here) were equally good but with this novel, he has raised his game considerably. Characters have always been a strength, but in Beartown, the cast is larger and richer and the story arc more complex. The book is set in a small, wintry town in the forests of Sweden where hockey is king. From the time children can stand, they are buckled into skates and handed a stick. The titular Beartown has teams at every level, always hoping to get itself on the map and, more importantly, bring a hockey academy and all the business surrounding it to bolster their faltering economy.
Backman toggles between the points of view of a number of the teenage boys who play on the junior team, which is one step away from winning a regional championship, their classmates, their parents and various other townspeople. Initially, the book seems to be about the benefits and dangers of such extreme investment in hockey. Suburban America may be geographically far distant from Beartown, but the obsessive behavior of a community too invested in youth sports for their own good seems familiar. But, it turns out that the novel is about much more: what it means to be a good parent, to be a good friend, whether you are able to accept the consequences of your choices. Importantly, it asks, is there a point at which loyalty stops? The story also takes on topical issues such as classism, gender roles and sexual aggression.
NOTE: The sequel, Us Against Them, was published in the fall and it was a disappointment after Beartown.
The Woman Next Doorby Yewande Omotoso
Marion and Hortensia are two octogenarians who live next door to each other in an upscale neighborhood in Cape Town. Marion is white and Hortensia is black; both are cantankerous and embittered women and they can’t stand each other when the story begins. Both women are professionally successful as younger women; Marion is an architect and, in fact, Hortensia’s house is her first design. Marion has longed to live in the home that she considers hers but over the years the sales have been private and taken place before she knows the house is open. Marion is resigned to living next door and for not much longer because, as it turns out, her seemingly wealthy husband has left her with a stack of debts. After bearing four children and with little child-rearing support from her husband, Marion becomes a stay-at-home mother, sacrificing her career, stifling her talent and leaving her without her own money. Hortensia is a world-famous fabric designer, owning a business in London and then one in Nigeria. The reason for her bitterness is not immediately apparent but through a series of flashbacks, the reader learns about the vagaries of her marriage to a white man with whom she can not produce children. Hortensia is financially set, having kept her money separately from her husband and the house in her name, but she envies Marion’s motherhood even though Marion’s grown children have little to do with her. Relieved when her husband dies, Hortensia is in for an unsettling surprise when his will is read.
The icy relationship between the two women begins to thaw when an accident occurs leading to a broken leg for Hortensia and major house repairs for Marion. As they get to know each other better, each woman begins to confront personal issues that have been unspoken for years. Omotoso does a good job of bringing in racism and class distinctions through the characters of the maids who work for the two women. Hortensia forces Marion to confront her own racism as does Agnes, Marion’s maid, and Marion’s gentle conversational prodding leads Hortensia to take responsibility for some of the wrong turns in her marriage. Occasional sparks of humor lighten the mood and help to gradually endear the main characters who are initially not very likeable.
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