Pekoe Most Poison, A Tea Shop Mystery, by Laura Childs takes us back to the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston with another murder for proprietor and amateur sleuth Theodosia Browning to investigate. This time one of the town’s wealthy elite drops dead at a fancy tea party in front of fifty or so guests, any one of which could be the murderer. Nothing heady here, just a bit of fun to read with a good cup of tea, and loads…
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman is a sweet, if a bit predictable, novel about a woman who lost her husband three years ago and with the help of her sister is raising her two young daughters. She gets a job illustrating a book about vegetables, so work pays for her to take a gardening class where she meets various interesting people and maybe even the man of her dreams. There were some laugh out loud moments, make…
Barren Cove by Ariel S.Winter is a futuristic sci-fi novel about a world in which robots rule and very few humans are left alive. One older human built robot retreats to Barren Cove where a sick aging human is said to live. There he meets other robots and ponders the meaning of his existence. There were moments when this book was quite thoughtful and interesting, and other moments when it seemed silly and depressing. Although I enjoyed it while reading…
Circling the Sun by Paula McClain is my favorite kind of book. Historical fiction about a fascinating woman ahead of her time, in this case Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Beryl is English born, then brought to Kenya as a young child. Her mother returns to England after only two years and when she is five she is left alone with her father who raises racehorses and owns a farm. It is a wild…
The Guineveres by Sarah Domet is a novel about four teenage girls named Guinevere each left by their family at a Convent. Intermixed with the chapters about the girls are stories of female saints who all suffered brutally. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen the whole book, and when it finally did I was unsure if it was more ridiculous or disturbing. Either way, a sad, depressing, highly disappointing read. This is one to skip.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a masterpiece. I put off reading this book for some time as I had to take a break from reading books set during WWII. Although it is truly sad and tragic in many ways, its also one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. The story follows Werner, a young German orphan living in a mining town with few prospects, until he is noticed for his ability to build…
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett is a rambling little stream of consciousness book of connected stories of daily life by an unnamed female narrator living in an unnamed coastal village in an unnamed European country. She spends a lot of time eating porridge and taking out the compost. Some reviewers found this book brilliant and highly original. I found it interminable.
A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay is a novel about an art restorer who meets and falls in love with an Italian chef, then marries him after two weeks and follows him home to Italy. Once there, she has a hard time fitting in; mostly she tries to fix everyone and everything and begins questioning her life choices and marriage. A somewhat charming, yet forgettable read.
The Red Car by Marcy Demansky is a deceptively simple little novel that packs a real punch. When Leah gets a call in NY that her old boss and mentor died in a car accident and left her her red car, Leah flies out to SF for her funeral, leaving her possessive husband behind. There, her old life awaits her and she finds herself on a journey of self discovery in the very car that killed her friend, a car…
Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey is an original debut novel about a Brazilian writer who one day takes a small suitcase, climbs into a tree and disappears. This sends her two grown children and her American translator on a quest to find her. They discover she had an online gambling debt, is being chased by a loan shark and might be in contact with her editor. The writing is brilliant, I liked it better than I liked the characters…