RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Third Quarter

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RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Third Quarter

1RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: sep 28, 2021, 11:13 am

2021 is already half over. Time for a new thread and another chapter.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Newly Acquired

10RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: sep 27, 2021, 8:21 am

United States
Megan Abbott (The Turnout)
Taylor Adams (No Exit)
Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind)
Quan Barry (We Ride Upon Sticks) (country of residence)
Brit Bennett (The Vanishing Half)
Allie Brosh (Solutions and Other Problems)
Frederick Busch (The Night Inspector)
Frances Cha (If I Had Your Face)
S.A. Cosby (Blacktop Wasteland)
James Crumley (The Last Good Kiss)
Amanda Dennis (Her Here)
Sean Desmond (Sophomores)
Avni Doshi (Burnt Sugar)
Percival Everett (Telephone)
Andrew Feldman (Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba)
Rivka Galchen (Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch)
Sarah Gailey (The Echo Wife)
Elon Green (Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York)
Yaa Gyasi (Transcendent Kingdom)
Simon Han (Nights When Nothing Happened) (country of residence)
Debbie Harry (Face It)
Peter Heller (The River)
Joshilyn Jackson (Mother May I)
A. Natasha Joukovsky (The Portrait of a Mirror)
Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Plot)
Chang-Rae Lee (My Year Abroad) (country of residence)
Patricia Lockwood (No One is Talking About This)
Una Mannion (A Crooked Tree)
James McBride (Deacon King Kong)
Kelly McClorey (Nobody, Somebody, Anybody)
Kelsey McKinney (God Spare the Girls)
Sue Miller (Monogamy)
Joyce Carol Oates (Blonde)
Flannery O'Connor (Everything that Rises Must Converge)
Stewart O'Nan (Wish You Were Here)
Nadia Owusu (Aftershocks)
Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby)
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips (Sleepovers: Stories)
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (American Estrangement: Stories)
Karin Slaughter (False Witness)
Lisa Taddeo (Three Women)
Chris Harding Thornton (Pickard County Atlas)
Kasey Thornton (Lord the One You Love is Sick)
Bryan Washington (Memorial)
Sarah Weinman (editor) (Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession)
Karen Tei Yamashita (Sansei and Sensibility)

Vietnam
Quan Barry (We Ride Upon Sticks) (country of birth)

11BLBera
jul 2, 2021, 10:06 pm

Happy new thread, Kay. You've read a lot of great books so far, and from all over the world.

12labfs39
jul 3, 2021, 10:33 am

I love reading through your lists. I see Pull of the Stars was the first book you read this year, but definitely not your favorite. I was thinking of reading that next, but will put it off. Have you read Akin? I picked that one up at the same time. I've only read Room to date.

13RidgewayGirl
jul 3, 2021, 1:28 pm

>11 BLBera: Yes, but still the vast majority are American.

>12 labfs39: Lisa, I liked The Pull of the Stars. Donoghue can write well. I liked Akin a lot, too, in part because my father is in his eighties. I really like Donoghue's writing, but while I have owned a copy for years, I have never mustered the courage to read Room.

14RidgewayGirl
jul 4, 2021, 8:30 pm

When the Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced, I realized that I'd already read five of the six books, so I felt I had no choice but to read this one immediately.



Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller tells the story of two middle-aged siblings, Julius and Jeanie. They've lived their entire lives isolated in a small, increasingly run-down cottage in rural England. One morning, they awaken to find their mother dead and from there their lives rapidly fall apart. As Jeanie tries desperately to maintain the routines she's lived with her entire life, Julius, who is out in the world more often to pick up jobs as a casual laborer, begins to see a future different from his past. But their poverty, lack of education and lack of exposure to other people may take them down despite their best efforts.

So this isn't a cheerful book, but neither is it full of misery. Jeanie is a wonderful character, stubborn in ways that make sense to her, wary but also curious and inventive. There's some lovely character studies here, an exploration of what poverty looks like and excellent writing. I'll be reading more by this author.

15lisapeet
jul 5, 2021, 9:48 am

>14 RidgewayGirl: Oh good, got that on the pile. As well as... three of her other novels, it looks like. I'd best get reading!

16BLBera
jul 5, 2021, 12:55 pm

>14 RidgewayGirl: I loved this one as well, Kay. I think, in the end, it was a hopeful novel. I loved Jeanie.

17RidgewayGirl
jul 5, 2021, 1:15 pm

Lisa, it's an excellent novel and I would be happy to see it win the Women's Prize for Fiction. And I'll be reading more by Claire Fuller.

Beth, it was so good! I was wary at first because I was not in the mood for unrelenting misery, but then she had me from the first page -- the way the view of their house started from a distance, where it looks like the perfect English cottage, and that impression falls apart as Fuller takes us closer.

18kidzdoc
jul 5, 2021, 1:19 pm

How would you rank the books on the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist, Kay?

19AlisonY
jul 5, 2021, 2:23 pm

You've put this one on my list too, Kay. I'm at home with a bit of misery fiction!

20BLBera
jul 5, 2021, 5:02 pm

>17 RidgewayGirl: Yes, Kay. My two favorites are Unsettled Ground and Transcendent Kingdom. The Vanishing Half was also very good.

21Nickelini
jul 5, 2021, 8:38 pm

>10 RidgewayGirl:

I really enjoy looking at all of your various lists. I'm looking to tweak what I do, but I'm not sure what I want to capture exactly.

>8 RidgewayGirl:, >9 RidgewayGirl:, >10 RidgewayGirl: - I'm still struggling how to categorize transnational authors. I see you add (country of birth), (country of residence). Maybe that's what I need to do, but when it comes to turning that info into stats, it gets a bit more complicated. There are so many variations. Eg: Rohnton Mistry - Canadian citizen, Indian-born, writes books set 100% in India. So . . . I can file him under "India." But what if he writes a book that's completely set in Toronto? My second example is Jhumpa Lahiri. She was born in England, to Indian immigrants, moved to the US and became a citizen. Now she lives in Italy, and says she's only going to write in Italian going forward. But she says she's not changing her citizenship. So do we file one of her Italian books under . . . India, England, US?

I guess our stats are never going to be straightforward because real lives don't fit my little book world categories. But I'm trying to be as accurate as possible. Sorry to carry on, but I'm hoping you have some advice for me.

22Nickelini
jul 5, 2021, 8:43 pm

>14 RidgewayGirl:
Wow, you'd read 5 of the 6 Women's Prize books? That's amazing. They need you as a judge.

I had Unsettled Ground in my hand at Munro's Books the other day, but then I saw Bitter Orange, which I'd never heard of, and the blurbs on the cover drew me in, so I picked it instead. I'm 1/3rd in, and enjoying it very much so far. It's atmospheric and evocative, and dark and summery.

23RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: jul 5, 2021, 10:03 pm

>18 kidzdoc: I'm going to give a squishy answer and say that Transcendent Kingdom is the one that emotionally resonated the most for me, The Vanishing Half was the best structured and displayed the skills of a truly talented and skilled writer, and Uncommon Ground was the one that charmed and surprised me.

>19 AlisonY: I look forward to finding out what you make of it, Alison.

>20 BLBera: I see we have the same thoughts about the shortlisted books, Beth. Great minds, etc...

>21 Nickelini: Joyce, it can get convoluted. Since these stats are for me, I go with my gut. In the case of Jhumpa Lahiri, I only listed her with her country of residence. She's made statements that make me think she'd be fine with that. In my Category Challenge thread, I have a category for American/British/Canadian authors who aren't straight cis white people, and one for expats and immigrants, so between my threads, there's more nuance. I wonder if I can add that here next year? Worth thinking about, at least. So I'm no help at all.

And I'll definitely be reading more by Claire Fuller, so I look forward to finding out what you made of Bitter Orange when you've finished it.

And, finally, my birthday was yesterday and among many fine gifts was a slipcovered set of Penguin clothbound classics editions of four Brontë novels. They are astonishingly lovely.

24BLBera
jul 5, 2021, 10:34 pm

Happy birthday, Kay. You're an Independence Day baby.

Those books are beautiful.

25kidzdoc
jul 6, 2021, 12:03 am

>23 RidgewayGirl: That's a good enough answer for me, Kay. I hope to get to Transcendent Kingdom this summer. I don't own any of the other shortlisted titles, though.

26labfs39
jul 6, 2021, 7:20 am

>23 RidgewayGirl: I love the Clothbound Classics series. I wish more publishers were inventive with cloth.

27ELiz_M
Redigerat: jul 6, 2021, 7:56 am

>21 Nickelini: When I need to determine what country a book "belongs to" for challenge prompts, I have what I call the Ishiguro rule: look at birthplace, citizenship/residency, and primary setting. To qualify for a particular country the book must meet at least two of the criteria. The Remains of the Day = UK (citizenship, setting) and An Artist of the Floating World = Japan (birthplace, setting).

Maybe you need a Global category/statistic for books/authors such as Lahiri and Allende?

>23 RidgewayGirl: Happy Birthday! I love those editions. I have three and have been on the lookout for Villette in the used bookstores for a while.

28avaland
jul 6, 2021, 10:05 am

>23 RidgewayGirl: Those books are just lovely. Seems a same to put them on a shelf were only the back binding would show....

29RidgewayGirl
jul 7, 2021, 8:14 am

>24 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. And then yesterday I got a package from a friend who sent me a biography of Gustav Klimt, full of photographs. I love his landscapes so much. Hmm, maybe I should decorate my thread here a little...

>25 kidzdoc: Darryl, I'll be interested to find out what you think of Transcendent Kingdom.

>26 labfs39: It's really gorgeous. Now I'm eying other titles. The set has also made me want to reread them, and read Wuthering Heights all the way through.

>27 ELiz_M: Oh, that's an interesting way to sort things. And Villette isn't an easy book to find.

>28 avaland: Lois, so far I keep pulling them down to show people.

30labfs39
jul 7, 2021, 7:59 pm

>29 RidgewayGirl: and read Wuthering Heights all the way through Have you not? Why?

P.S. Whenever I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of Pat Benatar's song, my own musical soundtrack on repeat

31Nickelini
jul 7, 2021, 8:12 pm

>30 labfs39: ? I didn’t know Pat Benetar had a Wuthering Heights song too. What’s it called? I’ll look it up. Maybe I can start a playlist- Kate Bush, Pat Benetar.....

32labfs39
jul 8, 2021, 3:53 pm

>31 Nickelini: Pat Benetar covers Kate Bush's song. I like Pat's version better though. :-)

33Nickelini
jul 8, 2021, 6:36 pm

>32 labfs39: I had no idea! Off to look it up . . . .

34Cariola
jul 8, 2021, 8:15 pm

Just tossing in a few comments on Lahiri. I loved The Namesake. It's the only book I can think of that made me cry since I first read Charlotte's Web way back when. I also liked The Lowland, although I agree with the person who said the pace was uneven. The Interpreter of Maladies is a great short story collection. After finishing Whereabouts, I pulled out a hardback copy of Unaccustomed Earth that has been sitting in a drawer for several years. I remember starting it but not being grabbed by it. I'll try it again when I finish what I'm currently reading, Donal Ryan's latest, Strange Flowers.

Pat Barker is so good at writing about war. I've enjoyed both of her trilogies as well as The Silence of the Girls, and she has another female-focused book about the Trojan War coming out soon.

35RidgewayGirl
jul 9, 2021, 12:03 pm

>30 labfs39: Lisa, I first tried reading Wuthering Heights when I was thirteen, after loving Jane Eyre and they are two very different books! I now have a lovely copy to try again with.

>34 Cariola: Lahiri is a wonderful writer. I've read her short stories and Whereabouts and I've picked up a few more of her novels and I'm looking forward to reading them. And, yes, Barker is so good at writing about war.

36labfs39
jul 9, 2021, 1:53 pm

>35 RidgewayGirl: Very definitely two different books. My daughter read them some time ago, and then we watched several different televised versions of each. It was interesting to talk about how they were interpreted and which we liked best.

37RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: jul 9, 2021, 2:15 pm

>36 labfs39: It wasn't a book I was ready for at the time. But, oh, I loved Jane Eyre so much.

A few days in NC meant four bookstores and subsequently twelve books. All bookstores were wonderful and very different from each other. Quail Ridge Books was huge and gorgeous and I saw only a small portion of the store. Flyleaf Books was fun and had a back room of used books. Purple Crow Bookstore was small, but had an owner excited about books in a town with a lot of authors. And finally Scuppernong Books had creaky wooden floors, comfortable sofas, a bar for coffee or wine along one side. All were beautifully and thoughtfully curated.

38Nickelini
jul 9, 2021, 3:07 pm

How do you post a picture in your thread?

Oh, and nice book haul! Doesn't it feel wonderful to be in a book store?

39RidgewayGirl
jul 9, 2021, 3:23 pm

>38 Nickelini: Joyce, I cheat by first posting the picture to my twitter account and then copying it.

It felt fantastic to be in bookstores, chatting with the clerks and owners, browsing the shelves and tables, just being part of life again. Also, we stayed in an old Travelodge that has been renovated into a stylish and comfortable place with a retro feel. The original purpose of the trip was a special exhibition called The Golden Mummies, which was interesting. I learned quite a bit about mummies and funeral practices and got some ideas for when my time comes.

40BLBera
jul 9, 2021, 6:02 pm

>37 RidgewayGirl: That sounds like my kind of trip! You have a lot of restraint to only walk away with 12 books!

41Nickelini
jul 9, 2021, 6:12 pm

>39 RidgewayGirl:
Oh I can do that Twitter cheat too. Thanks

42lisapeet
jul 9, 2021, 9:58 pm

>37 RidgewayGirl: Nice haul, and a great eclectic selection. I haven't been in a bookstore in such a long time, that got me all amped up for a minute there. Never mind that I don't actually need any books, but it will be nice at some point to just walk around some of my local spots.

43Nickelini
jul 9, 2021, 10:30 pm

>42 lisapeet: LOL what does "actually need" have anything to do with visiting bookstores? For me, visiting a good bookstore is like riding my favourite amusement ride. And I can't just walk in and out without supporting the establishment for giving me that wonderful experience. And for my $$, they let me take some books home. It's really a win-win.

44lisapeet
jul 9, 2021, 10:49 pm

>43 Nickelini: True that. If need entered into it, I wouldn't exactly have all these books to begin with. I like your idea of the win-win scenario.

45RidgewayGirl
jul 12, 2021, 10:16 am

>40 BLBera: I was very good, wasn't I?

>42 lisapeet: I didn't need any more books, either, but I did need to be in bookstores, talking with people and browsing. Discovering books I hadn't heard of was a huge bonus. Quail Ridge Books has a section devoted to novels in translation. I'll have to order from them, especially as I qualified for a free membership somehow (buying so many books there is how).

>43 Nickelini: Yes, that's my philosophy, too. I am contractually obligated to buy a book in any independent bookstore I visit.

46RidgewayGirl
jul 12, 2021, 10:16 am



Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye is a young woman in nineteenth century England, who reads a book called Jane Eyre and sees in it some similarities in their circumstances, inspiring her to write down an account of her own life. And there are similarities, from the cold aunt to the harsh boarding school to her later job as a governess. But while they share similar personalities -- both are loving and loyal and brave -- Steele has a decidedly different reaction to mistreatment, which results in her needing to avoid a detective named Sam Quillfeather. She's still shocked by what she finds in her employer's cellar, but her willingness to take action will be necessary to save that same employer from the man from the East India Company.

This novel is written in the style of a Victorian novel and despite the protagonist's propensity to needful murders, retains that feel through out. I enjoyed it enormously. Jane is a wonderful character and the way the novel echos and diverges from its inspiration was a lot of fun for this Jane Eyre fan. This is well-written entertainment.

47NanaCC
jul 12, 2021, 12:09 pm

>46 RidgewayGirl: You’ve sold me on this one, Kay.

48RidgewayGirl
jul 12, 2021, 1:09 pm

>47 NanaCC: I really loved this one, Colleen.

49RidgewayGirl
jul 13, 2021, 3:04 pm



I Couldn't Love You More by Esther Freud entwines the stories of three Irish women living in London. Aiofe leaves rural Ireland for London in the forties, and meets a pub owner who only wants to return and run a farm. They persevere and save through the war and its aftermath, sending their daughters to the safety of an Irish boarding school. Rosaleen flees to London in the sixties, falling deeply in love with a much older Jewish artist. And then there's Kate, also an artist, but forced to put her own ambitions on hold as her daughter is young and her partner prioritizes his music and his drinking over childcare.

At first, the book feels like three unconnected stories woven together, but Freud slowly reveals connections and parallels that unify the novel. The novel looks at the choices that women have been allowed to make over the years and how those choices, or lack of choice, form them. Freud is such a fine writer and has so fully developed each of her three protagonists, that I never felt frustrated when the novel switched from one to another. As each woman's story is told, it deepens the other stories as well, and in the end, all was pulled together into a single cohesive whole. I was impressed with Freud's writing and her skill in both telling a story and how well she developed her characters. I'll certainly be reading more by this author.

50lisapeet
jul 13, 2021, 3:20 pm

>49 RidgewayGirl: Oh good, I just got that one.

51RidgewayGirl
jul 13, 2021, 4:08 pm

>50 lisapeet: It's really good, Lisa.

52RidgewayGirl
jul 13, 2021, 4:08 pm



Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby is a noir set in small town Virginia, the kind of small town where it's not unusual to be living in a double-wide between a stretch of woods and a corn field. Beauregard, also known as Bug, has a family, that doublewide and an auto repair shop he runs with his cousin, Kelvin. But he's reaching a financial crisis; a second shop has opened in town, undercutting his prices and the bills are piling up. His son needs braces, his daughter would like to start college in the fall and his mother will be kicked out of her assisted living facility. When a last ditch effort to raise the money for the lease on his shop fails, he agrees to join a group of unreliable and inexperienced criminals for a diamond heist. What could possibly go wrong?

This is the kind of noir I love, full of desperation and bad decisions. Bug puts on a good show as a man who thinks things through, but he still somehow always relies on the wrong person, or puts himself in situations that can't possibly go right. This crime caper was both fun and heart-breaking as all good noir should be. I will admit that my love for this book is tempered by how the author added an overweight woman as comedic relief, with far too much space given to how disgusting her body was. That element alone will make me wary of picking up Cosby's next book. It was a mean-spirited touch in a novel that otherwise had heart and humanity.

53AlisonY
jul 14, 2021, 6:19 am

>49 RidgewayGirl: So pleased this was a good read. One of several of Freud's titles that I've still to get to.

54RidgewayGirl
jul 15, 2021, 2:44 pm

>53 AlisonY: Alison, I loved Freud's writing. I'm going to find more of her novels.

55SassyLassy
jul 15, 2021, 6:47 pm

>54 RidgewayGirl: This is the kind of noir I love, full of desperation and bad decisions.

I agree completely.
Also had a chuckle at seeing "double-wide" in LT. That's one of those words that really flummoxes urbanites, as they try desperately to figure out what it could possibly mean, without having to ask! Then the look.

56kidzdoc
Redigerat: jul 15, 2021, 7:52 pm

>55 SassyLassy: *searches double wide on Google*

*still not completely sure what it means*

57RidgewayGirl
jul 15, 2021, 8:44 pm

>56 kidzdoc: Also known as a manufactured home. You've probably seen them driving down back roads.

58kidzdoc
jul 15, 2021, 8:47 pm

>57 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I have seen those homes. Are they supposed to be twice as wide as regular trailer homes?

59RidgewayGirl
jul 15, 2021, 9:55 pm

60RidgewayGirl
jul 16, 2021, 2:33 pm



I try my best to like people.To expect good from them. If you see someone as a monster, it is as good as attaching a real horn to them and poking them with a hot metal poker. I really do think so. In order to avoid turning people into monsters by suspecting them of being monsters, I do my best to keep mostly to myself.

In 1618, as the Thirty Years' War gets going, plague is a constant threat and life is generally harsh, an elderly woman living in a small town in what is now Germany is accused of witchcraft. An unremarkable occurrence, but in this case the woman's son is Johannes Kepler -- astronomer, mathematician and a key player in the scientific revolution. From this historical tidbit, Rivka Galchen has written Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch.

Katharina Kepler is a woman who has survived to old age, supporting herself and quietly living her life. She loves her garden and Chamomile, her cow. When she is accused, she goes for help to her neighbor who is both a man and literate, who carefully helps her write down her defense. But the odds aren't in her favor, despite the help of her adult children.

Galchen has written a wonderful novel that is a character study of Katharina and her neighbor as well as a portrait of daily life at a time of turmoil and scarcity. She manages that difficult balance, of making her characters fully inhabit their time and place and of making them feel like real people.

61SassyLassy
jul 16, 2021, 6:43 pm

>57 RidgewayGirl: >58 kidzdoc: Looks like a pretty fancy one

>60 RidgewayGirl: I like the sound of this. I have John Banville's Kepler on my pile, and this would make a good companion.

62RidgewayGirl
jul 17, 2021, 4:02 pm



Her Here by Amanda Dennis is a hard novel to describe. It's set in Paris, where Elena has been hired by a friend of her dead mother to fictionalize her missing daughter's journals. But it's really set in northern Thailand, which is where the missing woman, Ella, had been teaching English before she disappeared, but those parts of the novel, while they are far more vivid and detailed than the "real" parts, are just Elena's imagining what Ella's life was like. And while Ella's life was a mess; she'd fallen for a self-involved and self-congratulatory American, her housemate had some serious emotional issues going on and her own issues made teaching difficult, at least Ella was out there living her life. Elena was busy not living hers, using this temporary job as a way to leave her long-term boyfriend behind as well as her graduate studies. She may be living in Paris, but she's treading water, hoping that by immersing herself in Ella's story, she'll find the way back into her own.

I was wary going into this one as it felt too insubstantial given that all Elena does is wander around moodily, but her imagining of Ella's life is vivid and takes up the majority of the book. And, to give Elena credit, she chose the right place to be aimless. I wouldn't mind being aimless in a rent-free apartment in Montmartre. I liked the meta touches in this novel, too, the way the reader is reminded that Elena is making things up, that she's writing for a specific person and that she is ignorant of most of the facts. But what else is fiction, but someone making stuff up in the absence of fact, embroidering on ideas and fragments? This is an off-beat kind of book that won't appeal to everyone, but there's something interesting going on here.

63RidgewayGirl
jul 20, 2021, 3:03 pm



American Estrangement is a collection of short stories that focus on young men who are treading water in their lives, dealing with entry-level jobs, mothers dying of cancer and a general inability to have things go smoothly. But Saïd Sayrafiezadeh also fills these stories with ordinary pleasures and glimpses of hope; a man remembers when his mother buys him a shirt at Goodwill that gives him credibility at his new school or a young man stuck in a dead end job meets a girl he likes. Sayrafiezadeh doesn't mind making the reader uncomfortable or uncertain. He's writing about the working class, the marginalized and the discontented. And the stories are quietly perfect, from the clear and unobtrusive writing, to the way the author creates vivid settings within a single paragraph. This book reminded me of why I love short stories so much, that when they are well-crafted, they contain entire lives in single moments.

64lisapeet
jul 20, 2021, 5:07 pm

>63 RidgewayGirl: I'm looking forward to that one. His Brief Encounters with the Enemy was very good, and I have a copy of his When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood on the shelves from way back.

65RidgewayGirl
jul 20, 2021, 5:21 pm

>64 lisapeet: I'll have to read his other books. I found the stories to be sort of Raymond Carver meets Tom Perrotta, if that makes sense. I hope he has a long career and writes many more stories.

66RidgewayGirl
jul 27, 2021, 5:22 pm



Otto and his partner Xavier are given a train trip as a gift from Otto's aunt as a sort of honeymoon, they find themselves in a magical world where the rules change arbitrarily. They are pulled into an odd story of a dead man and his son, and the theremin player who stands to inherit millions, while also encountering assorted ex-lovers and a pair of mongooses.

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi is a book I struggled to read. Oyeyemi is a talented author and the novel was beautifully written, but there wasn't anything for me to hold on to. When anything can happen at any moment, there's no way to surprise the reader, at least this reader. And without any sort of narrative tension, I was left with a series of lovely vignettes, none of which I felt invested in. More sophisticated readers and those who don't need their fantasy grounded in some sort of ground rules will like this novel a lot more than I did.

67RidgewayGirl
aug 3, 2021, 3:43 pm



If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha follows the stories of five women living in a cheap apartment building in Seoul. Each young woman struggles to find success and contentment in a society where appearance, family and wealth matter, and each has issues from their past that define them. One has put herself into debt getting the plastic surgery that allows her to work at an exclusive "room-salon" entertaining wealthy men. Another is determined to get the plastic surgery in order to improve her job prospects, but it doesn't go the way she had anticipated. An aspiring artist has a dream boyfriend, but is he as good as he seems? A hairstylist deals with the challenges of her disability while putting all her emotions into a member of a Kpop group. And Wonna, newly married, just wants a baby.

Cha has written a fascinating story about beauty standards that make plastic surgery as routine as moisturizer, where if you are not part of a wealthy family, your life choices are restricted and where women must bend themselves to fit into a patriarchal society. Cha here is writing about Korean culture and society specifically for western readers, explaining elements of Korean culture that western readers might be unfamiliar with in a way that feels unobtrusive. I very much enjoyed each woman's story, but because there were so many main characters, each story felt a little skimpier than I would have liked. Still, this was a well-written and structured debut novel and I'll be very interested to see what Cha writes next.

68BLBera
aug 4, 2021, 10:29 am

>67 RidgewayGirl: This sounds like a Korean The Women of Brewster Place, Kay. I loved that. I'll add this one to the list.

Peaces sounds like one I'd have to be in a certain mood to read.

69rocketjk
aug 4, 2021, 12:16 pm

>67 RidgewayGirl: "Cha has written a fascinating story about beauty standards that make plastic surgery as routine as moisturizer"

That is a great sentence. Also, a set of terrific reviews, there. Thanks.

70RidgewayGirl
aug 4, 2021, 12:30 pm

>68 BLBera: I enjoyed If I Had Your Face as well as learning a bit about this aspect of Korean culture. A friend has talked about the misogyny and extreme materialism present there and this helped put a human face on that (not to say those things are not present here and probably everywhere).

71RidgewayGirl
aug 4, 2021, 12:33 pm

>69 rocketjk: Thanks, but I was thinking about my review while getting ready for my day and using the various moisturizers, lotions, sunscreens and balms that I've convinced myself are necessary. The analogy was literally sitting on my face.

72RidgewayGirl
aug 4, 2021, 6:12 pm



First published twenty years ago, Wish You Were Here is the kind of timeless story that could just as easily take place fifty years ago or last week. And because it's written by Stewart O'Nan, it's beautifully written. It's an ordinary story of an extended family's last time together at the family lake house. Each family member is going through their own stuff and there's all the family dynamics that emerge when adult siblings are together again. O'Nan is unparalleled at writing about the complex and unique lives of unremarkable people and here he has a lot to work with, from the never-married aunt whose life was always full as a public school teacher, discovering loneliness in retirement, to a pre-adolescent boy full of fear of what might happen. The stand-out scene from this book is his -- finding the courage to ride an inner tube being dragged behind a boat and having it tip over -- such a routine event but written about with empathy. O'Nan had me rooting for each and every member of this family, even when they were in conflict. I'm so glad he chose to write a few more books about the Maxwell family.

73RidgewayGirl
aug 7, 2021, 12:20 pm



Blonde is a novel about Marilyn Monroe written by Joyce Carol Oates, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about it, except it's also pretty long. And the length did something to me as I read. Oates's ability to dig into the unsavory corners and to lean into the uncomfortable, combined with the stark facts of Monroe's life became, for me, an utterly immersive reading experience, where I thought about this book even while I wasn't reading it. I raced through it, until I neared the end, where I found myself slowing down, unwilling to let go of the hope that the novel ended with Monroe living happily in a farmhouse with lots of babies, doing some community playhouse as her hobby. And of course I knew all along that that was never going to be the ending, but Oates had drawn me so deeply into this damaged woman's life that I couldn't help but hope.

The facts of Monroe's life are well-known and so Oates plays with them, changing the story in ways small and large, to show the long-term effects of unaddressed childhood trauma. But JCO is also looking at all the ways Monroe was used and victimized, and how she refused to see herself as the victim, working relentlessly to make a place for herself, until the sheer weight of it all dragged her under. There's a new sub-genre of books by women, about women who ruin their own lives and it strikes me that although this book is two decades older than that trend, it wouldn't be out of place among them.

74Nickelini
aug 7, 2021, 12:49 pm

>73 RidgewayGirl: Interesting. I read a lot about Monroe about 40 years ago (1980! Can't believe that was 40 years ago) and moved on, so I've never thought to pick this up. But you make it sound interesting. Maybe one day

75AlisonY
aug 7, 2021, 12:59 pm

>73 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I think this is included in my older copy of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, and it's been on my wish list for ages. You've reminded me to dig through the hundreds of books on there to nudge it up again.

76NanaCC
Redigerat: aug 8, 2021, 9:03 am

>73 RidgewayGirl: I loved Blonde when I read it several years ago. I followed it up with Marilyn by Gloria Steinem. I’d recommend it if you haven’t read it.

Edited to add that I just read my review from 2013, and I actually read Steinem’s book first. That lead me to Blonde.

77RidgewayGirl
aug 8, 2021, 12:14 pm

>74 Nickelini: I did spend a lot of time looking up pictures and facts about Monroe, as well as watching some of her movies. She was so luminous on screen, it was impossible not to stare at her. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a stupid and almost plotless movie, but she and Russell made it worth the time.

>75 AlisonY: I can see why Blonde was included, but you'd think that if you wanted to include a JCO book on that list, there are dozens that would suit just as well and aren't over 700 pages long.

>76 NanaCC: Thanks for the recommendation, Colleen. I'll keep an eye out for it.

I had a satisfying ramble through the annual giant booksale held nearby and brought home a few books. I went in the mid-afternoon and found it pleasantly uncrowded (apparently it was packed in the morning), but the people wearing masks were few and far between.

78ELiz_M
aug 8, 2021, 4:42 pm

>77 RidgewayGirl: Ah, but as there are 1315 books mentioned in at least one edition of the list, there is, of course, more than one JCO book -- the others included are Black Water, Marya, and them.

79Nickelini
aug 8, 2021, 5:13 pm

>77 RidgewayGirl:
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a stupid and almost plotless movie, but she and Russell made it worth the time.

That's probably the MM movie I've seen most often. Really, all her movies were pretty terrible, but there is something fun about that one

80LolaWalser
aug 8, 2021, 9:25 pm

My favourite Monroe movie is Niagara and if you had to see only one, I'd say that's the one that explains the best her "phenomenon". For one thing, it's not a comedy so she's not getting neutered as a funny bimbo the whole time. For another, Joseph Cotten's performance as the unwanted husband makes up for Monroe's acting deficiencies. But they way she simply IS, on the screen, explains wordlessly the fascination of cinema like the sun explains light.

81RidgewayGirl
aug 8, 2021, 10:29 pm

>78 ELiz_M: I'm glad they include more than one of her novels. She's one of our Great American Novelists, but since we don't really think of women in that light, she tends to be overlooked.

>79 Nickelini: Russell is so cranky, it's delightful. And I love that they never pit the women against each other.

>80 LolaWalser: Yes, there is something compelling about her. I don't think she's a lousy actor. Probably by today's standards (although there are plenty of actors today playing the same role in every film they're in) but a lot of the acting of that time was so stilted and mannered.

82arubabookwoman
aug 11, 2021, 12:29 pm

I think I've said before how fondly I remember Wish You Were Here. Your review makes me want to rush out and buy it for a reread immediately. Since I've more recently read the other books in the series--written afterwards, but set before Wish You Were Here-a reread might be interesting.
And Blond! I'm a big JCO fan, and this is one of my favorites. Poor Marilyn.

83RidgewayGirl
aug 13, 2021, 5:32 pm



Somebody, Anybody, Nobody is an impressive debut novel by Kelly McClorey. Amy is working as a housekeeper at a Yacht Club, but she prefers the more evocative job title of "chambermaid." She considers it good practice for her chosen career as an EMT, which is what she will be as soon as she passes the exam. Only, she's failed it twice before and this will be her last chance. To combat her anxiety, she comes up with a program to convince herself she has already passed.

So this novel fits perfectly into my favorite sub-genre, which is novels about women ruining their own lives. Amy is a mess, and for every step she takes to stabilize her life, she takes two that are self-destructive. And she's living in a world with people with their own agendas and plans, plans she can't see through the haze of her own self-involvement. McClorey does a fantastic job of revealing Amy's past and reasons for the way she is organically over the course of this novel, and as I gained enlightenment, I really rooted for Amy. But issues created over the course of a lifetime are not solved in a chapter and McClorey commits to Amy, who she is and how she relates to the world. I really liked this book and I'm still thinking about it.

84RidgewayGirl
aug 14, 2021, 7:52 pm



A young Finnish woman sets out on a long train journey across the Soviet Union, from Moscow to Ulan Baator, Mongolia. The person assigned to share her compartment is an older Russian man, often drunk, usually loud, sometimes unsafe. But also expansive and somewhat friendly. As the journey progresses, he talks, the Russian landscape scrolls past the windows and the trains stops in towns further and further from Moscow.

I'm not sure how to describe Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom, except that it is about a place and a style of life that doesn't exist in the same way anymore, written about vividly and without judgement. The protagonist's words are omitted from the story, leaving only the place and the people, especially her travel companion, to speak for her. This is an extraordinary novel and one I'm so pleased to have read.

Thanks to Lois (avaland) for bringing my attention to this one.

85AnnieMod
aug 14, 2021, 8:18 pm

>84 RidgewayGirl: My Mom’s brother got married to a Russian in the late 70s and the wedding was in a small town somewhere in the Far East, close to the Mongolian border. That was Mom’s first trip out of the country - a train to Moscow and then another going East. Sounds like a novel I must read - if for nothing else for making me smile and remember this just now.

86RidgewayGirl
aug 15, 2021, 12:41 pm

>85 AnnieMod: What an amazing experience that must have been.

87AlisonY
aug 16, 2021, 4:50 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: That sounds like a really interesting read. Onto the list it goes.

88Simone2
aug 16, 2021, 6:15 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: This sounds so good. I have never heard of it, is it a new one?

89SassyLassy
aug 16, 2021, 8:45 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a great book. It also sounds like a movie I saw where a young couple did the same kind of journey with the inner tension in the compartment and the wonderful landscape outside. I'll look for the book

90japaul22
aug 16, 2021, 8:51 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: That sounds unique. I purchased it immediately!

91lisapeet
aug 16, 2021, 11:41 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I think I need to read that. I took an overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1976, when I was 13—the world's weirdest class trip—and it's a standout memory, so this should be a good spark for it.

92RidgewayGirl
aug 16, 2021, 9:36 pm

>87 AlisonY: It was so interesting reading about the cities along the route.

>88 Simone2: Barbara, it was originally published in Finland in 2011, so not really new.

>89 SassyLassy: Do you remember what the movie you saw was called by any chance?

>90 japaul22: I think you'll like it.

>91 lisapeet: How amazing to have been in the Soviet Union! I have a few friends who managed to travel in the USSR and Eastern Europe before things opened up and I'm a little jealous of that.

93BLBera
aug 17, 2021, 7:06 pm

>84 RidgewayGirl: This one sounds interesting, Kay. I'll check it out.

94RidgewayGirl
aug 18, 2021, 5:09 pm

>93 BLBera: Beth, I think you'd like it.

95LolaWalser
aug 18, 2021, 5:28 pm

>83 RidgewayGirl:

Sounds like a trip on the Transsiberian--could be a mini literary genre of its own by now. My high school math teacher did the whole route (plus the leg before Moscow--I think she started in Belgrade) in the mid-eighties.

>92 RidgewayGirl:

I was interested to read in Johny Potts' Afropean that his elder brother visited Moscow etc. with school, in 1982 IIRC. I've never been to a Warsaw Pact country but I've met lots of Western Europeans who had been. I'm not sure about everywhere (Albania?), but travel clearly wasn't generally impossible.

96RidgewayGirl
aug 18, 2021, 7:56 pm

>95 LolaWalser: It's not the relative ease that's interesting to me, but that it's a regret to have not seen the world as it was. Like, I've been to Dresden relatively recently, and visited a small city situated in what was once a much grander one. I'll never be able to see it as it was, either before WWII, or in the late 19th century. Of course, some of my fascination for the Soviet Union comes from having come of age during Reagan's Presidency, when the jingoistic nationalism was off the charts and my teenage self reacted to that. Did you ever see the 1985 movie Letter to Brezhnev?

97LolaWalser
Redigerat: aug 18, 2021, 9:37 pm

>96 RidgewayGirl:

No, I haven't. Is it like The Golden Girls episode where Rose writes to Gorbachev? :) Yeah, I so understand the wish to grasp recent history better--it's especially tantalising when it comes to places and events I've been close to (even in!) but without the capacity or interest to explore. I just received from the library a photo book called Soviet Cities and this Kotov chap, born in 1988, writes about the USSR as a "lost civilization" he didn't know and whose relics he's trying to decipher... sometimes literally--he has photos of buildings from the Soviet era, in use today, but that no one (he could find, I suppose) could tell him what they were built for originally. (He makes educated guesses based on architectural features.) It's astounding and to me also terrifying how quickly everything gets forgotten.

Speaking of Dresden, of course there is no going back, but have you seen the archival films? I think more were made available fairly recently (2000/2010s). As it happens, I too saw recently Wie sagen wir es unseren Kindern* which was filmed in 1944 in Dresden and environs and is, I think, the feature movie with lengthiest such footage to be found. It was the last film to record the city as it was just months before destruction.

*Note, it's a comedic family film that doesn't acknowledge the war AT ALL.

98RidgewayGirl
aug 19, 2021, 4:15 pm

>97 LolaWalser: No, Letter to Brezhnev was an indie film set in Liverpool and about two Soviet sailors with a few hours leave and the two young women they meet. It's really a film about working class life in England and it's not like the actors playing the Soviet sailors were even Russian. It's also not available anywhere although used cassettes of the soundtrack are available on-line, LOL.

Here's the trailer. It's amazing.

https://youtu.be/5xGbyyoCvF4

99LolaWalser
aug 19, 2021, 6:13 pm

>98 RidgewayGirl:

Thanks, looks interesting, I'll look for it. Reminded me of the romantic subplot in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, with Alan Arkin and John Phillip Law... now that was funny, as I recall.

100arubabookwoman
aug 19, 2021, 6:51 pm

>96 RidgewayGirl: In the spring of 1968, my senior year of high school at the American School in London, we took a school-sponsored trip to the Soviet Union. After crossing the channel we took a train from Ostend to Moscow, with a one day stop in Berlin. We received all kinds of warnings about what we should not bring (I.e Time Magazine, Orwell's 1984). The train passed thru East Germany, Poland, and large swathes of Russia. There were frequent passport checks including in the middle of the night by military-looking officials. We were thrilled, and a little scared. During our stay in the Soviet Union we were of course always accompanied by official guides, and there was a group of Soviet students who also tagged along with us. We also went to Leningrad (St Petersburg), but flew there from Moscow. From Leningrad we flew to Riga in Latvia where we spent a few days before taking a boat home to England with a stop in Copenhagen. An extremely memorable trip, but what I remember most is the masses of European art in the museums there. (And the Bolshoi Ballet and the prison where Dostoevsky was imprisoned).

101rocketjk
Redigerat: aug 20, 2021, 1:13 pm

>96 RidgewayGirl: The only time I've spent in a Warsaw Pact country was in 2004 when my wife and I had a vacation in the Czech Republic. We loved our week in Prague. And then we rented a car and drove off into the countryside to try out luck at finding a small town somewhere to spend some time in. We like to do this sort of thing without plans and lean on our karma to find us a proper spot. This worked out for us, as we landed in a small, beautiful, very old town called Slovenica, very close to the Austrian border. We made friends with the woman who ran the tourist office, and one evening we were invited to her parents' house for wine and snacks and to view the 15th century murals painted on the walls of their living room. (The town was full of these very old and well preserved murals.)

One day we decided to walk to the Austrian border and see if we could cross over and stroll around. We'd never just ambled on foot over a European border before. It was about a kilometer's walk. All went well at the border. The Austrians on duty were somewhat bemused to have two Americans just walk up to them. They duly stamped our passports and into Austria for an afternoon we went. However, during the walk, before we reached the border, we came upon a large cement building with a large Star emblem in front. It was clearly abandoned, so we went to investigate. This was clearly the border crossing post for the old Czech police force. We saw holding cells and dog kennels. The place had been trashed, seemingly by people filled with fury. Things had been smashed and the walls were covered with graffiti. Later, when we told our friends in town about our walk, they told us, "You wouldn't have been able to take that walk during the Communist days." "Would we have been arrested?" "You would have been shot." We had known of course, but not fully thought through the implications of strolling along what was at one time part of the very border between Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc.

Once when we were driving in search of something in our guidebook, we took a wrong turn and drove into an old, clearly Soviet-era housing complex. Gray cement buildings, row upon row. In general, the Czech Republic, when we were there, just a year or two into their entrance into the EU, was a very cheery place. But driving into this old housing block was like going back in time to the 1960s, or like entering into an old movie. Everything immediately got gray, the people in this place looked at us with obvious suspicion, their scowls seemingly permanently in place. Well, when you're on vacation in a strange place, it's easy to have your imagination run away with you, I guess. But the impression I got in those 10 minutes was strong and, obviously, lasting. I felt like I needed to get out of there right away before I got stuck in a time warp.

On another vacation, my wife very much wanting to see the Hermitage, we took a train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg for two days in that city which I can only describe as surreal, a condition not helped by heavy rain that fell steadily just about the whole time we were there.

>99 LolaWalser: The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming is on my short list of funniest movies, ever. Amazing to note that it was Alan Arkin's first movie role. (He'd been a successful stage actor.) Carl Reiner is also hilarious. A couple of years back, I read the book the movie is based on. It's also funny, though a bit darker.

102LolaWalser
aug 20, 2021, 1:56 pm

>101 rocketjk:

Well by 2004 it wasn't a Warsaw Pact country! I meant the period pre-1989, I hate the tendentious expression "the Iron Curtain" (made by the same people who brought you "the Axis of Evil" etc.) I've been to Czechia.

We had known of course, but not fully thought through the implications of strolling along what was at one time part of the very border between Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc.

They were foreign countries edged with official borders--and in the midst of actual war ("cold" or not). Do you just stroll over into Mexico any which way... and vice versa? These days Americans would not be advised to bum rush the Canadian border either. :)

On "greyness" and "scowls"--sorry, to me that's just clichées people actively look for while forgetting how much greyness and scowling there is in capitalism. There was an Internet game somewhere where people were posting pics of (sub)urban housing and inviting guesses as to which were in the ex-Communist countries and which in the West. Suffice it to say that it was eye-opening. East Berlin is some of the most sought-after living area, not just because it (was) relatively cheaper, but because those grey housing blocks are frequently built to better standards. When my brother shopped for an apartment in Zagreb, easily the best option in terms of quality was a late 1970s, socialist-era mid-rise (and he got more than enough proof of that during the recent earthquakes there!)

I've heard similar from Russia.

I didn't know there was a "The Russians are coming..." book! I saw the movie by chance and I just about died during the sequence when the guy is tied to the... librarian? or whatever she was... when they try hopping in sync etc. I'm not much attracted to the patronising "look, the Communists are people too!" genre but comedy makes it less annoying.

103rocketjk
Redigerat: aug 20, 2021, 5:53 pm

>204 "Well by 2004 it wasn't a Warsaw Pact country! "

Sure. As I said, they were a couple of years into EU membership at that time.

"They were foreign countries edged with official borders--and in the midst of actual war ("cold" or not). Do you just stroll over into Mexico any which way... and vice versa? These days Americans would not be advised to bum rush the Canadian border either. :)"

Sorry, perhaps I was unclear. The point is that walking anywhere within, say, a half kilometer of that border from within the country would have gotten one shot. It wasn't that they shot spies or other undesirables trying to get in (though I assume they did), but that they shot their own citizens for trying to get out.

"On "greyness" and "scowls"--sorry, to me that's just clichées people actively look for while forgetting how much greyness and scowling there is in capitalism."

I wasn't "actively looking for" anything, though. It was my immediate, visceral and unexpected reaction upon driving into that housing unit. The difference between the atmosphere in this housing project and the rest of what I saw in that area of the Czech Republic was stark. If that seems like a cliche, c'est la vie.

Certainly, I was not making a blanket statement about all housing of that era across the entire Warsaw Pact area. Only adding my impression of the specific thing I'd seen. And of course, no single political system has cornered the market on scowls.

Re: Zagreb. I was going to mention our time in Croatia, and Zagreb in particular, all of which, the country and the city, my wife and I loved visiting, but when I looked up Warsaw Pact on Wikipedia, I didn't see Yugoslavia listed, so I left it out. We thought Zagreb was a terrific city and had a blast there. We also spent time in Istria and drove down the coast to Dubrovnik. A fabulous trip all in all.

Regarding The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming, the book the movie was based on was originally titled "The Off-Islanders," though of course it was republished as a movie tie-in with the new name. If you're interested, my full review, in which I included some background info about the movie as well, is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/315064#7106879

Oh, and check out the movie trailer, which was entirely adlibbed by Arkin and Reiner: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060921/

All the best.

104RidgewayGirl
aug 20, 2021, 6:14 pm

>99 LolaWalser: It would be so convenient if all these movies were easy to find for streaming. And also convenient if time expanded so I could watch all of them.

>100 arubabookwoman: What a fabulous experience! My best friend did something similar and has such great stories.

105RidgewayGirl
aug 20, 2021, 8:34 pm



Megan Abbott began her career writing classic noir with a feminist twist like her story of a criminal working for a crime boss, where both are women and the protagonist's downfall comes at the hands of a good-looking but none too bright man in Queenpin, or her novel based on a Depression-era murderess in Bury Me Deep. Then she moved to writing twisty crime novels set in the present, in which the protagonists were teenage girls, like the cheerleaders of Dare Me. With The Turnout, Abbott has shifted her focus again, telling the story from the point of view of one of two sisters who run a ballet school.

Dara and her sister Marie teach ballet in the same school their mother founded. When an accident leaves one of their studios damaged, a contractor is hired to repair and renovate the space. But the contractor isn't there just to supervise the work. And the danger he poses is apparent only to Dara. Meanwhile, the preparations for the annual production of The Nutcracker continue, with the stress put on the teenager dancing the part of Clara is exacerbated by the jealousy of her fellow students, at least one of whom thinks the part should have gone to her.

This is a twisty one, full of old grievances and rivalries. No one is exactly as they seem and who is responsible for an escalating series of incidents is uncertain, as is the motivations of everyone, until the very end. Abbott excels at writing problematic relationships, complex situations and in taking things to the next level. She doesn't pull her punches and this is her best yet. I was left wishing that she'd go back and write entire novels from the point of view of other characters in the book, there was so much going on.

106RidgewayGirl
aug 21, 2021, 8:56 pm

>103 rocketjk: What fantastic experiences. And there's something about knowing that you couldn't repeat them -- things have changed so much.

107rocketjk
aug 22, 2021, 3:02 pm

>106 RidgewayGirl: Thanks! But, to be clear, as LolaWalser correctly pointed out, my trips to that part of the world all came well post-Soviet Era days. What I was reporting was the traces of those days I came upon. In Croatia, though, which we visited around 2017 or so (the specific dates get hazy, don't they?), we didn't see anything like that, other than in the museums, and even there they were much more focused on 19th Century history and earlier (in Dubrovnik, much earlier; in Split, all the way back to Roman Empire times) and their own relatively recent series of post-Yugoslavia conflicts.

108RidgewayGirl
aug 22, 2021, 10:03 pm

>107 rocketjk: It's illuminating to see what time period different places want to emphasize and how that changes over time. And how one's experience of a place can change so much depending on what part of history one is hunting. I like seeing buildings of vastly different ages right up against each other and how they relate to one another.

109RidgewayGirl
aug 23, 2021, 10:43 am



William Bartholomew was a soldier in the Civil War until he was shot in the face. Now a few years past the end of the war, Billy is living in New York, wearing a mask to cover his ruined face and making a dubious living trading on futures and stocks. He meets a man who intrigues him, a failed writer working the night shift as a customs inspector and they become friends. His other friends include a Black prostitute whom he loves, a Chinese woman who makes her money taking in washing, and a man who served with him in the Union Army. When his lover asks him to help her in a daring plan to rescue children from the South, Billy gathers his friends and a few others and comes up with a plan.

This is mostly a story of what daily life was like in post-Civil War New York, from the relative comforts and financial insecurity of a family clinging to the middle class to those scraping by with nothing at all in shocking circumstances. In The Night Inspector, Frederick Busch tells a nineteenth century tale, seen through modern eyes but told in the voice of the nineteenth century. It's a difficult juggling act, but Busch manages to make it work. Here's a novel that reads like it could have been written 150 years ago, but which sees women, immigrants, the formerly enslaved and those making their livings as they can as full human beings and which looks unflinchingly at how they are preyed upon by the wealthy and white dominant class. But this isn't a lecture, but an action-packed and heart-breaking story of an morally-complex man making his way in the world and how his past, both his childhood and his experiences in the war, inform his present.

110RidgewayGirl
aug 23, 2021, 8:16 pm



Raised in the third largest megachurch in Texas, younger daughter to the head pastor, Caroline has always felt comfortable there, even if she's in the shadow of her older sister, Abigail. She has decided to go all the way to Austin for college, a decision no one else agrees with, but for her final summer in her hometown, she anticipates nothing more than supporting her sister as she plans for her wedding and to continue whatever it is she has going with a boy she's known her entire life. But when her father's affair is revealed, both her and Abigail's world is turned upside down, both in the shock of discovering his actions and in the speed at which the church moves to paper everything over and move on.

This is a quiet book, about two young women making different decisions in the face of disillusionment. It's also about the sometimes fraught relationship between sisters. God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney is also about faith that comes from an author who knows the Evangelical world intimately and is, more than anything, both clear-eyed and empathetic in its portrayal. McKinney allows her characters to doubt, to lose their faith and their ability to function within that world, or to invest more deeply in it despite or because of its flaws. Neither a screed nor "inspirational," this novel does a good job of embracing nuance although the heavy use of Evangelical jargon may dismay some readers.

111AlisonY
aug 24, 2021, 4:36 am

>110 RidgewayGirl: Oh that sounds interesting. You are the queen of new title finds.

112rocketjk
aug 24, 2021, 12:17 pm

113RidgewayGirl
aug 25, 2021, 4:35 pm

>111 AlisonY: Oh, I like that. I accept. Will look into finding a suitable tiara.

>112 rocketjk: May we yet get to discover new places and revisit old favorites.

We dropped my youngest off at college yesterday and are now home with nothing but the cats to make our house feel less empty. Looking forward to picking up the dog from the kennel tomorrow. My son asked me, in all seriousness, what I was going to do without him there to do chores and, reader, I did not laugh.

114ELiz_M
aug 25, 2021, 7:02 pm

>113 RidgewayGirl: Here you go!

115RidgewayGirl
aug 25, 2021, 8:07 pm

>114 ELiz_M: That's perfect!

116BLBera
aug 25, 2021, 8:50 pm

>109 RidgewayGirl: I've had The Night Inspector on my shelf for years. Time to get to it. Great comments, Kay. Have you read anything else by Busch?

117RidgewayGirl
aug 25, 2021, 8:53 pm

>116 BLBera: Beth, I read Girls several years ago and gave it 4 and a half stars. It was entirely different than The Night Inspector.

118labfs39
aug 25, 2021, 9:07 pm

>113 RidgewayGirl: My son asked me, in all seriousness, what I was going to do without him there to do chores and, reader, I did not laugh.

Lol. As the mom of an 18-year-old, this struck me as particularly funny

119RidgewayGirl
aug 26, 2021, 10:30 am

>118 labfs39: If you've got an 18-year-old of your own then you'll know exactly the disgust he felt when I informed him that he'd have to call the doctor's office himself to ask for a copy of his immunization record for school. He accused me of procrastinating by not getting this for him before his birthday, despite him not having asked me to get it. In the weeks leading up to him leaving for school in another state, he vacillated between being truly charming and helpful, and in behaving in ways that made me think that the start of the semester could not come quickly enough.

120arubabookwoman
aug 26, 2021, 8:54 pm

>113 RidgewayGirl: >118 labfs39: Along the same line, one of our kids once accused us of having kids just so we could have slave labor.

121rachbxl
aug 27, 2021, 5:45 am

>119 RidgewayGirl: I'm giggling at the idea of him accusing you of proscrastinating. In the time it took him to think that up, couldn't he have made the phone call?

122Nickelini
aug 27, 2021, 1:32 pm

>119 RidgewayGirl:
So it's not just my kids then. That's a relief

123RidgewayGirl
aug 27, 2021, 2:00 pm

>120 arubabookwoman: I love how they have no concept of how much work they still cause, but are sure that walking the trash out more than makes up for it.

>121 rachbxl: Rachel, the issue was not the time it would take, it was that I was failing to do a mom-job.

>122 Nickelini: I suspect it's a well-worn path, the raising of teenagers.

124avaland
Redigerat: aug 27, 2021, 4:03 pm

>73 RidgewayGirl: Enjoyed your thoughts on Blonde. It is often called Oates' masterpiece, which is probably why I have avoided it, afraid to be disappointed. There are some others of the 86 books of hers I have yet to read. (I fear I have "outgrown" her a bit, too).

>113 RidgewayGirl: Ok, I did laugh at that! (my youngest turns 37 this week)

125RidgewayGirl
aug 27, 2021, 9:16 pm

>124 avaland: Lois! You dragged me into JCO's work and now you've abandoned me there!

126BLBera
aug 28, 2021, 2:08 pm

>119 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I am also smiling, Kay. Been there.

127NanaCC
aug 28, 2021, 6:48 pm

>125 RidgewayGirl: I’ve been trying to get Lois to read Blonde for a few years….I guess my prodding hasn’t helped.

128avaland
aug 29, 2021, 8:34 am

>125 RidgewayGirl: Really, dragged? :-)

>127 NanaCC: There is another of her well-known books I purposely didn't read....the Oprah book: We Were the Mulvaneys. And some of her books have similar themes and tend to run together. But OK, I'll put Blonde on my list for late fall or early winter :-)

129NanaCC
aug 29, 2021, 12:31 pm

>128 avaland: I read Marilyn by Gloria Steinem, and then followed it with Blonde. They went well together. Just sayin’. :-)

130RidgewayGirl
aug 29, 2021, 1:55 pm

>128 avaland: Kicking and screaming, Lois.

You are right when you point out how she revisits certain themes over and over again, but I'm still eager to read another book by her about a shy girl growing up with a distant and menacing father and in precarious financial conditions. She's better than anyone else at creating a sense of creepy unease. I do think that sometimes she oversteps her realm of experience when she writes about current issues - I read one told from the POV of a low income Black girl that made me cringe more than once, but then again, the one about abortion (A Book of American Martyrs) was very good.

131RidgewayGirl
aug 30, 2021, 12:37 pm



The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz concerns a failed writer. Jacob was once a promising young author whose debut literary novel had been well-received and sold well for a literary novel. And then nothing. A book of short stories was eventually published by a small press and quickly forgotten, Jacob ends up teaching at a low-residency MFA program that accepts anyone able to pay the tuition. It's there that he meets a student who claims to have come up with a plot so new and exciting that it's a guaranteed bestseller. And for years Jacob watches for the student to publish, but when that doesn't happen, he takes the bare bones of the guy's idea and writes what is, indeed, a runaway bestseller and all of his dreams come true. And then the letter arrives.

The Plot is a fun thriller that doesn't quite hold together, but which is great fun to read. I guessed a few of the big reveals ahead of time but that didn't impact my enjoyment at all. The plot, both of this novel and of the fictional one, is suitably twisty and suspenseful and Korelitz's writing is of the kind that does not stand in the way of the action. The characters, even the villains, are well-rounded and complex by the standards of a thriller. Good thrillers are hard to find and there are so many terrible ones. This is a good one.

132RidgewayGirl
aug 31, 2021, 4:36 pm



Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins is a thriller about an Oxford nanny whose charge is a troubled eight year old girl with selective mutism. The girl's father and her stepmother are far to busy to spend time with her and they both live in the attic of an old house, which feels haunted. There's even a small, secret room in the child's room that might be a priest's hole, but is supposed to stay locked, because the wallpaper inside contains arsenic. At the opening of the novel, the police are questioning the nanny about the girl, who disappeared during one of the nanny's rare weekend's off. At first, she's sure they just want background on the family, but as the questioning continues, she realizes that she might be a suspect and, as things are revealed about her past and her time in this position, the reader begins to think they might be right.

So this was a fun thriller. Nothing substantial, but the characters were interesting, if broadly drawn. I don't generally like when the reader has access to the narrator's thoughts and yet information the narrator knows is held back, but it was not too annoying here. I'm not sure whether the author exerted great restraint in ending the novel where she did, or if she took the easy way out, but it was different.

133Nickelini
aug 31, 2021, 11:13 pm

>132 RidgewayGirl: This one has been on my radar for months, but I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback. I need more fun thrillers

134BLBera
sep 1, 2021, 10:09 pm

>132 RidgewayGirl: I also enjoyed Magpie Lane, Kay. I thought the ending was great.

135AlisonY
sep 2, 2021, 6:50 pm

>128 avaland: I have to say I enjoyed We Were the Mulvaneys. Did you avoid it because Oprah hyped it?

136RidgewayGirl
sep 4, 2021, 4:21 am

Joyce, good, well-written thrillers are a lot of fun and also not as common or easy to find as I would like.

Beth, I do really wonder about the next few hours. I suspect they were probably disastrous.

I’m currently in Atlanta with a good friend who lives in Arizona and whom I don’t often get to see. We started in Savannah, drove through Milledgeville to see Flannery O’Connor’s farm and are planning to spend the next few days in bookstores and museums.

137BLBera
sep 4, 2021, 10:00 pm

Enjoy your outing. It sounds like fun!

138RidgewayGirl
sep 8, 2021, 11:18 am

Back from a week's vacation with my best friend from high school (and after). We started in Savannah, Georgia, visiting the independent bookstores there (go visit E. Shaver Books if you are ever there), the Owens-Thomas House and Flannery O'Connor's childhood home. Then we stopped in Milledgeville at her final home, Andalusia Farm, before ending up in Atlanta, where we went to three great bookstores (A Cappella Books was my favorite), the High Museum where we toured the folk art and the African art collections as well as the special exhibition on Picasso and Alexander Calder. We also went to the SCADfash, a museum devoted to fashion and film, where there was a stellar display of Ruth E. Carter's work -- did the costumes for Do the Right Thing, Roots, Amistad and Black Panther, among others. It was fascinating. And finally the National Center for Civil and Human Rights which was emotionally exhausting, but well worth the visit. Also, we ate a lot of fantastic food and talked non-stop.



This was the Little Free Library at the Flannery O'Connor House in Savannah:

139lisapeet
sep 8, 2021, 11:23 am

That sounds like a great time—always good to spend time with old friends. And that's a nice book haul!

140RidgewayGirl
sep 8, 2021, 11:45 am

>139 lisapeet: I may have gotten a little carried away in the bookstores, but I regret nothing. And my friend and I usually managed to meet up once a year, but what with the pandemic, it's been a lot longer than that.

141japaul22
sep 8, 2021, 12:57 pm

That's a great stack of books - many of which I have not heard of and look forward to reading your reviews (whenever those may come!).

142RidgewayGirl
sep 8, 2021, 2:28 pm

>141 japaul22: Many of them are new to me, too. I like finding books I haven't heard of in small, independent bookstores.

143BLBera
sep 8, 2021, 8:37 pm

It does sound like you had a wonderful time, and your book haul looks great. I look forward to hearing about them.

I love the LFL!

144AlisonY
sep 9, 2021, 4:15 am

Sounds like a fun trip. Isn't that the great thing about holidays - normal spending parameters go right out the window, so a large book haul is entirely permissable!

145RidgewayGirl
sep 9, 2021, 9:58 am

>143 BLBera: Yes, now to read all these lovely new books, as well as all the others.

>144 AlisonY: Alison, I've had a fun project going of finding all the independent bookstores and buying something from them. It's an entirely self-serving project that I justify as support.

146RidgewayGirl
sep 9, 2021, 10:40 am



The Magician by Colm Tóibín is a biographical novel about the German writer Thomas Mann, and Tóibín sticks to Mann's life, using his authorial presence to create dialog and emotion rather than to play with the established facts. The portrait he paints is of a divided man, on the one hand, a man whose sexual preferences are forbidden and who has friends and family who regularly transgress against the accepted norms of traditional German society and, on the other, who is deeply conventional himself and is often indecisive when it comes to the moments when he could use his reputation and voice to influence events.

Mann is born into a conventional, upper class northern German family at the end of the 19th century, but his world is altered when his father dies when he is a teenager. The family is no longer affluent and his mother moves them to Munich, where she tries to set him up in a career. But Thomas wants the freedom and ease he sees his brother enjoying as a writer and decides to follow the same path. Mann's life is lived during tumultuous times in German history and his own views move from support for Germany in the First World War, to bitter disillusionment at the defeat, followed by the weird days of the Munich Soviet Republic and the later rise of the Nazi Party, which has the extended Mann family separated as they flee in different directions, or hunker down and hope for it all to pass. Mann ends up first in Princeton, NJ and then in California, growing older, indecisive on the best path forward, concerned and disappointed in his children and worried that his early diaries will fall into Nazi hands.

Mann isn't the most exciting of characters, despite the times he lived through, but the novel isn't boring. It is measured, beautifully written and has a deliberate pacing that made the novel oddly soothing to read. There is something so pleasant about a book that demands the reader slow down and just take the novel as it is. I suspect that those readers who have read Mann's works will get a great deal more out of The Magician, but I enjoyed my time with this book and was sorry to have finished it.

147RidgewayGirl
sep 9, 2021, 12:01 pm



If you're in the mood for a concentrated dose of the 1970s, let me hand you this copy of The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. The story centers on a private detective who is sent to haul a famous author home from a bender and who, along the way, gets involved in finding a woman who disappeared years ago. This is a novel filled with drinking, having sex, drinking some more, smoking some weed, driving while drinking, drinking while driving and the occasional fist fight. There was no way for me to picture the detective without a substantial mustache and he even drives an El Camino. The women are all ready to have sex with the private dick, although he does turn a few down. And while the women are usually up for some fun, they are also, for the most part, fully realized characters who are braver than the men, out of necessity.

As for the plot itself, it's not bad. It appears to spin its wheels for a while in the middle, but once you've had your third or fourth to-go cup of gin and tonic and the rest of that six-pack, the story comes together. This was a fun read, although I spent much of it wondering how on earth they got anything done between the benders and the hang-overs.

148BLBera
sep 9, 2021, 12:49 pm

>146 RidgewayGirl: I'm waiting to get the new Tóibín from the library, so I skimmed over your comments. I did love his book about James.

149AlisonY
sep 9, 2021, 1:25 pm

>146 RidgewayGirl: I must pick up this one up at some stage - sounds interesting, and I like Toibin's writing.

150RidgewayGirl
sep 9, 2021, 2:07 pm

>148 BLBera: I'm eager to read The Master now. I liked how immersed in Mann's life I became and I'm afraid my family got to hear far too much about him.

>149 AlisonY: Yes, his writing just flows so naturally. I'm never pulled out of one of his novels because the phrasing became either clunky or too fancy.

151baswood
sep 9, 2021, 5:57 pm

The Magician, Colm Toibin sounds interesting

152RidgewayGirl
sep 10, 2021, 10:02 am

>151 baswood: It is, Bas. Have you read any Thomas Mann? This book has me considering Buddenbrooks.

153BLBera
sep 10, 2021, 11:43 am

I think it's a testament to Tóibín that The Master held my attention even though I'm not a big Henry James fan!

154japaul22
sep 10, 2021, 11:57 am

>152 RidgewayGirl: I will definitely read The Magician - I loved what he did with The Master about Henry James. Also, I loved Buddenbrooks. It’s is in the tradition of the 19th century family epics, which I love. It is not particularly experimental like his later works are.

155RidgewayGirl
sep 10, 2021, 12:51 pm

>153 BLBera: I really loved The Portrait of a Lady, so I'm already going into The Master with more interest than I went into The Magician.

>154 japaul22: Yes, the description of the writing of Buddenbrooks made me think I'd like it. So on to the imaginary pile of books it goes.

156baswood
sep 10, 2021, 1:44 pm

The Magic Mountain is one of my all time favourite books - just wonderful

157RidgewayGirl
sep 13, 2021, 12:15 pm



Sleepovers: Stories is a debut collection of short stories by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips all set in the rural backwaters of western North Carolina. The characters in these stories are all struggling with poverty and also often mental illness, neglectful parents, addictions and terrible boyfriends. This debut collection suffers from being uneven. The first few stories in the collection are fine enough, but nothing to get excited about, causing me to wonder why exactly Lauren Groff had blurbed it so enthusiastically. Then came Mind Craft, in which a young woman takes care of her nephew and her aging father for a few days so her sister can have a break. It is both unflinching and tender and followed by the equally brilliant The Locket, in which a mentally challenged woman enjoys the tenuous friendship she has with a lifeguard at the pool, a friendship the other woman is likely unaware of.

Weak stories are nothing unusual in any collection, with writers padding out their stellar work with less noteworthy filler, but many of the stories here feel undeveloped, as though the author had played briefly with an idea or a scenario and then lost interest. When her stories are fully realized, Phillps's writing has both heart and hard edges, the kinds of stories that burrow beneath the skin and kept me thinking about them long after I'd finished reading. But a lot of the work this collection feels unfinished, like Lorene and Jacuzzi, where a few snippets of character and idea sit juxtaposed on a page or two, without the development of her finished stories. When they are good, Phillips's stories remind me of Flannery O'Connor in her focus on the dark, squirming corners of Southern rural life. I'm not sorry to have picked up this book, despite its shortcomings and I'm eager to read what Phillips writes next.

158RidgewayGirl
sep 13, 2021, 5:50 pm



It turns out that heroin use is not a good way to build memories. Face It, Debbie Harry's memoir, is hampered by this fact as well as her unwillingness to say anything bad about anyone, tell juicy stories or get personal. She's lead an interesting life, what with being a part of the punk/new wave music scene, hanging out and performing at CGBG, a legendary music club in the seventies and eighties, with people like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and assorted drag queens and musicians, being part of Blondie and touring the world and acting in movies like Hairspray and Videodrome. I just wish there hadn't been so much missing from her memoir.

The book itself is a lovely object. The paper is the kind of thick, matte paper that photographs look good on and there are pictures. Mostly, there is fan art; drawings of Harry sent to her through the years and which she kept. It's a nice, surprisingly sentimental touch from a woman intent in making sure we all know how tough she is (she is very tough, and had to be). There's a lot of name-dropping, but not much in the way of stories. Harry isn't going to say anything bad about anyone and anyway she doesn't remember much of the early CGBG days, has only nice things to say about most of the members of Blondie (there's a bit about two former members behaving badly in 2006) and she's too guarded to say anything about how she felt about any of it along the way.

I'm sure that people who loved Blondie will enjoy this, but it's dull stuff.

159Nickelini
sep 13, 2021, 5:56 pm

>158 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for saving me time and money. I was going to get it for sure until I picked it up in a book shop and it was so thick and heavy, so I said "later." Now I won't bother. So thanks again!

160kidzdoc
sep 13, 2021, 7:14 pm

I'm glad, though not surprised, that you and Pattie had a great time in Atlanta. Although I'm sorry that I couldn't meet up with the two of you on Sunday I definitely made the right decision, as the only thing I accomplished that day was doing laundry and heating up leftovers for lunch and dinner; I didn't even make my usual Sunday morning trip to Publix.

I'd love to know what bookstores you visited (I think I know two of them, but not necessarily the third one), and where you dined. Unfortunately the new upscale food court at Colony Square, named Politan Row, opened last week, just after you two would have been there. Colony Square is the white high rise building on the northeast corner of Peachtree & 14th Streets, a very short walk from the Woodruff Arts Center where the High Museum of Art is located. A branch of Rumi's Kitchen, a Persian restaurant which is one of my top five places to dine in metro Atlanta, will open there later this year. Politan Row at Colony Square is also a short walk from where I live, and I'll probably make my first visit there later this week.

161RidgewayGirl
sep 13, 2021, 8:48 pm

>159 Nickelini: Joyce, even if you are a superfan, there's not much in it worth reading.

>160 kidzdoc: Such a great time, Darryl. A Capella Books, Charis Books and Posman Books were the three we visited. Posman Books was in a mall made out of a Sears warehouse, a really lovely use of space. We've already made plans to be back in October of 2022, so we'll meet up then. We did eat at the Iberian Pig and enjoyed that meal tremendously.

162kidzdoc
sep 14, 2021, 8:24 am

>161 RidgewayGirl: Nice! I should have guessed that the third bookshop was Charis Books, since you're familiar with Decatur and had dinner at The Iberian Pig. Posman Books is located in Ponce City Market, one of my favorite places in Atlanta, which has several dozen fine eateries and shops. I may go there for lunch later this week, and buy a copy of Harlem Shuffle, the new novel by Colson Whitehead, while I'm there.

163RidgewayGirl
sep 14, 2021, 9:34 am

>162 kidzdoc: Darryl, Charis Books was lovely and we parked in an Agnes Scott College lot, figuring that because it was Labor Day it would be fine and when we walked out, the driveway was blocked by pylons and a police car. As we walked in, the cop got out of the car, but just to move the pylons so we could pull out. So no ticket for us, although we did deserve one. And Ponce City Market was wonderful -- we intended just a short visit to the bookstore on our way back to Greenville, but ended up walking around enjoying the place.

164avaland
sep 15, 2021, 2:35 pm

>130 RidgewayGirl: Agree with those observations....

165RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: sep 15, 2021, 2:50 pm

>164 avaland: Thanks. In the end, she's no more controversial than Cheever or Updike and far less problematic than Roth.

And when it comes to problematic authors, may I draw your attention to Flannery O'Connor?

166RidgewayGirl
sep 15, 2021, 2:50 pm



Flannery O'Connor's final short story collection, Everything that Rises Must Converge, was compiled and published after her death. All except for one story, Parker's Back, were published previously and the final story in the collection, Judgement Day, is a reworked version of her first published story. It does help to know that O'Connor did not choose the stories or place them in the order they appear in the book.

The titular story starts things off and it's O'Connor at her biting best. A woman has her son accompany her on a bus trip in Atlanta, feeling she needs protection now that the buses are integrated. The son is resentful, both of this small task and of his mother, who raised him on her own and continues to support him. As he stews and sulks, she becomes increasingly outgoing and everything becomes more and more uncomfortable. And then it all ends very badly. It's both brilliant and immediately recognizable as being written by O'Connor.

The following stories continue in this vein, pitting hard-working yet silly mothers against idle sons who resent them. And then things always end very badly. In lesser hands, this would result in stories that feel too similar, but O'Connor's returning to the same ground results in a feeling of cohesion. And then there are the variations -- a man both resents his wife and longs to win her admiration in Parker's Back, a widower takes in a homeless young man with a club foot and soon prefers him over his own son, a lonely ten-year-old who misses his mother. But don't confuse heart-rending circumstances for authorial empathy; O'Connor eviscerates her characters, leaving them not a shred of dignity as she explores their darkest weaknesses.

My one quibble with this collection lays with the final story, Judgement Day. Even in descriptions of her given by admirers, her racism is evident. Yet her stories aren't racist -- she's equally willing to lay bare all the dirty hate and hypocrisy of a well-heeled racist in a new hat as she is to call out someone setting themselves in opposition to racism, but benefitting from it. But this final story, of an elderly man living in his daughter's New York apartment and longing for home, is the exception. Not only does the n-word appear numerous times in each paragraph, the Black characters all conform to a Southern racist's stereo-types. All the justifications, all the she-was-a-product-of-her-time excuses can't cover up what is going on in this story. Other than that, and it's a pretty big other-than-that, this collection is brilliant. Approach with caution.

167kidzdoc
sep 15, 2021, 6:32 pm

Nice review of Everything That Rises Must Converge, Kay. I gave it 3 stars, which I'm sure is easily the lowest rating I've given to any of her books, and in my review I said that "the black characters are almost all one sided, poorly developed and stereotypical." It's been a number of years since I read it, but I suspect that I was appalled and offended by Judgement Day, in a way that I wasn't by The Artificial Nigger, one of her earlier short stories. (BTW I saw an unforgettable rendition of that short story years ago in San Francisco, which was performed by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and read by Jones and a middle aged White woman with a perfect old money (Buckhead or Ansley Park) Atlanta accent.)

I just saw the lineup for this year's Decatur Book Festival, a one day event taking place on October 2nd in the First Baptist Church of Decatur. The lineup is profoundly disappointing, especially compared to the 2018 and 2019 festivals, and I may only go to the first talk, depending on what else is going on in the Square that day, and it's possible that I may skip it entirely and go to the Pitt-Georgia Tech football game with a fellow Pitt alumnus that afternoon. I very much hope that this watered down festival is a reflection of the COVID-19 pandemic, and not indicative of what future festivals will be like.

168RidgewayGirl
sep 16, 2021, 10:14 am

>167 kidzdoc: I very much hope that this watered down festival is a reflection of the COVID-19 pandemic, and not indicative of what future festivals will be like.

The person I spoke to at A Cappella Books said that the festival organizers were as eager as us to get it back to full-size.

169kidzdoc
sep 16, 2021, 6:43 pm

>168 RidgewayGirl: That is both great news and a huge relief.

170RidgewayGirl
sep 20, 2021, 5:57 pm



There are a number of novels out in the past few years in which someone returns/visits for the first time the African country of their birth/their parents/their ancestors. Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo is one of these, but stands apart from the rest both in the quality of the writing and in how it refuses to follow any expected path.

Anna is separated and her Welsh mother's death has unsettled her. She never met her father, a student who returned home to Africa before she was born. Clearing out her mother's things, she finds his diary from his time in London and decides to find him. What she finds out about him is that his life was far from ordinary and while she felt she got to know who he was from his account of being a Black man in England during Enoch Powell's heyday, who his is now is a far different person.

Traveling to a small country on the west coast of Africa, Anna is out of her element. Always made to feel like an outsider in England, she's surprised to find that she's seen as an outsider in Africa, too. Her father is elusive and placed so far outside of what she's used to, Anna behaves in ways that surprise her.

This is a novel that kept turning in directions I didn't expect and I loved how nuanced and complex Onuzo allowed the story to become. There are no easy solutions or correct choices here, just the ones made by fallible human beings. And what looks like good from one angle, is not necessarily good from the other side. I'm eager to read this author's previous novels.

171labfs39
sep 21, 2021, 9:54 pm

>170 RidgewayGirl: Great review of what sounds like an interesting book, Kay. I'll watch for it.

172BLBera
sep 25, 2021, 12:20 pm

>170 RidgewayGirl: This does sound good, Kay.

173NanaCC
sep 25, 2021, 2:47 pm

Thank you for saving me money on the Debbie Harry book, Kay. I was tempted.

>170 RidgewayGirl: This sounds good. I’m making note.

174RidgewayGirl
sep 25, 2021, 3:10 pm

Hi, Lisa, Beth and Colleen. I'm curious as to how Sankofa does. The author has two previous books, including Welcome to Lagos, which had some buzz behind it, so this one should be everywhere, but who can tell in these weird times? I mean, I'm tripping over reviews for Sally Rooney and Jonathan Franzen's new books, but I'm not hearing much about a bunch (and there are so many new books coming out this fall) of books that should be getting a ton of attention.

Colleen, yes, I was disappointed that there wasn't more substance to Face It.

175BLBera
sep 25, 2021, 4:10 pm

Oh, I read Welcome to Lagos and loved it! I didn't remember the author's name. For sure, I'm going to read Sankofa.

176RidgewayGirl
sep 26, 2021, 2:08 pm



False Witness by Karin Slaughter is the kind of thriller that hits all the right notes without feeling predictable. It concerns two sisters, one a trial lawyer working in a successful, upmarket law firm in Atlanta and the other an addict of no fixed address. When the lawyer is hired by a man they both babysat many years ago, to defend him against rape charges they have to work together to prevent their past from destroying their future.

Slaughter had a lot of fun creating a man so evil he often began to feel like a comic book villain, but she's skilled enough to make it feel plausible. Where this thriller shines in her portrayal of the characters and in the relationships they have with each other. She knows how to pace a novel and how to alternate scenes of grim poverty or gruesome violence with moments of tenderness or connections between the characters. It raises the stakes considerably. The book is also set in 2020, with all the masks and distancing that entailed, adding a interesting bit of grounding to a story that was, but never felt, unlikely.

177Nickelini
sep 26, 2021, 4:35 pm

>176 RidgewayGirl: That sounds great!

178RidgewayGirl
sep 27, 2021, 8:16 am

>177 Nickelini: If you're looking for the kind of book that keeps you turning pages, it's perfect. Also, there's one scene that made me cry, and I rarely cry over a book.

179kidzdoc
sep 27, 2021, 2:21 pm

Apparently I've been living under a rock, as I had not heard of Chibundu Onuzo until today, when I read enticing reviews of her books by you and OscarWilde87. Both books sound interesting, but I'll look for Sankofa first.

180NanaCC
sep 27, 2021, 3:17 pm

>176 RidgewayGirl: You’ve put this one on my wishlist, Kay.

181RidgewayGirl
Redigerat: sep 27, 2021, 5:15 pm

>179 kidzdoc: Just going to spend a minute here celebrating having found an author before you, Darryl.

>180 NanaCC: It's a lot of fun, Colleen. I was just discussing it with a friend I met up with today. We do mini-roadtrips to visit independent bookstores. We only had a few hours today, so we drove to a nearby city, Spartanburg, SC and visited the excellently appointed Hub City Bookshop. They also run a small press that published Southern authors and I picked up a few of their books.

182lisapeet
sep 27, 2021, 5:36 pm

>181 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed Likes, Kay. And I have to say I'm fascinated by the title of Pasture Art.

183RidgewayGirl
sep 27, 2021, 8:24 pm

>182 lisapeet: Lisa, I can't resist a short story collection and those were the two that caught my eye. I'm very glad to hear that you enjoyed Likes.

184RidgewayGirl
sep 28, 2021, 4:01 pm



Evelyn makes clones, that is, she runs a lab that creates adult clones intended for temporary use. Her work has won her awards, but her marriage has failed. Then her husband's new wife contacts her and she discovers that he has used her work to create a clone of her, a version of her who is, unlike her, docile and attentive and focused on his comfort. And also pregnant. Soon after their meeting, Martine contacts her again because she has just murdered her husband and isn't sure what to do next.

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey is doing a lot in its 250-some pages, so it didn't explore every issue that crossed my mind as I read, but it did give me a lot to think about. It's primarily a caper with dead bodies (a lot of dead bodies) and a race to hide the crimes, except with clones. There's a theme running through the book about consent and agency that had me thinking, but mostly it's a will-they-get-away-with-it romp.
Den här diskussionen fortsatte här: RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Fourth Quarter