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Sharp Objects

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Looking for a quick, can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller? Look no further than “Sharp Objects.”

The book, author Gillian Flynn’s first, debuted to critical acclaim when it was published in 2007. It’s getting renewed, and well-deserved, attention thanks to Flynn’s success this summer with “Gone Girl.” Themes? Where do I start? Family dysfunction, serial killers, pain, loss, grief, rejection, batshit crazy people … it’s all packed nearly into 252 pages.

Chicago crime reporter Camille Preaker is sent back to her southern Missouri hometown to cover the possibility a serial killer is stalking the sweet little girls of Wind Gap. Camille’s upbringing was less than spectacular, and throughout the story, we’re slowly introduced to the hell that was her childhood—so much so you’ll shake your head and say out loud, “Girl be messed up.”

Camille’s trip back in time has her revisiting her past sins, along with that of her family and friends—it’s got to be tough to go home, only to discover not much has really changed. Boys are still jerks, mean girls are still mean, and yep, Mommy still doesn’t love you. Still, she soldiers on, determined to figure out who is killing feisty tween girls and why the heck they’d be interested in keeping their teeth as a souvenir.

Camille’s much younger half-sister Amma features prominently, as does her mother Adora, who makes Joan Crawford look like Carol Brady. Just like Gone Girl, there’s not too much I can say that won’t give away the ending. But really, you don’t need me to tell you. I promise you that it won’t take long to finish, and you’ll be highly entertained. If “Gone Girl” was your first Gillian Flynn experience, run, don’t walk, to get this one.

Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn

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The Midwife of Hope River

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What a lovely book.

That probably sounds contrite—and I certainly don’t mean it that way. But it is—”The Midwife of Hope River” is really, a lovely book. Engaging, romantic, quiet, introspective, sad … it’s not as gripping a novel as say, “Gone Girl.” But the story of Patience Murphy latches on to you emotionally, making it difficult to put the book down.

Murphy is, as she almost always has been, on the run. An orphan on the run, an almost-widow on the run, and now a possible felon, having played a role in the death of her activist husband, Patience has now since settled in the foothills of Appalachia in 1930, still grieving the two men she loved and the loss of her mentor, Mrs. Kelly. She would just as well be left alone if it weren’t for being the only midwife in town.

The book ebbs and flows on the birth of children in a place where no one can afford to pay for her services. Prejudice plays a role, as Patience takes on a boarder by the name of Bitsy, the African-American daughter of a housemaid in town. Love also comes to town in the form of Dr. Hester, the local vet. It’s a long, drawn-out affair that puts “50 Shades” to shame when it comes to romantic tension.
Who needs handcuffs when you can read this:

“Lightning flashes, then thunder a few seconds later, so close and so loud that it shakes the barn walls. He unbuttons the two top buttons of my dress and I let him, my heart pounding so hard that I think if it weren’t for the sound of the now-continuous claps and booms, he might hear it. When we stand, the moonshine has affected me more than I realize, and I almost fall into him.”

Sure, there feel to be a few loose ends too conveniently closed at the end of the story, but I’m not going to nitpick—author Patricia Harman did an exquisite job of making me feel for Patience at every turn, and wanting for her happiness maybe even more than she did.

The Midwife of Hope River
Patricia Harman

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The Age of Miracles

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The hell?

I’m not sure who or what told me to read “The Age of Miracles.” And let me be clear—I am not disappointed I did. But seriously …. what the hell?

This debut novel from Karen Thompson Walker was as disturbing as it was entertaining. And by entertaining, I mean that it swallowed up my day whole. I didn’t want to put it down, mesmerized by the desperate plot line. Sixth-grader Julia narrates a year in her life, beginning with a cataclysmic event—the slowing of the Earth’s rotation.

I drew an immediate connection from this book to Tom Perrotta’s “The Leftovers”—easily one of my favorites in the last couple of years. It’s the end of the world as most everyone knows it, and of course, people handle that news differently. Some deny, others accept, still more adapt. Julia’s family is a representation of those who freak, those who falter and those who simply put one foot in front of the other for no other reason that that’s really all there is to do, besides stock up on canned goods.

For fear of giving too much away, I can’t delve much more into the story. Julia’s story—the pain of adolescence, only to be exacerbated by “the slowing,”—intersects with so many others struggling to find their way. Her parents, her crush—the sad, sad Seth Moreno—her grandfather, those bitchy middle school girls you hated when you were in middle school, the “real-timers” …it’s a sad story and heartbreaking in so many ways, but so incredibly well-written and one that book clubs would love to dissect.

Go get it, read it, and someone call me to debrief! Argh!

The Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker

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The Sandcastle Girls

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You know the term “investment piece?”

We hear it a lot in fashion and furniture. Sure, it’s not exactly trendy, and it costs more, but it lasts longer. You’ll use it forever. It’s well-worth the larger financial and/or emotional investment.

That’s “The Sandcastle Girls.”

This book isn’t going to blow up the summer reading charts in the same fashion as the “50 Shades” trilogy or Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl.” But it certainly isn’t any less worthy of accolades. It’s simply a really tough read. It is about a love affair, but it’s not traditionally romantic. Set in the early 1900s in Aleppo, Syria, young Katherine Endicott has traveled from Boston on a goodwill mission to aid victims of the Armenian Genocide. It’s fiction set in fact—while the story of Katherine and her true love, Armen, may not be real, the atrocities around them are—thousands upon thousands of women and children marched hundred of miles through the desert, essentially, to their deaths. Author Chris Bohjalian leaves little to the imagination, making the reading of this book hard on the heart. And that’s really the point, I think. When should reading about a genocide ever be easy?

Still, the tale is touching and the investment Bohjalian makes in each character results in an engaging narrative. Katherine, Nevart, Hartoun and Armen sink into your soul while you read their story. And in typical Bohjalian fashion, the ending includes a twist that leaves you yelling, “Noooooo!” —not something I expected in this novel, but nonetheless, I was left breathless.

From one reader to another—historical fiction set in the Middle East has never been my bag. But Bohjalian is one of my favorite authors, so despite the occasional thoughts of abandoning it (and for no other reason than because its descriptions of the atrocities are really depressing), I kept on—and am glad I did. Bohjalian’s prose never fails me, and in the end, it was a beautiful love story. I’d love to know what other people think of Katherine’s decision in the end.

The Sandcastle Girls
Chris Bohjalian

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Gone Girl

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Wicked fun.

“Gone Girl” has been all the buzz this month, so I grabbed it for July 4th weekend, knowing I’d have a solid chunk of time to spend with it. This may well be the “it” book for the summer.

Chicago-based author Gillian Flynn takes readers on a roller coaster journey through the courtship, marriage and subsequent disappearance of Amy Dunne. Husband Nick, a hapless-but-harmless out-of-work writer has moved Amy back from spectacular NYC to the Midwest and the M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I to be closer to his sister, his dying mother and Alzheimer’s father. Amy, whose parents made a small fortune off her childhood using it for storybook fodder, raided her trust fund, leaving little financial reason to continue to make a go of it in the big city, so the timing was right. Lest I give away too much, this isn’t exactly where either Nick or Amy thought they would be 5 years into their marriage. Nick now runs a bar with his twin sister, Margot, and Amy is just … yeah. She’s got a lot of time on her hands.

The story switches off between Amy and Nick’s narration, and the book is divided into 3 neat parts, giving the reader pause as they continue forward. Is Nick innocent? Is ‘Go? Maybe it’s a crazy cop, or one of Amy’s stalkers from her past. Or maybe, as Nick’s dad believes, she’s just a crazy bitch.

This book isn’t so much “Gotcha!” as it is, “Wow, she be craaaaazy.” But it’s SO FUN. Given Nick’s faults, Amy being whack and her parents being skeevy, there’s no single character that I rooted for — it was pretty much fun watching them all squirm. However, if you need a book with a hero or heroine, read it for Margot’s brutal truth and unwavering loyalty to her brother, Nick. Or their dad’s lack of a filter. Every book needs a character wandering away from a nursing home muttering about stupid crazy bitches. Just read it. Guaranteed summer fun.

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn

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No Pulitzer for Fiction in 2012? Boo!

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The Pulitzer Awards are the book industry’s Oscars—and it was with great anticipation that I waited for the release of the list of winners. Only to be followed with an audible “WTF?” when it became clear there was no winner in the fiction category for the first time since the late 70s.

Book geek message boards began to light up with similar reactions—2011 was such a fantastic year for fiction, I thought, how could it be possible for there to be no winner?

I knew Salon.com writer Laura Miller would have something to say—and her column has offered the most insight so far. Having served as a judge, I do think her opinion carries some heft. She explains the process well, and it’s her assertion that the inability of the board to come together on a book may indicate a larger problem with the public at large—that we, for whatever reason, aren’t reading enough to make any kind of formal pronouncement on which book deserves to be labeled the best.

Chances are good that the three novels recommended by this year’s Pulitzer jury — “Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell, “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson, and “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace — are the only three serious new novels many of the board members read last year, apart, perhaps, from one or two others. These people are, after all, pretty busy doing things like editing the Denver Post and running the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, jobs that are a lot more time-consuming than they used to be, as well as selecting the winners in the other Pulitzer categories.

By all accounts, the group could not reach a majority on any of the three titles recommended by the jury. It’s certainly unlikely that enough of them read fiction widely enough to agree on an alternate choice. In that, they truly are representative of American readers, and that bodes worse for our national literature than a year without a Pulitzer winner.

Hmm. I agree with this to a point. I’m sure that given everything the board does professionally, outside of board deliberations, and their Pulitzer duty, is enough work to stop a team of oxen in its tracks. Still, I think it’s an incredible disservice to literature to avoid choosing a selection. The Pulitzer already suffers from its snobbish perception—only made worse when it appears as if the board can’t agree on one.single.book! to bestow the honor upon. As someone who loves to read, I shudder at the thought of thousands of casual readers not knowing there’s something better than “Twilight.”

The Pulitzer raises awareness. The Pulitzer can take a wonderful but obscure book and knock the likes of Snooki off the display table for at least a few days. For just a little while on the literary calendar, authors like Karen Russell, David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson get a little more attention than Stephanie Meyer and EL James.

And I’ll admit—I have yet to read any of the three finalists, though they are now on my short (ha!) list. Maybe that’s the positive we can take from this—that all three authors will have garnered some well-deserved attention.

Here are a few others that also received some Pulitzer “buzz” last year that I did get around to reading.

Ten Thousand Saints

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

The Tiger’s Wife

The Art of Fielding

State of Wonder

And a few more of my favorites from 2011:

The Night Strangers

The Leftovers

11/22/63

The Night Circus