Three Great Reads: One fiction, one nonfiction, and one crime fiction
In Allegra Goodman’s marvelous novel This Is Not About Us, an apple cake and the recipe for making it both spark a dispute between sisters that lasts throughout the story, often giving rise to further disputes and misunderstandings that are alternately poignant and hilarious. Almost from the start, I recognized this family – oy, it could have been mine!
Great dialogue, memorable characters – this story has it all, in abundance.
‘Who said comparison is the thief of joy? Or was it only on a pillow? Helen did not keep score. She took a longer, sadder view. After all, Jeanne had not lived to enjoy her descendants. It seemed to Helen that every gain was offset by some loss. She mentioned this in her Great Jewish Ideas class, and her rabbi suggested, “Or could it also be the other way around? B’erev yalin bechi, v’leboker rina. Weeping endures for a night—but joy comes in the morning.”
Helen smiled. She liked Rabbi Lieber, but she thought, You’ll learn. You’re only forty.’
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Reading Amanda Vaill’s absorbing Pride and Pleasure convinced me that I needed to learn more about the Revolutionary War. Ron and I then watched Ken Burns’s multi-part documentary, after which I proceeded to read Tom Paine’s War by Jack Kelly. This book not only covers Paine’s early life in England, but also chronicles his emigration to America in 1774 and the momentous events that followed. Thomas Paine took an active part in the Revolutionary War; he was with Washington’s troops during the grueling retreat across New Jersey – my home state! – in 1776.
But of course, it was the white hot power of Common Sense, a 47-page pamphlet published in January of 1776, that represents his most significant contribution to the fight for independence. A series of smaller pamphlets comprising The American Crisis appeared between 1776 and 1783. It is impossible to overestimate the galvanizing affect these writings had on the beleaguered and often overwhelmed soldiers of this war. The historian Bernard Bailyn called Common Sense “one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language.”
Along with my newly awakened interest in the American Revolution, I was particularly intrigued by the case of Benedict Arnold. What could possibly have impelled him to commit such a great betrayal? He had served so brilliantly as a leader in the early years of the war. I found that Jack Kelly had also written a book on this subject. I enjoyed his writing so much in Tom Paine’s war that I decided to read God Save Benedict Arnold next. I recommend both of these titles highly.
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Finally, there’s Don Winslow’s masterwork of crime fiction. The Final Score consists of six narratives. They are of moderate length, and each is entirely absorbing. The first is “The Final Score.” It starts like this:
‘John Highland is going to die in prison.
He’s been found guilty of armed robbery, in this case of an armored car. That’s twenty-five years, federal time, which means he’ll serve at least 85 percent of the sentence. Twenty-one years. He’s coming on sixty now, so he might get out when he’s eighty.
Or not.’
John Highland has some unfinished business to attend to…
Next comes “The Sunday List.” The place is Rhode Island; the year is 1970:
‘Every Sunday, Nick McKenna picks up the list.
Known as the “Sunday List” for the obvious reason.
You see, Rhode Island is a dry state on Sundays.’
This may be my favorite story; it has a beating heart. You really root for Nick, a boy trying to get ahead in the right way.
“North Wing” begins this way:
‘The night Chrissy Pritchett kills Sarah Gaines isn’t that much different from a lot of other nights.’
Chrissy is actually a guy, but he becomes ‘Chris’ as the story develops.
“True Story” consists of a long running dialog that toggles between spooky and hilarious:
‘–True story. You know Lenny, right?
–Lenny the Barber or Lenny No Socks?
–Lenny No Socks.
–You kidding? I’ve known him since he wore socks.’
And on it goes….
“Lunch Break” is the story of the infuriating and ultimately endangering antics of a spoiled Hollywood starlet:
‘DAVE-UH!”
No response.
“Dave-uh!”
Dave the Love God—the aforementioned “Dave-uh” in West Coast Gen Z female dialect—pretends not to hear.
“DAVE-UH!”
Dave gives up and walks from the living room into the bedroom of the suite at La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla where Brittany McVeigh is sitting up in bed, her copper hair disheveled, her face twisted into a grimace of discontent.’
And finally, “Collision:”
Life can be viewed as a series of collisions.
In fact, some scientists would say that all of life, all of existence, is a series of billions upon billions of collisions between atoms. We don’t really know.
What we do know is that our human lives have collisions.
Collisions between who we want to be and who we are. Collisions between what we want and what we don’t. Between dreams and reality. Between wants and needs, good and bad, right and wrong.
We think we have one life, but we have several.
We’re sons, fathers, husbands, lovers, brothers, daughters, mothers, wives, sisters, friends, citizens, employers, employees.
We think we live in one world, but we live in many.
Those worlds can collide.
“Collision” is the moat harrowing story in the collection. It is tough going, in some places. I read somewhere that it’s going to be filmed, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. (I hope I got that spelling right.) All I can say is, Fasten your seat belts…
The Final Score is crime writing at its most brilliant. I loved this book.
Books From My Past
So, what do these five books have in common? I will tell you: each of them was read by me at some point during my twenty-five years of employment at the Howard County Library. Moreover, each of them made a distinct impression on me, so that years later, I still think about them.
This is not to say that I can recall specific content. For the most part, I can’t. This blog is no help; I read these works before I started blogging. Only one of them is noted by me in this space, and it is but a brief mention. I quote it here:
‘Bloody Falls of the Coppermine (2005) by McKay Jenkins. A riveting account of the murder of two priests, in 1913, by members of a tribe of Arctic Eskimos whose way of life hearkened back to the Stone Age. This book has it all: atmosphere, suspense, crime, retribution – and the most intrepid investigation imaginable, courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Very highly recommended.’ (From the post Roberta Recommends: true crime.)
Of late, I’ve been reading books almost exclusively on Kindle. Only two of the above titles are available in that format. Bloody Falls of the Coppermine is one of them; The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is the other. So if I want to reread the remaining three, in addition to the two aforementioned, I’m going to have to return to reading hard copies. I think I can do that now, since I recently had cataract surgery and as a consequence my vision is vastly improved.
Due to my hazy recollections, I’m going to borrow from other sources to give you an idea of what the books other than Bloody Falls are about:
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page…”is the fictionalised autobiography of an archetypal Guernseyman, Ebenezer Le Page, who lives through the dramatic changes in the island of the Guernsey, Channel Islands from the late nineteenth century, through to the 1960s.” (from Wikipedia)
Clara Reeve: ‘Clara Reeve marries her cousin Niles after she inherits a large fortune. She lives with him for more than a year but their marriage is never consummated. The gothic plot confirms what most Victorian women commonly expected: that underneath it all, the man you marry is really a monster. Clara Reeve discovers, after an arduous and poignant journey through innocence, that the monster she marries is really….’ I’m omitting the revelation at the end of this sentence; it is a major spoiler. (from The New York Times)
Revelations is the story of…’ a Virginia pastor who falls in love with a married woman and, partly through her, experiences God’s presence. From the first day, it was clear that young Thomas Buckford was the wrong man to take over as pastor of the Naughton, Virginia, Episcopal church. Idealistic, intense, disconcertingly handsome, and a veteran of a poverty-stricken parish up north, Buckford shares little with the cocktail-slugging, old-monied congregation that has brought him here.’ (from Kirkus Reviews, as quoted on Amazon)
The Brocken: ‘Another of Hill’s acidulous little gems featuring serenely horrid people, victims who either drop passively from the twisted family tree, or hurtle down spitting, along with blackly comic turns of fortune fueled by monstrous acts. Here, a London banking family is reduced, at the close, to one pragmatic nasty passing the torch and to an incestuous relationship in thrilling and intricate bloom.’ (from Kirkus Reviews)
I may return to any, or all of these books. And I would very much like to hear from any readers of this blog who are familiar with any of them.
Favorite Nonfiction of 2025
Last year was a great year for nonfiction – at least, it was for this reader.
This was a a pleasant, rather than a deeply profound read. Bee Wilson, a distinguished British writer about food, does weave the story of her painful divorce in among her tales of notable kitchen objects and their associations. The Heart-Shaped Tin will probably appeal more to “foodies’ than it did to me, but Wilson’s writing is graceful and her subject is sufficiently unusual to generate a certain amount of interest. (I pretty much lost interest in food writing when I got my diabetes diagnosis. Reading about delicious-looking dishes and then realizing that they almost all had too many carbohydrates made me feel sad and somewhat antagonistic at the same time.)
I’ve only read one novel by Muriel Spark: A Far Cry From Kensington. I read it quite a while ago, so I don’t remember it well, but I do recall that it impressed me deeply. I thought this new biography would be interesting, and so it was, chiefly because it put Dame Muriel in the context of mid-twentieth century British literature, an intriguing cultural landscape.
The full title of this book is Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival. Well! There was no way I could resist reading it. The author had to do a deal of speculating, as hard information about Christopher Marlowe is very thin on the ground. Even that cover picture of Marlowe, a painting made while he was a student at Cambridge, is in some degree disputed. (I read somewhere that it nearly got thrown into the garbage, at one point.) Is it really him? I choose to believe that it is. No other likeness has ever been found.
Marlowe was stabbed to death on May 30, 1593 in a tavern brawl in Deptford, an area now incorporated into London. He was 29 years old. Much mystery still surrounds his murder. (The Google AI Overview offers a good summary: How did Christopher Marlowe die?) Whatever the cause, we lost a brilliant mind that day. Below is the final monologue from Marlowe’s masterpiece Doctor Faustus, with the great Richard Burton in the title role:
Gilbert King reports on – and investigates – crime and injustice in the state of Florida – that’s his beat. In 2018, I read Beneath a Ruthless Sun, his very compelling account of a man convicted of a rape which he did not commit. Among other things, this book describes the workings of a shockingly corrupt sheriff’s department. It’s true Southern Gothic, like something out of Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor. Bone Valley contains its own share of shocking stories, the main one concerning a man serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit. Not only did he not commit it – someone else had confessed to it!
Angelica, Elizabeth, and Peggy Schuyler lived through the turbulent years of the American Revolution. Elizabeth, called Eliza, was the wife of Alexander Hamilton. Unlike her two sisters, she lived an amazingly long life.
Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton 1757-1854
This stirring depiction of a crucial time in our history made me want to watch the new Ken Burns series. I am learning many things about the Revolution which I was never taught in school. I highly recommend this beautiful and meticulous production.
I’m always on the lookout for books about art and artists. Two titles in 2025 were particularly rewarding.
I cannot stop reading and thinking about Vincent Van Gogh. It makes my heart ache, but I just keep doing it. I’ve read these books
I own this delightful volume:
I also have a collection of his letters, which are poignant and beautiful by the way, and well worth reading.
A Fire in His Soul is a solid entry in the field, and a good place to start if you haven’t yet read a life of Van Gogh. (There is also Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. This book, published in 2001, clocks in at a whopping 976 pages in hardback, so it’s a serious commitment.)
I can never mention Van Gogh without referencing this wonderful recreation from the Doctor Who TV series. I’m moved by it, each time I watch it:
This was a terrific companion to the Van Gogh bio. I loved it – and so did many others. Witness the accolades:
One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025
One of The New Yorker’s Top Books of 2025
One of Vogue’s Best Books of 2025
One of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of the Year
One of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2025
One of the Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2025
Shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize
Winner of the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award
Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards
Wild Thing is filled with revelations about this great artist and the fascinating and turbulent times in which he lived. Gauguin spent his early childhood years in Peru, where his mother had family. When he was six years old, his mother returned to France. Gauguin disliked living in France; in school, he used to try and scare fellow pupils by shouting, “I am a savage from Peru!”
Gauguin’s first job was as a stockbroker. He made a good living that way. He married a Danish woman, with whom he ultimately had five children. But in 1882, the Paris stock market crashed. Gauguin’s earnings took a serious hit. At that point, he decided to pursue painting as his livelihood. Alas, the money dried up and stayed dried up.
There’s much more to this story; Prideaux tells it in a beautiful and compelling way. Shortly after reading Wild Thing, I had the opportunity once again to visit The Art Institute in Chicago. I made it a point to seek out one of the Gauguin works housed there. This might be my favorite:
‘Stan’ is Stanford White; ‘Gus’ is Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The first was an architect; the second, a sculptor. Both were immensely gifted in their respective disciplines. As the subtitle of this dual biography states, they both took part in the explosion of artistic gifts that characterized the so-called Gilded Age, defined as follows by Wikipedia:
‘In United States history, the Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mark Twain’s 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.‘
Theirs was an unlikely friendship but an enduring and mutually supportive one. White was the more flamboyant of the two. At one point, he entered into a relationship with Evelyn Nesbit, a young – very young – showgirl. She was married to the wealthy and highly unstable Harry K. Thaw. On the night of June 26 1906, Thaw and White were both attending a show at the rooftop venue of Madison Square Garden. Thaw had come armed, and took advantage of the opportunity to shoot White, killing him instantly.
Edifices designed by Stanford White, both in Manhattan:
Works by Augustus Saint-Gaudens:
It’s 1973 and a British couple, Maralyn and Maurice Bailey, have decided against settling down to a humdrum suburban life in the suburbs. Instead, they want an adventure. So they purchase a boat and set about realizing their dream.
A dream that swiftly turns into a nightmare.
I’ve read survival stories before – The White Darkness was especially good – but A Marriage at Sea was incredibly compelling. It was not only about living through an unimaginable experience, but also about two people loving and supporting each other when they had nothing else to offer in the way of help or consolation.
Click here for my review. A Marriage at Sea was also one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of 2025.
In this deeply affecting work of reportage, Brian Goldstone tells the story of five families in the greater Atlanta area, all of whom are struggling to establish a decent home for themselves and their children. All five families are African American; all are headed by women, with fathers drifting in and out of the picture. It is shocking and heartbreaking to witness what these people endure, even as they work sometimes at multiple jobs in an effort to stay solvent. Child care is almost always an issue; rents are too high; salaries too low.
These are heartbreaking and enraging stories, told with eloquence and compassion.
This title was also selected as one of the New York Times Best Books of 2025.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh,Scotland, in 1850. His father was a famed engineer who constructed lighthouses in various Scottish port cities. (There is a book about him and his firm of builders called The Lighthouse Stevensons.) As a child, Stevenson suffered from a bronchial ailment that was originally thought to be tuberculosis. (It is now thought to be sarcoidosis.) He was plagued by ill health throughout his life.
Stevenson attended the University of Edinburgh. He was supposedly studying engineering, so as to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, he had no interest in the subject. Eventually, he traveled widely and realized that writing was his true vocation.
Stevenson’s personal life was fascinating. In 1880, he married an American woman named Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. She was divorced and had three children. At the time they wed, he was 29 years old; she was 40. It was a solid, loving, and supportive union.
One of Stevenson’s most famous works is his first novel, Treasure Island, published in 1882.
This was followed by such well known titles as Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889) But his single most famous novel is a short, atypical work whose title character (characters?) has become a part of the English language: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).
This double exposure of actor Richard Mansfield in the role (roles?) of Jekyll and Hyde in an 1887-1888 stage production. Apparently he was so convincing that an audience member reported to the police that he might actually be Jack the Ripper.
In 1890, Stevenson and his family moved to Samoa in a desperate attempt to find a suitable climate where his health might improve. To no avail; he passed away in December of 1894. He was 44 years old.
As well as being a novelist, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote numerous short stories. Many years ago I read one called “The Bottle Imp.” It’s a tale of mounting desperation; I’ve been haunted by it ever since. Click here to read it. He also wrote poetry. I grew up reading “A Child’s Garden of Verses.”
This is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. I loved it, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Already now, in 2026, I’ve read some really engaging nonfiction. So stay tuned…
Best Crime fiction of 2025: mysteries and espionage, and memories of great crime writers past….
And then again, too few to mention…
Well, I’ll mention them anyway, then I’ll comment on the small number:
With the exception of Endless Night, none of the above titles are fresh in my mind. So I’ll just state the following: Michael Connelly is one of the few authors whose books I pick up as soon as they roll off the press. He never disappoints me. (Same is true of Donna Leon.) I haven’t read that much of Val McDermid’s crime fiction, but what I’ve read, I’ve liked very much. I’ve also read several titles by Denise Mina. I’m going to recommend The Good Liar, despite the fact that I wasn’t quite as thrilled with it as most reviewers were.
Now, as for Transcription and The Predicament. These were both espionage novels that took place some years in the past. The Boyd title was a fast read and a terrifically enjoyable one. Transcription is set during the Second World War. A naive young woman goes to work transcribing the conversations of a group of British people who are passing secrets to the enemy. As the narrative proceeds, tension steadily mounts. On the surface, the setup is very static; in reality, it is anything but.
Kate Atkinson is a marvelous writer. Her masterpiece, in my view, is Life After Life, a book that plays with timelines in an incredibly cunning and devastating way.
So why so few crime fiction titles for the whole year? I guess this is just my own problem, but out of all the mystery subgenres, I love British police procedurals the best. Oh, where are those authors of yesteryear?? Colin Dexter (Morse), Peter Robinson (Alan Banks), P.D. James (Adam Dalgliesh), Ruth Rendell (Reginald Wexford), Reginald Hill (Dalziel and Pascoe), Peter Lovesey (Peter Diamond)…all gone to Crime Writers Heaven, alas.
Very few crime writers are producing procedurals these days. One that is is Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Her Bill Slider novels are great reads and exceptionally witty as well. (Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels are also procedurals.)
Finally, a return to Dame Agatha. Endless Night is a late entry in her oeuvre; it was originally published in the UK in 1967. It features neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple. Like The Pale Horse, it has a somewhat darker tone than her earlier novels and stories. Plus it has an ending that’s…well, I don’t want to say anything about it except that it caught me completely off guard.
The novel’s title comes from “Auguries of Innocence,” a poem by William Blake. The third section of this haunting work contains the following lines:
‘Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.’
Book (and Magazine) News
Behold a nifty little mag that Ron and I have become very fond of:
Among its other virtues, The Week devotes two pages in each issue to book news and reviews. I am deeply grateful for this feature!
Each week, an author or other literary luminary selects six favorite books and annotates each title. It’s always interesting to see who chooses what. (I always like to see which ones I’ve read – or tried to read.) In the January 16 issue, the author picks were chosen by Matthew Pearl. Here they are:
Matthew Pearl is obviously an admirer of Patricia Highsmith’s fiction. Here’s a write-up I did on a book discussion of Strangers on a Train back in 2009. Every now and then, The Usual Suspects, a discussion with my mystery book group back in Maryland, really nailed it. This is a good example of that phenomenon.
The only title from Matthew Pearl’s list that I have not read is Ripley’s Game.
This exercise as made me ponder what six books, if asked, I would select. These two immediately came to mind:
I’ve written in this space about both of these superb works of nonfiction, A Sultry Month and Poets in a Landscape. (Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the latter.) Then there’s Penelope Fitzgerald’s brilliant work of historical fiction, The Blue Flower.
Oh and of course I’d have to choose an Anthony Trollope title – I don’t yet know which one!
And on and on….
Matthew Pearl is a writer who is of special interest to me. His aunt, ‘C’, is my oldest friend – we’ve known each other since junior high! (That’s Nautilus Junior High, in Miami Beach, Florida.) C’s sister ‘S’, Matthew’s mother, is a woman of strength, tenderness, and steadfast devotion. I admire them both enormously, and love them both.
Matthew Pearl’s latest work is entitled The Award. This novel is a wicked, no-holds-barred skewering of the world of writing as it is today. Authors, publishers, publicists, critics – all take it on the chin! It’s a highly enjoyable read.
Best Reading, 2025: Fiction
The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie. Nothing stops Salman Rushdie, not even being nearly killed by a savage knife attack at Chautauqua in 2022.
This novel features a not very likeable protagonist. In fact, one could almost call him an obnoxious snob. But oh well, watching his his amour propre get dented and pretty much destroyed on the honeymoon from Hell – he manages to misplace his wife! – is rather entertaining, plus as a setting, La Serenissima is hard to beat.
A poignant story about loss and mourning, beautifully written. Definitely the first novel I’ve ever read that is translated from the Bulgarian language! And really, he had me with those first sentences: “My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden.”
Audition by Katie Kitamura. The first sentence of my review of this work is “Audition is a strange book.”
So I wasn’t sure whether to include this book in this post. In the first half of the story, we meet the unctuous and appropriately named Mr. Fox, a middle school teacher no less, with some unforgivable proclivities. The second half relates the police investigation into Fox’s fate, which no one could possibly lament. This part of the book had me truly mesmerized. But I think the novel should come with a warning: you may find some of the content simply too disturbing to deal with. I’m not sure what is says about me that I was so powerfully drawn into this depiction of evil that pulls no punches.
Whew! Well, so now I can move on to novels with far more engaging themes and characters. I speak, of course, of the wonderful works of Anthony Trollope.
Just a few weeks a go, several of us who are members of the Trollope Society USA concluded our online discussion of The American Senator. This is the second such discussion I’ve participated in; the first was Mr. Scarborough’s Family. In both instances, the novels and the discussions were hugely enjoyable. We connect via Zoom, so that members from various places can easily participate.
Our next selection for discussion is Framley Parsonage. This is the fourth title in Trollope’s six-book saga Barchester Chronicles. I’ve already read it twice. Third time, here I come! Meanwhile, I wanted to slip in another Trollope, one which I hadn’t previously read. My choice, which I just finished, was Bullhampton Vicarage. This novel centered on a situation frequently encountered in Trollope’s novels; namely, lovers who yearn to marry but cannot due to financial or other obstacles. The crisis moment, when it finally occurs late in the novel, is truly harrowing.
Our group’s leader has stated the opinion that Trollope is the true inheritor, from Jane Austen, of the marriage plot. (I agree with her.)
And now, for my four favorite contemporary fiction titles of the year:
Kiran Desai covered all the bases in this magisterial work. The action ricochets from India to America, with stops in Italy and a few other places along the way. While Sonia and Sunny are trying to work out their respective fates, the crowded canvas presents us with sundry other characters – friends, family, and others who just wander in and out of the narrative. The writing is lovely:
‘Mama sat out with Babayaga until late, looking upon the enchantment of the forest. A scops owl came out to hunt a squirrel. The owl was disrupted by the branches and found it difficult to land; the squirrel ran from branch to branch; the bird followed but still couldn’t catch the squirrel. The squirrel was silent, the owl was silent. Briefly, before they vanished, the squirrel running, the bird gliding, the owl swiveled and looked at Mama. The woods filled with cool moonlight.’
The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia made it onto several Best of 2025 lists, including the New York Times selection of Ten Best Books of the Year.
In Fonseca, Jessica Francis Kane imagines in enchanting detail a trip that novelist Penelope Fitzgerald made to Mexico. Fitzgerald has gone there in hopes of securing a legacy from two childless, rather eccentric sisters-in-law. She and her husband Desmond need the money. (Fitzgerald actually did make this trip in 1952.)
Desmond has not accompanied Penelope on this fact-finding mission, but she does bring along her six-year-old son. His name is Valpy. He is one of the most irresistible children I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending fictional time with! I kept wishing I could make him materialize in front of me and give him a robust embrace, and then send him on his way.
Fonseca seems to have flown under the radar of those literary worthies in charge of compiling best-of-the-year lists. I urge them, and you, to read this absolute gem of a novel. Having done that, or before doing it, treat yourself to one of Penelope Fitzgerald’s terrific historical novels. My two favorites are The Beginning of Spring and The Blue Flower.
I’ve already reviewed the last two books in this group. The first is by one of my favorite authors, Ian McEwan. In What We Can Know, he is writing at the height of his considerable powers. I cannot praise highly enough McEwan’s eloquent, meticulous prose and his provocative storytelling. In my view, he stands at the summit of novel writing:
‘As was noted long ago, we are all innocent children in the tall forest of our clever inventions. What brings our students round to the beginning of a mature understanding of history and an appreciation of what the past has imagined is – simply – detail. The everyday life of, say, a mid-twenty-first-century junior doctor as told by her digital traffic, recording her week: dropping her young children at nursery, dealing with intractable illnesses, difficult patients, useless or gifted colleagues, low pay, constant pressure, keeping watch on troubling political developments, meeting friends, loving or ceasing to love her husband, paying bills, streaming new music, planning a holiday, worrying about a pain, ordering the shopping – and so on, a picture made up of countless points of different colours, like a landscape by Seurat, whose work we display and explain, can arouse even the dullest of our students into an acceptance of shared humanity across an immensity of time.’
Finally, there is Evensong by Stewart O’Nan. It is hard to put into words what to my mind makes this novel so exceptional. It features a cast of quite ordinary characters, living in a quite ordinary suburb. The individuals in question are growing old, and they seek to help one another with daily tasks, especially regarding transportation. They each feel a mixture of empathy and exasperation. And, to some degree, fear. This book struck me so forcibly; it strove to depict the divine element that resides in every human being.
From a chapter entitled Requiem:
‘They all had their losses, and if time made them easier to bear, the dead were also more remote and harder to recall, a silent slideshow of old memories unchanging as the past. Emily and Arlene had been alone for so long. It was the fate that awaited Kitzi, and while she vowed that she would sell the house after Martin died rather than inhabit an empty shell, she wasn’t certain she could leave everything she knew behind for a box of an apartment in Maxon Towers or the Morrowfield, no matter how cozy. Susie, who had done exactly that, was still surprised to wake up in a new place with a cat and now some mornings a strange man, as if her other life had never happened. She missed not Richard but her garden and the woods beyond, the deer and turkeys silently passing through the birches as she watched from the window over the sink. Gone, all of it, the children grown, the house sold. There was no going back.’
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Next up: the best crime and espionage fiction. Oh and I wish to leave you with this Bach piece, Sing Unto the Lord a New Song, to welcome in the New Year:
Give the gift of Reading, 2025:
In 1863, in regard to the substance of his novels, Anthony Trollope made the following observation to George Eliot:
‘I have attempted to confine myself to the commonest details of commonplace life among the most ordinary people, allowing myself no incident that would be even remarkable in everyday life.’
In hewing to this principle, Trollope succeeds time and again in revealing the innermost depths of his memorable characters. Stewart O’Nan performs the same effortless magic in his latest novel, Evensong. The setting is the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where a group of older woman have formed an organization dedicated to serving the needs of elderly residents of their community who need transportation and assistance with other needs in order to remain in their own homes. The organization has named itself The Humpty Dumpty Club.
The combination of compassion, anxiety and determination are part and parcel of the doings of the Club’s members. And it is in the depiction of these individuals as they go about their self-imposed tasks that the author succeeds brilliantly.
It is probably already evident from what I’ve written here: I LOVED THIS BOOK! Read it, then give it to someone you know who loves great writing and great storytelling. They will thank you.
The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Somehow I managed to get to this point in my life without having read anything by Salman Rushdie. Like just about everyone else, I’ve read plenty about him, from the issuing of the notorious fatwa to the ghastly knife attack at Chautauqua in 2022. When I started seeing notices of a new work of fiction by Rushdie, I decided it was time to remedy this omission in my reading life.
The stories in The Eleventh Hour range from just a few pages in length to almost novella length. (Two of the shorter tales appeared originally in The New Yorker.) Rushdie makes liberal use of what is usually termed magical realism. This is a device that I’m not ordinarily fond of, but Rushdie’s artistry and humor won me over right away.
My favorite story in this delightful collection is “Late.” It begins this way:
‘When the Honorary Fellow S. M. Arthur woke up in his darkened College bedroom he was dead, but at first that didn’t seem to change anything.’
Rushdie’s narration of what happens next is strangely convincing, not to mention oddly compelling. I felt grateful to him for this tender, almost lighthearted evocation of an afterlife, for a character that I came to care about deeply.
(That opening sentence reminded me a bit of Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect’
But the element of fear and desperation so vivid in Kafka’s chilling novella is absent from “Late,” replaced instead by a sense of wonder.)
The writing throuhout is beautiful and contains welcome touches of wit.
Highly recommended.
Photo above from an article in The Guardian
Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida, by Gilbert King
It was August 2017 when author/photographer/investigator Gilbert King made his way to Naples, Florida. He was slated to deliver the keynote address to the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, which was taking place at a venue in that city. During a lunch break, as King was chatting with some of the judges, a man approached and handed him a business card. On the back of the card was written the following:
LEO SCHOFIELD #115760 HARDEE C.I.
NOT JUST “WRONGFULLY CONVICTED,”
HE’S AN INNOCENT MAN.
As the man walked away, he turned to King and indicated that he should call him.
As summarized on Gilbert King’s website, here is how matters stood:
‘In 1988, 22-year-old Leo Schofield—a heavy metal guitarist from Lakeland, Florida—was arrested and charged with the murder of his 18-year-old wife, Michelle. Leo maintained his innocence from the beginning, but he was failed at nearly every turn: the investigation was shoddy, the defense inadequate, and critical evidence was overlooked. Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, Leo exhausted his appeals and seemed destined to remain in the shadows.’
Author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning narrative Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, a Pulitzer-Prize winning narrative, as well as Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found, Gilbert King was a busy man with a full schedule; nevertheless, he was immediately intrigued by this situation. He followed up on the lead he’d been given. The result was a podcast, the exoneration of a wrongly imprisoned man, and ultimately the book Bone Valley.
Highly, highly recommended.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
‘”Mr Toby! Mr. Toby!”‘
A chance encounter on a London street causes Juliet Armstrong call out excitedly to a man she’s sure she recognizes – someone she worked beside in ‘the old days.’ But Godfrey Toby frostily informs her that she must be mistaken – he does not know her, has never seen her before. Juliet is bewildered. Why would he refuse to acknowledge her? It must have to do with their former employment….
For Juliet and Godfrey Toby worked in Intelligence, during the Second World War. They were installed in an apartment directly adjacent to where a cell of collaborators were busy passing information to the enemy. Juliet’s group secretly recorded their conversations; it was Juliet’s task to generate transcriptions of these forbidden revelations.
Type, type, type…
Juliet came to join this operation at a very young age. She was guileless and naive, at the time. As she burrows deeply into her remit, this changes. Unavoidably, her mindset alters, and her whole life changes.
‘Juliet had been easy to recruit. She had believed in fairness and equality, in justice and truth. She believed that England could be a better country. She was the apple ripe for plucking and she had also been Eve willing to eat the apple. The endless dialectic between innocence and experience.’
Kate Atkinson is an author I have long admired. An early novel, Case Histories, was hugely entertaining and highly irreverent. Then came Life Histories, a completely different kind of a novel, on a grand scale, profound and riveting.
Transcription boasts that rarity in contemporary fiction: a terrific conclusion. In fact, the whole novel is terrific – I loved it!
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Books to the Ceiling 
