Book art
From my whimsical artist friend, Deb Middleton-Hope…
Completist?
My reading habits have changed over the years, partly because I’m not as willing as I was when younger to stick out a book I am not enjoying, and partly because (I like to think) I’ve become a bit less of a control freak. It used to be that if I found an author I liked, I had to read absolutely every book they had ever written, so as to know their complete catalog. I learned that this was sometimes a mistake; it can become disillusioning if you have idealized or even idolized that author to read, for instance, one of their early, less well formed works, or (in the case of some long-time authors) one of the later ones when they quit trying and phoned it in. So I have become more interested in reviews, and I look for red flags to warn me off certain books.
I missed that cue on a book I read lately, and it wasn’t a catastrophe—I enjoyed the book for what it was—but when I belatedly looked it up on Goodreads and found out that Three Wishes was Liane Moriarty’s first novel, I wasn’t surprised.
The book is about the Kettle sisters, Lynn, Cat, and Gemma—
a set of triplets who have just turned 33—and follows the lives of each of them as they confront challenges separately and together. Moriarty also cleverly includes in the narrative some “remote” views of the triplets at various ages from the perspective of outsiders who run into them at the park or see them in a restaurant and then comment about the experience to someone else.
Although I found all the various relationships—between the sisters, with their spouses, children, parents, outsiders—involving, there were a few things not to like about the book, that echoed my response to the early works of another novelist, Jenny Colgan. Whenever I recommend Colgan’s books, which I like very much, I always add hastily, read everything after 2012. That seemed to be a turning point for her, when she quit writing about shallow, artificial, unlikeable characters and started embracing her now-trademark touching, empathetic, and charming ones. I’m not saying she went over the sappy line, just that they quit being actively annoying and started exhibiting positive qualities. That was the main problem I had with Three Wishes: I didn’t much like any of the three sisters, so it was hard to invest and sometimes even to keep reading about them. I also felt like one of them got a raw deal from the other two that didn’t get resolved by the end, and since she was the one with whom I had the most sympathy, that was off-putting.
There’s none of the intrigue or thrill of Big Little Lies or the unexpected plot twist of What Alice Forgot here; it’s a simple relationship novel. (I did prefer it to Nine Perfect Strangers, however!) There’s nothing wrong with that; I have just come to expect a little something extra from Moriarty. But I’d say it’s worth reading, with the words “first novel” always in the back of your mind.
Chefs of the gods
I picked up A Thousand Recipes for Revenge, by Beth Cato, as a bargain book through BookBub. This sometimes indicates that book sales haven’t been that great, but in this case it seems that it was simultaneously published in three formats (paperback, Kindle, and audio book) all on June 1st, so perhaps it was just a promotional gimmick. It’s a fantasy, and as such I found it immediately immersive.
The premise is intriguing: The tag line is “Chefs of the Five Gods #1,” and it’s about people who are born with the special gift of an empathic connection to food and wine—a magical perception of aromas, flavors, and ingredients and, in special cases, the actual ability to intuit what dishes, with what seasonings in kind and quantity, would best please the palate of the diner with whom they are confronted. Needless to say, this ability is highly prized, with the result that while the Chefs, as they are known, are treated like royalty, they are also constrained in their freedom. There are several kingdoms in this story, and in one of them (Verdania) the chefs are “in service” to the gods-ordained rulers of the country, another way to say they are virtual prisoners, not allowed to go elsewhere or work for anyone but the crown. (This is reminiscent of the children born with two different colored eyes and some innate gift in the world of Graceling, by Kristin Cashore.)
The story is told from two points of view, the first being that of Adamantine Garland, who escaped 16 years ago from the position forced upon her, and is living under the radar with her grandmother, both of them rogue Chefs. Since the punishment for abandoning the post of Chef is either death or to lose your tongue (and therefore your gift), they have good reason to take care not to reveal themselves, especially by cooking too well! But circumstances that transpired just before Ada disappeared from the court of Verdania are about to bring her perilously out of hiding.
Solenn is the princess of Braiz, a neighboring land to Verdania, and a marriage has been arranged between her and Verdania’s prince, a 14-year-old boy still more concerned with his friends and amusements than with girls and weddings. It is hoped by the union of these two children and countries that together they will be able to withstand the greater might of another nearby more powerful kingdom, Albion. Something unexpected happens, however, during Solenn’s ceremonious and extended welcome to Verdania—her own magical perceptions awaken (this usually happens at a much younger age), and make her aware that there is a plot by Albion to kill the prince. This unexpected kindling of power (as far as she knows, there are no Chefs in her ancestry) sets in motion several plot twists that will bring together unlikely players in the attempt to save civilization from destructive forces.
I enjoyed the story for several reasons. I liked the world-building: The background felt like a French court from the 17th Century, with musketeers, fancy dress, and court intrigue. But the principle characters who played things out against this backdrop were refreshingly ordinary in their thoughts, actions, and priorities. I liked that there was a wide span of age groups represented in the participants—a few teenagers, some middle-aged adults, and elderly relatives with infirmities that must be regarded. I enjoyed the set-up of the Five Gods of these kingdoms, their various affinities connecting to both food and the greater world (for instance, Selland is associated both with salt and with the sea), and the relationships people maintained with a specific god they considered their patron or guardian. The gods were also refreshingly arbitrary and human in their behavior, which made things more interesting. I enjoyed all the plot twists and, although I’m not sure this was intended as a young adult novel, I felt like this was an example of a book that would appeal equally to teens and to grown-ups who enjoy fantasy. I did not enjoy the somewhat abrupt ending with the realization that I would have to wait for the sequel!
It seems the plan is for the next book to come out in the same three formats next January. This one has been nominated for a Nebula Award, and Beth Cato has apparently also written another duology and a trilogy that I will have to check out. She also has a blog called “Bready or not” (I love a good pun, I used to have a bread-baking business called “Friends in Knead”), and an Instagram page (@catocatsandcheese) featuring gardening, bread, cheese, and cats. I could definitely be friends with this person!
Cozy
I felt the need to read something simple and comforting after my unexpected discovery that Miss Benson’s Beetle was anything but (see previous post), so when someone on the Facebook reading page asked for cozy mystery recommendations, I decided to do likewise and find a new author in a gentler genre.
I ended up with the Julia Bird mysteries by Katie Gayle, beginning with An English Garden Murder. I’m a sucker for anything with small quaint British villages, cottage gardens, and hey, a chocolate labrador puppy named Jake as one of the main characters.
Julia Bird has fled London after a somewhat unexpected retirement from a career as a social worker and an extremely surprising divorce in which her husband Peter leaves her for a garden designer named Christopher. She ends up in a picturesque and cozy cottage in the Cotswolds, and settles into a life she expects to contain no bigger excitement than adding a chicken coop and some laying hens to her backyard potagère. But when the local handyman and his son tear down a garden shed in order to replace it with the coop, they find a dead body buried underneath, apparently for decades. No one in the village (including the police) has a clue who it could be, so Julia decides to do her own investigation, which leads, dismayingly, to another dead body! Oops. Someone in the village has apparently killed twice—is Julia in peril as she moves closer to the truth?
I enjoyed the delineation of the characters in this series quite a bit. They are all individuals, with enough detail given about appearance, mannerisms, and possible agendas that you don’t have to keep reminding yourself who is whom, sometimes a problem when there is a fairly large cast. The scene-setting details likewise gave a complete picture of the surroundings, which is always pleasing. There is, every once in a while, a passage filled with so much detail that it seems over the top—a description, say, of the person’s entire morning routine with all the minutiae included, that has no bearing on the story—but this was a fairly minor flaw in what proved an enjoyable read. So, I went on to the next two books: Murder in the Library, and A Village Fete Murder.
This is when I started to think that I would have done better to seek out a more well known cozy series instead of this trio of quickly turned out (all three within nine months!) books by what turns out to be two authors (Katie and Gayle) working together. Say, the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich or, hey, Agatha Christie! That’s because each of the next two had almost the identical formula to the first. Julia finds the bodies; Julia can’t resist being a busybody by soliciting local gossip and visiting possible suspects on her own without benefit of police oversight; and her poking around then results in another body because someone has caught on to something as a result of the extra attention, and doesn’t want to be found out. No blame to poor Julia, of course (although some of the villagers have nicknamed her the Grim Reaper).
In the second book, the minute one character confided, in front of three other people, that she needed to talk to Julia about something, I knew she was body #2. In the third, Julia carries on a conversation with the local police officer on her cell phone in a public place, and I knew that someone was listening (wasn’t sure who, but someone) who would benefit from the indiscreet conveyance of important information.
So…while I continued to enjoy both the character creation and the descriptions of both the surroundings and the small-town events, the fact that I had solved the crime a while before Julia in each book was a bit off-putting. If you are a person who enjoys having the advantage in this way, you may really like these books, but as for me, even in a cozy genre I prefer my stories to be more challenging. (There will be a fourth book, but I think I’m done with Julia. But if you are intrigued, it’s called Murder at the Inn, due out in August.)
Quirky?
On the strength of enthusiastic comments on What Should I Read Next?, I picked up Miss Benson’s Beetle, by Rachel Joyce. I haven’t read anything by her before, but saw some raves for two of her previous books, and I’m usually a fan of quirky characters—Eleanor Oliphant, Fern Castle, Don Tillman, Leonard Peacock, A. J. Fikry, have all figured on the list of characters’ stories I have enjoyed.
While there were parts of this book in which the characters rose to the level of those, some of the events of the story, paired with uneven character development, made it not quite my cup of tea.
Margery Benson owns a certain level of eccentricity (for instance, in the seminal moment when she steals a pair of lacrosse boots from a fellow teacher), but she is largely too dour and sad to be considered quirky. The assistant she ultimately hires to go with her to New Caledonia in search of the golden beetle is obviously written to up the quirkiness factor exponentially, but Enid Pretty is so frenetically over the top for about 90 percent of the book that rather than being engaging, she just makes you tired. And the story line takes the serendipity one would expect in an offbeat novel and turns it into caricature or farce, with aspects that are simply unbelievable, not to mention contradictory. I know I’m sounding like a curmudgeon here, and perhaps it just wasn’t my week to read this book, but honestly it was all too much.
The story isn’t without its merits; there are some genuinely amusing situations, and also some truly touching moments. The best part about it is the evolution of the friendship between the unlikely adventurers (Margery and Enid), and I would have enjoyed learning more about the two of them, as well as about Gloria, and even Dolly. But there was also a subplot involving a former prisoner of war who became obsessed with and was stalking Miss Benson that I found both unpleasant and unnecessary, and I ended up highly resentful of how this ultimately affected the plot. So while I appreciated the beautiful language Ms. Joyce uses to describe Margery’s experience of the natural world, and really liked the evolution of Margery from a passive, uptight, somewhat frightened person into the take-charge, open individual she becomes, my reaction to the novel as a whole was a little sad with a touch of frustration. Over all, not a particularly pleasant experience.
Misspers
Quite by chance, I ended up reading two books in a row about missing persons. The first was Force of Nature, by Jane Harper, one of her Aaron Falk series, and the second was Liane Moriarty’s latest, Apples Never Fall. I didn’t plan it that way (maybe the library did?), but it made for some fun comparing the two as regards suspense, the form of the narrative, and so on. I enjoy the works of both authors, so it wasn’t really a quality comparison, although they brought different things to the table despite their common theme. They are also both set in Australia, another coincidence? Synchronicity strikes again.
In the first, a company that is secretly being examined by Aaron Falk and his partner for financial crimes sends 10 of its personnel—five men, five women—on a retreat into the wilderness of the Australian bush that is intended as a character-building and bonding exercise. The groups are divided by gender, the men taking one route, the women another. They pack in enough supplies for the first day, and the rest of their food and fuel is stashed for them at two way-stations, each of which they are supposed to reach within a day’s hike. The men successfully complete their retreat and emerge at the expected time, but the women are significantly delayed and, when they do turn up, are exhausted, starving, slightly hysterical, and missing one of their number, Alice Russell. Vague and conflicting accounts are given by the four remaining women and, as the rangers and regular police set up for a comprehensive search of the Giralang range, Federal Police investigator Falk tries to puzzle out whether the missing woman could possibly have met with foul play due to her clandestine connection with his investigation.
I enjoyed the personalities that Harper created—they were both original and yet clichéd in the best manner, in that you could see reflected in them all the characteristics, positive and negative, of the people you yourself might have worked with in a corporate setting—the bully, the ambitious but obsequious assistant, the entitled boss, the low-level couldn’t-care-less data entry clerk, and so on. I also really liked the chemistry and interplay between Aaron Falk and his partner, Carmen. And, as in her novel The Dry, the scene-setting is excellent; you soon feel overwhelmed by the claustrophobic closeness of the trees and the sense that perhaps something is watching from beyond the light of your fire. The book did take a long time to get where it was going, but the jumps from present to past and between multiple narrators/points of view keep it interesting and vibrant. I will continue with this series.
Moriarty’s book is a much more conventional misspers narrative, in that she’s a retired businesswoman and mom from the suburbs. The story opens with a cinematic shot of a deserted bicycle by the side of the road, with a flat front tire and a bunch of apples spilling out of its basket. Then someone comes along and steals the bike, and we realize that a key piece of evidence has just gone missing in a way that guarantees misdirection.
Stan and Joy Delaney, married for 50 years and also partners in a tennis coaching enterprise, have just sold their business and retired, and it’s not going so well. Their four grown children are largely oblivious to this, although certain incidents let them know the marriage is no longer as amicable as they would hope. Then Joy sends the kids a garbled text saying she’s going “off-grid” for a while, and disappears, but Stan doesn’t know anything about where she’s gone or for how long, and has scratches on his face that look like they were inflicted in a struggle. As Joy remains missing day after day with no word and the police seem ever more inclined to look at Stan as their prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, their children try to come to terms with what they will do if their mother remains missing and if, indeed, their father is the one responsible.
The story is told from a “now” viewpoint and also via a series of flashbacks that cover the past six months or so. Complicating the narrative is the appearance, six months previous, of a stranger—the elfin and bedraggled Savannah—on Stan and Joy’s doorstep, asking for temporary shelter from her abusive boyfriend. The couple welcome her in, but soon her extended stay coupled with her lack of a substantial back story has the Delaney children worried that their kind and gullible parents are being taken in by a grifter.
Moriarty is, as always, a master at creating and developing her characters, and by the end of this you feel like you know each of the Delaneys well enough to predict their actions in any situation. Less predictable is the enigmatic Savannah, and Stan is likewise tough because he holds everything inside and presents a gruff and seemingly uninterested façade to everyone. Although the book probably could have been a bit shorter and still succeeded, I did like the jumping around, as in Harper’s book, from time period to time period and to all the variety of narrators. The one weird thing about the book was its ending, which I should characterize as endings, plural. I read a chapter and the final sentence seemed to put a period on both the scene and the book; then I turned the page to find another chapter, which also seemed conclusive; and this went on for about five more chapters! When the end finally came, it was almost surprising, because Moriarty had dragged it in so many different directions. I found it kind of irritating, but since it also imparted a bunch of information we wouldn’t otherwise have had, I ultimately couldn’t find fault with it, though I feel like it might have been more effective to reveal it all as more a part of the story instead of as a series of addendums, which is how it read. Still, I liked the book a lot, and don’t understand why so many of her readers found it disappointing compared to some of her others. No, it’s not Big Little Lies—but it’s not Nine Perfect Strangers (which I found both weird and unsuccessful) either!
Murder in Alaska
I just finished the first two Kate Shugak mysteries by Dana Stabenow—A Cold Day for Murder, and A Fatal Thaw. Stabenaw started publishing this series in 1992, so I don’t know how I have completely overlooked it until now, but the first book popped up in my Kindle freebies and I gave it a try. I wasn’t really looking for a new mystery series, but I will most likely dip back into it from time to time, now that I have found it.
It’s one of those in which the locale plays as big a part as any protagonist, so you have to be at least marginally interested in the scene-setting because there’s a lot of it. This one takes place in a remote area of Alaska, inside a national park that is largely inaccessible (no roads) for more than half the year and so beloved of its few residents that they want to keep it that way. Niniltna, the closest “town,” consists of about 800 people, but that swells to thousands (flown in) from (very) late spring through summer as the thaw sets in and the various hunting and fishing seasons begin.
Kate Shugak is a member of the Aleut people and, although she has many relatives in the area (including her grandmother, Ekaterina Moonin Shugak, head of the local tribal council), lives alone on a 160-acre homestead, except for her half-wolf, half husky, Mutt. She is in emotional recovery, as the series opens, from a traumatic incident during her tenure as a police officer in Anchorage that left her with a lot of anger, a growly voice, and a ropy white scar that stretches from ear to ear. She mostly keeps to herself, engaged in doing all the things a homesteader in Alaska has to do to get by, but occasionally, when the local police and the FBI can’t seem to solve a case for themselves, they appeal to Kate to get involved, since for all her solitude she has a better handle than they on her neighbors—the miners, hunters, trappers, fishermen, bush pilots, and pipeline workers who populate the area.
The first book was a bit slow, because the author focused almost exclusively on drawing a picture of the Alaskan scenery and outlining the main players, with all their quirks. It picks up in the second half as Kate gets closer to figuring out what happened to two missing men and turns into more of a mystery, but in general it was pretty low-key. The second book made up for that by opening with a literal bang as a man goes about shooting everyone in sight, and although it bottomed out a little in the middle while Kate ponders her course of action (which she keeps close to the chest and doesn’t share), it had a dramatic ending as well.
I wouldn’t call these books page-turners, but there’s something about them that is appealing, enough so to keep me reading beyond these (although not right now, I have two books about to be due back to the library that I have to finish first). Although there are certain passages involving scenery description that seem a little stiff and extraneous, there are equally beautiful paragraphs that let you know both the author and the protagonist are people who love and are focused on the natural world. There is an element of humor that gives the stories a kick in the pants when needed, and the complex relationships between a lot of people with unmeeting wishes when it comes to their surroundings makes for both interest and fireworks. The book I just started (Jane Harper’s second book, Force of Nature, starring Aaron Falk) beckoned to me, but I admit there was a little reluctance to leave Kate Shugak behind; I had gotten used to hanging out with her.
Authenticity rant
I just finished reading a book that’s popular on the Facebook page “What Should I Read Next?” (The Reading List, by Sara Nisha Adams), and although I quite enjoyed the concept of someone finding someone else’s reading list and following in their steps by reading all the books on it, and also sharing and discussing the list with others, some of the simplistic details of the book were so flat-out wrong that I feel the need to correct them here, at least.
For any other venue or atmosphere chosen as the backdrop to the action in a book, the author would probably take at least minimal pains to research the details of the world-building. But everyone in America apparently believes they all know how libraries work, and this presumption has perpetuated a lot of stereotypes that are highly inaccurate. Even those who profess to love the library, as both the author and the characters in this story do, are doing their local library and its staff a disservice when portraying them in this way. The flyers being passed out to “Save our library!” in this story become necessary when people fail to realize exactly what a library is or can be, depending on who staffs it.
One of the two main characters in this book, a teenager named Aleisha, gets a part-time job for the summer at the local branch library. Her brother, Aidan, has always loved the library, so when she can’t get the retail job she’s been trying for (clothing discounts being important to teenagers), he encourages her to take the position at the library. She designates it in at least one conversation as a “shit summer job,” and is no way invested in it, to the point where she sits at the information desk with headphones on and pointedly ignores a patron (the other protagonist, Mukesh, an elderly Indian man) who can’t figure out how to operate the automatic door opener. When this man then approaches her at the desk to ask for reading recommendations, she summarily dismisses him by saying she doesn’t read “stories,” she only reads true things, so she can’t help him, sorry.
Throughout the rest of the book, this person is referred to, by both the public and by her co-workers in the library, as a librarian.
It should be obvious, but I’m going to make it crystal clear: Not every person who works in a library is a librarian, just as not every person who works in a law firm is a lawyer. Just as with a lawyer, a librarian is a trained professional. Being a professional means that your work depends on special skills and qualifications you have acquired through study and practice, and involves holding that work to a specific standard.
In order to achieve the title of “librarian” in most related venues, you must have a bachelor’s degree in an unspecified area (English literature, art history, or science are helpful, depending on your future plans), followed by a two-year master’s degree in library information studies that will include acquiring such areas of expertise as cataloging, collection development, services specific to a particular demographic (for instance, children’s librarian or teen librarian), and readers’ advisory. There are also a variety of categories and kinds of librarian—archivist, information specialist, public librarian, college or university librarian, law librarian, and so on—that require further special training in that area of knowledge.
I have that master’s degree, plus at least half a dozen upgrades via individual classes in specific subjects, and I also teach in the masters program at the University of California in two areas of special knowledge—Young Adult Literature, and Readers’ Advisory. And the idea that the way librarians recommend books, as is presented in The Reading List—they read the books themselves so they have something to recommend—is inaccurate and misleading. Do I recommend books I have enjoyed to others looking for a good read? Sure. But I don’t do so without first performing an extensive deep dive into their personality, reading preferences, and previous reading experiences, because until you know with what kind of reader you are interacting, it is impossible—unless you’re exceedingly lucky—to hit on the perfect book for them. Further, if I relied only on the books I had actually read in order to satisfy the requests of my patrons, it would be severely limiting to what’s actually out there in the world. A trained librarian finds books for any and all purposes and tastes, regardless if she has read them or not.
This is one of the things that frustrates me about such interactions as “What Should I Read Next?” on Facebook. Someone puts out a reading request with minimal parameters, and 300 people immediately proffer their favorite book. No one stops to ask, What kind of experience are you looking for? What elements of a book are most important to you: characters? world-building? mood? Are there specific genres you like, and why? Do you read to gain knowledge or to experience emotion? and any of the dozens of other questions that make it possible for one person to recommend a book to another with any hope of success. What people without librarian training fail to realize is that the recommendation of a book must be preceded by knowledge about that reader.
Why is success so important? Well, what happens if this person hasn’t been much of a reader but is resolved to do more reading? They take multiple recommendations from people touting their own favorites and, one after another, find them disappointing because the books are not to their taste. Do you think that person will become discouraged and maybe believe that reading just isn’t for them? That’s what happens with many children or teenagers who get frustrated after the second or third book that doesn’t resonate. They give up on reading forever—or maybe, if luck plays a hand, they come around to the idea again in their 40s when some book grabs them by surprise.
Although I certainly wouldn’t put librarians’ level of professionalism on the same par with, say, a doctor or a lawyer (considering their many extra years of study and also the relative importance of their actions), it is every bit as offensive to us as a profession for others to assume that anyone could do our job. Furthermore, the misrepresentation of every library employee as a librarian would never happen in real life. If you work in a public library as a page (one of the people who shelves books and does auditorium set-ups) or a circulation clerk (one of the people who checks books in and out and maintains the integrity of the books), one of the first things you are trained to do, should a patron ask an information-related question, is to send them to the reference or information desk to speak with a librarian who is qualified to answer that question.
Non-librarian staff are sometimes even discouraged from providing simple directions, because they can’t know what informational needs back up that query. Someone might ask, Where is the history section? and you as a page know where it is, so you escort them there. But what they really wanted was guidance in finding a book about a particular battle that took place during World War II, and being escorted to the history section did exactly nothing for them on that quest besides narrow down their choice of books from millions to thousands or from thousands to hundreds. If they had been directed to a librarian, who would have drawn them out about the exact nature of what they were looking for, they would be standing in the history section with three books on that subject in their hands for further consideration.
So, Sara Nisha Adams, although there are parts of your book that are personally compelling, evocative, and engaging, you have done yet another disservice to the profession of librarian by perpetuating all the misinformation that puts our libraries in constant peril of being shut down. Yes, a library is (or can be) a dynamic community space. Yes, it can serve many functions for its neighborhood. But the reading-specific needs that it fulfills are best realized by the participation of real librarians, whose purpose in taking on this career is to find the right book for the right person by using training and experience, not random personal preference, as their methodology.
Secondary characters
Do you ever love a book not for its main protagonists but for its secondary characters? I think that was the case with me and JoJo Moyes’s new book, Someone Else’s Shoes. The two protagonists, Nisha and Samantha, certainly drive all the action with their stories, but it is when the secondary and peripheral people get involved that those stories really come to life.
Part of this is because neither of the protagonists is particularly likeable. Samantha’s okay, I guess, but she spends so much of her downtrodden existence reacting like a confused limp noodle that it’s easy to grow impatient with her and snap “Buck up!” every time you encounter her on the page. With Nisha, it’s the opposite problem—she’s so entitled that your constant response is to want to do anything to stymie her, and follow up by smacking her silly. So when you first start reading this book, it may make you wonder why you should keep going. The answer is the others.
The basic story: Sam and Nisha are at the same gym. After their respective workouts, somehow they end up accidentally switching gym bags. Nisha’s contains a Chanel jacket and a pair of custom red crocodile Christian Louboutin high heels, while Sam’s has a pair of practical black flats and the British equivalent of an outfit bought at Target.
The switch proves initially beneficial for Sam, because she’s teed up for a series of business meetings and, forced to don the Louboutins (or wear gym flip-flops), she gains some needed confidence and lands three deals in a row for the printing company for which she works.
Nisha, on the other hand, wouldn’t otherwise be caught dead in Sam’s flats, but when she steps outside the gym wearing those and a bathrobe only to discover that her car and driver are nowhere in sight and she can’t raise anyone on her phone, she’s stuck. Little does she know how stuck, however, until it becomes clear that her husband has taken this inopportune moment to shut her out—out of her penthouse suite at London’s poshest hotel, out of her custom wardrobe, out of her bank accounts and credit cards—she’s literally destitute in the space of a few minutes, and has no idea how to recover.
She’s such an unlikeable character that you almost revel in the desperate straits she finds herself; fortunately for her, surrounding folk aren’t as gleefully vindictive as you are! She meets Jasmine, one of the head housekeepers at the hotel where Nisha and her husband Carl are staying, and Jasmine, at least initially, pretty much saves the day. Sam is similarly blessed, by a co-worker, Joel, who buoys her up when her confidence is lagging in the face of abuse from their new supervisor, Simon, and also by her best friend, Andrea, who is undergoing cancer treatment but can still be counted on to give sage advice about Sam’s depressed, unemployed husband.
Both women make an initial attempt to return the bags to the gym and retrieve their own, only to discover that the gym has financial woes and is closed until further notice, cutting off their access to the possibility of identifying who is now holding their belongings. The rest of the book is a sometimes funny, sometimes grim French farce about the efforts each woman makes to get her life back on track and retrieve the things that are important to her, enabled by the aforementioned wonderful secondary characters.
As you can guess, there is a fair share of heartwarming personal transformation, but it’s not maudlin, nor is it cute, so it rings true. The contrast in status of each woman with the people surrounding her and how that matters (or doesn’t) in the scheme of things is a big theme, as is discovering what each truly wants as opposed to what they have been accustomed to receiving as their due or enduring as their punishment. There are hints of developing romantic relationships between various characters, which is always nice if done properly, and also some comeuppance results, which are gratifying. All in all, I really enjoyed this latest from Moyes.
Two added notes: First, I am bemused by the choice of artwork for the cover. With a book completely centered around those shoes, why aren’t they on display in all their wildly expensive glory? Second, after finishing this I scanned the next five books up on my Kindle, wondering which to read, and noticed that The Reading List, which will be due at the library in a week so should probably be first, was written by Sara NISHA Adams. Having never previously encountered the name Nisha only to read a book with one as the protagonist, it seems too serendipitous that the following novel should be written by someone of the same name, doesn’t it? That’s my reading life…
Standards, genres
I find I don’t often enjoy the books that mainstream book clubs are out there touting like mad; or sometimes I do enjoy them, but it’s more like an unhealthy sugar rush than a savored meal, something you may regret later. Part of the reason usually turns out to be the frantic push to define a book as something more than it is.
That was the case when I read The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave. It’s not without merit: The central decision of the main character to do something that will forever deprive her of the thing she has discovered she wants was, to me, a compelling plot twist and the best part of the book. But the efforts of the publisher, the book clubs, and now Apple TV+ to convince us that this is an explosive mystery/thriller do a disservice to what is basically a domestic drama.
Hannah, a woman with an established life and an involving and creative career, meets Owen, and finds for the first time in her life that she can put aside all her reservations and enter wholly into a relationship. They take it to the next step, Hannah leaving her base in New York City for life on a houseboat in Sausalito with Owen and his 15-year-old daughter, Bailey. Her stepdaughter doesn’t warm up to her, and Hannah is, quite frankly, somewhat pathetic in the ways she tries to win Bailey over. Then, one day, Owen disappears, leaving behind a cryptic note that says “Protect her.” Bailey is the most important person in his life and, finding himself unable to be there for her himself, he asks Hannah to step up. This is where the contrived plot started to lose me because, as we discover as the story proceeds, there are specific people from whom Bailey needs protecting, but since Owen fails to mention any of them (a simple addendum of “Don’t go to this city!” would have sufficed), that leaves Hannah and Bailey walking right into danger as they do their amateur sleuth routine trying to find out why Owen has disappeared. For a person with as much talent for deception as Owen turns out to be, you’d think he would have thought ahead a little?
There were some nice moments as Bailey and Hannah come to trust each other (or more likely realize that there is no one else) and their relationship starts to unfold, but other aspects of the story (such as the involvement of the FBI and the ineffectiveness of the Witness Protection Program) are dealt with summarily to the story’s disadvantage. I did enjoy the sleuthing parts as they research Owen’s (and Bailey’s) past (probably the librarian in me), but the detecting bits don’t make this a mystery any more than the drama makes this a thriller. Many of the reviewers I saw on Goodreads disliked the book not because of its own inherent merits or failings but because its genre was misrepresented by the hype.
If you do decide to read it, therefore, go into it as an example of relationship fiction with a little extra excitement provided by the circumstances surrounding the central theme, and put those other genre labels out of your head. As a “What if?” story, it’s quite engaging enough to provide a pleasant afternoon’s read, but if you pick it up expecting Jennifer Hillier or Sharon Bolton-level thrills, you will be disappointed.
The Book Adept 