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Carla Jean Whitley

FictionSpeculative Fiction

When Women Were Dragons

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

In 1955, hundreds of thousands of women disappeared. They were oppressed mothers and wives. They were brides on their wedding days and switchboard operators harassed by their male managers. Later reports—at least, those that were publicly acknowledged—omitted a key detail about this mass disappearance. The women didn’t vanish; they became dragons.

As Kelly Barnhill writes in When Women Were Dragons, “people are awfully good at forgetting unpleasant things.” Just look at our own world, in which willful silence around the injustices of the past affects how history is taught (or isn’t taught) in American schools. The mass dragoning meets a similar fate, but despite her best efforts, Alex Green can’t forget: “I was four years old when I first saw a dragon. I was four years old when I first learned to be silent about dragons. Perhaps this is how we learn silence—an absence of words, an absence of context, a hole in the universe where the truth should be.”

Alex’s Aunt Marla was one of the disappeared women. She was also one of the most influential people in Alex’s life; after all, Marla gave birth to Alex’s cousin and best friend, Beatrice. After Marla’s dragoning, Alex’s parents raised the two girls as sisters, but questions about Marla’s disappearance lingered at the edges of Alex’s consciousness.

Barnhill writes from Alex’s point of view as an adult, looking back on a remarkable period in history that coincided with her formative years. Through teenage Alex’s perspective, readers witness dragons marching with civil rights protesters—because if we aren’t all free, none of us are free. Some dragons seem drawn to one another, rather than to the men they left behind, in a way that young Alex accepts intuitively. Meanwhile, Alex examines her relationship with Beatrice while reflecting on their mothers’ complicated sisterhood. And interspersed throughout these events, Barnhill includes research documents that Marla left in Alex’s care, offering thoughtful context for this eerily familiar world.

In her first novel for adult readers, Kelly Barnhill, bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, offers the same sort of magic she’s brought to her middle grade readers for years. A close examination of the patriarchy and cultural inequalities, When Women Were Dragons is fantasy that is both political and personal.

In her first novel for adult readers, Kelly Barnhill offers the same sort of magic she’s brought to her middle grade readers for years.
NonfictionMemoirEssays

Bomb Shelter

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Parents express affection in different ways. The care packages Mary Laura Philpott received when she was in college are a perfect illustration: If the package was from her mother, it would contain sweets, maybe something practical, perhaps money. But if her dad sent the box, it was almost always filled with canned food. It became a joke between Philpott and her roommate—“Here we go, another bomb shelter box”—as they slowly worked their way through the accumulated display of her father’s care. 

Now, as a mother of two, Philpott expresses her love for her children through worry, often wishing for an actual bomb shelter to protect her family from every affliction.

This was especially true the morning Philpott and her husband, John, awoke to an unusual sound: a thump that turned out to be their teenage son in the throes of a seizure. Philpott’s anxiety levels skyrocketed in the aftermath of this event, and she began obsessing over ways to protect her boy and his younger sister.

The bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink reflects on her life among the stacks.

Bomb Shelter is full of laugh-out-loud moments as Philpott weaves her recollections of growing up with present-day observations about her children’s adolescence. However, she is equally gifted in delivering heartbreaking moments, such as her husband rifling through their son’s belongings looking for any sign of a vape pen in an attempt to explain the seizure. (“He stuck a USB thumb drive in his mouth and tried to suck air through it. Nothing.”)

Fans of Philpott’s previous essay collection, I Miss You When I Blink, will find even more to love in Bomb Shelter. As Philpott grapples with anxiety, she seeks—and gives—comfort in the world around her. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, she prepared a Christmas dinner for a college-age couple who couldn’t go home for the holiday. “You build, if not an actual shelter, a box of food,” she writes. “You let that surge of caretaking energy go where it can—if not into saving the world, into saving this one day, or at least this one meal, for this one pair of people.”

Philpott’s openhearted joy and fear is relatable regardless of your parenting status—a reminder that, even amid the most frightening challenges, we are rarely alone.

The openhearted joy and fear woven throughout Mary Laura Philpott’s second memoir-in-essays is relatable, even comforting.
FictionFamily Saga

French Braid

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Serena Drew is returning to Baltimore after a daytrip to meet her boyfriend’s family. As she and her boyfriend wait for their train home, she thinks she spots her cousin Nicholas Garrett. Her boyfriend is incredulous; how can she be unsure whether or not the man is her cousin? But Serena doesn’t come from the sort of family in which first cousins recognize each other in the wild.

Anne Tyler is a master of interpersonal drama and intricate depictions of characters’ lives. Her astute observations have earned her a Pulitzer Prize (Breathing Lessons) and two turns as a Pulitzer finalist (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist), among other accolades. In French Braid, her skilled storytelling once again takes center stage as she reveals the minor family dramas that have resulted in Serena’s inability to positively identify her cousin. Chapter by chapter, Tyler follows a different member of the Garrett family, beginning with a family vacation in 1959 and ending in spring 2020.

As Tyler turns her attention to each Garrett, she reveals finely honed character portraits. Daughters Lily and Alice are opposites, and their little brother, David, often goes his own way. Mother Mercy searches for her identity as the kids grow up and leave the house, but father Robin is left confused; he has always been content with his home and family exactly as they were.

Each chapter is as well-crafted as a short story and reveals the heart of its central character. Tyler weaves these individual tales together to build something even greater, and like the braid of the novel’s title, this interpersonal family drama becomes more substantial as its pieces combine.

“That’s how families work, too,” says David, reflecting on the lasting effect of a French braid. “You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” (His wife laughs and asks, “You are finding this out just now?”)

French Braid is a case study of the circumstances and interactions that shape the lives of one family.

Anne Tyler is a master of interpersonal drama, and her skilled storytelling takes center stage in French Braid.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Yonder

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Jabari Asim isn’t limited by genre or form. He’s a poet, essayist, children’s book author, cultural critic and novelist who is adept at navigating language and story.

Asim’s latest novel, Yonder, draws readers into the heart of plantation life and the existence of the “Stolen” who live there. Notably, Asim never uses words such as enslaved or slave in describing their stories, and skin color is rarely mentioned. Instead, Asim emphasizes the individual experiences of his characters, focusing on their humanity.

“As my William has said to me more than once, a story depends on who’s telling it, what they choose to mention, and what they leave out. There’s also the way they tell it, and the way they tell it has been shaped by everything that’s happened to them,” a character says early in the novel. Asim’s storytelling approach mirrors this explanation as he unravels the tale from five perspectives.

William is one of the strongest, most respected Stolen men at Placid Hall. Even William’s captor, a “Thief” called Cannonball Greene, holds begrudging respect for William after seeing him stare down a loose horse, stopping the runaway animal in its tracks before it plowed into a Thief child.

Cato is William’s closest friend. He’s frustrated by William’s spiritual skepticism and bereft after being torn from his love. Margaret is William’s lady. She’s captured his heart and wants to have his baby, but William has been permanently scarred by things he saw before arriving at Placid Hall. Pandora has also seen quite a lot, observing others at Placid Hall and drawing lessons from their behavior. She believes a better life is possible, despite the odds. Ransom is an itinerant preacher to whom William’s companions look for guidance, but William distrusts a man who can move freely through the country without interference from Thieves.

Asim weaves together these five voices in lyrical prose. He is a gifted storyteller, first building the world in which his characters are bound before setting in motion their united mission toward freedom. Throughout, the five main characters wrestle with their doubts, beliefs and hopes for something more. Yonder reminds us that even in despair, love and the human spirit can endure.

Like Jabari Asim’s talent, stories of slavery and racism transcend boundaries. His latest novel draws the reader into the hearts of five people pursuing freedom.
NonfictionHistory

Let’s Get Physical

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Did you know the sports bra wasn’t invented until 1977? Yeah, neither did I. I’m an active person who exercises multiple times a week and sometimes teaches yoga, and this essential part of my fitness wardrobe predates me by only four years.

When I read that fact, I expressed my shock aloud—and author Danielle Friedman was just getting started. Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World bulges with tidbits like this, drawing readers into this history of exercise and modern women. The factoids boggle the mind, but Friedman goes further, providing a rich story for each fitness trend she examines, from jogging to Jazzercise, bodybuilding to yoga and beyond.

Friedman uses her award-winning reporting skills to profile the fads of the past century, the women who instigated them and the challenges they faced. Whether through clothing that offered freedom of movement or movement that offered freedom of expression, Friedman demonstrates that women’s growing interest in and access to fitness has often granted them a sense of liberation and strength.

But the fitness industry has also created obstacles for women, of course, by pressuring them to conform to whatever physical ideal is currently in vogue. Even in activities that sought to break those norms, such as bodybuilding, participants have couched their efforts in the belief that women’s muscles shouldn’t be too big.

America has historically idolized white bodies, as well, which is a truth Black bodybuilder Carla Dunlap faced head-on. Even when she won contests, lower-ranking white contestants would snag magazine covers. Friedman also examines the classism inherent to these often-expensive activities and the privilege—whether related to time, money or access—that gives some women a chance to move but restricts other women from doing the same.

Let’s Get Physical incorporates the stories of dozens of women, including the author herself. Friedman shares just enough of her own experience to grant the book a defined point of view: that of a woman approaching middle age, seeking strength and release in movement. Her research is thorough, and her storytelling is as energetic as the exercises she describes. Let’s Get Physical is full of stories that humanize an industry that sometimes seems to prioritize perfection over people.

Let’s Get Physical bulges with factoids you will scarcely believe, drawing readers into the history of exercise and modern women.
NonfictionMemoir

The Electricity of Every Living Thing

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Katherine May turned on the radio during a long drive one afternoon in November. She didn’t expect what she heard to reshape her identity—but as May listened to an interview about autism spectrum disorder, she recognized herself in the subject’s words. Puzzle pieces seemed to slide into place: This may explain why she had struggled to adjust to motherhood and why she’d had such a tough time coping at work.

That ah-ha moment came several months into May’s walk along England’s 630-mile South West Coast Path through Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. She undertook the journey, rearranging her family’s weekends and vacations, in an effort to reconnect with herself after a period of feeling badly frazzled. Identifying herself as someone with autism both clarified why she needed so much time alone on the path and gave her something to reflect on as she walked.

Bestselling memoirist Katherine May opens up about the risks and rewards of writing about her late-in-life autism diagnosis.

In The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home, May explains that she experiences the noise of the world as a current of energy. “Everything is strung together like fairy lights,” she writes. “If that electricity sometimes overpowers me, then it also often lights my way, and joins me to the rest of the world.” Through walking, she found a way to channel that electricity. Time alone helped May become a better version of herself, someone who was better able to connect with her husband and care for their son.

As May covered the seaside’s sometimes-craggy terrain, her attention turned inward. The act of putting one foot in front of the other and the exhaustion of the miles cleared out her mind. The effort gave May a chance to let her mind roam as widely as her feet, and she eventually came to a realization: “I want to learn to be with my family again—or perhaps, for the first time. I want to stop passing through places. I want to learn to stay.”

As in her bestseller Wintering, May’s attention to detail and poetic voice clear a path for readers to pause and reflect. In sharing her experience, she invites readers to examine their own.

Katherine May’s attention to detail and poetic voice in The Electricity of Every Living Thing clear a path for readers to pause and reflect.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Oh William!

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Readers first fell in love with Lucy Barton in Elizabeth Strout’s 2016 novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, a gentle reflection on the titular character’s life and parental influence during an extended hospitalization. In Oh William!, it’s been years since Lucy left her first husband, William. But despite the many affairs he conducted during their marriage and her own affair that prompted her departure, they remain each other’s confidants.

As the novel opens, Lucy has been widowed for a year after the death of her second husband, David. She explores her grief throughout the book, but her devotion to William also demands her attention. As in each of Strout’s novels about Lucy, her narration is nearly a stream of consciousness. The novel’s lack of chapter breaks reinforces its interior nature and invites readers to immerse themselves in Lucy’s ruminations.

As Lucy contemplates her lasting bond with William, she considers their marriage and the ways their relationship has affected their daughters. She also takes the reader through the pair’s misadventures in their later years. It isn’t always clear whether Lucy likes or respects her ex-husband, but her tie to him is unbreakable, her curiosity about him unwavering: “I wondered who William was. I have wondered this before. Many times I have wondered this.”
Likewise, William turns to Lucy, rather than to his current wife, when his sleep is disrupted by night terrors involving his late mother. And it’s Lucy he seeks when he confronts a secret his mother kept from him.

Pulitzer Prize winner Strout is a master of quiet, reflective stories that are driven more by their characters than by events. Her fans will find plenty to love as Lucy and William set out to explore his family history. At each step, Lucy contemplates her relationships to the people around her. Though she often feels invisible, her ties to William, their daughters and the strangers they encounter remind her that she has a place in the world.

Strout is a master of reflective stories that are driven more by characters than by events. Her fans will find plenty more to love about Lucy and William.
Fiction

New takes on classic authors

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

They’ve been on countless reading lists over the years, and now the lives and works of three classic English writers have inspired intriguing new novels.

Syrie James’ interest in classic literature led to extensive research on beloved authors like Austen and Brontë. Though the stories resulting from her studies aren’t quite nonfiction, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë is based on fact. James adapts Brontë’s voice, telling Brontë’s story as though it came straight from the great writer. Living with an alcoholic, drug-addicted brother and a deeply eccentric father, Brontë—and her sisters—still managed to write some of the most famous novels of their time. With The Secret Diaries, James offers a satisfying—if partly imagined—history of the real-life experiences that inspired Brontë’s classic novels.

In Girl in a Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold weaves a narrative based closely on the real-life marriage of Charles and Catherine Dickens. Estranged at the time of Dickens’ death, Catherine left a collection of letters she had received from Charles over the years, so that the world would know the truth about her role in his life. In Arnold’s account, the great writer Alfred Gibson is dead. After 20 years of marriage, Dorothea Gibson is excluded from her husband’s passing and his will. Through recollections of their history together and dealing with the aftermath of his death, Dorothea finally faces the hard truths of being married to her generation’s most beloved writer. Though we’ll never know for sure what went on in the Dickens’ marriage, this fictional account helps us to better understand the woman behind the talented man.

Courtney Stone, a self-proclaimed Jane Austen addict, was mysteriously transported to the early 19th century in Laurie Viera Rigler’s debut, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. In that book, Courtney traded places with English girl Jane Mansfield, and was abruptly forced to abandon her modern ways and adapt to the life of a lady in 1800s England. In Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Jane awakens in Courtney’s 21st-century American life, completing Viera Rigler’s clever switch-a-roo. As Jane aims to untangle Courtney’s problems and understand modern society, she finds that the girls and their time periods aren’t as different as they may seem. 

They’ve been on countless reading lists over the years, and now the lives and works of three classic English writers have inspired intriguing new novels. Syrie James’ interest in classic literature led to extensive research on beloved authors like Austen and Brontë. Though the stories resulting from her studies aren’t quite nonfiction, The Secret Diaries […]
Family & Relationships

Looking for love: books for every dater

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

With so many dating books out there, it seems there’s a guide for just about everyone. Here’s a look at five of this year’s offerings. By the time you make your way through this relationship gauntlet, you’ll be equipped to find a date this Valentine’s Day—and perhaps find love by the next!

Decoding men
Women always claim men are so hard to understand—but could that be because we’re reading into them the complexity we see in ourselves? Jeff Mac thinks so. In Manslations, the stand-up comic offers something of a you’re-too-smart-for-your-own-good (that’s us, ladies!) handbook to understanding men. With Mac as your guide, it’s suddenly easy to interpret what the man in your life is saying. Do his words and actions contradict each other? There’s truth in the old axiom, Mac says: “listen” to the actions and you’ll find mixed signals aren’t so mixed after all. Unsure whether he likes you? Again, Mac breaks it down: if he’s getting physical and keeping you around even when he’s not, you’re golden. Mac is like your best well-meaning but often blunt guy friend—one who’s happily involved and therefore willing to share insight into relationships. Ladies, we’re wrong when we assume men are hard to understand, and that’s perhaps the most useful manslation of all.

Get over it
Patti Novak won’t spoon-feed you. Get Over Yourself!, written with Laura Zigman, is filled with advice on how to move from being dateless to committed, but Novak, the star of A&E’s 2007 series “Confessions of a Matchmaker,” is just the guide—you’re the active participant. The book’s worksheets and quizzes show women ready to dig in and do the hard work of getting ready for love how to process their own desires and needs, and think about why they are where they are. That’s not always easy, especially when Novak tells you that it is you, after all! It sounds harsh, but she guides you through common self-protective behaviors to help you recognize actions that are holding you back and then heal the hurt beneath them. As you work through the past to change your future, the pressure you place on each date will diminish—and success will come.

Back in the dating pool
What do you do when, after years of marriage or a committed relationship, you find yourself single again? It’s been years (perhaps decades) since you left the 20-something’s singles scene—how has it changed? How have you?

In Getting Naked Again, Judith Sills, Ph.D., who appears frequently on the “Today” show, serves as the newly single woman’s tour guide to the now-unfamiliar world of dating. This isn’t your daughter’s book, she says, and dating is no longer as clear-cut a process as it is for your daughter. Her goals are likely easy to define: she’s dating to find love, marriage and children. But you’ve already had all of those things. What’s your goal? Your relationships with single men, married friends, your children and even yourself may have changed when you found yourself alone. But with Sills on your side, you can learn how to make the most of being single again.

You can hurry love
If you were ready to find love, like, yesterday, pick up How to Make Someone Fall in Love with You in 90 Minutes or Less. Love is an emotional progression, not a time-sensitive development, Nicholas Boothman argues, and he’s going to tell you how to find it in 90 minutes or less. As a former fashion photographer, Boothman developed a knack for presenting people in their best light, and he’ll help you capitalize on love at first sight. After all, it’s how he fell in love with his wife of more than 30 years. Throughout the book he breaks down preparation and action into practical steps. You’ll quickly discover whether someone is your “matched opposite,” a person who shares your values but has a personality different enough to keep life interesting and fun.

Take Boothman’s ideas into account next time you meet someone with whom you have chemistry, and you may well fall in love within an hour and a half. Now staying in love? That’s another book—and a lifetime commitment!

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

With so many dating books out there, it seems there’s a guide for just about everyone. Here’s a look at five of this year’s offerings. By the time you make your way through this relationship gauntlet, you’ll be equipped to find a date this Valentine’s Day—and perhaps find love by the next! Decoding menWomen always […]
Memoir

Bumps in the long and winding road to love

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of this year’s best relationship memoirs.

Dating disasters
Julie Klausner still hasn’t found what she’s looking for, but as the lengthy subtitle of her dating memoir suggests, she’s spent time with a lot of the wrong guys. In I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Other Guys I’ve Dated, Klausner recounts years of dating the wrong guys. She never went through a boys-are-icky phase, instead openly chasing her crush of the moment since childhood. In fact, in the book’s opening pages she boldly declares, “I love men like it is my job.”

Klausner refuses to pussyfoot around her recollections of past lovers, indiscriminately flaunting her dirty laundry and theirs. (This is the kind of memoir an author hopes her parents won’t read.) But what could be an airing of grievances from the pen of another author is, in Klausner’s hands, an entertaining romp through a series of comic sketches. As a writer for VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” Klausner regularly transformed a week’s minutiae into pithy television, and she applies the same droll tone to her own missteps and willful mistakes.

And through failure after dismal failure, Klausner clings to one hope: The right man is out there, somewhere. If she’s got to date all the wrong ones to find him, she’ll do it, enthusiastically.

Matching wits
Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Girl doesn’t give boy the time of day for five years. And then boy’s wildest dreams are fulfilled when girl suddenly decides he is all she wants.

Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn’s relationship is far from a fairytale romance, but it’s a story filled with all the excitement and drama you’d hope for from a couple of writers and actors. They’ve had a lot of experience in telling other stories, after all: For years Gurwitch hosted “Dinner and a Movie” on TBS, and she has written for NPR and The Nation. Kahn wrote for “The Ben Stiller Show” and appeared in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and other films.

In You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, Gurwitch and Kahn bicker as they recount their sometimes-conflicting tales of meeting, courtship, marriage and the journey toward “till death do us part.” And even as their lives turn gravely serious when their son Ezra is born with multiple birth defects, the couple injects humor into their otherwise terrified mindset.

This is definitely not a sweet tale, but couples who love and argue with equal intensity will find solace—and more than a few laughs—in Gurwitch and Kahn’s frank depiction of their relationship.

Something’s cooking
Elizabeth Bard spotted the classic tall, dark and handsome stranger at a conference in London. She was an American beginning a master’s program in art history. He was a Frenchman wrapping up a Ph.D. in computer science. When the opportunity arose, she made a point of meeting him. The bevy of emails that followed led to lunch—and then love—in Paris.

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes doesn’t stop with happily ever after. In fact, Bard’s wedding to the exotic Gwendal takes place halfway through the book. But the challenges of a life in a foreign country are just beginning. On the surface Bard’s life seems like a fairy tale: living in Paris, married to a Frenchman and dining on any number of delicacies. But what’s simple in America is a challenge for an American in Paris. A task as easy as buying curtains can become an all-day event.

A memoir with recipes isn’t a new concept. Amanda Hesser covered that territory well in Cooking for Mr. Latte, and in recent years there’s been an avalanche of relationship-and-recipe books. But if there’s anything that doesn’t get old, it’s a good love story and a good meal—all the better if they are crafted by someone who can both write and cook!

In Lunch in Paris, Bard shares not only her love story but her journey to finding a sense of self in a foreign land with a foreign man. Whether you read it with the love of your life at your side or while dreaming of meeting your own exotic other half, this story and its accompanying recipes will warm your soul.

A new dance
Maria Finn met her husband while salsa dancing. The couple danced their way into a relationship, then marriage. But after she discovers that he’s been cheating on her, salsa dancing has little place in her life.

Finn instead turns to tango, also a seductive Latin dance, but one that allows space for sorrow and loss. She quickly becomes addicted to tango, attending private lessons and dance classes and clearing space on her calendar for frequent milongas (social dances). While dancing, Finn learns to give herself over to a man, to allow herself to be pulled off balance and follow his lead, even while carrying her own weight. The dance carries her from her home in New York City to the dance floors of Argentina, but more importantly, it helps Finn rewrite her understanding of men and her own life.

In Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home, Finn incorporates her deep understanding of tango into the story, revealing its history even as she explores her own relationship with the dance. Unlike many life-after-heartbreak memoirs, this one doesn’t end with the author tangoing into the sunset with a new beau. Instead, Finn repairs her outlook on life and men in general, while finding comfort, challenges and encouragement in the arms of strangers.

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

RELATED CONTENT
Review of the audio version of Cooking with Mr. Latte

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of this year’s best relationship memoirs. Dating disasters Julie Klausner still […]
FictionFamily Drama

Neighborhood drama: Suburban lives at stake

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

Neighborhoods can become cities within cities, providing their residents with the sort of community that human beings crave. But proximity combined with intimacy can mean vulnerability. In new novels by Anna Quindlen and Abbi Waxman, two women are shaken to their core by the real-life dramas that play out on their streets. Each book is set in one of the nation’s largest cities but centers on a single neighborhood block. The lives that intersect in those spaces become a microcosm of interpersonal complications.

In Quindlen’s Alternate Side, Nora Nolan is frustrated by her husband’s obsession with his newly acquired parking spot. It’s a hot commodity on their New York City dead-end street, and it means a break from the alternate-side parking that is the bane of so many New Yorkers’ existence. But it also means Charlie is now tight with some of the street’s most grating characters, especially busybody George. The way he patrols the parking lot and the neighbors’ business, you would think George owned the place, rather than a mere unit. Then there’s Jack, the man who doesn’t offer any kindness when talking to the neighborhood handyman. They seem like mere annoyances until an incident forces everyone to re-examine what they know about truth and their neighbors.

Waxman’s Other People’s Houses is set on the opposite coast, but her characters have much in common with those in Quindlen’s novel. Four families in Los Angeles’ Larchmont neighborhood are tied together by carpool, if not friendship. Frances Bloom volunteers to run the neighbors’ children to school along with her own three. She’s a stay-at-home mom, after all, so why shouldn’t she take the responsibility off the other parents’ shoulders? The neighborhood learns the answer the hard way when Frances walks in on a neighbor in the throes of an affair.

In both novels, surprising incidents begin the unraveling process of friendships and other relationships. It doesn’t matter whether an individual was involved in the incident; each person begins to examine his or her own place on the block and relationship to the people in their own households.

Quindlen is well established as a documenter of life’s personal moments, with several bestselling novels and a Pulitzer Prize for commentary to her credit. Waxman’s effort, on the other hand, is her sophomore release and a strong follow-up to her debut, The Garden of Small Beginnings. Both Quindlen and Waxman show they are adept at fleshing out the fine details that comprise a life, and leave readers reflecting on the intimacy and risk of finding your community within a larger land.

Neighborhoods can become cities within cities, providing their residents with the sort of community that human beings crave. But proximity combined with intimacy can mean vulnerability. In new novels by Anna Quindlen and Abbi Waxman, two women are shaken to their core by the real-life dramas that play out on their streets. Each book is set in one of the nation’s largest cities but centers on a single neighborhood block. The lives that intersect in those spaces become a microcosm of interpersonal complications.

NonfictionFood & Drink

Truffle Hound

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

A single whiff of a truffle can be nearly intoxicating. Depending on the variety, the inhaler might detect notes of garlic, fried cheese and gym socks (white truffles) or pineapple and banana (a young Oregon black). And one person sniffing may find those aromas enticing, while another might not understand the fuss.

Those fragrances, and the allure of the fungi that produce them, left James Beard Award-winning food writer Rowan Jacobsen (A Geography of Oysters) drunk on truffles and determined to learn all he could. Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of not only truffles but also the stories of people who hunt and sell them. 

The result is Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World’s Most Seductive Scent, With Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs, an engaging work that blends history with travel and food writing. Jacobsen follows his nose and curiosity across Europe and back to North America, while considering studies that extend even farther. He meets hunters and farmers whose livelihoods depend on the elusive tubers, and along the way he challenges truffle myths. For example, they grow far outside of the Mediterranean region that’s most often credited for them.

Jacobsen delves into the sometimes twisting history of this food, as well as into the science that makes truffle farming possible. Even as he examines the fungi’s complex history and analyzes questions about who gets access to truffles, Jacobsen’s writing remains accessible, unlike the costly object of his desire.

Truffle Hound is a compelling story, but Jacobsen doesn’t leave readers empty-handed when the tale ends. The book also includes a glossary of truffle types, resources for acquiring your own truffles and recipes for after the decadent fungi arrives. It’s an appropriate finish to a delicious book.

Intoxicated by truffles and determined to learn all he could, Rowan Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of this elusive, decadent fungi.
NonfictionEssays

Graceland, at Last

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Margaret Renkl’s name was already familiar to readers in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was the founding editor of the online literary publication Chapter 16, and to readers of the New York Times, where she is a contributing opinion writer. But when her memoir, Late Migrations, was published in 2019, Renkl’s celebration of the natural world and family drew praise from reviewers, readers and popular book club facilitators nationwide.

Graceland, At Last gathers a selection of Renkl’s columns from the past four years, inviting loyal readers and newcomers alike to take in Renkl’s perspective on the world. The collection is organized thematically, touching on topics present in Late Migrations and others such as politics, religion, social justice, arts and culture.

These essays can be read with their original contexts in mind, thanks to the inclusion of their publication dates. For example, in “Hawk. Lizard. Mole. Human.,” Renkl writes of “days that grow ever darker as fears gather and autumn comes on.” The column, published in August 2020, may remind today’s readers of the spike in COVID-19 cases that occured in the fall of 2020. But the columns hold up equally well without the recollection of where you were when they were first written.

Renkl often finds gifts in the mundane, such as in a power outage caused by storms, recounted in “The Night the Lights Went Out.” But her concern about the precariousness of our environment never wanes, showing up even in the midst of this celebration of the simplicity of a few days without power.

Whether extolling the wonders of a rattlesnake or lamenting Southern Christians’ support of oppressive policies, Renkl engages with her home region’s beauty and complexity. As she writes in the introduction, “To love the South is to see with clear eyes both its terrible darkness and its dazzling light, and to spend a lifetime trying to make sense of both.”

Whether extolling the wonders of a rattlesnake or lamenting oppressive policies, Margaret Renkl engages with her Southern homeland’s beauty and complexity.

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