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Deborah Donovan

FictionThriller

Beautiful Bad

Review by Deborah Donovan

Annie Ward’s debut has all the familiar ingredients of the recent outpouring of psychological thrillers—dynamic but unreliable female narrators, a story that bounces between different characters’ perspectives, and secrets that remain buried throughout years of friendship or marriage—but it’s set apart by its unusual settings.

Maddie and Jo met as high school students on a summer exchange program in Spain. After college graduation, Maddie is in Bulgaria, teaching English at Sofia University, and Jo is an aid worker based in Skopje, Macedonia, a five-hour bus ride from Sofia. In 2001, the third pivotal character arrives in the midst of Jo and Maddie’s sojourn overseas: Ian Wilson, a security officer serving in the British army. Both women are fascinated by Ian, especially Maddie, who seems to be obsessed with him. Jo and Ian’s fling is brief, leaving Jo bitter and convinced that Ian is hiding evil underneath his humanitarian facade. Maddie continues to harbor feelings for him, even over years with little communication. Eventually, when Maddie returns to New York, she and Ian reconnect, which leads to their marriage in 2012. They move to her hometown of Meadowlark, Kansas—the only place where Ian feels he can cope with everyday life after the horrors he experienced in Bosnia and Rwanda—and start a family together.

Interspersed with these events are chapters from “The Day of the Killing,” though the reader doesn’t know the identities of the victim or killer. Maddie has suffered head injuries twice in her life, which may have affected her brain, and Ian suffers from PTSD. But which one is sick enough to commit a brutal murder?

A twist in the closing pages will catch even the most jaded reader off guard, making Beautiful Bad a good read for fans of Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins and A.J. Finn. 

Annie Ward’s debut has all the familiar ingredients of the recent outpouring of psychological thrillers—dynamic but unreliable female narrators, a story that bounces between different characters’ perspectives, and secrets that remain buried throughout years of friendship or marriage—but it’s set apart by its unusual settings.

FictionThriller

Watching You

Review by Deborah Donovan

Lisa Jewell’s domestic thrillers regularly show up on bestseller lists, and her latest, Watching You, should be no exception. The mysterious murder at its center unfolds gradually, as piece by piece the past and present relationships between her intriguing cast of characters begin to fit together.

Tom Fitzwilliam is the new headmaster of the Melville Academy in Bristol, England, and he’s called Superhead by the local newspaper due to his many postings to failing schools and his reputation for quickly turning them around. Tom lives with his wife, Nicola, in an upscale neighborhood. Nicola is an enigmatic, unhappy woman with a troubled past. Their only child, 14-year-old Freddie, believes he has Asperger’s. He hopes to work for MI5 one day and spends all his free time spying on the neighbors from his upstairs window, documenting what he sees with his camera and keeping a logbook of the neighborhood comings and goings.

One of Freddie’s voyeuristic targets is Joey Mullen, a young woman who lives two doors down from the Fitzwilliams. Joey is newly married and drifting from job to job. She and her husband live with Joey’s older brother, Jack, a physician, and his wife, Rebecca, a “strait-laced systems analyst.” Rebecca is pregnant, but she’s apparently not overjoyed about becoming a mother. Joey is completely smitten with Tom Fitzwilliam and begins planning how to meet him “accidentally,” which is all documented by Freddie’s watchful eyes.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna, a student at the Academy, and her mother live nearby, and they’re also subjects of Freddie’s surveillance. Jenna’s mother, who increasingly shows signs of paranoia, seems to believe she saw the Fitzwilliam family on holiday years ago, and that they were involved in an unpleasant incident that she can’t quite remember.

From the novel’s early pages, Jewell includes excerpts from police interviews conducted at the Bristol police station. The reader knows someone has been murdered but not their identity. Little by little, Jewell sprinkles clues about the pasts of each of her characters, and these hidden connections to the victim may turn out to be motives to commit murder. But only near the end does one suspect emerge as the killer—and a shocking final revelation completely takes the reader by surprise.

Jewell’s latest will be quickly devoured by readers of Gillian Flynn, A.J. Finn and Ruth Ware.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lisa Jewell’s domestic thrillers regularly show up on bestseller lists, and her latest, Watching You, should be no exception. The mysterious murder at its center unfolds gradually, as piece by piece the past and present relationships between her intriguing cast of characters begin to fit together.

FictionDebut Fiction

Family Trust

Review by Deborah Donovan

Silicon Valley, with all its excesses, lies at the heart of Kathy Wang’s insightful, witty and acutely honest debut novel of a Chinese-American family in crisis mode.

Patriarch Stanley Huang is dying of pancreatic cancer. His imminent passing is mourned by his two grown children, Kate and Fred; their mother and Stanley’s ex-wife, Linda; and his current wife, Mary. At the same time, each wonders just how their finances might be affected by his will, which has always remained a mystery. Stanley has hinted to Mary that he’s worth millions, but Linda is skeptical since she was the money manager during their marriage and knows that Stanley is clueless when it comes to investing.

Fred, though graduating with honors from Harvard Business School, is mired in a huge investment firm with little room for advancement. He begins to imagine the perks a few million would bring, though his discreet questions about the will are completely ignored. Kate also works for a tech company as a middle manager—and at the moment is the sole breadwinner in her family, as her husband has been on the verge of launching a startup for what seems like an endless number of months. An infusion of funds from her father’s will would obviously be most welcome.

Linda has invested wisely over the years since her divorce from Stanley. She’s financially stable, but she wants to make sure Fred and Kate get their fair share and don’t lose out to Mary, whom Linda knows expects to be handsomely rewarded for caring for her dying husband.

An intriguing side plot explores Linda’s involvement with an online dating site that harbors a global financial scam—one that, coincidentally, Fred barely escapes investing in himself.

Wang also graduated from Harvard Business School and worked in the tech field before deciding to write this engaging blend of family saga and Silicon Valley exposé. In Family Trust, her dissection of the glamorous appeal of this superficial slice of life succeeds on many levels and will appeal to a wide variety of readers.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Silicon Valley, with all its excesses, lies at the heart of Kathy Wang’s insightful, witty and acutely honest debut novel of a Chinese-American family in crisis mode.

FictionPopular Fiction

A Spark of Light

Review by Deborah Donovan

Following her incisive novel Small Great Things (2016), which delved into the white supremacist movement, Jodi Picoult takes on the explosive topic of abortion rights in A Spark of Light.

Picoult sets her story in Jackson, Mississippi—all the action taking place over one long day at the Center, a women’s clinic for those who had “run out of time and had run out of choices.” Picoult begins her riveting saga at the end of the story, when George Goddard—a distraught, anti-abortion father whose teenage daughter recently had an abortion at the Center—storms inside, fires several shots and takes an unknown number of hostages. Hostage negotiator Hugh McElroy has been called to the scene to confront George.

With her latest novel, Jodi Picoult takes on another explosive, timely issue: abortion rights in America.

Picoult then moves backward in time, hour by hour, gradually filling in the details of those who came to the Center that day and why they came. She approaches this divisive issue from all sides—not blaming or condoning, but shining a perceptive light into the lives of those now hoping to survive the hostage situation.

Izzy, a nurse, struggles with the dilemma of whether or not to tell her boyfriend about her newly discovered pregnancy. She’s risen from a childhood of poverty and doesn’t want to rely on him, “the prince from the entitled family.” After the shooting, Izzy tends to the leg wound suffered by Dr. Ward, whose own mother died from an illegal abortion. Dr. Ward regularly travels between four states to provide abortions for women living where almost all such clinics have closed.

Joy completed her abortion before the shooting starts—and although she wanted the procedure, she’s still in mourning for what she’s lost. She lived in foster care for 10 years and didn’t want another child to go through the same miserable experience.

Janine is at the Center faking a pregnancy—she’s an anti-abortion activist trying to prove the clinic doesn’t offer prenatal care. She lives with the guilt of her own abortion after she was raped at a fraternity party. In Picoult’s words, Janine has “white-washed the stain with years of pro-life activism.”

Also inside the Center that morning are Hugh’s teenage daughter, Wren, and his older sister, Bex, who has helped raise Wren since Hugh’s wife left them years ago. Wren is there for a prescription for birth control pills, and she asked Bex to accompany her so she wouldn’t have to walk alone past the line of protesters.

Interspersed with these stories of how each character came to be at the Center are the ongoing negotiations between Hugh and George, heightening the tension throughout the novel, even though most of the denouement occurs in the opening chapter.

A Spark of Light is another winner for Picoult—a provocative exploration of an issue that is in the spotlight now more ever before.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Following her incisive novel Small Great Things (2016), which delved into the white supremacist movement, Jodi Picoult takes on the explosive topic of abortion rights in A Spark of Light.

FictionFamily Drama

When tragedy strikes, who is to blame?

Review by Deborah Donovan

Proulx’s second novel opens an incisive window into the seemingly predictable lives of two upper-middle-class families that slowly unravel over one long year, following two calamitous events. Mia and Michael Slate are cruising into middle age—she’s a photographer, and he’s a partner in a money management firm with Peter Conrad, whom he’s known since high school.

At least Michael thought he was a partner, until one February evening when their lawyer arrives at the Slates’ door to tell them that when the company went through a restructuring process over a year earlier, Peter virtually “wrote Michael out” of their partnership. Michael knew his monthly share had been decreasing for a while, but he never looked into the details. Half a million in consulting fees have bypassed Michael and been funneled into Peter and his wife Helen’s personal account. Since Helen and Mia are best friends, and the Slates’ 17-year-old son, Finn, and the Conrads’ daughter have been buddies since childhood, Peter’s betrayal affects each member of both families.

This initiates the first real schism in the Slates’ marriage, for Mia is understandably angry and frustrated with Michael’s failure to monitor what was happening to their bottom line. But that same February evening, a much more tragic event occurs: Finn gets drunk at a neighbor’s party and passes out in the snow, and the temperature that night dips to 30 degrees below zero. He loses a hand to frostbite—and that loss reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. Who is to blame? Who feels guilty . . . and who wants revenge?

Finn withdraws from his parents, “loses” his prosthesis and skips six months of counseling appointments. Mia drifts further away from Michael, emotionally and sexually, and contemplates an affair. Michael escapes from home by means of nightly baseball practices with a homeless youth, an odd relationship that eventually leads to a violent act of revenge against Peter and his family.

Proulx deftly delves into the inner psyches of each of her flawed characters, bringing some level of understanding to their otherwise inexplicably bad choices. Her tale of the downward spiral experienced by these two families seems as real as if we were reading it in the newspaper or hearing it on the local news.

Proulx’s second novel opens an incisive window into the seemingly predictable lives of two upper-middle-class families that slowly unravel over one long year, following two calamitous events. Mia and Michael Slate are cruising into middle age—she’s a photographer, and he’s a partner in a money management firm with Peter Conrad, whom he’s known since high school.

FictionLiterary FictionFamily Saga

A bond between forgotten women

Review by Deborah Donovan

Thrity Umrigar’s eighth novel follows the main character of her bestselling The Space Between Us (2006), the servant Bhima, over the course of a year. The life of Parvati, a minor character in that earlier novel, becomes intricately entwined with Bhima’s in this sequel.

Parvati has the sadder background of the two: Sold into prostitution as a young girl by her desperately poor father, she spent two decades in a brothel before one of her regulars asks her to marry him. She trades one horrific life for another, as she is regularly abused by him and is left penniless when he dies. Now Parvati exists by selling six cauliflowers a day from her spot at an outdoor market; she sleeps under the stairwell outside her nephew’s apartment and eats leftovers from a nearby restaurant.

Bhima has been forced to leave one of her servant jobs and is looking for a way to earn extra money to help send her granddaughter, Maya, to college. She meets Parvati at the market, and they form a working partnership. As the two lonely women grow closer, they gradually begin to share their stories, listening without judgment to the secrets they’ve hidden from others—poverty, illiteracy, sexual abuse, multiple abortions, offspring who died from AIDS. Nothing is left unsaid.

Umrigar places these two old women, steeped in the strict class distinctions of their upbringing, in the midst of modern-day Mumbai. Through the character of Maya, the author builds hope for classes to better themselves, for gender equality and for a decrease in homophobia and sexual assault in India’s future. Her emotional portrayal of these two strong women will be a popular choice for book clubs, and for readers who enjoy multicultural family sagas.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Thrity Umrigar’s eighth novel follows the main character of her bestselling The Space Between Us (2006), the servant Bhima, over the course of a year. The life of Parvati, a minor character in that earlier novel, becomes intricately entwined with Bhima’s in this sequel.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Back to Beartown

Review by Deborah Donovan

Fredrik Backman’s engrossing fifth book is a sequel to Beartown, his 2017 novel set in a small town on the edge of a Swedish forest. As Us Against You opens, Beartown’s future is threatened: first by the possible closure of its only factory, and second by the bankruptcy faced by the town’s hockey club. Hockey isn’t merely a game to the town’s inhabitants—their whole lives revolve around the Bears’ wins and losses.

Beartown’s anxiety is further fueled by a major shift in the Bears’ team roster. After the rape of the general manager’s daughter, Maya, by a team member, as chronicled in Beartown, the team was torn apart. Some Bears abandoned the team and joined the Bulls from the neighboring town of Hed. Those who stayed in Beartown are some of the best players, but the remaining team lacks the size and experience of the Bulls.

Backman’s latest saga focuses on the first hockey season following the schism, brilliantly portraying the way each magnetic character copes with the hatred and violence that has engulfed these two small towns as their teams prepare to do battle. Maya struggles to move on from her traumatic experience, constantly aware that many blame her for the team’s demise. Her best friend, Ana, carelessly reveals that their friend Benji, one of the team’s best players, is gay. Maya’s parents, Peter and Kira, constantly face backlash from a town that blames their report of Maya’s rape for the team’s problems. Vidar, the younger brother of one of the town bullies, is mysteriously released from a detention camp to be the Bears’ goalie. Ramona, a widow who runs the local bar, lovingly supports the pack of “hooligans” who resort to violence in support of their team. The new Bears coach is a woman, an ex-professional player who struggles to gain the acceptance of the town and her players. And lurking in the background is a Wizard of Oz-like figure—a politician trying to manipulate the team and factory to enrich his own pockets.

Backman stirs this volatile mélange of disparate characters until the inevitable explosion occurs, leaving Beartown sadder but perhaps wiser than before. His depiction of this small town will resonate especially with readers who struggle with the racism, homophobia and misogyny that exist in their own communities.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fredrik Backman’s engrossing fifth book is a sequel to Beartown, his 2017 novel set in a small town on the edge of a Swedish forest. As Us Against You opens, Beartown’s future is threatened: first by the possible closure of its only factory, and second by the bankruptcy faced by the town’s hockey club. Hockey isn’t merely a game to the town’s inhabitants—their whole lives revolve around the Bears’ wins and losses.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Love and memory, marred by war

Review by Deborah Donovan

Nick Dybek’s haunting, vividly cinematic tale is set in rural France after the horrific World War I battle at Verdun, where almost a million men died. Each of Dybek’s three central characters has a tie to the site of the carnage—beginning in 1921 with Tom Combs, a young American ambulance driver working for the church, collecting remains from the battlefield to be placed in a huge ossuary, which will eventually hold the remnants of 130,000 French and German soldiers. Tom diligently carries out his macabre assignment, even as he ponders how to tell those searching for their missing loved ones that “the shelling was so incessant during the battle that a man’s remains might be buried and unburied and blown a mile into the distance and buried again?” Hundreds of bones are found every day, “mangled and unmatched.”

It is there that Sarah Hagen comes, searching for her husband, Lee, who was in the American Field Service and went missing in 1918. Perhaps to ease her evident stress from a long and fruitless search, Tom tells her he met Lee in Aix-les-Bains while Lee was on leave. Tom and Sarah begin an intense yet brief affair—she is immersed in grief, and Tom feels guilty over his lie. She leaves Verdun to continue her quest, and Tom moves on to a job as a journalist in Paris.

Dybek’s story then moves from Verdun to Bologna, where a year later Sarah and Tom meet again—both drawn by reports of an amnesiac patient in a mental hospital who may be Lee Hagen. There they encounter Dybek’s third enigmatic character, Paul Weyerhauser, an Austrian journalist who has his own wartime backstory—and a reason for questioning the amnesiac.

The narrative leaps forward to Los Angeles in the 1950s, where Tom and Paul meet unexpectedly at a funeral. Each has his memories of Sarah and their time together in Italy—memories viewed through different lenses and clouded by time. Dybek’s poignant tale of the harsh realities of war juxtaposed with a dreamlike love story will linger with readers in the same manner as Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Nick Dybek’s haunting, vividly cinematic tale is set in rural France after the horrific World War I battle at Verdun, where almost a million men died. Each of Dybek’s three central characters has a tie to the site of the carnage—beginning in 1921 with Tom Combs, a young American ambulance driver working for the church, collecting remains from the battlefield to be placed in a huge ossuary, which will eventually hold the remnants of 130,000 French and German soldiers. Tom diligently carries out his macabre assignment, even as he ponders how to tell those searching for their missing loved ones that “the shelling was so incessant during the battle that a man’s remains might be buried and unburied and blown a mile into the distance and buried again?” Hundreds of bones are found every day, “mangled and unmatched.”

FictionPopular FictionFamily Drama

A father calls his children home

Review by Deborah Donovan

Elisabeth Hyde’s latest novel, like her two most recent—The Abortionist’s Daughter (2006) and In the Heart of the Canyon (2009)—displays her marvelous gift for creating vibrant and believable characters while keeping a keen, often humorous eye on their less desirable traits. In Go Ask Fannie, her sixth work of fiction, Hyde focuses her perceptive lens on Murray, 81, the beloved patriarch of the Blair family. A widower for 32 years, he invites his three grown children to his rural New Hampshire home for what he hopes will be a weekend of sibling bonding.

Ruth, the oldest, is a typically dominant firstborn. A lawyer in D.C., she is the most removed and therefore hasn’t noticed Murray’s age-related foibles, but she also has the most to say about what should come next for their father: an assisted living facility. George, 44, is an ICU nurse and marathon runner who lives an hour away from their father, in Concord. Lizzie, 38, is a tenured college professor living only a 20-minute drive away from Murray and therefore is his most frequent caregiver. Lizzie also causes Murray the most worry, and is the reason he has called the siblings together. A few days earlier, Lizzie’s most recent lover dropped her late mother’s Fannie Farmer Cookbook into a sink full of water; in a rage, Lizzie poured boiling water on the man’s laptop, burning his hand in the process, and she may be sued at any time.

Hovering over this hastily arranged long weekend are two deaths from a car accident 32 years ago: that of Lillian, the children’s mother, and of their sibling Daniel, who was 15. Lillian was a stay-at-home mom who longed to be a published writer. She spent all her free hours in a tiny space on the house’s third floor, typing her short stories on an ancient Smith Corona. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, in which she scribbled first lines of stories that came to her while she was cooking for her endlessly hungry brood, is beloved by her remaining children, as they think it’s all that’s left of her writing endeavors.

Hyde moves back and forth in time between this family conference in 2016 and the early years of Murray and Lillian’s marriage, ending with the tragic accident in 1984. Each character is crafted with such an incisive eye for detail that the reader feels as if she has been dropped into the middle of this family confab—Hyde makes it easy to relate to what each family member is going through.

Hyde’s insightful and engaging novel is highly recommended, especially for readers who enjoy family sagas by Sue Miller and Anne Tyler.

Elisabeth Hyde’s latest novel, like her two most recent—The Abortionist’s Daughter (2006) and In the Heart of the Canyon (2009)—displays her marvelous gift for creating vibrant and believable characters while keeping a keen, often humorous eye on their less desirable traits. In Go Ask Fannie, her sixth work of fiction, Hyde focuses her perceptive lens on Murray, 81, the beloved patriarch of the Blair family. A widower for 32 years, he invites his three grown children to his rural New Hampshire home for what he hopes will be a weekend of sibling bonding.

FictionHistorical Fiction

A Romanov history

Review by Deborah Donovan

Ariel Lawhon’s two previous historical novels delved into the Jazz Age in New York City (The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress) and the final flight of the Hindenburg in 1937 (Flight of Dreams). In her latest, she imagines the last months of Russia’s royal Romanov family—Czar Nicholas II; his wife, Empress Alexandra; their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; and their son, Alexey—following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Lawhon focuses on Anastasia, the youngest daughter, illuminating those harrowing months in late 1917 and 1918, beginning when the imperial palace is taken over by the revolutionary army. The family is put under house arrest, limited to the few rooms not occupied by soldiers, and their activities are closely monitored. Lawhon recounts their haunting journey east into Siberia by train, when the girls, including Anastasia, are raped. The family is housed in an abandoned army barracks in the “godforsaken outpost” of Tobolsk. Their lives become even more unbearable when the Red Guard takes command, their mission to cruelly punish the family for their former excessive lifestyle. From Tobolsk they are sent further east to the town of Ekaterinburg, where, in July 1918, the whole family is executed by firing squad.

Or—did Anastasia somehow miraculously escape the massacre? Threaded in and out of the chapters recounting the last days of Anastasia and her family is the story of a young woman who, two years later, is pulled from a canal in Berlin and claims to be Anastasia Romanov. She has scars that could be from bullet wounds, and she bears a remarkable resemblance to the young Romanov duchess. Those who refuse to believe her story give her the name Anna Anderson and see her merely as a fortune seeker. Lawhon’s extensive research traces Anna’s steps backward from 1970, when a Hamburg court determines that her claim is “not proven.” In the years leading up to this moment, she is institutionalized, interviewed by Anastasia’s family and contemporaries, and romanticized in plays and movies.

The truth of her own sad story is revealed only at the conclusion of Lawhon’s mesmerizing saga, which encompasses over 50 years and travels from revolutionary Russia and interwar France to the United States in the 1970s.

Though DNA evidence has finally proven what happened to the Romanov family, Lawhon’s labyrinthine tale remains fascinating to the end.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ariel Lawhon’s two previous historical novels delved into the Jazz Age in New York City (The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress) and the final flight of the Hindenburg in 1937 (Flight of Dreams). In her latest, she imagines the last months of Russia’s royal Romanov family—Czar Nicholas II; his wife, Empress Alexandra; their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; and their son, Alexey—following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Sisterhood, against all odds

Review by Deborah Donovan

At the core of Shobha Rao’s magnificent and heart-wrenching debut novel is a unique friendship forged between two young women from a small Indian village. Poornima and Savitha’s bond sustains them despite insurmountable odds; their first obstacle is simply being born into a community that celebrates the births of sons but considers daughters as objects to be married off as soon as possible.

After 15-year-old Poornima’s mother dies and the traditional year of mourning has passed, her father contacts the local matchmaker to find her a suitable husband. At the same time, Poornima meets Savitha, who is a year older than Poornima and from an even poorer family. With three younger sisters, a chronically ill father and a mother who cleans houses, Savitha is forced to scour the garbage dumps daily for food, or perhaps something to sell.

Poornima’s father, a sari weaver, is looking for someone to sit at his dead wife’s loom to help increase his output, so Savitha fills that position and becomes Poornima’s close friend. Despite her dire circumstances, Savitha is full of joy and hope—feelings that Poornima has all but forgotten.

When a probable match for Poornima is found in a distant village, the girls plan ways to stay in touch after the marriage. But suddenly Savitha becomes the victim of a horrific crime, and she disappears—without telling Poornima where she is going.

Rao fills the second half of her captivating novel with the devastating circumstances that engulf these young women over the next several years. From extreme cruelty to kidnapping and entrapment in a sexual slavery ring, each traumatic experience keeps them separated by thousands of miles, and finding a way to meet again seems impossible.

Girls Burn Brighter focuses an enlightening lens on contemporary headlines that often seem abstract. Readers of Rao’s vital, vibrant novel will not soon forget these two strong, driven young women.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book essay from Shobha Rao on Girls Burn Brighter.

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At the core of Shobha Rao’s magnificent and heart-wrenching debut novel is a unique friendship forged between two young women from a small Indian village. Poornima and Savitha’s bond sustains them despite insurmountable odds; their first obstacle is simply being born into a community that celebrates the births of sons but considers daughters as objects to be married off as soon as possible.

FictionLiterary Fiction

This house is a home

Review by Deborah Donovan

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, December 2017

The third novel by Australian author Ashley Hay is an engrossing and insightful portrait of two women living in Brisbane, Australia: Elsie, now in her 90s, a widow of 40 years and recently relocated to an assisted living facility by her children; and Lucy, a 30-something mother of a 2-year-old and wife to Ben, a journalist.

Elsie has just sold her home of 60 years to Lucy’s young family. Throughout the novel, Hay moves back and forth through Elsie’s years, giving the reader introspective looks into her life: from her days as a vibrant, adventurous young woman to her years mothering her twins, Elaine and Don; from the time she stepped out of her ordinary life to have her portrait painted to the present day, when she looks into her mirror at “the facility” and says to herself, “I have no idea who you are or why you’re here.”

Lucy’s chapters revolve around the difficulties of new motherhood—the crying, the late nights, the sudden, obstinate behavior of her young son. She increasingly takes out her frustrations on her husband, whom she sees as blissfully removed from most of the childrearing as he enjoys his daily routine at the newspaper and his frequent work-related trips abroad.

Numerous scenes in this thoughtful novel will linger in the reader’s memory—like Elsie’s husband, Clem, graciously reaching out to an old neighbor who divorced and moved away, but could be found “wandering around his old neighborhood, looking for his past.” Or the night when Clem dies in his sleep at age 54, when Elsie realizes that “suddenly all the plans they’d thought of making were too late.”

A lyrically written portrayal of the lives of two women tied together by memories and the house they share, A Hundred Small Lessons is sure to be enjoyed by readers of Kate Morton, another Brisbane author.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The third novel by Australian author Ashley Hay is an engrossing and insightful portrait of two women living in Brisbane, Australia: Elsie, now in her 90s, a widow of 40 years and recently relocated to an assisted living facility by her children; and Lucy, a 30-something mother of a 2-year-old and wife to Ben, a journalist.

FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Behind the doors of the convent

Review by Deborah Donovan

Alice McDermott’s seven previous novels, including the 1998 National Book Award winner, Charming Billy, have portrayed with acute perception the many aspects of the Irish-American experience. Her latest is a beautifully crafted depiction of a cloister of nuns in early 20th-century Brooklyn as they move in and out of the lives of a young Irish widow and her daughter.

The novel opens as Sister St. Saviour, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, is on her way back to the convent after spending the afternoon collecting alms at the neighborhood Woolworth’s. She is summoned by police to a tenement apartment—the scene of a fire caused by the apparent suicide of a young Irish immigrant. She uses the influence she’s gained from 37 years of service to have the man buried in the nearest Catholic cemetery, and then tends to the widow, Annie, who is expecting a baby the following summer.

Annie is quickly brought into the fold of the Sisters of the Sick Poor and given a job in the convent’s laundry under the tutelage of Sister Illuminata, who sees godliness in every clean sheet she washes, every black tunic she irons. And when the baby, Sally, is born, the young Sister Jeanne gladly takes over her care while Annie works nearby.

As the years go by, Annie ventures into a relationship with a married man, a fact not hidden from the Sisters but somehow condoned. And Sally, who is comfortable with the daily life of the convent and her ministrations to the sick as she accompanies Sister Jeanne on her daily rounds, gradually begins to visualize becoming a nun herself.

McDermott illuminates every­day scenes with such precise, unadorned descriptions that the reader feels he or she is there, hidden in the background. The agony of the sick in body or mind, the guilt over ignoring church doctrine, the power of love to erase loneliness—each is treated with McDermott’s exquisite language, tinged with her signature wit. Her latest is highly recommended—a novel to savor and to share.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Alice McDermott’s seven previous novels, including the 1998 National Book Award winner, Charming Billy, have portrayed with acute perception the many aspects of the Irish-American experience. Her latest is a beautifully crafted depiction of a cloister of nuns in early 20th-century Brooklyn as they move in and out of the lives of a young Irish widow and her daughter.

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