Fiction

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“The Ditch” is a complex story about life, family, different cultures, love, revenge, aging, illness and the intersection of it all.

The story revolves around “Robert”, the mayor of Amsterdam and his wife “Sylvia”. Robert is the narrator and the names are aliases, because the real names “would only confuse things. People make all kinds of assumptions when it comes to names.” Robert is from Holland and Sylvia is from a different unnamed country and her physical appearance makes it clear that she is not from Holland. They have a daughter “Diana”.

During a reception, Robert observes Sylvia talking and laughing with Alderman Martens Van Hoogstraten. Robert becomes obsessed, based solely on that one event, that Sylvia and the Alderman are having a romantic relationship. If Sylvia is acting normal, that is suspicious. “…it was precisely the absence of any visible sign or signal that should confirm my worst suspicions. The completely normal way my wife was acting…could be a deliberate tactic.” “They were acting like nothing was going on which meant something was going on.” Of course, when Sylvia is acting peculiar, that is suspicious.
Continue Reading The Ditch – by Herman Koch

Eleanor Oliphant“I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue veil of tears is that there is always, however remote it may seem, the possibility of change.”

Now I realize that this quote may not make you want to read this book (and maybe you shouldn’t), dreary as it seems. But the novel, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, is about a person’s ability to make even the most dreadful life better—through change.

Eleanor Oliphant is a peculiar, 31 year old office worker, with a university degree in classics and what we learn was a miserable upbringing. She describes herself as a woman with “Long, straight, light brown hair that runs all the way down to my waist, pale skin, my face a scarred palimpsest of fire.” Her face, specifically, has “ridged, white contours of scar tissue that slither across my right cheek, starting at my temple and running all the way down to my chin.”

Eleanor has no friends and the people at work, a graphics design company, make fun of her behind her back. Her weekends are spent at home alone, with vodka, pizza and books. She has a weekly telephone call with her “Mummy”, who appears to be institutionalized and is extraordinarily cruel to Eleanor.
Continue Reading Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine – by Gail Honeyman

Chances Are“Chances Are” is a mystery, a love story and a buddy story all wrapped together. It is engaging, captivating, well written and 100% pure Richard Russo.

Lincoln Moser, Teddy Novak and Mickey Girardi are 66 year old college buddies who get together for a reunion at Lincoln’s vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard. Each come from very different backgrounds and met as college students at Minerva College in Connecticut, where they were scholarship students. They worked in the kitchen at the Theta House as “hashers”, where Lincoln met Anita, who became his wife and all three were close friends with and secretly in love with Jacy Rockafellow.

The novel tells the story of Lincoln, Teddy, Mickey and Jacy, and the details of their lives that the others do not know. The reunion in Martha’s Vineyard is difficult, because it was this exact house, forty plus years earlier, where they last saw Jacy. After college graduation, the four decided to have a last get together at the home previously owned by Lincoln’s mother. Jacy snuck out early on the last day and was never heard from or seen again.
Continue Reading Chances Are – by Richard Russo

Normal PeopleNormal People is the story of two very damaged people who only feel whole when together but tragically keep finding ways to be apart.

The story takes place from January of 2011 until February of 2015. In 2011, Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron are in high school. Marianne lives in a mansion with her mother and brother and Connell’s mother, Lorraine, is their housekeeper. Marianne is awkward and bookish and has no friends. Connell is popular, athletic, good looking and well liked by the girls.

Connell and Marianne get to know each other as Connell picks up his mother  from work. They develop an intimate relationship, which, although meaningful to both of them, they decide to keep a secret from their classmates. At the same time, they decide to go to Trinity College together, further strengthening their relationship. Then Connell invites someone else to the school dance and the thing falls apart.

They reconnect at Trinity and throughout the novel they are splitting up, engaging in new romances and then finding each other. Marianne grows into a beautiful woman and each of her relationships (other than Connell) involves physical abuse.
Continue Reading Normal People – by Sally Rooney

There are times in our past that are so horrific, and yet so monumental,  that the story must be told again and again. The trick, of course is to find a way to tell the story in a new and engaging way, that captures the interest and holds the attention of an audience. The Flight Portfolio is one of those stories.

In The Flight Portfolio, Julie Orringer tells us the story of Varian Fry, a Harvard educated, sexually confused, New York Protestant. In 1940 Varian Fry is in Marseilles France working to help significant writers, artists and intellectuals (most of whom are Jewish) blacklisted by the Nazis, get out of France. Fry is working for the Emergency Rescue Committee, headquartered in New York City. The mission is simply a matter of life and death.

The job involves relationships, money and bribery. Fry assembles an eccentric group of refugees, displaced do gooders and others to help with the mission. They develop relationships with the not always helpful or friendly American Consulate, French police, Nazis, gangsters and profiteers—anyone who can help or be bribed to help in getting people to safety. During a good portion of the story, much of the staff and many of the refugees are living together in a villa known as Air Bel, where food is scarce and raids are frequent.
Continue Reading The Flight Portfolio – by Julie Orringer

The Great BelieversThe Great Believers is a story of the AIDS epidemic, its victims and its survivors. The story is told in alternating years, beginning with 1985 in Chicago and moving to 2015 in Paris.

The story starts with Nico’s funeral and funeral reception. Nico had died 3 weeks before the story begins. This part of the story focuses on Yale (and Charlie) and Nico’s sister, Fiona. Yale works in development at Northwestern University at the Briggs Gallery. Charlie is a gay rights activist and runs “Outloud Chicago”. Charlie and Yale have been in a long term monogamous relationship.

Nico’s parents threw him out of the house at the age of 15 when they found out he was gay. Fiona was 11 at the time and began bringing him food and money. Nico’s partner, Terrence, is just waiting for the disease to hit him.

The funeral reception takes place at photographer Richard Campo’s home. Richard is about 15 years older than the rest of the group. When someone at the party brings out slides of Nico, Yale is so upset he goes upstairs to get away from the pictures. When he comes back down everyone is gone. It is this event that causes a permanent and insoluble rift between Yale and Charlie.
Continue Reading The Great Believers – by Rebecca Makkai

The Stationery Shop“The Stationery Shop” is a sweet, overly sentimental story of a woman’s life journey from heartbreak in Iran to ultimate consolation in America.

Roya Khanom, a 17 year old high school senior in Tehran, meets Bahman Aslan at the Stationery Store in Tehran. They start meeting there on Tuesdays and with the assistance of the store proprietor, Mr. Fakhri, begin to know each other and fall in love. Bahman is a political activist supporting the Iranian prime minister Massadegh.

Bahman‘s father is a successful engineer and his mother, Badri, married up from her modest beginnings. But Badri has many secrets and does not approve of the romance between Bahman and Roya. Badri has chosen another girl for Bahman, from a much more successful family.

When Bahman requests approval from Roya’s parents to marry Roya, his parents do not join him, which is the tradition. At the engagement party for the couple, Badri shows up wearing all black.
Continue Reading The Stationery Shop – by Marjan Kamali

I actually do not know how to describe this rather odd book. At first blush, it is a peculiar story about a search for the missing daughter of a friend, which takes the protagonist into an unknown world. However, I do not think that is what this book is about. I think this book is about politics and judgement and about how we have lost our way. But I am not sure.

The book starts with Phoebe driving through Upland, California looking for a detective’s office. Phoebe is from Manhattan and the description of how she feels searching for this office after driving past it twice is wonderful. “It was the feeling, specifically, that it was a place for driving past,  so my foot couldn’t find the brake.” There are little gems like this throughout the book.

The detective is Charles Heist, who keeps an opossum in his desk drawer and a runaway in his armoire. Needless to say he is unconventional and of course Phoebe falls for him.

Phoebe is looking for Arabella, the daughter of her friend Roslyn. Roslyn and Phoebe met at work at NPR, where Phoebe was working in the OpEd department and Roslyn, 20 years her senior, was her supervisor. Phoebe quit her job over her perception that NPR had normalized Donald Trump during the election.
Continue Reading The Feral Detective – by Jonathan Lethem

My Sister the Serial KillerMy Sister the Serial Killer may be the most literal title of any novel I have posted here. The novel is one sister’s story about her sister who kills her lovers, in what seems like rapid succession.

Korede, the older less attractive sister, is a nurse at St. Peter’s in Lagos. Ayoola, her beautiful younger…

The Nickel BoysLet me start by saying this is an excellent book. This is a very sad book but it is an excellent book.

The Nickel Boys is the story of Elwood Curtis, an African American teenager with immense potential whose life and future take an unexpected turn. In 1962 Elwood’s grandmother gives him a copy of…