Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford is a quickly unspooling, cinematic mystery set in the fictional city of Cahokia, during the 1920’s. (The real Cahokia had vanished by 1200 C.E., leaving behind only mounds of grass-covered dirt in Illinois, near the meeting of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.) The population of author Spufford’s Cahokia is divided …
Tag: book-review
Literary fireworks for the July 4th holiday
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is one of the most captivating works of fiction I’ve read in a long time. (I thank my reliable source Beth G. for the recommendation.) Set in rural England, this is a story of youthful passion, class differences, family loyalty, secrets, crime, coverups, abiding love, wrong decisions, their consequences, …
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A heart-warming novel set in Ireland
Time of the Child by Niall Williams returns us to the setting for his last novel, This is Happiness. We’re deposited back in the rural Irish village of Faha, where the men work hard and douse end-of-workday frustrations at the local bars while their long-suffering wives tend to domestic chores and ride herd on multiple …
Two novels to take you elsewhere
Safekeep, a debut novel by Yael van der Wouden, won the 2024 Booker Prize, and the award was well deserved. Set in the Netherlands in 1961, it focuses on Isabel, the only one of three siblings caring for the big old house in which she grew up. Brother Hendrick has moved on to a gay …
A message to Pete Hegseth about women in combat
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell is a wonderful biography about an extraordinary woman who played a key role in the defeat of the Nazis in the 1940’s, a woman of courage and powerful leadership skills, a woman of whom most people have never heard, a woman whose life should be instructive to …
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Historical fiction that expands our minds and feeds our senses
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud is a fictional drama based on the author’s own multi-generational family, covering seven decades of family history and moving from Salonica in Greece, to French (colonial) Algeria to France, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Australia and the United States. Each chapter is told from the perspective of another family member, …
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Fiction to distract from post-election angst
Here are two novels in which key characters are named Gabe. The similarity ends there. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a psychological thriller that plumbs the depth of the human psyche. The simplest narrative – a woman is convicted of murdering her husband, Gabriel Berenson. She becomes mute, is sent for years to …
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Two more novels where small towns are defining
Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke is a nicely woven mystery set in rural East Texas. Two murders occur in just a matter of days in a tiny town called Lark. Are the two crimes related? That’s just one of the questions being explored by principal character Darren Matthews, an African-American who dropped out of law …
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Still more summer fiction
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl is a confection, set in the 1980’s in Paris. Stella, a 20-something copy editor in New York, leads a highly routinized life, the regularity of which is comforting to her. She is estranged from her mother, Celia, who has never expressed love of her. Nor has Celia ever told …
Four Novels by Three Authors, All About Family Life
Long Island by Colm Toibin is a May, 2024 sequel to his notable 2009 novel Brooklyn and follows its principal characters, Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant to Brooklyn in the 1950’s, and her husband Tony Fiorella, a plumber from a robust Italian family. When Toibin picks up their story again, it’s the 1970’s, and they …
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Marjorie Arons-Barron 