Book Reviews - Late Last Night Books

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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Take a beautiful sea setting, add a few endearing but complex characters, top it off with serious moral dilemmas, and what do you get? The Light Between Oceans, an excellent debut novel by M.L. Stedman.

Set mostly at a lighthouse on Janus Rock, an island off the coast of Australia, The Light Between Oceans tells the story of Tom and Isabel Sherbourne, the lighthouse keeper and his wife, who live alone on the island, visited only once a season by two men who bring them supplies. This isolated existence suits Tom, who believes that if he can get far enough away from people and memories, time will heal the mental and emotional wounds he carries from fighting in World War I, especially the nightmares that remind him of the blood on his hands. He is a meticulous lighthouse keeper, always making sure the light goes on and off at the correct times and recording everything he should in the leather-bound log.

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The Secret Chord: A New Look at an Old Book

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks has everything — love, hate, jealousy, violence, intrigue, battles, and faith. And why shouldn’t it? It’s a retelling of the biblical story of David, though the word “retelling” doesn’t do justice to Brooks’s success in breathing new life into the three-thousand-year-old character many readers think they already know.

David is familiar to us as the man who killed the giant Goliath, united the people of Israel, played the harp, and wrote many of the Psalms. That’s about all I remembered of him when I opened the book. The novel so intrigued me that I’ve since reread the biblical accounts to see how they differ from Brooks’s.

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Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Happy Marriage

Here is my review of Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun’s latest, The Happy Marriage, which appeared in the latest issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books.

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Chanukah Guilt by Ilene Schneider: A Review

Chanukah Guilt is the title of Rabbi Illene Schneider’s first cozy mystery. The heroine is a female rabbi whose persistence in seeking answers about the supposed suicide of a young woman leads to the discovery of a double murder.

The Chanukah connection is an artificial overlay to the story and other than being “cute” due to the fact that Guilt almost sounds like Gelt, the title has nothing to do with the story.

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Book Review: The Bowl with Gold Seams

I’ve written frequently about my admiration for small-press publishing, folks who are driven more by their love of the written word than by any expectation of making a commercial killing. It’s that willingness to simply go with what they love that leads many small presses to build impressive catalogs of work by authors of remarkable talent. This month I’m highlighting another example of this marriage of small press to big talent.

I originally heard about Ellen Prentiss Campbell from several sources almost simultaneously, one of which was our shared publisher. As small presses go, publishers don’t come much smaller than Apprentice House Press, run out of Loyola University. Of unique note, though, Apprentice House is both non-profit and student-run. Students learn by doing; authors get unparalleled input into the creative process behind bringing a traditionally published work into print. What is perhaps most remarkable is that the students work as a team to choose the projects for which they’d like to offer a contract. Kudos for their selection of Ellen’s novel.

THE BOWL WITH GOLD SEAMS, Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Apprentice House, 2015, 221 pp.

“What is broken is also beautiful.” This is the lesson taught by kintsugi, a Japanese ceramic art form in which objects are purposely broken and then mended with golden joinery, thereby making them even more beautiful and more valuable.

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A MAN CALLED FREDRIK BACKMAN

Novels that pack a punch but still leave the reader feeling uplifted don’t come along very often. Too frequently, novels tend to depict the world we live in as dangerous and dreary or they’re filled with unflappable optimists and do-gooders. Swedish author Fredrik Backman walks the line between those two scenarios perfectly in his first two novels, A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry.

I read A Man Called Ove first and loved its main character, a grouchy old man who’s set in his ways and seems to have no tolerance for anyone who can’t understand that his way is not just the right way; it’s the only way.

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10 Great American Political Novels

Ten Great American Political Novels for Trying Times

As the campaign season draws to a close, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. But what about fiction with a strong political theme? Can it help us understand and make sense of the world around us? You bet it can, and I’ve got just the list to prove it.

Whether you’re fed up with politics and need an escape or you just can’t get enough of it, here are ten American political novels worth considering before Inauguration Day. The choices are mine, and I’ll warn you that I’ve left out a few that might seem particularly partisan (Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, for example), as well as the many great foreign political classics (1984, The Trial, War and Peace, to name just a few). Most have been made into movies, but trust me, the books are better.

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Catherynne Valente, a Children’s Book Author for Adults

Fairy Tales for Every Age

As a children’s book blogger and mother to a toddler, I’m an equal-opportunity lover of books, from board books to novels, and I’ve learned to largely ignore age recommendations. That’s how I found Catherynne M. Valente in the children’s book section rather than general fiction, and, trust me, she’s not an author to miss, no matter how you find her.

I first encountered Cat Valente’s books through her Fairyland series, novels which are listed for ages 10-14, according to the back cover. I’m 29 right now, by the way. I soon finished reading them all and delightedly reviewed them for my children’s books blog, The Children’s Bookroom, praising her for her ability to frame characters with such heart and personal growth, and to create a world so fantastical and yet so tangible. But I wanted more Valente books. I wondered what else someone with her capabilities would be able to do. Topsy-turvy adult that I am, I went from reading her children’s books to discovering her adult novels.

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ALL IN THE FAMILY—THE PERFECT CAULDRON FOR CONFLICT

According to the 2011 FBI Uniform Crime Report, 24.8 percent of U.S. murder victims were killed by family members. That’s a nearly a quarter of all murders. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that family violence (including assault, murder, robbery, and sex offenses) accounted for 11 percent of all reported and unreported violence between 1998 and 2002. Although we don’t have statistics for the flip side of family passions, anyone who has experienced a tragedy knows the profound role family love and support can play during those times. And also how deep an emotional wound inflicted by a family member can go. Because family relationships are among the most highly charged of any relationships in human experience, families offer the ideal set of characters for a novel’s essential conflict.

In the past few months, I’ve read three good novels about different kinds of families and the ways they deal with tragedies, including murder. I recommend them all.

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Musings: Writer’s Brain, or, Whose Story Is It?

On a recent trip to Florida, my husband, some friends, and I took a short boat ride out to an uninhabited barrier island. We hiked out to the beach, and they pulled up a seat while I continued on to hunt shells. I was perhaps a quarter mile away when I decided to take a quick dip to cool off. As I turned to go back to shore, a searing pain burned through my foot. I stumbled out of the water, fell onto the sand, and watched as blood pumped with every heartbeat from the top of my foot. The pain threatened to cause a blackout.

Here are the things that went through my mind as I sat there:

I can’t put any weight on my foot.
I have no way to stop the bleeding.
I am completely alone on this beach.
I wonder how I can use this in a story.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is a perfect example of writer’s brain. For all I knew, I was in the midst of a life-threatening situation with no obvious resolution, but that was no reason to delay imagining the fictional possibilities. I could immediately envision all the ways this could segue into great literature:

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Enter Through Magda Szabo’s The Door

So you devoured Elene Ferrante’s tetralogy and now you’re wondering what other international gems are out there—books so good you can’t believe you never heard of them. Well, look no further than Magda Szabó’s The Door. If you like Ferrante, I guarantee you’ll like Szabó.

Magda Szabó, who died in 2007 at age 90, was one of Hungary’s most important 20^th century writers, widely read and admired at home but only recently getting the love and attention she deserves worldwide. The Door was published in 1987 but not translated into English until 2005, when it appeared in Britain. Last year, the New York Review Books classics offered it up to American audiences in a new, widely praised translation by Len Rix. We should all be thankful.

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What Writers Can Learn from Tolstoy’s Novellas

I’m shocked when I read lists of favorite novels and see that most, and sometimes all, are American. There may be a leavening of British authors too; that’s something. Still, I think, haven’t you read the Russians or the Germans? You really think Toni Morrison or Jonathan Safran-Foer are better than Tolstoy or Musil? Anglo-Saxon culture is lamentably insular, and American culture is not merely insular but downright provincial these days. The greatest weakness of the writing done by creative writing students—graduates as well as undergraduates—is that it’s so rarely informed by wide reading. And however unfashionable it may be, my remedy is to send them to the canon. Not “back to the canon”, sadly, because most of them aren’t familiar with it in the first place. And you can’t do better than start with a Dead White Male who was also (oh, unpardonable elitism!) an aristocrat, Count Leo Tolstoy.

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MURIEL SPARK NOVELS

READING MY WAY THROUGH MURIEL SPARK On Goodreads I posted the question, “Who writes like Barbara Pym, one of my favorite authors?” A friend replied that I should try Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington. There began my reading of Spark, an author who had escaped me, though she was twice short-listed for the Booker Prize and in 2008 included by The Times as among Britain’s top 50 writers since 1945.

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Goodies From My Book Groups

A friend of mine was in four book groups for many years. She couldn’t help herself. Whenever she heard about one, she thought she’d give it a try and quickly found herself hooked.

I’m now in three book groups, so I understand. One is with friends, another is at synagogue, and the third is at a home for seniors. Each group has its own personality, and I wonder how I ever managed with only one.

Without these groups, I’d have missed many a good read and discussion. They introduced me to Harriet Scott Chessman, Howard Norman, and so many more.

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The Buried Giant: Ishiguro’s Masterpiece?

Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro. Source: Getty Images

Good art, Tolstoy said, is of two kinds: either religious or “universal”, which he defines as conveying “the simplest feelings of life, such as are accessible to everyone in the world.” I quibble with his use of the term “religious”, although I would accept the broader “spiritual.” About the universal, it’s hard to disagree. The question I ponder here is whether a novel set in Dark Ages Britain, with elements of fantasy including ogres, a dragon, a knight of the Round Table, and a constant mist that causes amnesia, could possibly fall into that category.

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Bloggers Take On Book Reviews

As usual, the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime served up an excellent program along with lunch at its monthly meeting this July. Presenters were Dru Ann Love of drusbookmusing.com and Kristopher Zgorski of BOLO Books talking about their blogs.

Dru Ann Love is owner/writer at dru’s book musings and at her daytime work as a market research analyst. Her blog is a bright spot among hundreds, it seems, that focus on cozy mysteries which she reviews and discusses. A New Yorker born and bred, Dru Ann is an avid reader but she also writes poetry, quilts and loves attending mystery fan conventions with readers and authors. Her musings will appear in Crimespree Magazine and her name has appeared in several cozy titles.

As for her blog, most of her reviews are posted on Sunday and she will not post a negative review. She also invites authors of cozies to submit a guest blog to her “Day in the Life of. . .”

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BOOK REVIEW: ST. BART’S WAY BY PATRICIA SCHULTHEIS

When I was a little girl, I loved riding home from my grandparents’ house with my parents after dark. It was one of the few times I was in a car at night, and I was fascinated by the lights in the windows of the houses that lined the two-lane highway that led from my hometown to my grandparents’ farm. In my child’s understanding of the world, those lights suggested warmth, a refuge from the darkness our car was plowing through. St. Bart’s Way, a collection of short stories by Patricia Schultheis, is like looking at the lights inside those windows and seeing all the way into the residents’ souls. But what’s inside is not always refuge, and what refuge there is isn’t easily earned.

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A Sense of Place: Learning from Richard Russo

A Sense of Place: What We Can Learn From Richard Russo

When I was in graduate school and working on an early version of my first novel, Hawke’s Point, my thesis advisor asked me if I’d read Richard Russo. I hadn’t, but when he said my writing reminded him of Russo’s, I rushed out to get everything I could lay my hands on. The advisor’s comment was reinforced when a reviewer of Hawke’s Point also cited a similarity to Russo.

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BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK, REVIEW

6/20/16 A TASTE OF NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST AND NYT BESTSELLER BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK BY BEN FOUNTAIN

“His [2½ -year-old] body was all spring and torque, a bundle of fast-twitched muscles that exuded faint floral whiffs of ripe pear. So much perfection in such a compact little person—Billy had to tackle him from time to time, wrestle him squealing to the ground just to get that little rascal in his hands…”

19-year-old American soldier Billy Lynn, stateside from Iraq on a two-week promotional tour because his company—Bravo Squad—made the news for its heroism, is essentially prostituted for patriotism on Thanksgiving Day as part of the halftime show at a Dallas Cowboys football game. Tomorrow, Bravo will be re-deployed to Iraq.

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Cozy Mysteries Offer Guilt Free Escape

6/7/16 — A Cozy and Guilt-Free Escape

I owe a debt of gratitude to public TV because PBS made me a fan of cozy mysteries. I didn’t even know the term when I first met the writer Dorothy Sayers through Ian Carmichael’s portrayal of Peter Wimsey, the upper-crust dilettante who solved murder cases with wit and his trusted valet.

Some people restrict the term cozy mystery to stories that occur in small towns, like Miss Marple’s village of St. Mary Mead, but I think that’s too limiting. The distinction, I think, is what action takes place off the page or off the screen. Cozy mysteries are family entertainment; there’s no graphic violence, no graphic sex, and no reason to cover your eyes. The protagonists’ skills may thrill you as they use their calculating minds and cool instincts to identify the villains, but you’ll never mistake these books for thrillers.

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Book Review: Open Country, A Civil War Novel in Stories

In my last posting, I highlighted Foreword Reviews magazine and its mission to draw readers to the best of independent publishing. What is perhaps most remarkable in the world of indie publishing is the sheer number of presses operating more or less on a shoestring in an industry whose margins continue to shrink. Indie presses typically don’t make fortunes for their owners, so what makes those people keep at it?

In a word, passion. Okay, perhaps two words, the other being dedication. Both are crucial to persevering in the best-seller-driven world ruled by publishing’s Big Five, but that big-press culture certainly leaves behind underserved readers and underrepresented writing voices, which is where indie presses shine.

Passion, dedication, and perseverance all describe Richard Peabody, the force behind Gargoyle, the Washington, D.C.-based literary magazine now in its 40th year (minus a seven-year hiatus in the 90s), and its publisher, Paycock Press. Peabody is justifiably known for his tireless support of those in the D.C. writing community, and Paycock publishes many local authors.

One such author is Jeff Richards, whose debut novel of connected Civil War stories, Open Country, celebrates its one-year anniversary of publication on May 21st. Several of the stories that appear in Open Country were originally published in various journals and magazines, one of which was Gargoyle. Paycock later published the full novel.

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Paint It Black

Paint It Black, The Song, and The Novel

A Review of Paint It Black, a novel by Janet Fitch

Happy Friday the 13^th. Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the Rolling Stones release of their iconic song “Paint It Black.” I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate this anniversary than with a brief discussion of the song, and since Late Last Night Books is a literary blog, include a review of Janet Fitch’s 2006 best selling novel by the same name.

Astute readers will notice the album cover has a coma between “It” and “Black.” Grammarians among us will interrupt this to mean a man by the name of Black is being instructed to paint “It”…whatever “It” is. This must have been to the great consternation of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the songwriters, who properly did not include the comma in the song’s title. It’s also worth noting that the title phrase does not appear in the song. The lyric is “I see a red door and I want it painted black.”

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Writers Can’t Get Enough of World War II

5/7/16 — Novelists Still Intrigued by World War II

What is it about war that produces such compelling literature? And what is it about World War II, in particular, that continues to capture us like none other?

As long as there has been war—and that’s since the beginning of time—storytellers have been trying to capture the experience, first to preserve it for history (think epics like Homer’s Iliad) and then to try to make sense of it. They have tried to explore it as tragedy (Shakespeare’s Henry V), as philosophy (Tolstoy’s War and Peace), through psychology (Pat Barker’s Resurrection), as memoir (My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell) and even as comedy (Joseph Heller’s Catch 22). But whatever the approach the aim has been the same: to describe what can’t be described, to find humanity in the midst of cruelty, to understand what can’t be understood.

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Review – Golden Age of Murder

4/17/2016 – Review: The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

Here’s an excellent read for mystery buffs written by Martin Edwards, author of the Lake District mysteries and a commentator on detective fiction. The Golden Age of Murder is a history of an elite club of outstanding mystery writers from the 30s and 40s.

This delightful book is full of interesting tidbits about the lives and personalities of the club members and guests. It opens with Ngaio Marsh’s impressions of a meeting in 1937. She was a guest for the evening, which began with a banquet in an opulent dining room. The meal ended, everyone rose and the party adjourned to another room, where the ritual began. With lights out, a door opens and the Orator enters holding a taper. The rest of the ceremony involves a grinning skull and lethal weapons. For this meeting, an oath was administered to a burly man in his sixties who had been elected to preside over the club affairs. He pledged to honor the rules of the game they played:

“To do and detect all crimes by fair and reasonable means; to conceal no vital clues from the reader; to honor the King’s English…and to observe the oath of secrecy in all matters communicated to me within the brotherhood of the Club.”

These are my kind of people.

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A Book Review of Girls, a Novel by Frederick Busch

A Book Review of

Girls, a Novel by Frederick Busch

It has been said that Frederick Busch is a writer’s writer. He was an award-winning author whose books were loved by critics but ignored by the mass audience required for climbing bestseller lists. And that’s too bad for readers, for they are missing out on beautifully woven, poetically told, compelling stories of the intimate lives and tragedies of ordinary people.

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