Think of this menu of books as a 3-course meal: fiction for appetizer, nonfiction for entree, and mysteries for dessert. Bon appetit!
Fiction. Three Junes is a first novel by Julia Glass, a young journalist from NYC. The Junes of the title are of course 3 different months. First we center on Paul McLeod, in 1989 a recently widowed Scotsman with 3 sons and a wonderful old house in the country. Paul is taking a tour of Greece and is drawn to a young artist, Fern. The second June is devoted to Paul's oldest son, Fenno, who has moved to NYC and opened a bookstore. The third June belongs to Fern. She's a New Yorker and of course she meets Fenno, but our author doesn't settle for simple endings.
Cassandra King, who is married to Pat Conroy (as in Prince of Tides), shares his ability to evoke a southern locale. In this case, it's Florida's Panhandle. King's new book, The Sunday Wife deals with Dean Lynch, married for 20 years to Methodist minister Ben Lynch, who is handsome and ambitious. Dean finds her life more and more depressing; they have no children, which leads Ben (and some of the church ladies) to feel no chore is too much for Dean. Ben is controlling and cruel, a master of the put-down. Dean takes comfort in her dulcimer and singing, mostly folk songs and old-time hymns. How will she get her self-respect back? This could be cloying, but not with Dean, who is so nice and funny and so hopeful that there is more to life.
If you worked or are working with young children left at home, here is the book for you. Allison Pearson's I Don't know How She Does It captures the guilt and exhaustion and manages also to be laugh-out-loud funny. Her heroine is Kate Reddy, Working Mother, who makes good money in an investment firm and goes home to Ben, 1, and Emily, 5....and to a very nice husband who would like to see more of her. Kate's balancing act extends to her office, where she may be abruptly sent abroad, and where success breeds hostility from some co-workers. Nice ending. Note: young Emily gets some of the best lines.
Michael Frayn is perhaps best known as a British playwright ("Noises Off'", "Copenhagen"), but he has published 9 novels. Spies is his most recent. Stephen Wheatley, an older man, is moved by a familiar sweet odor coming from a shrub (his daughter tells him it's privet) and goes back to the neighborhood where he lived during WWII. He finds it largely unchanged. As a small boy there, he had been convinced by his best friend, Keith, that Keith's mother was a German spy. The 2 boys decide they must spy on her, and they do indeed find she disappears for part of each day. Now the adult Stephen finally figures out who the real German spy was. Frayn's book is short, with a haunting, dream-like quality. It was nominated for Britain's coveted Whitbread Prize.
Nonfiction. But guess what author actually won the Whitbread Prize? Mrs. Michael Frayn, who writes under her own name, Claire Tomalin, and who has published 6 earlier biographies. Her new book is Samuel Pepys, pronounced "peeps"; it is subtitled The Unequalled Self. Pepys (1633-1703) was the son of a London tailor; his mother had been a laundry maid. He rose to become Secretary of the Admiralty and a member of Parliament. He lived through the English Civil War, saw Charles I beheaded, knew Cromwell and his puritan years, served Charles II and then James II. And from 1660-1669 Pepys wrote the most famous diaries in the English language, telling of his life at court and in naval administration, of the Great Fire of London in 1665 and the Great Plague in 1666 (which left 1/6 of London's population dead). It is also a very personal record, in which Pepys describes his daily life, his marriage, even his sexual dalliances. Prudently, he wrote in a shorthand he had learned at school and mixed in French and Spanish. He is curious about everything, but principally about himself; it is this search to understand himself that gives his diaries their punch and excitement. It was not until 1970 that the entire diaries were published, uncensored. Pepys has left us one phrase, used repeatedly at the end of his daily entries, that we all know "And so to bed."
For 4 years in the 1990s, Lynne Duke was bureau chief in Johannesburg for the Washington Post. She tells the story of her African stay in Mandela, Mobutu, and Me, subtitled A Newswoman's African Journey. She describes Mandela's trials in rebuilding South Africa after the long years of apartheid, including his emphasis on reconciliation, not revenge. Mobutu, in contrast, was a greedy and violent dictator, ravaging Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) just as King Leopold of Belgium had done. One intriguing vignette is the story of Winnie Mandela, wife of the hero, and her descent into violence and paranoia. Nelson Mandela divorced her in 1996 with angry and bitter words seldom heard from a man who had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mystery. Here's a British mystery, fast-paced - Acid Row, by Minette Walters. Acid Row is the name given by its inhabitants to the decaying, interracial, gang-filled housing project they live in. When word leaks out that a released criminal has been settled there, the angry young people take to the streets. A young woman doctor is taken hostage. This may sound too grim to read, but Walters has her good guys, too, including the mothers who defend their children. She writes in short chapters and tension builds.
Thin Walls, by Kris Nelscott, is the 3rd book featuring Smokey Dalton, a black P. I. who lives on Chicago's south side. The time is 1968, after Martin Luther King's killing, and after the Democratic Convention which ended in violence. Smokey is trying to raise a young adopted son in the midst of these turbulent times. You get a lesson in history, in psychology, and also a good suspense story.
OK, your literary meal is over....go get an after-dinner drink.
-- Alice Racher