Peachy Reads

This is sort of a modern take on Murder on the Orient Express .  The central storyteller is somewhat of an unreliable narrator.  She’s a travel correspondent preparing a feature on a luxury mini-cruise to the Norwegian fjords.  When she witnesses a body being thrown overboard in the wee hours, nobody believes her story about a mysterious woman in the neighboring cabin and some strange goings-on.  Of course things escalate in an exciting conclusion.

Another decades-long family saga is skillfully told by Ann Patchett.  The house of the title features as the focal point, and is almost as much of a character as the human actors.  A mother leaves her family because of the Dutch House, a step-mother (almost as evil as those in fairytales) is drawn to the house, by the end both women reside in the house together, and finally a granddaughter recaptures the house for the family members who were once driven out.  These are just the milestones, the in-between parts are filled with life and love.  Always compelling, Ann Patchett’s strength is her multifaceted characters.

Having read the last book in Sue Grafton’s alphabet mystery series, it became obvious that I had skipped over the previous installment, X.  This episode focuses on a serial killer who very nearly snuffs Kinsey.  Y put an end to that killer, so X shed a bit of light on that storyline!  Now I’m caught up.  Definitely would have made more sense to read them in sequence, alas.

This novel is a bit more cohesive than the last Anne Tyler I read.  It's a multi-generational family history.  And like many families, the reality behind the facade is a little different from what you first suppose.  There are secrets, and jealousies, and disappointments, and surprises.  It's like the proverbial onion, peel away once layer, and there's yet another layer concealing a difficult truth, a damaged relationship, an unexpected revelation.  It's like a typical family reunion, one which will strike a familiar chord for many readers.

Eleanor is a bit of a unique individual, to say the least.  We know early on in the novel that she's socially awkward, but it's only gradually that her backstory is revealed and we find out why she is the way she is.  Her naive, socially tone-deaf interactions with what would be common everyday experiences for most people are comical, but her dependence on vodka and her unhealthy relationship with her mother leave the reader wondering about her wellbeing.  She pairs up with a quirky IT guy and together they forge a surprising friendship that allows both of them to blossom as individuals and allows Eleanor to gain control of the demons of her past. This is a different novel that I really didn't know much about going into it, but quite enjoyed by the end.

Sue Grafton is another author I've read since the 1980s, and since her stories take place in that decade and time never advances much, it's always a bit nostalgic traveling back to the time before cellphones, internet, and many of the things that define the intervening decades.  This unfortunately is the last visit with detective Kinsey Millhone, since the author of the alphabet series "only" made it to Y before her recent passing. In Y is for Yesterday Kinsey is hired to find out the identity of a blackmailer who is trying to get a surprisingly paltry sum from a young man recently released from confinement after a tragic murder in high school.  The story ping pongs back and forth from 1979 to 1989 and includes as a sidestory a stalker (from a previous episode in the series) who is after Kinsey.  The whole book is a bit dark, and the usual lighter vignettes of Rosie's "offal" cooking in the neighborhood Hungarian restaurant and her octogenarian b...

Having recently read a couple books by Alexander McCall-Smith, his wonderful knack for character development reminded me of another skilled author who is adept at drawing well-rounded 3-dimensional characters, Anne Tyler.  I began reading Anne Tyler back in the 1980s with  The Accidental Tourist , but it had been many years since I had picked up one of her novels.  Clock Dance was available through the library's eBook service, so I reentered her world of quirky individuals, plotting their course through life. We first meet Willa as a young girl, trying to navigate a tricky childhood with a mother whose mood swings introduce a difficult dynamic into the home.  Willa holds things together, far too young to be doing so, trying to walk a tightrope and searching for that all important balance, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout her life.  We next meet Willa in college, with a promising career in linguistics ahead. ...

  Paul from My Italian Bulldozer is back.  He has a remit to write a book on the philosophy of food, but can’t find his groove in Edinburgh.  A distant cousin offers him a quiet place to write in a villa she’s rented in France, but it doesn’t quite go to plan.  The writing is soon derailed by a cast of village characters that consume all of Paul’s attention.  And the “second worst restaurant in France” turns into a project, not unlike Restaurant Impossible, that Paul can’t resist.  This almost has the feel of a comedic television series.  It’s light and entertaining.  It reminded me of Peter Mayle’s fiction, and characters like Anne Tyler writes.

A collection of David Sedaris’s essays might be the perfect antidote to these anxiety-filled times.   As to be expected there are many laugh-out-loud moments, but some serious content as well.   Sedaris always mixes darkness with light, so his revelations about his sister Tiffany and his mother’s alcoholism counterbalance the oftentimes wacky encounters he has with people on his seemingly unending book tours. Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve read some of these before, maybe I have, but it also could be partly due to being a lifelong fan.  

This is the ideal foil to the last couple of books I've read.  The anodyne tangential back-and-forth dialogue, and the unceasing non sequiturs are the perfect replacement for real conversation so absent during these self-isolating times.  But that's what McCall-Smith has always excelled at, after all.  Whether it be Precious Ramotswe, Isabel Dalhousie, Bertie Pollock, or Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfel, it's all about human nature, and never particularly about moving a complex plot forward! This new series is set in a police department in Malmö.  The sensitive crimes that Varg investigates are not the blood-soaked cases of nearby fictional colleague Kurt Wallander!  Instead, we follow a case that involves a minor knifing at a market stall involving a little person, a made-up boyfriend who disappears to the North Pole, and a supposed werewolf who is depressing a hotel's overnight traffic.  Characters are key here.  It's a great escape...

Medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner GBI agent Will Trent stumble across a band of domestic terrorists who have just perpetrated an explosive attack on the Emory medical center. Sara is abducted and Will goes undercover to save her and foil a larger terrorist plot targeted on Atlanta and its airport.  Sara’s journey takes her to a doomsday community somewhere in the Georgia mountains.   There she is confronted with a mysterious health emergency among the children in the camp, which first appears to be measles, but eventually reveals itself as something much more sinister.  This is a well-crafted story, but violence and bio-terrorism were perhaps not the escape I was looking for during a pandemic!  Maybe it was because the setting was Atlanta and Georgia, which normally would be fun, but given recent news headlines, just wasn’t.

Alfred Hitchcock's psycho shower killer has nothing on the frenzied bent murderer in Stalker .  Videos of women in private moments in their homes are posted on the internet, and then within the hour their corpses, with horribly mangled faces, are discovered by police.  A pattern begins to emerge, and of course a surprise ending and a deft escape round out the novel.  The non-stop action and blood-saoked violence unspool breathlessly.  Sure, it's a page-turner, but I found it to be all a bit one-note after awhile. Joona Linna is back from the dead, though the spotlight doesn't fall quite so much on his fascinating personality as it has in previous novels in this series.

I'm not sure how I stumbled across this title, but it is a real gem.  Written by Flemish-Belgian writer Stefan Hertmans, the book-- part memoir, part scrapbook, part historical fiction, is cobbled together from the notebooks and reminiscences of the author's grandfather.  His hard-knock upbringing in Ghent rivals anything that Dickens described in the poor districts of London.  The central part of the book consists of his grandfather's harrowing accounts as a soldier describing the brutality of World War I.  The scenes exceed even the shock-value of some of the montages in the recent movie 1917.  The book ends with his marriage to the sister of his beloved, after the former succumbed to the flu of 1918.  This is a history of 20th century Europe, but at the same time it serves as a nuanced and multilayered glimpse into an intimate and personal family history.

Two foreign nationals are teamed up to pave a ribbon of highway linking the north and south of an unnamed war-torn nation.  The highway represents a hope for lasting peace, binding the two halves and ushering the poor nation into a new era.  A parade is promised at the end to commemorate the completion of the road, thus the title of the novel. Four and Nine (they go by numbers to avoid sharing personal details that might aid potential kidnappers) are polar opposites--  Four is a no-nonsense company man, while Nine has a curiosity and joie de vivre that threatens their mission.  While Four plods on with the paving project, Nine throws out the rulebook and not only compromises their schedule, but nearly dies as a result of his shenanigans.  In the end the project is completed, but at what cost?  I just thought this book was nearly perfect.  It's a parable about human nature, people's intentions, who is good and who is bad, whether we should be by...

Barbara Kingsolver always delivers on thoughtful, politically-inspired, and environmentally targeted novels.  Unsheltered , her latest, tells two alternating parallel stories, set 140 years apart about two families living in Vineland, New Jersey.   The nuances of the characters are so wonderfully drawn and the two complex storylines are expertly joined.  The tone of both narratives is extremely authentic to the period in which the characters live, and yet the novel as a whole is cohesive and successful.  Historically and environmentally engaging, Kingsolver is always a favorite author of mine.

Roy Jr. is a first gen college graduate of Morehouse and has high hopes for the future as a newlywed and in an entry level position with a textbook company.   All that rosy vision of the future is shattered when he is falsely imprisoned after being accused of a rape.   The status of his marriage during the five years of his incarceration is told via letters, and in the voices of those involved.   The characters are all very multi-faceted and speak in a way that is extremely believable.  And I liked the way the story resolved itself, it seemed very true to life. This Oprah Book Club pick has been at the top of the popularity lists for months and garnered its fair share of awards.   Another interesting angle for the Atlanta reader is that Tayari Jones is a local and An American Marriage takes place largely in Atlanta.

Toby, a PR person for a Dublin art gallery, leads a charmed life.   When two burglars break into his apartment and beat him up severely, his life is shattered.   Later, he moves into the ancestral home to take care of an ailing uncle suffering from terminal brain cancer.   When a skeleton is discovered in the back garden, Toby’s fragile mental state makes it difficult to process the facts of the case, and his potential role in a history.   This psychological thriller depends on an unreliable narrator and keeps the reader guessing until nearly the end.

Dave Eggers has chronicled the story of the most recent wave of immigrants to the US with Zeitoun , What is the What? , and now The Monk of Mokha .   In this latest nonfiction account, he follows Yemeni-American Mohktar Alkanshali as he develops from a shiftless youth to successful coffee mogul.   He decides (in a somewhat haphazard way) to promote the heritage of coffee in his ancestral land, and elevate the Yemeni coffee industry (and improve the lot of coffee farmers) to an esteemed place internationally.   All this is difficult to achieve in a war-torn country that long ago all but forgot its pride of place in introducing coffee to the world centuries earlier.

Just Mercy is basically about a messed-up justice system that puts people on death row without due process, with these individuals frequently proven to be innocent years after their initial incarceration.   The author of this nonfiction work focuses mainly on the case of Walter McMillian, an African-American  wrongfully put on death row for the 1986 murder of a white woman in Alabama.  The book covers a lot of other cases of injustice, and it really is a compelling read, and a shocking eye-opener to see the frequent miscarriage of justice continuing on into our day.  The author makes a convincing argument linking the treatment of prisoners today to the treatment of blacks under Jim Crow laws. Movie advert Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).   I first became aware of EJI after visiting the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice (the lynching memorial) in Montgomery, AL, on a recent trip....