Book News & Favorite Reads of 2019
If you know me in real life or follow me on social media, you’ve already heard the news: my second novel, The Distance from Four Points, will be published in May 2020 by the University of New Orleans Press. This is a book about landlording and small towns and figuring out the meaning of home. At the center of the book is a house that has a real-life counterpart, the Soisson House in my hometown of Connellsville, PA; researching, writing, and finding a home for this novel took place while the Soisson House came back to life, from decrepit eyesore to beautiful historic home. All this is to say: this novel is my baby. Of course. You can pre-order it right here, and I’d love it if you did. Isn’t the cover pretty?
There are many months before this novel sees the world, but there are a few things you can do to support it even now:
Pre-order it (wink) from Amazon or from your nearest indie bookstore
Select it for your book club in 2020 (I can Skype in, or even visit your meetup, if you’re near me in NJ!)
Add it to your To Read shelf if you’re on Goodreads
Connect me to your writer and editor friends who might want to review the book, interview me, or have me write a guest blog post
Small-press books rely on word of mouth to reach new readers. I’m grateful for your help!
Now on to other books:
We’re approaching the end of 2019, which means it’s time for my reading wrap-up. I read 55 books this year, surpassing my goal of 50. My list includes some fun thrillers, lots of literary fiction, and even a couple of audiobooks (new terrain for me). These 10 favorites are books I’ve recommended and lent and gifted, books that made me laugh and cry and ignore my kids.
In no particular order, my 10 favorites:
Man With a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige
I loved this book. Inspiration and the creative impulse, loneliness and connection, the search for meaning in a life that spins relentlessly toward its conclusion--all these ideas are explored beautifully. Every sentence is a gem. Each of Paige's characters is a small sphere of longing and regret, with occasional bright sparks of hope and happiness drawing them forward. A stunning and unforgettable read.
Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky
Zahid Azzam is a reluctant professor, a literary star who’s unable to write after his first novel propelled him to fame. He’s passive and directionless but also incredibly handsome, and one of his young students, Rachel, decides to seduce him. When Zahid visits his family in Pakistan, he leaves his standard poodle with Rachel, who moves back in with her mother, Becca, in suburban Connecticut for the summer. Becca falls in love with the dog and, when Zahid returns from Pakistan unexpectedly early, with Zahid. Meanwhile, Rachel’s father, Jonathan, is facing the unhappy reality of living with his mistress. His best employee, Khloe, is struggling with unrequited love for her childhood babysitter. And Rachel, disgusted by Zahid’s puzzling lack of attention and what she views as her mother’s embarrassing crush, finds temporary refuge with the most toxic family in town. Zahid is the connective tissue linking all of these lost souls, but he will not be the one to force anyone out of their inertia.
The point of view shifts chapter by chapter among these and other characters, and the story is richer for the weaving. Dermansky’s short, stark sentences are laden with humor and pithy, sometimes risky observations about life in the Trump era. No one escapes the low-grade fever of dissent, fury, fear, and disappointment--except, perhaps, the poodle. Loved by all, she is the only character in this strange, funny, timely novel who makes a choice and sticks to it. The rest may be doomed to tepid contentment, where a half-hearted “very nice” is better than nothing at all.
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
A gorgeous, intricately built story of two neighboring families who--despite tragedy, betrayal, and great loss--find themselves intimately linked for a lifetime. The Stanhopes and Gleesons get off to a rocky start when they're young newlyweds just starting out, and, despite requisite niceties, the relationship between the two couples never really improves. Their children, however, forge a bond that transcends what others might see as logical boundaries, and their determination to be together has repercussions neither can fully imagine. This is a spellbinding saga, told in multiple points of view, and though the territory is staunchly domestic--the realm of marriage, parenthood, and work--the book is a page-turner, and the characters are as real as they come.
The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
On the surface, the Milton family are picture-perfect WASPS. Ogden Milton, the patriarch, made the family fortune through his investment firm. His wife, Kitty, is a hostess extraordinaire. Their daughters, Joan and Evelyn, are beautiful and charming, and their son, Moss, is humble heir to the Milton throne. Their kingdom is Crockett’s Island, a private realm Ogden and Kitty purchased for a song when their children were young. There, they throw parties to which other good families journey by boat, and they build memories that shape not only their summers but the very fabric of their lives. Beneath the surface--of course--all is not so rosy. A family tragedy. Questionable alliances during World War II, and an unsavory origin to the family fortune. A child in danger, turned away at the door. Decorum, appearances, and silence have always been the Miltons’ code--until finally, generations later, the silence cracks.
The Miltons, like Crockett’s Island itself, are separated from the real world, able to see themselves only when the outside world finally crosses the rocky shore, and even then unable to clearly understand their own personal shortcomings. The novel begins with a shattering tragedy that renders the rest--the glorious parties, the trappings of the Miltons’ world, the mores and expectations--almost absurd. Spanning three generations, The Guest Book chips away at the Miltons’ splendid veneer and their unsustainable idea of what constitutes a life well lived.
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
After an inglorious dismissal from college, teenage Vivian Morris is sent to New York City to live with her Aunt Peg in the rooms above the decrepit Lily Playhouse, which Peg runs with her office manager, Olive. Vivian, a gifted seamstress thanks to her grandmother’s tutelage, immediately makes herself useful sewing costumes for the Lily’s second-rate productions. At night, she and Celia, a gorgeous showgirl, indulge in every tantalizing bit of Manhattan, and Vivian feels happier than she ever has. When the Lily’s fortunes begin to rise with the arrival of a bona fide star and a standout new show, Vivian goes many steps too far--and finds herself banished from the only place she’s ever considered home. Life in New York City was an impossible dream; and rebuilding it seems impossible.
Told from the point of view of an aging Vivian, as she explains the highs and lows and twists and turns of her life to a woman named Angela, City of Girls creates an intoxicating portrait of New York in the 1940s, when it was a city of showgirls and theatre, when war was rumbling and then engulfing the country, when a little luck and a little real estate could turn a wayward life exactly right. The pages of Gilbert’s novel fly by, and though Vivian’s story encompasses a generous lifetime, it ends much too soon.
Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
Half-sisters Lark and Robin grow up close in Montreal, bound by their mother Marianne’s negligence and wild mood swings. Left mostly to their own devices, they find camaraderie with a prickly neighbor who recognizes and cultivates Robin’s musical talent. When Lark leaves for college in the United States, she is wracked with guilt over leaving Robin behind. The sisters eventually find themselves in New York City: Robin is attending Juilliard, and Lark is struggling to forge a life in film. Here, the lifelong differences between them begin to fracture their relationship. Robin rebels against her instructors’ expectations and demands; Lark finds herself under the spell of an eccentric filmmaker; and the sisters split onto very different paths. Only years later will they confront the fallout of their choices--and find their way back to each other.
The novel is a long flashback narrated by Lark, who is happy and settled in her present life but still grappling with the fraught path she traveled to get there, and the even more lurching path Robin traveled to find a place by her side. Ohlin’s gorgeous prose and deeply drawn characters pull readers easily through the decades, creating an unforgettable portrait of two women who find that the bonds of sisterhood transcend even the most conflicting definitions of happiness.
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
This is an incredible and mind-boggling story. Loved learning about both the Theranos saga itself and the journalistic challenges of getting the story reported and published.
L’Appart by David Lebovitz
Laughed out loud throughout this book, while simultaneously feeling genuine dread as the renovation nightmares unfolded. Lebovitz doesn't hold back on the portentious foreshadowing, playing up his naivete and solicitousness so that it becomes clear he's in for a truly awful French-property reckoning. Anyone who's endured even the most run-of-the-mill renovation will find much to relate to in these pages. The horror is real, even if the reward--a room of one's own in Paris--makes the hardship unarguably worthwhile.
The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross
In 1908, Bridey and her fiance Thom leave their home in Ireland and set sail from Liverpool to New York City, seeking a better life along with so many others. Thom dies on the journey, leaving Bridey bereft--and pregnant. She gives up her son, Vincent, when he is three months old and goes on to make a place for herself as a maid at Hollingwood, the grand Connecticut home of the Hollingworth family. When Sarah Hollingworth decides to adopt a child, she and Bridey find Vincent--and bring him to Hollingwood, without revealing the truth of his birth. As the 1900s gallop along, the Hollingworth family grows and changes, and by the time the century turns, Bridey is dead; the Hollingworths believe her a murderer; and Vincent’s son is about to meet a terrible fate of his own.
The Latecomers follows five generations of Hollingworths, and Ross deftly employs short, vignette-like chapters to manage the various time- and storylines. Though a minor figure in the Hollingwood household, Bridey is the beating heart of the narrative, and it is her decisions that determine the direction and shape of multiple Hollingworths’ lives. Her death, in Ireland, feels distant; which makes sense--Connecticut by that point is, for her, a memory--and this severing from the family she loved is heartbreaking. Secrets, too, have a way of seeming unremarkable when generations separate the concealing from the revelation. This is, perhaps, what makes this novel so moving. As time marches on, with its drama and tragedies, even the deepest secrets can lose their power.
Cape May by Chip Cheek
When newlyweds Henry and Effie travel from George to Cape May for their September honeymoon, they failed to account for the off season and are surprised to find the beach town nearly deserted. Their cottage, which belongs to Effie’s uncle George, is modest, and Effie feels uneasy revisiting this quasi-familiar place from her past. They try to make the most of their vacation but ultimately decide to cut their honeymoon short. The night before they plan to leave, however, they see lights in a house across the street and meet Clara, a woman Effie remembers from childhood. She and Henry are both impressed by the party Clara and her friend Max throw that night, and the raucous evening changes their minds about leaving. Henry and Effie begin spending all their time with Clara, Max, and Max’s sister, Alma--discovering a side of Cape May where sexual mores are looser, gin flows all day long, and mistakes can throw an entire lifetime off course. Henry and Effie will never be the same.
The atmosphere Cheek builds in this novel lays the groundwork for the dread that builds relentlessly from the moment the newlyweds encounter Clara and Max. Empty houses, the violent surf, and the quiet town lend a deep uneasiness to these characters’ unstructured days, and the events that transpire are as unsurprising as they are sickening. In Henry and Effie, Cheek has created a portrait of innocence, but the villains, in the end, are not the debauched New Yorkers. The capacity to ruin what is good and true resides even in the purest souls. This sexy, captivating novel is a masterfully plotted and beautifully written marital and emotional trainwreck, in the best way.
THREE MORE...
A few more to highlight for my list. This year, I was happy to read new books by authors in or near my zip code, which is a pretty fun reminder that this is a town full of book lovers: Looker by Laura Sims, Twisted Family Values by VC Chickering, and Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Highly recommend all three of these as well.
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