Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
927 pages

What’s it about?
 This is the fifth Cormoran Strike detective novel in the series by Robert Galbraith (a pen name for J.K. Rowling).  In this novel, Strike and his business partner Robin are tasked with trying to solve a missing persons case from 40 years earlier.  Margaret Bamborough went missing in 1974 and is assumed dead, most likely at the hands of convicted serial killer Dennis Creed.  However Creed has yet to confess to this crime and the victim's daughter would like closure.   Strike and Robin continue to explore their own relationship as they look for clues as to what happened to Margaret Bamborough.

What did it make me think about?
 J.K. Rowling just writes interesting characters and intricate plot lines.  I was thinking about who did it for 900 pages.

Should I read it?
 So this was a long book and I enjoyed it immensely.  I must add that this book has gotten uneven reviews.  The book has also had it's share of controversy over a cross-dressing character in the story. 

Quote-
" 'One t'ing life's taught me: where there's no capacity for joy, there's no capacity for goodness,'"

If you liked this try-
These Women by Ivy Pochoda
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
Long Bright River by Liz Moore

9 stars

Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump
261 pages

What’s it about?
 Claude McKay Love is coming of age in Chicago's South Shore- just as Obama is rising in politics.   Claude is a kid dealing with more than his fair share of problems.  Claude's everyday existence is different than most of us would imagine.  

What did it make me think about?
All the young people who live in precarious situations.

Should I read it?
 What an unusual and compelling book!  Claude is my favorite literary character of 2021 (ok it is only January 10th...).  This book was uneven, funny, heartbreaking, and so very readable.  I am so glad I picked this one up!

Quote-
"And my life went on like that: people coming and going, valuable things left in a hurry"

If you liked this try-
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement
​Dominicana by Angie Cruz

​9 stars
​

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
264 pages

What’s it about?
 Gifty is sixth-year PhD candidate at Stanford University School of Medicine studying neuroscience.  Her interest is in reward seeking behavior and addiction.  Alternating between the past and the present this is a story of a family grappling with the many facets of mental health.

What did it make me think about?
 I loved Gifty!  What a great character.  She was so complicated, and yet so refreshing.   "He smiled at me, and I wanted to slap the smile off his face, but I wanted other things more."

Should I read it?
 I highly recommend this book.  It is a family story first- but it also sheds light on addiction, depression, religion, and being an immigrant in the Deep South.  What a combination...  

Quote-
"But this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false.  I used to see the world thought a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science.  Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning."

If you liked this try-
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
​Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
​
9 stars

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
442 pages

What’s it about?
 Addie is 23 years-old and lives in a small village in France in 1714.  She longs for a bigger life but she is destined to marry, work, and die in this same small village. "Her future will rush by the same as her past, only worse, because there will be no freedom, only a marriage bed and a deathbed and perhaps a childbed between, and when she dies it will be as though she never lived." On the eve of her wedding to a local widower she panics and runs away.  Not realizing that it has turned dark she prays to the old Gods.  A mysterious handsome stranger appears and makes a bargain with Addie.   She will have freedom but he gets her soul when she no longer wants to live.  Too late she realizes the cost of the bargain. She will live as she pleases, but no one will remember her. 
​
What did it make me think about?
Be careful what you ask for!  So this novel was part fantasy, part romance, part historical fiction and engrossing to the last page.   "A story is an idea, wild as weed, springing up wherever it is planted."  Who doesn't love a good story?

Should I read it?
 Yes.  This novel is for anyone who wants to suspend belief for a little while.  Not sure how to categorize it, but I do recommend it.

Quote-
"I gave you what you asked for, Adeline.  Time, without constraint.  Life without restriction."
"You cursed me to be forgotten"
"You asked for freedom.  There is no greater freedom than that.  You can move through the world unhindered.  Untethered. Unbound."

If you liked this try-
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Golem and the Jinni by Helena Wecker
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
The Enchanted by Rene Denfield

8 1/2 stars

The Memory Monster by Yashai Sarid
169 pages

What’s it about?
 This novel is written as a letter from an employee to his mentor explaining the events that led up to him punching a client in the face.  The narrator lives in Israel and hopes to work for the state department.  When this door is closed on him he takes his love for history, and through circumstance, becomes a leading historian on the Holocaust.  In particular he is an expert on Polish concentration camps.  As he spends more and more time in Poland at the camps, away from his wife and child, he begins to see human possibilities through the lens of the Nazi's. When leading a student group he thinks,   "A weak flicker in my mind tells me that these wild types are capable of murder, but they have a hard time with commands.  They know how to reject them, evade them, manipulating their way out of them, smuggling little bottles of vodka into their rooms, making noise in the middle of the night, but perhaps on the deciding day they wouldn't turn in their neighbor, refusing orders, unlike the good kids, who would obey immediately, because for them a law is a law." 

What did it make me think about?
 What is each individual capable of?  How do we process the horrors we inflict on each other? How do we honor the victims without sensationalizing  history and turning it into a drama? 

Should I read it?
 This short book was pretty brutal- but to do justice to history it would have to be difficult to read.  It asks so many interesting questions.  Many questions to Israel itself.  Does the rise in nationalism lead us to this place again?  Does violence begat violence?  Is everything about power?   Because it asks tough questions, this beautiful and thoughtful book  would not be for every reader.

Quote-
"I spread my arms and said human beings are capable of anything, especially murder.  They relied on ideology or religion."

If you liked this try-
In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen
Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman
Apeirogon by Colum McCann​

8 stars

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Barry
186 pages

What’s it about?
 Hannah Coulter is a twice widowed woman in her later years.  She tells the story of her life through the lens of her age.  She ruminates on loss, raising a family, and how her rural Kentucky community has changed over the years.

What did it make me think about?
This was a book about being of a particular time and place.  How rooted people used to be in the actual land that supported them.  It was a story of a time when people lived and died in one community.  It also describes some of the reasons we moved away from that way of life, and some of the costs of that move.

Should I read it?
This was such an old fashioned book and quite different than anything I have picked up in awhile. It is a part of a series of books that Wendell Berry wrote about the town of Port William, Kentucky. Hannah Coulter's remembrances of rural Kentucky were insightful, if at times slightly moralistic.    When looking for a quote I had lots of pages earmarked with interesting thoughts.  I enjoyed this book- but can't say I loved it.  

Quote-
"I have this love for Mattie.  It was formed in me as he himself was formed.  It has his shape, you might say.  He fits it.  He fits into it as he fits into his clothes.  He will always fit into it.  When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just sit did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.
​He fits my love, but he no longer fits the place or our life or the knowledge of anything here.  Since a long time ago, when he comes back he has come as a stranger."

If you liked this try-
​Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
Driftless by David Rhodes

7 1/2 stars

The Searcher by Tana French
451 pages

What’s it about?
 Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago cop who's recent divorce has led him to find a new life in the countryside of Ireland.  Cal is busy working on his new fixer-upper home when a kid (Trey) starts showing up around his house.  He soon finds that Trey's brother has gone missing and Trey wants some outside help to find out what happened.  

What did it make me think about?
 Ireland must have a beautiful landscape.  Tana French's description of the countryside is captivating.

Should I read it?
I have loved Tana French novels ever since I picked up "Into the Woods".  For me this book was slower than her previous novels, and had a different tone to it.  The writing is descriptive and beautiful, but the mystery was slow to pull me in.  I enjoyed it but in a different way than I was expecting.  My presumption with a Tana French novel is that I will not be able to put it down.  Not so true with The Searcher- but again, it could have been my mood.

Quote-
​     " 'Sure, they oughtn't to give you gun anyway,' Barty the barman told him, when he pointed this out.
     'Why not?'
     'Because you're American.   We're all mental with the guns, over there.   Shooting them off at the drop of a hat.  Blowing some fella away because he bought the last packet of Twinkies in the shop.  The rest of us wouldn't be safe.' "

If you liked this try-
​The Loney by Micahel Andrew Hurley
​Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
​Long Bright River by Liz Moore
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey

​7 1/2 stars

The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
254 pages

What’s it about?
In the fall of 1999 three teenage siblings are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field.  He is unconscious and bleeding.  Help is called and the boy survives.  All three siblings are forever changed by this experience.  
 
What did it make me think about?
 I thought I was picking up a mystery, but this book turned out to be so much more.  How have I never read a book written by Margot Livesey?  The writing reminds me a little of Sigrid Nunez.  It's like the voices of the characters are so low you really need to pay attention.  

Should I read it?
 This was such a quiet novel with so much to say.  It was a mystery about what happened to that boy in the field, but it was more about the mystery of the human mind.  "I don't think we'll ever finish discussing ideas of the self, or the problem of evil."

Quote-
"People talk about locked-room mysteries, but the ultimate locked room is another person's brain."

If you liked this try-
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney

9 stars