Arlene McKanic

FictionPopular Fiction

Heartbreak and hauntings at the Bellweather Hotel

Review by Arlene McKanic

Not quite as creepy as the Overlook Hotel, but with its own history of unpleasantness, the Bellweather Hotel in upstate New York dominates the pages of Kate Racculia’s quirky new novel, Bellweather Rhapsody. Here, the really Bad Thing happened in Room 712, some 15 years before the main action of the book, which takes place in 1997. While the tragedy does haunt the hotel, it is in a realistic and not supernatural way, right down to the monster blizzard that socks everyone in for the weekend. Instead of the alcoholic writer Jack Torrance, we get teenaged musicians at different stages of careers that may or may not pan out. Even the cataclysm that harkens back to the Overlook’s malfunctioning elevators isn’t caused by evil spirits as much as rotting infrastructure. Insurance should be able to take care of it.

The action revolves around the talented Hatmaker twins. There’s bassoonist Bertram, also known as Rabbit and his sister Alice, a singer. They’ve both been chosen to participate in the Statewide festival, which is traditionally held at the Bellweather, and from the moment they arrive, Rabbit and Alice are confronted with situations and people who aren’t what they seem. Is the Ichabod Crane-like Scottish conductor with the maimed hand as mean and crazy as he seems? Did the second Bad Thing to happen in room 712—where Alice is staying!—happen or not? Did the big fat lady with the deaf dog have anything to do with it? Is the new head of Statewide really a psychopath?  I will spare the reader the suspense here and answer with an emphatic “Yes.” She’s one of those villains whose comeuppance—which couldn’t possibly be too ghastly—the reader prays for.

All the while Alice, a somewhat insecure girl who hides her insecurities with an outsized personality and an outsized voice, strives to get to the bottom of it all.  Rabbit, having come to terms with his gayness, is more interested in getting next to a handsome tenor who looks like Ralph Macchio and standing up to the screwy conductor.  How folks cope, or not, keeps the reader turning the pages of Racculia’s weirdly enjoyable and fast-paced mystery.

Not quite as creepy as the Overlook Hotel, but with its own history of unpleasantness, the Bellweather Hotel in upstate New York dominates the pages of Kate Racculia’s quirky new novel, Bellweather Rhapsody. Here, the really Bad Thing happened in Room 712, some 15 years before the main action of the book, which takes place in 1997. While the tragedy does haunt the hotel, it is in a realistic and not supernatural way, right down to the monster blizzard that socks everyone in for the weekend.
Fiction

A woman soldier’s unseen wounds

Review by Arlene McKanic

It’s good to know that a female protagonist doesn’t have to be “nice” in order to be compelling. In Cara Hoffman’s latest novel, Be Safe I Love You, returning Iraqi war vet Lauren Clay is anything but nice. Indeed, the reader might be tempted, at first, to call her hateful. But as you read on, it dawns on you that the Lauren who enlisted as a soldier because of the fat signing bonus that would keep the wolves away from the door of her impoverished family isn’t the Lauren who has returned. The word that kept going through this reviewer’s head was “revenant.”

It’s not that Lauren is actually a newly minted member of the walking dead—the book is a horror story, but it’s not that kind of horror story—but her experiences in Iraq have hollowed her out to the point where she is truly something other than human. Fans of “Firefly” and Serenity might recall River Tam, a delicate-looking girl who’s had her amygdala scraped, or something similarly horrible, so that when she hears certain trigger words she becomes a killing machine.

Fortunately and unfortunately, Lauren has enough self-awareness to know that she’s crazy. It’s good that she wants to spare her loved ones, including her depressive and useless father and the beloved younger brother she raised after their mother abandoned them. But the knowledge that she’s been destroyed inside makes her life a torment, and she can’t keep that torment from spilling over onto others.

And it’s those others who finally make you care about what happens to Lauren in the end. Yes, her father is pitiable, but he’s also good. Her brother, too, is lovable and goofy in a way that only teenage boys can be lovable and goofy. Her boyfriend and her best friend believe in her even as they’re subjected to the worst of her behavior. Her voice teacher still believes she’s destined for greatness. Even the boyfriend’s dumb, drunken louts of uncles care about her, as does Lauren’s own surrogate uncle. How can you not think, “If these people care about Lauren so much, why shouldn’t I?” This is called telling a story slant, and it’s a way to pull the reader into some difficult material. In Be Safe I Love You, Hoffman pulls us in brilliantly.

It’s good to know that a female protagonist doesn’t have to be “nice” in order to be compelling. In Cara Hoffman’s latest novel, Be Safe I Love You, returning Iraqi war vet Lauren Clay is anything but nice. Indeed, the reader might be tempted, at first, to call her hateful. But as you read on, it dawns on you that the Lauren who enlisted as a soldier because of the fat signing bonus that would keep the wolves away from the door of her impoverished family isn’t the Lauren who has returned. The word that kept going through this reviewer’s head was “revenant.”

Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

That delicate balance of living

Review by Arlene McKanic

If you’re very observant and know a little something about the wilder shores of human genetics, then you may be able to figure out the big mystery of Carol Cassella’s new novel by, oh, page 260 or so. Oh yes, the title also gives one a hint as to what’s going on with one of the book’s well-drawn characters. But we should start at the beginning.

Gemini concerns a dedicated and humane doctor, Charlotte Reese, who comes to be the physician for an anonymous woman who is medevaced in from an impoverished Washington town to Dr. Reese’s Seattle hospital in the middle of the night. The Jane Doe is apparently a hit-and-run victim. Conscious when she was first found lying in a ditch by a road, she slips into a coma on the operating table after a fat embolism breaks loose from one of her broken bones and lodges in her brain. Part of the story concerns Charlotte’s struggle over whether to keep Jane Doe alive, or to let her pass on with some kind of dignity.

The other part of the story has to do with Charlotte’s boyfriend of three years, a writer who’s working on a book about genetics. He’s one of the folks in this book whose DNA doesn’t work the way it should. Having inherited neurofibromatosis, as a child he was subject to seizures and later developed benign brain tumors—yes, more than one. Charlotte, who’s desperate to have a child, doesn’t know if Eric’s a good prospect for fatherhood, as the risk of him passing down his affliction is almost a certainty.

But there’s still the problem of Jane Doe. Surely, with the whole world interconnected, she must have family; she must have someone who misses her. Cleverly but incrementally, Cassella—a practicing physician as well as an author—puts together the pieces of Jane Doe’s mystery even as she ponders, through Charlotte, the Big Questions. What is life, anyway? Is it simply one’s genetics? Does it have a purpose? What’s the best way to find love, happiness, peace? Is Jane Doe still in there somewhere, in her ruined, swollen, already decaying body?

As for the mystery’s solution: It explains much, but that’s all you’ll learn from this review!

If you’re very observant and know a little something about the wilder shores of human genetics, then you may be able to figure out the big mystery of Carol Cassella’s new novel by, oh, page 260 or so. Oh yes, the title also gives one a hint as to what’s going on with one of the book’s well-drawn characters. But we should start at the beginning.

FictionWorld FictionDebut Fiction

The splintering of a family, and a country

Review by Arlene McKanic

Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda is killed in the prologue of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s first novel, Dust. From there on, everything falls to pieces.

We’re in 2007 Kenya, though the country has been tormented ever since the Brits decided to graft it onto their Empire. Add to this the Mau Mau uprisings, myriad political assassinations and the mandatory forgetting of the disappearances and torture of thousands of men, women and children. As one of the characters contemplates in this grief-stricken book, the three languages spoken in Kenya are “English, Kiswahili and Silence.”

But instead of concentrating on the woes of a whole country, Owuor turns her attentions to one fractured family and the people who have touched their lives, for good or for ill, over the decades of Kenya’s endless ordeals. Odidi’s mother, Akai, is driven mad by his death and runs off—granted, she’s always been a little mad and we learn why much later. His sister, Ajany, is almost as devastated, and heads for Nairobi to find answers. His father, Nyipir, whose past is excruciatingly bound up with the travails of his country, stays behind to build a cairn for his son.  Even as he builds it he’s visited—or haunted—by Isaiah Bolton, the son of his former master, who has come to Kenya to find out what happened to the father he never knew. Add to this assorted government officials, crazy men and vagabonds, all of whom contribute a piece to solving the puzzle of Odidi’s murder.

As we see from the murder in the prologue, Owuor wants to plunge her reader into the action immediately, and her writing style reflects this. She utilizes sentence fragments; dialogue that consists of the speakers barking out one or two words before they reach some kind of conclusion; bare glimpses of deserts, people and wildlife. It’s as if she wants to represent the splintering of Kenya itself. We emerge from her tale a little stunned, like someone coming into daylight from a darkened movie theater. But the somewhat good news is that we are in Kenya, 2007. Can the country knit itself back together? Can Odidi’s family? Dust seems to say that only time will tell.

Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda is killed in the prologue of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s first novel, Dust. From there on, everything falls to pieces.

We’re in 2007 Kenya, though the country has been tormented ever since the Brits decided to graft it onto their Empire. Add to this the Mau Mau uprisings, myriad political assassinations and the mandatory forgetting of the disappearances and torture of thousands of men, women and children. As one of the characters contemplates in this grief-stricken book, the three languages spoken in Kenya are “English, Kiswahili and Silence.”

FictionLiterary Fiction

Dead dog and a man on the run

Review by Arlene McKanic

In Richard Powers' latest novel, Orfeo, the last great problem for Peter Els begins when his old, beloved dog kicks the bucket. The poor dog’s death is messy—killed by his ex-wife, in his amateur biology lab. It’s present-day America, and a layperson messing with Petri dishes of weird bacteria is a no-no. Before Els knows it, men in hazmat suits come and confiscate some of his stuff. He goes out for his morning run, and when he comes back folks from what looks like Homeland Security have come to confiscate the rest of it. In response, Els does what he’s been doing most of his life—he runs.

Orfeo takes its title from the Latinized version of Orpheus, a character from ancient Greek mythology who was said to be the greatest musician who ever lived. When his wife died, he went down to Hades to rescue her, but lost her at the last minute when he turned to look at her. In comparison, Peter Els is a man driven and intoxicated by music since childhood. Even his biolab is an attempt to make a primitive, pure music. But he’s hardly the best musician who ever lived; he has exactly one notable creation to his name and disavows it even before it has a chance to premiere. But on his way to his destiny he reconnects with those he’d neglected in his mad pursuit of musical perfection. This includes the woman, another musician, who left him for the greener pastures of Europe when they were young; the big-hearted, quilt-making woman he divorced decades earlier; the snarky, infuriating, charming dancer who was his collaborator on that unfortunate opera and the middle-aged daughter whom he adores but has rarely spent time with.

In Els, Powers gives us a man like so many others: talented but not talented enough, loving but insufficiently so, decent even as his decency goes unrecognized. With prose almost as lyrical as the music that’s always in Els’ head, Powers shows us a man trying to make his peace with people he’d wronged and who had wronged him and with dreams that never quite came true. Orfeo is a haunting book.

In Richard Power’s latest novel, Orfeo, the last great problem for Peter Els begins when his old, beloved dog kicks the bucket. The poor dog’s death is messy—killed by his ex-wife, in his amateur biology lab. It’s present-day America, and a layperson messing with Petri dishes of weird bacteria is a no-no. Before Els knows it, men in hazmat suits come and confiscate some of his stuff. He goes out for his morning run, and when he comes back folks from what looks like Homeland Security have come to confiscate the rest of it. In response, Els does what he’s been doing most of his life—he runs.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Gold Star Mother on a mission

Review by Arlene McKanic

April Smith, creator of the popular Detective Ana Grey novels, makes a change of pace with A Star for Mrs. Blake. This moving and surprising novel is the account of a Gold Star Mother’s sojourn to the fields of Verdun where her only son was killed, along with so many other young men, during World War I.

The reader would expect such a story to be moving, but what’s surprising is the toughness that Smith gives to her characters, especially Cora Blake, the Gold Star Mother. But why shouldn’t she be tough? When we first meet her, it’s during a freezing cold Depression-era Maine winter. Her parents are dead, her son is dead and she’s raising her motherless nieces. She and the girls are saved from penury when she gets a job in a sardine cannery that she must walk to because there’s no more gas to fuel the bus. Somehow, she’s managed to survive: She even has a suitor. Then, the letter comes, inviting her to visit the grave of her son in France. She decides to look forward to her voyage the way her seafaring parents looked forward to their trips around the world.

Cora’s sojourn puts her in more modest company, however. She becomes part of a group that includes an Irish housekeeper, a Jewish chicken farmer’s wife, a socialite and, almost, an African-American seamstress. The near inclusion of Mrs. Russell is our first reminder that, Depression and fallout from World War I aside, things aren’t quite right in America.

Still, most of the folks Cora meets are delightful company, including her minders, the plucky nurse Lily Barnett and the upstanding, infinitely patient and cheerful Lt. Hammond. Cora also strikes up a friendship with journalist Griffin Reed. Disfigured in the war, he’s a morphine addict who’s being kept by the artist who helped design the mask that conceals his wounds.

But as entertaining as the trip is, Smith, a lucid writer with a detective’s eye for detail, doesn’t let us forget the painful event that launched her heroine’s journey. Reed’s shattered face, rows of gravestones on a field, live ordnance found too near to a picnic area—all remind the reader of the grotesque wastefulness of the war that began a century ago. Through Cora Blake’s story, Smith explores the experience of some of the good, ordinary and resourceful people who were caught up in it.

April Smith, creator of the popular Detective Ana Grey novels, makes a change of pace with A Star for Mrs. Blake. This moving and surprising novel is the account of a Gold Star Mother’s sojourn to the fields of Verdun where her only son was…

Fiction

Someone Else’s Love Story

Review by Arlene McKanic

The folks in Joshilyn Jackson’s sixth novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, are in all kinds of trouble, but they don’t know it right away. The catalyst for self-knowledge turns out to be a botched robbery at the local Circle K—a gas station, for those of you who aren’t in the Atlanta metro area—attempted by a snaggle-toothed little punk who is promptly brained by one of his hostages.

That hostage is William Ashe, and his fellow hostages include a young woman named Shandi Pierce and her 3-year-old son, Natty. Most of the book is narrated by Shandi, the product of a mixed marriage of a fundamentalist Christian mother and Jewish father. Her son is the product of what she wants to believe is an immaculate conception; she didn’t lose her virginity till after Natty was born by C-section, when she begged her longtime best friend, Walcott, to perform the defloration. The trauma of the robbery forces Shandi to realize that her son’s conception could not have been what she thought it was. It also makes her believe she’s in love with William, her savior.

The robbery causes William to realize a few things as well. A scientist who looks rather like a Nordic lumberjack, he’s a touch autistic. The robbery happens on a painful anniversary, and he’s spent a year trying to push the memories of his now-destroyed family out of his head. Like Shandi, William, too, will find his attempts to avoid reality increasingly difficult.

The reader can’t be blamed for at first finding Shandi’s insistence that her lovely, brilliant boy is the product of parthenogenesis somewhat ridiculous. But as Jackson slowly reveals the truth about Shandi, we warm to her—and to weird, heartbroken William, his tough-as-nails best friend Paula, forbearing Walcott and even the dope who held up the Circle K. There are scenes that will make you gasp, pause or even tear up as Jackson’s characters fumble toward imperfect enlightenment. Someone Else’s Love Story will delight and surprise with its unexpected compassion, empathy and humanity.

The folks in Joshilyn Jackson’s sixth novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, are in all kinds of trouble, but they don’t know it right away. The catalyst for self-knowledge turns out to be a botched robbery at the local Circle K—a gas station, for those of…

Fiction

Wall Street, before the fall

Review by Arlene McKanic

Sophie Landgraf is not a Master of the Universe. When we first meet her in Laura Hemphill’s Buying In, Sophie emerges from beneath her desk after a nap and goes crawling about the offices of her investment banking firm, snooping in her co-workers’ desk drawers. It’s two in the morning, and Sophie, a lowly, overworked analyst, hasn’t seen her boyfriend for days. Not only that, but she doesn’t even have the comfort of making a lot of money. Her overpriced dump on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan eats up half of her salary. Her goodhearted boyfriend Will is in even worse shape; his parents pay his rent. Both of them might be better off than Sophie’s widowed dad, whose mortgage just went up by $1,000 a month. Vasu, the junior of Sophie’s two bosses, is terrified of being sacked, despite being a good worker. The senior boss, the coldly efficient Ethan, has his own demons. The real kicker: The tale begins in late 2007, not long before the beginning of the Great Recession.

What Sophie, Vasu and Ethan do share is that they’re working—and working and working some more—on the merger of two aluminum companies. For this, and the nebulous promise of a fat bonus, they will toil through the holidays, shrug off as many obligations to friends and family as they can get away with and basically become a band of predators. Vasu, for example, doesn’t dare tell Ethan that he stopped on the way to a diligence meeting in India to perform funeral rites for his mother. He’s pleased to let Ethan believe that his shorn head is a fashion statement. On the other hand, becoming a predator-in-training has an allure for Sophie. Check out how she bigfoots a co-worker, then pops her lips in the ladies’ room mirror after applying a layer of (pilfered) power lipstick. Sophie’s not just leaning in; she’s buying in.

At the end, the reader has a strong suspicion that there could be a sequel to Buying In; we’re not through with these characters yet. It’s a testament to Hemphill’s talent that we want more, a lot more, of them.

Sophie Landgraf is not a Master of the Universe. When we first meet her in Laura Hemphill’s Buying In, Sophie emerges from beneath her desk after a nap and goes crawling about the offices of her investment banking firm, snooping in her co-workers’ desk drawers.…

FictionHistorical Fiction

An Old West adventure

Review by Arlene McKanic

There are two schools of thought when it comes to just how wild the Wild West was back in the post-Civil War days. Some folks claim it wasn’t as lawless as Sam Peckinpah would have it, while others cling to the notion that it really was as bad as folks said it was. In The Outcasts, Kathleen Kent—known previously for historical novels set in colonial New England—chooses the latter point of view, and then some.

Nate is a young Texas policeman who’s taken the job to get some money for his hardscrabble farm back in Oklahoma, where he lives with his wife and baby girl. He falls in with two veteran rangers, Deerling and Dr. Tom, who are on the hunt for a serial murderer named McGill. Dr. Tom is a bit older than Nate, and a voluble spinner of yarns. Deerling, on the other hand, is old enough to be the father of both men. Taciturn, with one of those adamantine moral codes, he would have been perfectly played by John Wayne.

A parallel story concerns a young woman named Lucinda, whom we first meet escaping a brothel to join up with her lover. He, of course, is the vicious killer the rangers are searching for. Slowly, it dawns on the reader that she’s almost as much of a psychopath as McGill. But the operative word is “almost.” Lucinda is capable of love, even if her love expresses itself in some deeply twisted ways. Will it be her downfall? Will it be McGill’s?

Kent’s minor characters are equally memorable, from the people Lucinda lives among while she pretends to be a schoolmarm, to the young boy who facilitates the last showdown. The dialogue, particularly between the rangers, has an almost Biblical cadence. Kent’s descriptions of landscape, weather and rough justice are stunning. Best of all, she keeps you guessing about the fate of these compelling characters.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to just how wild the Wild West was back in the post-Civil War days. Some folks claim it wasn’t as lawless as Sam Peckinpah would have it, while others cling to the notion that it really…

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

An Icelandic tale of guilt and truth

Review by Arlene McKanic

Iceland might be a swinging place now, but it wasn’t so in the 1820s. People lived on farmsteads that only survived through endless toil. Everything was filthy; the country was chilly even in summer; and society was ruled by a joyless, punitive piety. The death penalty consisted of being separated from your head via order of His Majesty in Denmark. Such is the setting for Australian writer Hannah Kent’s dark but humane first novel, Burial Rites.

Agnes Magnúsdøttir is a pauper and serving woman who’s been arrested and condemned to death for the murder of her employer and lover, Natan, a man looked upon by the country folk as a shady character—his very name is a play on the name Satan, it’s said. To be fair, he is miserably cruel. He hits Agnes and never considers her as anything more than a comfort woman. He has a baby with another woman and sleeps with the other serving girl. But Agnes, who narrates much of the otherwise third-person narrative, remains in love with Natan. So why would she murder him? And if she didn’t kill him, why doesn’t she proclaim her innocence?

Because there are no prisons in their region of Iceland, Agnes is sent to live with the family of a district officer. This isn’t as comfortable as it sounds, for the family at the farm at Kornså are only a tad less poor than other local farmers. The officer’s consumptive wife, Margrét, resents Agnes’ invasion of her home, until her own natural goodness and maternal instincts take over. But the younger daughter loathes Agnes, while the older is strangely drawn to her almost from the beginning. Added to the mix is the callow assistant reverend, nicknamed Tøti, whom Agnes calls upon to be her confessor and who quickly becomes fascinated with her.

Kent has a sturdy grasp of place and history, as well as a talent for creating memorable characters—from Margrét’s family to their eternally pregnant and gossipy neighbor and the uncertain and smitten young priest. And, of course, Agnes. In this day and age, it’s not politically correct to admire a woman who’s in thrall to a brute like Natan, but there’s no doubt of Agnes’ strength of character, her wisdom and practicality (in things other than love) and her essential, vulnerable humanity. Based on a true story, Burial Rites gives us a vivid portrayal of a distant time and land that still somehow feels familiar.

Iceland might be a swinging place now, but it wasn’t so in the 1820s. People lived on farmsteads that only survived through endless toil. Everything was filthy; the country was chilly even in summer; and society was ruled by a joyless, punitive piety. The death…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Sisters find truth and horror in the Great War

Review by Arlene McKanic

If Thomas Keneally’s expansive and brilliant novel The Daughters of Mars doesn’t remind you of an Australian version of “Downton Abbey,” I don’t know what would. This isn’t to disparage either work—especially not one from the author of Schindler’s List—but the similarities jump out from the opening pages. We have two sisters who don’t get along. We get the soldier with half his face blown off; the manor house converted into a hospital; the Spanish flu sweeping off otherwise young and healthy people; the upstanding bloke thrown in jail for no good reason and the faithful woman who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get him out; the deaths of loved characters that make you gasp for their sheer unfairness.

In The Daughters of Mars, the Durance sisters—chilly Naomi and somewhat more biddable Sally—sign on as army nurses at the beginning of World War I. We follow them on the long boat trip from Australia to the Mediterranean, where they nurse the soldiers coming in from the disaster at Gallipoli and endure the torpedoing of their hospital ship, the Archimedes. The sinking, depicted with hair-raising vividness by Keneally, will impact the sisters, their friends and lovers for the remainder of the war. For one thing, Naomi and Sally (who, it should be said, are not the daughters of an earl but of a dairy farmer from the Australian bush) finally begin to deal with a sad secret they thought they’d left behind in Australia.

Given the devastating nature of what was then known as the “war to end all wars,” Keneally’s touch is surprisingly nimble. He gives us only glimpses of the horror, but that’s sometimes enough. What he’s interested in are the ways the war affects the life choices of those who are caught up in it, and how ordinary folks rarely know they’re living through—or even making—history. The Daughters of Mars is a masterpiece that is sure to rank among Keneally’s best works.

If Thomas Keneally’s expansive and brilliant novel The Daughters of Mars doesn’t remind you of an Australian version of “Downton Abbey,” I don’t know what would. This isn’t to disparage either work—especially not one from the author of Schindler’s List—but the similarities jump out from…

FictionThriller

The secrets we keep

Review by Arlene McKanic

At first, this reviewer wanted to warn readers not to be taken in by the light tone of Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret. On second thought, maybe readers should let this rather crafty novelist’s deceptive breeziness and humor sweep them along. It makes the shocks just that much more deliciously nasty, including the gob-smacking twist in the epilogue.

On the surface, the story is about a group of nice, middle-class, mostly Catholic women living in modern-day Australia. There’s Cecilia, the disconcertingly chipper and organized Tupperware salesperson with her mysterious, moody husband John-Paul and their beautiful young daughters. There’s Tess, who embarks on an affair of her own after she discovers her cousin Felicity is sleeping with her husband. And then there’s poor Rachel Crowley, whose daughter Janie was found dead in a park many years ago as a teenager. The case has never been solved, but Rachel’s sure she knows who killed Janie.

A constellation of spouses, children and co-workers surrounds these women, giving the proceedings a cozy normality that we know can’t last. Though men tend to be background figures, the most developed is Connor Whitby, the P.E. teacher at the school attended by Cecilia and Tess’ kids. Handsome and fit, Connor has everyone wondering why he remains unmarried well into his 40s.

Perhaps there’s a reason that most everyone in the book is Catholic, given its themes of sin, both venal and mortal, of guilt and redemption, forgiveness and confession—as well as its images of Easter eggs and hot cross buns and wrong­doings that erupt on Good Friday like the undead. The genius of The Husband’s Secret is that it makes us start to wonder what in our own lives would—or would not—have happened if, say, we had waited just five more minutes before we walked out the door, had not said that hurtful thing, had applied a bit of logic to that situation. The Husband’s Secret is as scary as it is familiar.

At first, this reviewer wanted to warn readers not to be taken in by the light tone of Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret. On second thought, maybe readers should let this rather crafty novelist’s deceptive breeziness and humor sweep them along. It makes the shocks just that much more deliciously nasty, including the gob-smacking twist in the epilogue.

FictionDebut Fiction

Lyrical debut makes familiar characters fresh

Review by Arlene McKanic

The first pages of Natalie Brown’s debut novel might bring a reader to groan, “Not another story about a ninny falling for her college professor!” But The Lovebird proves to be more than the story of an ill-fated romance between a timid co-ed with a Strawberry Shortcake suitcase and a predatory teacher. The affair between the diffident Margie Fitzgerald and her Latin professor fades out almost as quickly as it begins. As a parting gift, however, he makes her the head of the fanatical animal rights group he founded and is now washing his hands of.

Feeling useful and included at last, Margie does something stupid and spectacular enough for her to be wanted by the FBI. With the help of one of her animal activist friends, she flees to a Crow reservation in Montana. Specifically, she’s deposited, like one of the stray bunnies she likes to save, at the home of a wise and elderly Crow woman and her family. Yes, yes, haven’t we had enough of authors bringing out old, patient, sagacious Native American women—to the point where we may secretly long for a matriarch who’s mean, irresponsible, potty-mouthed and can’t tell one herb or root from another? But that’s for another novel.

Besides, Brown’s skill pulls us into Granma’s warm, nurturing orbit in spite of ourselves. One reason we love her is the goodness she’s passed on to her son Jim, a chap who’s manly enough to rebuild a car engine and sensitive enough to cry when he shoots a buffalo. Another reason we love Granma is that she’s such a refreshing contrast to the watery Margie. Motherless, raised by a loving but sad and ineffectual father, Margie has been blown hither and yon all of her life like so much of the fluff that blows from the Montana cottonwoods. The rootedness of Granma and her family is what she deeply needs.

Skating so close to cliché and stereotype, then subverting them a little; making you feel for and believe in her characters and care about what happens to them—these are signs of real talent. Natalie Brown is a real talent.

The first pages of Natalie Brown’s debut novel might bring a reader to groan, “Not another story about a ninny falling for her college professor!” But The Lovebird proves to be more than the story of an ill-fated romance between a timid co-ed with a…

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