Rebecca Stropoli

Friendship between women can be a complex thing, with break-ups, make-ups and heartache to rival that of any romantic union. Ann Packer's Songs Without Words her follow-up to the best-selling The Dive From Clausen's Pier, expertly captures the intricacies of this relationship, along with the complications of marriage and the despair that often accompanies adolescence.

Songs Without Words follows the tale of childhood friends Liz and Sarabeth. When they are 16, Liz's family takes Sarabeth in after the suicide of her mother; this cements a bond that continues into adulthood. While Liz graduates from college into the more conventional role of wife and mother, Sarabeth drifts from one unstable relationship to another, making a living through her art. But despite the disparate paths their lives have taken, the two have a connection that appears unbreakable. It is only when Liz's teenage daughter, Lauren, attempts suicide, that the strength of her tie to Sarabeth is seriously tested.

The novel is told in the voices of multiple characters; along with hearing from both Liz and Sarabeth, the reader gets the viewpoints of Liz's husband, Brody, and Lauren. Packer writes with unsentimental realism about the effects of a child's violent act on her parents' marriage and about the teenager's universe, in which it can be difficult to see beyond today's pain.

Packer does falter at times in capturing Lauren; awash in misery throughout most of the book, she does not feel quite as multilayered as the other three characters. But for the most part, the players are easy to relate to full of flaws, often acting in ways that make them unlikable, but ultimately appealing in their perfectly human imperfection. It is a credit to Packer that the reader might not always root for the women's friendship (the connecting link in the book, the one that affects all four characters) to survive. As Songs Without Words illustrates, sometimes one event can bring out the underlying issues that were there all along in a relationship that was only healthy on its surface. Sometimes the relationship will endure, other times it won't (and perhaps shouldn't). Packer resists the urge to provide simple answers, which makes for a compelling read.

"The Stolen Child" was a poem about changelings written by William Butler Yeats in 1889; now, this novel by the same name expands on the theme in an enchanting way. Keith Donohue's debut immediately intrigues the reader with the tale of Henry Day, a seven-year-old boy kidnapped by a band of forest-dwelling changelings (mythical miniature creatures who never age and form a secret society on the fringes of the human world) after he runs away from home. Henry is replaced in his own home by a changeling boy tapped to re-enter the real world. Henry is now a hobgoblin, and the hobgoblin, a child. But can this carbon copy, who is identical yet so different—for example, he suddenly displays extraordinary musical talent—truly become another?

The reader is treated to two narratives—one by Henry Day himself, who has to adjust from the human world to the changeling one, and one by his duplicate, who is readjusting to the human world after more than a century spent as a changeling (for he was also once a real boy). As the years pass, both Henry and his double struggle to come to terms with their true identities. And as the modern world (the book opens in the 1950s) impinges upon the covert changeling sect, their very existence is threatened.

Both storylines captivate in different ways while dealing with the same topic: the who am I? question we all face while growing up. Childhood is not sentimentalized; when describing his school experience, the changeling Henry Day details the nightmares that every kid who has ever braved the schoolyard faces: "They came back from recess bearing the signs of their abuse black eyes and bloody noses, the red welt of tears . . . these human children were altogether inferior." Donohue seamlessly blends the fantastical and the real here, with a matter-of-fact approach to the magic that exists on the edges of everyday life. This is a mysterious journey told in lyrical prose.

Rebecca Stropoli writes from New York City.

In her first novel, MacKenzie Bezos writes in the voice of Luther Albright, a middle-aged man struggling to cope with fissures in his home, both literal and figurative. Luther is a civil engineer living in Sacramento with his wife, Liz, and teenage son, Elliot. The book opens on a symbolic note, as an earthquake hits the area, shaking the Albright home. Following this event, Luther begins to sense the precariousness of his own small family's structure as his typically well-behaved son Elliot grows increasingly defiant and his warm and beautiful wife Liz becomes ever more distant. At the same time, the house that he built years ago begins showing frequent signs of structural instability, mirroring the happenings within its walls. In Luther, Bezos paints the portrait of an American everyman watching his life crumble around him, too afraid to speak up and save what he knows he is losing. As Luther helplessly watches his family implode, he also wrestles with some deep-rooted ghosts. Woven into Luther's story (the bulk of the book takes place during the early 1980s) is the history of his disastrous relationship with his own father; here Bezos shows that dysfunctional family patterns are often destined to repeat themselves, despite the best of intentions.

Bezos (who is the wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos) takes a literary risk by giving voice to a male protagonist in her first novel. For the most part, she is successful. If anything is lacking in this tale, it is Bezos' portrayal of the book's secondary characters. Luther's first-person voice is the only one that resonates strongly on the pages; Liz and Elliot generally take a backseat to the roar of Luther's internal dialogue. But this is likely the effect that Bezos intended. As Luther's family is becoming lost to him, it is fitting that they might feel distant to the reader as well.

Bezos refreshingly resists tying the story up neatly at the end. The book's conclusion is quietly heartbreaking and perhaps a bit anticlimactic, just as real life often is.

Rebecca K. Stropoli writes from New York City.

In Porter Shreve's follow-up to his acclaimed debut The Obituary Writer, he effectively writes in the voice of a woman coping with an empty nest and the remarriage of her ex-husband to a much younger woman. Lydia Modine is a 61-year-old car historian and writer whose marriage collapsed four years ago. After her three grown children briefly return home to Detroit for her ex's nuptials, an idea is planted in her mind: get the kids to come back home for good, no matter what it takes.

As the tale unfolds, Shreve narrates from the points of view of both Lydia and her 28-year-old daughter Jessica, a discontented health food store employee living in Oregon. As is often the case with mothers and daughters, the relationship between Lydia and Jessica is both fiercely close and fraught with conflict and unspoken resentment. Shreve, despite his gender, proves adept at plumbing the depths of this complex familial connection.

Along with its portrait of family ties, this novel intriguingly delves into the history of Detroit's automobile industry. Shreve weaves real-life figures, including famed GM car designer Harley Earl and Preston Tucker, the independent carmaker whose automobile dream turned into a legendary disaster, into the mix as Lydia studies her auto designer father's connection to them both while researching her latest book.

Drives Like a Dream is the kind of book that can be plowed through in one afternoon; the prose is simple yet smart, with many passages (including a description of Lydia's disastrous date with a quirky environmental extremist who figures prominently in her plan to bring her children home) designed to provoke laughter. Lydia, in her zeal to get what she wants, sometimes comes across as an unsympathetically self-interested character. But human nature, along with family relations, is quite an imperfect thing. And despite its imperfections, Shreve's latest effort is an entertaining read.

Rebecca Krasney Stropoli writes from New York City.