As a child, Sylvie Lee had a lazy eye, a crooked tooth and a peculiar birthmark that she’s retained into adulthood. Now grown, she’s brilliant and successful. She is cold and even punitive toward people she doesn’t know, but she is capable of passionate love for the few who are close to her. She spent the first nine years of her life in the Netherlands with her grandmother; her mother’s rich cousin, Helena Tan; Helena’s husband, Willem; and their son, Lukas. After that, Sylvie was shipped back to the cramped Queens, New York, apartment of her Ma, Pa and adoring younger sister, Amy.

When Jean Kwok’s latest novel opens, Sylvie has returned to the Netherlands to tend her dying grandmother’s funeral, then vanishes. No wonder: If you were Sylvie, you’d probably want to get as far away from the Dutch branch of your family as possible. Helena hates her, and Willem is handsy. Friends Estelle and Filip, whom Sylvie meets when she returns to the Netherlands, are duplicitous. Sylvie falls in love with Lukas, but it’s an impossible union, not only because they’re second cousins but also because she’s already married to an unfaithful man and Estelle is Lukas’ girlfriend. After Sylvie’s disappearance, Amy burns up her savings to fly to the Netherlands to find her.

On top of the turmoil surrounding Sylvie’s disappearance, Kwok throws in the racism experienced by the Lees in America, and the less expected but often cruder racism the Tans experience in the enlightened Netherlands. Throughout the novel, women struggle to cope with the misogyny found in Chinese, American and Dutch societies, language barriers, class differences, amusing customs (such as the Dutch traditions of giving three kisses in greeting and riding bicycles absolutely everywhere) and irresistible cuisine. Kwok is unafraid to fully translate her characters’ flowery Chinese and contractionless Dutch, which gives the book an unexpected Pearl S. Buck-style flavor. There’s even a cache of valuable jewels passed from mother to daughter that everyone thinks everyone else wants to get their hands on.

The result is a book that is busy, compelling and not a little wild. When you think of it, it is very much like Sylvie herself.

For the first quarter of Oscar Cásares’ quiet, deeply human novel, the reader can be forgiven for believing that the story is a thriller of sorts—a cops-and-robbers narrative about smugglers and federal agents along America’s southern border. Instead, Where We Come From does something altogether different. What begins as a story about Nina, a Mexican-American woman who does a “favor” for her housekeeper by letting smugglers house their human cargo on her property, slowly transforms into a story about the meaning of family and home.

Eventually the smugglers are forced to disband, but one person remains: a small boy, stranded many miles away from his father to the north and his mother to the south. The child, Daniel, comes to befriend Nina’s godson, Orly. Even as Daniel is forced to hide away for fear of deportation, the children form a bond, and much of the novel centers on that bond.

There are many moments of quiet power in Cásares’ story. Among them are short asides in which the fates of minor characters are explained—the small fortunes and misfortunes of their lives—even as these characters pass inconspicuously through the narrative. The novel’s depiction of children’s daily lives is particularly well done, especially that of Orly, who is forced to navigate a world full of adults who either seem to trust him but not care for him, or care for him but not trust him.

Where We Come From is not the kinetic, suspenseful novel its opening pages will make many readers believe it is. This is a good thing. It moves instead at a slow, deliberate pace, much more concerned with what it means to make a life in a place where so many systems and institutions are designed to make you feel precarious and, in some way, permanently unrooted.

It’s easy for an author to get sucked into familiar tropes when writing about families; like venturing into a blind canyon, writers can stumble into cliches and have difficulty finding their way out. But with her latest novel, There’s a Word for That, Sloane Tanen is evidently undaunted by these common pitfalls, as she presents us with not one but two families with serious issues.

We first meet the Kesslers through Janine. A former child star on a wildly popular sitcom, she’s now in her early 40s and washed up. She’s still dependent on her beloved father, Marty, a just-as-washed-up Hollywood producer, and has no prospects. We first find her signing on for a cartoon-drawing class even though she can’t draw. Indeed, the class leads to one of her nastier humiliations in a lifetime of humiliations. Janine may have been the child star, but her late mother always preferred her beautiful sister, Amanda, now the soon-to-be-divorced mother of twins Jaycee and Hailey, who are replicating the same toxic sisterly dynamic as their mother and aunt.

Marty is a heroin addict. He doesn’t do anything as scuzzy as shoot up, but he does need his bumps once in a while, the same way he needs women. The latest is Gail, who is more of a minder than a lover and who probably isn’t as greedy as Janine thinks she is. Marty is Tanen’s great creation. Funny, big-hearted and still vigorous enough to make the reader imagine what he was like when he was firing on all thrusters, Marty is so charismatic that he can convince an attendant at the rehab center to sneak him a bottle of booze.

Speaking of rehab, the Directions Rehabilitation Center is where most of the novel takes place. With its beautiful landscapes, deluxe rooms, countless statues of the Buddha, simpering counselors and squillionaire clientele, the joint could only be in California. 

One of the squillionaire clientele is Bunny Small, a bestselling British author with an oxymoronic name. The opposite of sweet and fluffy, Bunny is a lush and a harridan who’s alienated nearly everyone, including her brittle son, Henry. Only her devoted agent is left standing, and it is he who packs her off to Directions. And what d’you know, she’s there at the same time as her ex-husband, Marty Kessler. Not only that, but Henry and Janine meet and, rather too quickly, mate. (Rest assured, they’re not half-siblings.)

Like so many other books that capture the foibles of good-hearted but misguided folk, There’s a Word for That is often uproariously funny. Tanen’s skill is that you don’t laugh at the characters. Janine and Marty and Hailey and Henry and even Bunny know how messed up they are. All you, and they, can do is laugh at the straits they find themselves in and soldier on.

In a polarized world, Nickolas Butler’s third novel, Little Faith, offers a touching portrait of people working to heal divisions.

Lyle Hovde and his wife welcome home their adopted daughter, Shiloh, and her 5-year-old son, Isaac, who need help getting back on their feet. Lyle dotes on Isaac, taking him to neighbor Hoot’s house for ice cream or to the apple orchard where Lyle works in retirement. But when Shiloh joins a radical church in nearby La Crosse, Wisconsin, she pushes her parents away. Lyle, with the help of his mates, must decide how to act when his beloved grandson’s health is in danger.

Little Faith is filled with biblical elements, starting with its bucolic, Eden-like setting, where the Hovde family enjoys togetherness after a long estrangement. Lyle is tempted to savor this fairy-tale scene, but like the apples he tends, the moment doesn’t keep well. Salvation is an open-ended question in this story. Is Lyle saved? Or is it Lyle who saves Isaac? Like a good parable, the novel’s message is worth patient interpretation.

Little Faith resides in a tenuous middle ground between extremes: stoic, agnostic Lyle against the charismatic pastor who attracts his impressionable daughter; Hoot’s unhealthy smoking and drinking habits versus teetotaling church-goers; medical treatment versus faith-healing. Natural rhythms bind these opposites, as the novel is organized by the year’s seasons, and their abiding serenity accompanies the many tensions.

The book’s conclusion is as enigmatic as its title. Little Faith might be diminutive, but it’s far from fragile.

Gretchen has had enough of her husband, Steve. He’s been obsessed with work and emotionally distant for years. She’s sought revenge for his affairs by embarking upon one of her own. Gretchen is ready for a new life.

But before the couple splits, they decide to visit a marriage counselor. With Sandy’s guidance, the couple learns to look beyond the surface of what the other says and examine what’s really happening in their relationship. The time they spend in Sandy’s office requires Gretchen and Steve to slow down, listen to each other and listen to their marriage.

It’s been 37 years since John Jay Osborn’s last novel, and 47 since his debut, The Paper Chase, soared onto the literary scene. That novel followed a first-year law student as he dealt with a professor he both admired and feared. It was ultimately adapted for both television and film. Though decades have passed, Listen to the Marriage shows Osborn is still able to home in on the heart of a story and reveal its characters’ motivations.

Counseling sessions can be revealing, and so it is for Gretchen and Steve. Listen to the Marriage is set entirely in Sandy’s office, where they reconvene each week to discuss the obstacles between them. The novel is a page turner, with the reader thrust into the characters’ most vulnerable moments, and it’s easy to read in a single sitting.

Osborn’s tale focuses on a single relationship, and in doing so, examines the power of empathy and invites readers to consider how they relate to others in their own lives.

The “still life” in Katharine Weber’s new novel is Duncan Wheeler, a 37-year-old successful Connecticut-based architect who receives life’s worst surprise when a car crash leaves him mostly paralyzed with a C6 spinal cord injury. The “monkey” is Ottoline, a female tufted capuchin monkey, close to 25 years old, who arrives from the Primate Institute of New England to help Duncan get used to his new reality. Connecting the two is Laura Wheeler, Duncan’s wife, whose profession as an art restorer at Yale University has made her the perfect person to also delicately restore her husband’s will to carry on.

The idea of a helper monkey at first seems ridiculous to Duncan (and even to Laura), like something made up for a Hollywood movie. But Ottoline proves them wrong almost instantly. Her ability to follow Duncan’s commands brings back some amount of solitude and privacy that he had sorely missed since his accident. Soon the Wheelers also realize that Ottoline’s mischievous nature is somewhat filling the gaping hole left by the child they never had.

But a still life with a helpful and loving monkey is still just that, and Weber expertly weaves Duncan’s internal conflict throughout the novel, constantly making the reader wonder if he will find the strength to continue living in his new circumstances and carry on with a will to make new legacies. Most importantly, Still Life with Monkey begs the question, “What would I do in this situation?” It’s a question that lingers long after the book ends.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Proulx’s second novel opens an incisive window into the seemingly predictable lives of two upper-middle-class families that slowly unravel over one long year, following two calamitous events. Mia and Michael Slate are cruising into middle age—she’s a photographer, and he’s a partner in a money management firm with Peter Conrad, whom he’s known since high school.

At least Michael thought he was a partner, until one February evening when their lawyer arrives at the Slates’ door to tell them that when the company went through a restructuring process over a year earlier, Peter virtually “wrote Michael out” of their partnership. Michael knew his monthly share had been decreasing for a while, but he never looked into the details. Half a million in consulting fees have bypassed Michael and been funneled into Peter and his wife Helen’s personal account. Since Helen and Mia are best friends, and the Slates’ 17-year-old son, Finn, and the Conrads’ daughter have been buddies since childhood, Peter’s betrayal affects each member of both families.

This initiates the first real schism in the Slates’ marriage, for Mia is understandably angry and frustrated with Michael’s failure to monitor what was happening to their bottom line. But that same February evening, a much more tragic event occurs: Finn gets drunk at a neighbor’s party and passes out in the snow, and the temperature that night dips to 30 degrees below zero. He loses a hand to frostbite—and that loss reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. Who is to blame? Who feels guilty . . . and who wants revenge?

Finn withdraws from his parents, “loses” his prosthesis and skips six months of counseling appointments. Mia drifts further away from Michael, emotionally and sexually, and contemplates an affair. Michael escapes from home by means of nightly baseball practices with a homeless youth, an odd relationship that eventually leads to a violent act of revenge against Peter and his family.

Proulx deftly delves into the inner psyches of each of her flawed characters, bringing some level of understanding to their otherwise inexplicably bad choices. Her tale of the downward spiral experienced by these two families seems as real as if we were reading it in the newspaper or hearing it on the local news.

Quick quiz: Which group is larger—Americans who have Nobel Prizes or Americans who have passed the Masters of Wine test? Is that your final answer? At press time, the U.S. sported a mere 47 of the latter, fewer than the number of Americans who have won the Nobel in the last decade. The Masters of Wine roster is the very definition of “elite.”

At the beginning of Ann Mah’s second novel, The Lost Vintage, protagonist Kate Elliott has committed to an extended visit with extended family in Meursault, France, in the hopes of shoring up her knowledge of French wines in advance of her third—and final—sitting for the test. To earn her keep during her excursion, Kate helps her cousin reclaim a cellar storage space that contains several surprises, not the least of which is a World War II-era diary from a great half-aunt named Hélène who has been more or less expunged from the family history. As Kate digs deeper, it appears that her relative may have been a collaborator during WWII, which is a bitter pill to swallow, but she’s determined to uncover the truth nonetheless.

Meanwhile, her erstwhile French paramour Jean-Luc has drops back into her life, and it’s unclear whether his presence will turn out to be boon or bane.

Any of these circumstances could break the concentration—even the will—of a lesser human, but Kate proves to be made of stern stuff, and she delves into the formal, informal and secret history of her family to try to make sense out of Hélène’s narrative, and perhaps to find the key to recovering her family’s pride and fortunes.

Mah’s scholarship and knowledge of French history and viticulture figure significantly in the novel’s storyline, but The Lost Vintage never feels forced or heavy-handed, and her vivid prose unlocks the musty aromatics of a long-abandoned cellar full of secrets for even the least sophisticated of palates. Drink deep.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and writes about food and wine (and occasionally France) in his blog, templeofthetongue.wordpress.com.