A fairy tale for mature audiences Don’t be deceived by a quick glance at The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. This may appear to be just another charming children’s book, but a clever subtlety and thought-provoking story lurk within. Growing up, I laughed at the same jokes my parents did when watching television shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle or, later, The Simpsons. As an adult, I understood why they were laughing, and the jokes became much funnier. In other words, while children will enjoy The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, only adults will fully appreciate it. Short-story writer George Saunders and illustrator Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man) have created a beautiful mix of story and art. Their tale is set in Frip, a fictional seaside town plagued by persistent gappers pests who crawl from the ocean at night to suck on sheep. The story examines how the town’s three families deal with this unique challenge. For the most part, they handle it by forcing their children to work all day plucking gappers, though it’s really not that simple. Right below the surface are issues like parental responsibility, abandonment, and the absence of a social safety net, to name a few examples. As you turn the pages, you’ll discover the real magic of the book: characters that make you smile, because you know someone exactly like these fascinating residents of Frip.

Andrew Lis

Doris Lessing’s acclaimed 1988 novel The Fifth Child is the grim but compelling tale of an English family that is destroyed by the birth of a child who is a throwback to an earlier stage of human development. He, Ben, is called a goblin, a troll, a dwarf, a gnome, a freak, a monster, an alien, a savage, a changeling, and a Neanderthal.

In the just published sequel, Ben, in the World, he is most often, at age 18, referred to as a yeti. Always hungry for meat, he sometimes catches birds with his bare hands, kills them, plucks them, and eats them raw.

In The Fifth Child we dislike, even hate, Ben for what he does to his family, while in Ben, in the World we are asked to feel sympathy for him as a stranger in a strange land. We learn that he has become a poor loner, yearning for a sense of belonging.

Lessing, described by the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature as “a master of the short story,” keeps her short novel moving along nicely, as she directs Ben through misadventures in London, Nice, and Rio.

She creates an array of characters who hinder or help Ben along his way, such as Mrs. Biggs, who is the first to show Ben maternal love outside his family of origin; Alex, a movie director who envisions Ben in a successful film about a primitive tribe; and Dr. Gaumlach, who wants to use Ben to advance the cause of science (and his own career).

Of special interest is Teresa, a young woman who has lifted herself out of Rio’s wretched slums and therefore is in a position to help Ben when his yearning to find a home reaches a crisis point.

The sequel rides the emotional momentum of its predecessor. I would think one would definitely want to read The Fifth Child before taking on Ben, in the World. As Lessing once more plays with the possibilities of a wild man thrown into today’s world, she reminds us of the times when we too have felt like strangers in a strange land.

Don Smith is a Senior Trainer with the Great Books Foundation.

With Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner, the highly praised winner of the 1984 Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac, has written another perfectly crafted, precise novel, revealing the dramas and desires that seethe inside seemingly quiet, proper lives. In this, her 18th book, Brookner’s writing is as perceptive and polished as ever as she analyzes and gives significance to the inner lives of ordinary people. The book revolves around Beatrice and Miriam Sharpe, two British sisters who have reached middle age, and the heartbreaking realization that true love might never happen to them. Beatrice, who entered a room with a helpless suppliant air, as if looking for a pair of broad shoulders, of strong arms to which she might entrust her evident womanliness, has spent her life searching for the perfect man like those found between the covers of her favorite romance novels. Miriam, her stoic and sensible sister, had married not out of love but out of impatience and is now divorced. The sisters live quiet, sophisticated lives in London. Beatrice is a pianist and Miriam has a satisfactory but routine career as a translator of French texts. Though they talk often about their young, sociable days, the sisters have become lonely but determined companions, settled uneasily into anonymous middle-aged lives. Everything changes, however, when Miriam comes home one day to hear a strange man’s voice in the drawing-room. It belongs to Simon, a golden stranger, a man for whom the word handsome seemed too tepid, too indefinite. He has come to tell Beatrice that her career as a pianist is over. The news hurdles Beatrice into a long decline as she finally gives in to the disappointment that life has let her down. Miriam, on the other hand, steps out of character and into a devastatingly cavalier affair with the married Simon. A rift begins to emerge between the sisters as new men further complicate their lives. Ultimately, Falling Slowly is a dark, melancholic story of loneliness, desire, love, and loss. Yet Brookner teaches us that there are many kinds of love that can sneak up on us at any age. Even love that stems from loss has the power to transform us. Patty Housman is the book publishing managing editor at The Nature Conservancy.

Author T. Greenwood’s second novel has been highly anticipated since her debut, Breathing Water, won the Sherwood Anderson Award for best first novel in 1999. With Nearer than the Sky, Greenwood blends past and present, memory and reality, and the two separate lives of the main character—her family life, and the life she has chosen for herself in adulthood to show the effects that a mentally ill mother has on the people surrounding her.

The illness in question is the mysterious Munchausen Syndrome. Mothers with this disorder are so desperate for attention that they invent or even cause illness in their children. These women are unable to admit their abusiveness and have lives full of lies and denial. Greenwood is especially intrigued by this aspect of the disorder.

Indie Brown, the central figure in the novel, has worked hard to escape the traumatic experiences of her youth. Nevertheless, the memories of emotional and physical abuse still haunt her, and Indie’s memories do not match the stories her mother tells. While Indie remembers the pain, her mother only recalls how she repeatedly "saved" her children from harm. As Indie writes in her journal, "In this story, in every story, she’s always the hero." Far away geographically and emotionally from her childhood home, Indie is brought back to reality with a sudden phone call: "Ma’s sick." Indie must go home to Arizona and face the pain of the memories and the reality that her mother and sister are both unwell.

By switching between the past and the present, Greenwood presents the reader with two stories: those of Indie’s family life in 1970s Arizona, and Indie’s independent life in the 1990s, complete with her view of the lives led by her sister and mother. Through these intertwined stories, the author reveals the long-term effects of Indie’s childhood experiences.

Greenwood successfully keeps the reader on edge by exposing the eventual outcome of the story, but withholding her explanation of that outcome until the end of the book. Despite its disquieting subject, the novel is not entirely serious in tone; humor, irony, happiness, and melancholy all exist in Indie’s life—as they do in most people’s. Nearer than the Sky is a superb second effort for Greenwood.

Emily Zibart, a student at Columbia University, was a summer intern at BookPage.

Most colas traditionally fizz with carbonated wonder, sweetly swashing in the mouth with the familiar caffeine bite in every swallow. Maxx Barry’s Syrup is as close to the real thing as you can get: flowing with flavor, full of pop, and heavy on the bite. This novel is a refreshing piece of literature to pull from your local bookseller’s shelf and knock back during the summer months.

As anyone in the real cola industry will tell you, the heart of the world’s most popular soft drink is in the syrup, which is added to carbonated water to make what we call cola. Barry uses cola syrup as a metaphor in his novel Syrup. This story is a tale of success, or at least how to achieve success marketing beverages in a comically cutthroat manner. Scat, alias Michael George Holloway, is our chief conniving marketing scud, hell-bent on making millions on every wild get-rich plot that occurs to him. His first venture is a new cola concept, produced by the Coca-Cola corporation. Aimed at the disenfranchised and at Gen-Xers, the name of the new cola is meant to impact potential readers and customers like a hard swallow. (Unveiling the name of the new cola is tempting, but would undermine some marketing credo in Syrup, so it will remain unrevealed.) Scat is also surrounded by such comic characters as Tina, Sneaky Pete, @, and the frosty cold but tall and smooth 6. Syrup is refreshing and entertaining. The style and wit are layered flavors of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Woody Allen. Maxx Barry’s experience in marketing makes Scat and Company’s unbelievable marketing schemes seem quite plausible. Best grab this book this summer and slam down a gulp or two of something fun, strong, and satisfying. Syrup is simply the next best thing to the real thing.

Kevin Zepper writes from Moorhead, Minnesota.

Larry McMurtry’s newest novel, Duane’s Depressed, concludes the story begun with The Last Picture Show and continued through Texasville. In this final installment, Duane Moore is 62 and strangely uncomfortable with life, Sonny Crawford is dying, and Jacy Farrow is five years dead, the victim of an Alaskan plane crash.

As the book opens, Duane parks his pickup under the carport, hides the keys in a chipped coffee mug, and begins to walk everywhere he goes. His family and neighbors immediately assume that he’s either crazy or depressed. Karla, his wife of 40 years, suspects another woman may be involved in this sudden and unexpected change of lifestyle. She grows more concerned when Duane exhibits a distinct preference for living by himself in an old shack on some acreage outside of town.

Duane develops an overwhelming desire to simplify his life, to stop wading through clutter, to be beyond questions, speculations, marriage, business, all of it. He walks away from the life he has led to see what he can find.

Duane admires an orderly display of tools at a local store, seeing in it a counterpoint to his own cluttered carport, and, indeed, his over-complicated life. The tool display was built by the shopkeeper’s daughter, Dr. Honor Carmichael, a psychiatrist in a larger nearby city. Duane begins to see the doctor, and she becomes the vehicle for his growth. Duane pares his life down to essentials. He gardens, walks, and, at the suggestion of Dr. Carmichael, reads Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past for a few hours each day. When he finishes the three volumes, he is not sure that he understands the novel. His final visits with Dr. Carmichael reveal her reasons for insisting that he read Proust, as well as her initial diagnosis of the feelings that led him to park his truck and start walking.

As always, McMurtry is excellent with the interplay between men and women. Duane’s Depressed is a book in tune not only with the others in this trilogy, but also with Leaving Cheyenne, Terms of Endearment, and Lonesome Dove. Honor Carmichael joins a long line of wonderful McMurtry women.

This final chapter in what McMurtry privately calls the Archer City trilogy proves him to be a mature and reflective artist, at peace with both his characters and himself.

David Sinclair is a former English Literature teacher and reviewer in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Syms Covington was 15 years old when he joined the crew of H.M.

S. Beagle for a journey that would change forever both his own life and humanity’s view of our place in the world. As collector and shooter and all-around assistant, young Covington accompanied Darwin throughout the five-year voyage and for two years of wrap-up work after the return to England. Recent Darwin biographer Janet Browne describes Covington as the unacknowledged shadow behind Darwin’s every triumph. Like most people who have lived on this planet, Syms Covington left little mark on history. But now his life has been impressively reclaimed from history’s notorious dustbin, in a new book by acclaimed Australian novelist and essayist Roger McDonald, Mr. Darwin’s Shooter. McDonald’s fictionalized account of Covington’s life is far more than a footnote in the Darwiniana catalog. Granted, it is an impressively researched book, rich in the tangled issues that surround Darwin and his work, especially its shock to Victorian religious sensibilities. But Mr. Darwin’s Shooter is genuinely about Syms Covington, not about Darwin. It is about his adventurous life, which happens to accompany for a time that of a man destined to become the most influential scientist of his era.

McDonald lovingly fills his story with the textures and assumptions of 19th-century life religion, work, clothes, food, even shipboard floggings. The result is a superbly imagined story of a man who embodies the era a daring, courageous, passionate man who is troubled by his own small role in the shocking changes going on about him.

When we first meet Syms Covington, he is 12 years old, the religion-drenched son of a butcher. We accompany him as he and Charles Darwin and the natural sciences grow up. We follow him into a contentious, disappointed middle age. McDonald constantly surprises. His prose is ebullient, even boisterous, grabbing the reader with language so vivid and original, alternately comic and tragic, that it reads like something out of Dickens. McDonald never falls into a dry historical tone, simply because he refuses to lose the sweaty, angry, sad, violent reality of life.

Mr. Darwin’s Shooter is not merely a historical novel. It is a serious novel that happens to take place in a time before our own.