Fiction book reviews archive | Page 65 of 454

As Diana Abu-Jaber’s novel Fencing With the King opens, it’s late 1995 and Amani Hamdan is adrift. At 31, she’s separated from her husband and drinking too much, her poetry and teaching careers on pause. She’s moved back in with her parents, Gabe and Francesca, in Syracuse, New York. Then her Uncle Hafez (Gabe’s brother and an adviser to the king of Jordan) calls from Amman with a surprising invitation: The king wants Gabe to partake in his 60th birthday celebrations, specifically a fencing exhibit. As teenagers in Jordan, Gabe and the king fenced together. In the interim years, Gabe immigrated to the U.S., married Francesca and raised Amani, their American daughter.

While considering this invitation, Gabe pulls out a family heirloom, an ancient knife known as Il Saif, passed to him by his dying father. Amani returns the knife to its satchel, where she finds a note written by her grandmother Natalia, a sad fragment that speaks of loss, perhaps that of a child. Amani, wondering about this grandmother she never knew, persuades Gabe to accept the king’s invitation, and soon father and daughter are in Jordan, greeting extended family and attending the first of the king’s celebrations.

This is only the beginning of a story that focuses on multiple searches. Although the novel belongs to Amani, it includes the perspectives of her uncle and father, Hafez and Gabe, who are brothers but opposites. Hafez is a self-centered mover and shaker in modernizing but autocratic Jordan, and Gabe is a quiet contractor living a suburban American life. Amani is seeking clarity about herself and her failed marriage, but she also wants to understand her family’s past, in particular the sadness of grandmother Natalia, who was forced to flee her village in Nazareth as a child in 1918 and resettle as a Palestinian refugee in Jordan. With the help of her 19-year-old cousin Omar, Amani begins to decode the mystery embedded in her grandmother’s note, a possible secret at the heart of her family history.

Abu-Jaber, whose family’s story is reflected here, writes with a poet’s attention to language, and the novel beautifully evokes Jordan, from its modern cities and society parties to its ancient desert sites and Bedouin goatherds, all existing together under the whims of an autocratic kingdom and at a time (the mid-1990s) when peace in the Middle East seemed almost within reach. Fencing With the King is a complicated, character-driven and slow-burning mystery with a satisfying yet open-ended finale.

Diana Abu-Jaber writes with a poet’s attention to language, and her novel beautifully evokes Jordan, from modern cities to ancient desert sites.

Fiction, Political Fiction

Fiction Political Fiction

Glory

Review by Michael Magras

by Michael Magras

Sooner or later, every country experiences moments of upheaval. Some moments, however, are more consequential than others, such as the 2017 coup that ended the regime of Robert Mugabe as the president of Zimbabwe after four decades in power.

That ouster is the inspiration for Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo’s follow-up to her 2013 debut novel, We Need New Names, a finalist for the Booker Prize. Bulawayo has found a clever if familiar way to tell the story of a fictional African country and the fall of its leader: Clearly inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the population consists entirely of animals.

Known as the Father of the Nation, Old Horse is the leader of Jidada. He held a leadership role in the War of Liberation during the 1970s and has been in power for the past 40 years, his reign “longer than the nine life spans of a hundred cats.” In one of many witty touches, Bulawayo writes that Old Horse’s authority is so great that the sun twerks at his command and blazes with the intensity he desires.

Also in power, in her own way, is Old Horse’s wife, a donkey known as Dr. Sweet Mother, who denounces the “depravity” of the Sisters of the Disappeared, a group that demands the return of regime dissenters who have mysteriously vanished.

The novel’s action takes off from there, with a pack of dogs known as Defenders determined to protect the current regime; a vice president, also a horse, who schemes to take over; an Opposition convinced that the overthrow of the government will lead to better days; and a goat named Destiny, long exiled from Jidada, who returns after a decade’s absence to reunite with her mother and tell the story of her country’s struggles.

Glory is an allegory for the modern age, with references to contemporary world politics, chapters written as a series of tweets, and animals checking social media for updates on fast-changing developments. Animal Farm is the obvious parallel, but some readers will also note the influence of works by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, especially in Bulawayo’s extravagant storytelling and critique of colonialism.

Late in the novel, Destiny notes “the willingness of citizens to get used to that which should have otherwise been the source of outrage.” As this wise, albeit occasionally repetitive, book makes clear, that’s a cautionary message all countries should heed.

NoViolet Bulawayo’s Animal Farm-inspired novel is an allegory for the modern age, with animals checking social media for updates on fast-changing developments.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Robert Fleming

David Haynes, a novelist deserving of greater recognition, continues to examine the humor and irony to be found in the social and cultural institutions of African-American life. In his fifth novel, All American Dream Dolls, he provides a bold, striking glimpse of the fall and rise of Athena Deneen Wilkerson. Deneen is a top-flight ad exec with a seemingly perfect life, until everything derails after her beau Calvin confesses his growing attraction to men. This brutal admission occurs as the couple is headed to a long-awaited romantic getaway.

Surprisingly, Deneen survives the bitter outing and makes for the airport, feeling her heart is wounded beyond repair. She is teetering on the brink; her thoughts are unpredictable, dangerous, and manic. Where can she go before her imminent collapse? Deneen heads to her mother’s home in St. Louis and the tarnished memories of her upbringing, finding unexpected comfort in the cocoon of the old familial homestead. To save her troubled soul, she has fled the city, the fat accounts and big money of her job for the healing power of her roots.

Haynes reports Deneen’s slow unraveling with a sardonic clarity and honesty usually reserved for nonfiction, but even in these darkest nights of the spirit, there are wonderful moments of love, revelation, and discovery. His depiction of Deneen’s mother avoids the customary stereotypes of the typical black matriarch by presenting a woman molded by the unsentimental tragedies and triumphs of her long life. She is not a woman of regret or complaint, and she assists her wounded adult-child in making the first steps toward recovery.

The most hilarious sections of the novel deal with Ciara, Deneen’s younger sister in the All American Dream Dolls beauty pageant. Haynes turns the sham and pretense of the contests upside down, changing the entire affair into a crazed madcap romp worthy of anything Carl Reiner or Richard Pryor could have imagined. It’s all here, the glitz, the tawdry publicity and promotions, and the zealous stage parents.

Laughs and chuckles aside, Haynes’s All American Dream Dolls is a very sly satire poking fun at the basic elements of the highly popular girlfriend novels pioneered by Terri McMillan, while offering the flip side of how it feels to be a woman dealing with the contemporary issue of betrayal. Here, the author has converted many of the commercial themes found in the works of several leading African-American novelists into a lively, provocative story. And it’s all great fun. What a witty, nutty movie this book would make!

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams links the history of Newfoundland with the journey of protagonist Joe Smallwood, an ambitious country man whose past haunts him almost as much as his country does, and Shelagh Fielding, a reporter and satirist whose secrets reveal her as powerfully engaging. Smallwood’s life on the Brow, the poorest section of St. John’s in Newfoundland, is forever changed by his admittance to a private school and an encounter with Fielding, the quick-witted student of his sister school. A secret letter, which gets both Smallwood and Fielding expelled, plays a crucial role in their lives as they create their own journeys she as a reporter and writer, he as a socialist, then liberal, and finally a confederate supporter. Leaving Newfoundland to prove his worthiness to his father and country, Smallwood attempts to create a life in New York as a socialist, only to find that his dreams are never realized and his return to Newfoundland is inevitable. Fielding’s own secret history takes her to New York, where she too discovers the pain of lost identity. Smallwood aggressively pursues his career as a politician while ignoring the feelings of love he has for Fielding. Upon her return to Newfoundland, Fielding attempts to drown her past and abandonment of her father in alcohol. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams tells the story of many histories, one of the most clever being Johnston’s portrayal of Newfoundland, which takes on its own foreboding character. Smallwood’s tales of seal hunting, railroad unionizing, and politics depicts the history of a dark and cold continent whose inhabitants are sometimes ambivalent, uncivil, and doomed to always return to their country. Through Fielding’s funny and satirical account of Newfoundland’s history in her Condensed History of Newfoundland, Johnston portrays the irony of Newfoundland’s history. Coincidental encounters, words never spoken, and human frailty characterize what is perhaps the most engaging story Johnston tells, that is, the history of Smallwood’s relationship with Fielding. It is through the slow unraveling of this history that we are endeared to Smallwood and Fielding as they discover their failings, their connections to their colony, and the true nature of their relationship. Thankfully, Johnston tells of these histories through a language that is profound, often funny, sometimes ironic, all of which contribute to the page-turning quality of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Ginny Bess is a reviewer in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams links the history of Newfoundland with the journey of protagonist Joe Smallwood, an ambitious country man whose past haunts him almost as much as his country does, and Shelagh Fielding, a reporter and satirist whose secrets reveal her…

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Sharon Chance

The journey to finding love can sometimes take a detour. In Jo Sheppard’s case, her detour takes her all the way to Italy and back before she finds that the one she loves has been waiting for her right in her own backyard.

After spending months nursing her beloved grandfather through his final painful illness to his death, Jo receives a wondrous vision of the Virgin Mary who tells her to head to Italy to live out her dream of becoming an artist. In taking this fateful leap into the unknown, Jo must leave behind her best friend and childhood sweetheart, Jack, knowing she might lose him forever.

In Florence, Italy, Jo’s vision becomes clearer as she becomes intimate with the lives of the saints who inspire her artistic creativity. But her journey to self-realization is complicated when she meets two fellow expatriates, extraordinary young men, each of whom vie for her attention. As the lives of the three young Americans are intertwined, revelations of deep, painful secrets threaten to destroy their relationships, and soon send Jo fleeing back to the familiar shores of home.

Eventually returning to her childhood home in the Pacific Northwest, Jo reflects on her adventures in Italy and how they will affect her future. Her old boyfriend, Jack, is tentatively back in the picture, but will he accept her for the woman she has become? And along the way, Jo learns of a side to her grandfather that she was blind to in her younger days. In her glorious debut novel, All We Know Of Love, Katie Schneider creatively interweaves the blossoming of a young woman’s self-awareness with a study of emotional life-lessons to deliver a powerful story of romance and desire. Masterfully alternating tears, laughter, and love, Schneider provides vivid studies of all her characters, ensuring they will not soon be forgotten.

With the recent intense interest in all things Italian, All We Know Of Love will be an intriguing summer read sure to leave the reader longing for nights of starlight and passion.

Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The journey to finding love can sometimes take a detour. In Jo Sheppard's case, her detour takes her all the way to Italy and back before she finds that the one she loves has been waiting for her right in her own backyard.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by James Webb

If the new millennium is the time of tofu and veggieburgers, then the 1940s would have to be represented by a thick, juicy T-bone steak. Life these days is cast in terms of political correctness, non-violence, and fashion from the thrift store; by contrast, the ’40s were for white men only, and you’d better have been packing some heat along with that $400 suit and fedora you were wearing.

Earl Swagger has just had the Medal of Honor bestowed on him by a beaming Harry Truman in the opening scene of Stephen Hunter’s new novel, Hot Springs. The war is over, silver jets fly in the sky, and a new invention called television is showing up in department store windows. Why then, is this Marine hero sitting in a White House bathroom pointing an auto-matic pistol to his head? The mental journey this bitter soldier makes to find inner peace is anything but peaceful. He is approached by the young, ambitious, and newly elected prosecuting attorney of Hot Springs, Arkansas. The city is lawless, run by a British born mob boss late of New York City, a hot spring of prostitution, gambling, entertainment, and booze. He’s been so successful that a certain Benjamin Bugsy Seigel is checking out his operation in hopes of transplanting the concept to an unknown desert town named Las Vegas. Earl, along with a retired FBI agent and a small group of young law enforcement officers, must take on this well entrenched and very well armed group of gangsters. Elliot Ness had it easy compared to these guys.

An experienced master of the high-testosterone thriller, Hunter does a great job of evoking the time period; the fact that the ’40s is a decade synonymous with tough guys on both sides of the law makes it easy for him. You expect his characters to be hard drinking, hard loving men’s men.

Stephen Hunter is a skilled storyteller, familiar with his settings, his characters, and his genre. If you like tough thrillers, you’ll like Hot Springs.

James Neal Webb has a gray fedora hanging on a hat rack in his living room. He hasn’t worn it in years.

Family Drama, Fiction

Fiction Family Drama

The Unsinkable Greta James

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

While reading YA author Jennifer E. Smith’s first novel for adult readers, The Unsinkable Greta James, I wondered how a story like this one, about a vivacious, career-minded woman who is iffy about settling down, would have worked out 70 years ago. Of course, the woman would meet a nice chap on an ocean liner, as Greta does in this novel. An epilogue would see her married to the good man, happily pregnant in a sunny kitchen while the souvenirs of her old career, whether as a singer or an athlete or what have you, collected dust in the attic.

Of course, that’s not what happens in The Unsinkable Greta James.

Greta is a rock ’n’ roll musician who is famous enough to be recognized but not so famous that a room goes silent when she walks into it. Ben, a Jack London fanatic, is the love interest whom Greta meets on the cruise ship (and who doesn’t know who she is at first). But for Greta, the “man in her life” isn’t Ben, but her father, Conrad. Greta agreed to join Conrad and his friends on the Alaskan cruise after the sudden death of her mother, Helen, who planned the trip.

Greta and Conrad’s relationship has always been uncomfortable. While he acknowledges her talent, he’s nervous about the precariousness of a career in entertainment. She thinks he’s never been on her side and favors her brother, who has a wife, kids and a steady job with health insurance. They’re completely different and too much alike, and Helen’s death poleaxed both of them. (Another reason Greta is on this ship is to forget an onstage episode when her grief became too overwhelming. She’s not quite unsinkable.)

Smith’s style is as smooth as an Alaskan cruise is supposed to be—though like Greta, the ship does rock and roll now and then. Smith’s characters are good and nice. She does allow for some eccentricity, as in Helen’s friend Todd, an obsessive bird watcher who longs to see some avian rarity on an ice floe. But Smith reserves nearly all the novel’s real complexity for Conrad, a man who can’t seem to overcome a certain midcentury rigidity. Greta is wary of him, and because she’s wary of him, so are we, and this is the real meat of the novel. Can these two stubborn people lay down their arms at long last and connect? That’s the question of The Unsinkable Greta James.

Can two stubborn people lay down their arms at long last and connect? That’s the question of Jennifer E. Smith’s first novel for adult readers.

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Jamie Whitfield

Patricia Gaffney has done it again. In The Saving Graces, she wove characters so real you felt a part of their friendships. Now, in Circle of Three, she spins a tale about a family so genuine you will swear you know them.

Like her first novel, Circle of Three has women at its center: a grandmother, Dana; a mother, Carrie; and a daughter, Ruth. Gaffney has the women take turns telling their stories so that, chapter by chapter, the threads of their lives braid into a multi-leveled plot.

Each woman is struggling with the constraints of her generation. Dana, facing the physical frailties that come with growing old, has fought to build an illusion of the life she would like and is afraid it will somehow evaporate. Carrie, adapting to the death of a husband she did not love, is 42 and reestablishing a relationship with Jesse, a man she has loved since high school. Ruth, in the midst of teenage angst, decides the way to grow up and retaliate against her mother for being with Jesse so soon into widowhood is to get a tattoo. Each character will remind you of someone you know, someone quirky and likable, but annoying. There are men in the lives of each woman, though all but one are more observers than doers. Dana’s George barely speaks and is content to go outside and smoke in solitude. Raven, Ruth’s boyfriend, dresses like a vampire and ignores Ruth after a make-out session in the graveyard. Even Carrie’s dead husband Steve is notable only in his dying. It is Jesse who takes action, and it is because of Jesse that the circle of three is stretched almost to the breaking point.

It is in the pushing and pulling of each generation against the others that they are tied even more tightly together. The commitment they feel for each other is as much a part of them as the genes they share, and it is this commitment and shared history that provide the strength to move forward. It is also what will remind you why you continue to remain tied to your own family.

Jamie Whitfield writes from her homes in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Fiction, Satire

Fiction Satire

Eleutheria

Review by Chika Gujarathi

by Chika Gujarathi

Climate change takes center stage in three-time Pushcart Prize-winning author Allegra Hyde’s debut novel. Set in a future world of toxic air, food shortages and deadly weather, Eleutheria is the story of 22-year-old Willa Marks, who refuses to give up hope for a sustainable planet and a better life for all.

Raised by survivalist parents on canned foods in the woods of New Hampshire, Willa has lived a lonely life—until a bad turn of events thrusts her into the arms of her cousins Victoria and Jeanette in the metropolis of Boston. The two sisters are the antithesis of everything Willa has known, their entire life revolving around posting fashionable pictures online.

Willa goes with the flow until a photoshoot gone wrong brings her to Sylvia Gill, a famous sociologist and professor at Harvard University. Sylvia and Willa fall in love despite their stark differences. It’s a comfort and love that Willa has never experienced before. But being with Sylvia also means living among the privileged and wealthy, who still hold onto their vanity amid a dying planet.

Willa doesn’t understand this obliviousness. She eventually stumbles upon a group of Freegans, dumpster divers who are committed to saving the planet, come hell or high water. They inspire Willa, who wants Sylvia to use her celebrity to tout Freeganism as the answer to the climate crisis. This eventually causes a rift between the two as Willa struggles to stay in a relationship with someone who doesn’t support her cause for a better tomorrow.

In this highly emotional state of mind, Willa comes across a book in Sylvia’s library titled Living the Solution by Roy Adams. It seems to provide the salvation Willa is looking for by way of a sustainable community run by the author: Camp Hope, located on the island of Eleutheria near the Bahamas. Willa gives up everything, including Sylvia, to be part of the community—until even this Utopia starts showing imperfections.

Fast-paced and dramatic, Eleutheria is a love story that plays out against the backdrop of a planet in trouble. Hyde, author of the award-winning story collection Of This New World, offers many twists and shocks throughout her first novel, delivering an eerie prophecy of a not-so-distant future if we continue our inaction toward climate change.

Fast-paced and dramatic, Eleutheria is a love story that plays out against the backdrop of a planet in trouble.

Fiction, Short Stories

Fiction Short Stories

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Sims

If you have not yet read Jorge Luis Borges, you can find an absolute feast of his writings in the long-awaited Collected Fictions. Even if he is one of your favorite writers, this new book is cause for celebration. It’s the first collection of all of the Argentine master’s tales, and the first to be translated by the same person, Andrew Hurley. To have them all together and in a consistent voice is a delight. What are we to make of him? John Updike once asked of Borges. His stories are half fable and half essay, rich with gorgeous imagery and erudite (and sometimes fictional) allusion. Characteristic of Borges’s narrative maneuvering is the single-page tale in which Borges explains that it is Borges, the other one, that things happen to, and that the other Borges is turning all of the narrator’s life into literature. This sly meditation on the act of creativity ends with a confession: I am not sure which of us it is that’s writing this page.

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Review

Review by Abbey Anclaude

by Abbey Anclaude

Connie Green wasn’t bargaining for trouble when she arrived in Blackpool for a networking conference. In fact, she would have preferred to stay at home with her loving husband Luke and invite their equally loving friends over for dinner. So when she finds herself flirting with John Harding and they wind up at another conference in Paris, Connie finds the lines between adultery and fidelity blurring. It doesn’t take long before she can no longer tell the difference, nor does she care.

In the meantime, Connie’s friends Sam, Daisy, Rose, and Lucy are leading hit-or-miss lives of their own. Connie’s life is something of a fairytale: She left the carefree days of many lovers (which eludes the noncommittal, ruthless Lucy); found a wonderful husband (which eludes Daisy and Sam); and still manages to have fun (which eludes Rose, an ex-corporate up-and-comer now saddled with children). So why would Connie even look at another man? Connie isn’t sure of the whys either, but very quickly arrives at a point of obsession. John feeds this obsession, and soon discretion is dismissed as well. One by one, Connie’s friends uncover the truth, with varied opinions about her behavior: Lucy coaches her, Sam tolerates her, and Daisy is mortified. Then there’s Rose, who ultimately finds herself in the same vulnerable position as Luke. The most unlikely source of confrontation, Rose helps Connie reassess what is important to her and how far she’ll go to retrieve it. It is then that Connie finally realizes the magnitude of her sin.

Readers will find the first half of Playing Away disturbing; the idea that Connie is getting away with blatant adultery without repercussion is shocking. Ironically, readers will also like Connie; she truly is a likable character, making it very difficult to hate her or turn a deaf ear when she explains her actions and feelings. Wanting to hug her instead of thrash her is even more disturbing than Connie’s actions, but Connie does eventually pay, and she pays dearly. Adele Parks mingles humor with dark, realistic themes of boredom and isolation. Some may regard the ending as sappy, but after all the suffering, no other ending would suffice for such an endearing crew of friends.

Abbey Anclaude is a former schoolteacher.

Connie Green wasn't bargaining for trouble when she arrived in Blackpool for a networking conference. In fact, she would have preferred to stay at home with her loving husband Luke and invite their equally loving friends over for dinner. So when she finds herself flirting…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

A Ballad of Love and Glory

Review by Melissa Brown

by Melissa Brown

A Ballad of Love and Glory rides the waves of war and the bloom of lovers’ passion, intertwining real events of the Mexican-American War with a vividly imagined relationship between a forlorn Irish immigrant soldier and a grieving Mexican curandera, or folk healer.

In her fourth novel, Mexican American author Reyna Grande explores a little-known aspect of the Mexican-American War. After the annexation of Texas in 1845, hostilities between the United States and Mexico approached a boiling point due to a land dispute near the Rio Grande. At the time, foreign-born soldiers, primarily from Ireland, Germany and Italy, made up nearly half of the U.S. Army. After the American invasion of Mexico, many of the soldiers deserted the army in favor of Mexico’s cause as they resisted further land takeover and domination by the U.S.

In Grande’s detailed and well-researched novel, Irish Catholic immigrant John Riley, who is based on a real figure, deserts the U.S. Army in 1846. Enticed by the promise of better treatment, more pay and acres of land, John joins the Mexican Army, leading a growing battalion of deserters under Saint Patrick’s banner. They become known as the San Patricios.

Meanwhile, after Texas Rangers murder her husband, Ximena Salomé uses all the healing skills her grandmother taught her to bring comfort and relief to the many soldiers felled by each brutal battle. Her fate becomes inextricably bound with John’s while saving the life of one of his fellow soldiers, and in time, longing leads them to each other’s arms.

Grande’s novel highlights the abuses that American immigrants suffered at the hands of Yankee soldiers, in addition to the atrocities of war and all the maddening political and military machinations that go along with it. Although A Ballad of Love and Glory lags in pace or falls into cliche at times, it also often excels at making history palpable and real, not dry and unimpassioned but lively and full of the emotions the people of the past surely felt.

A Ballad of Love and Glory lives up to its title as it pays tribute to the heroism of everyday people called upon to defend their honor as well as their lives.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Patrick O’Brian’s publisher is saying Blue at the Mizzen may be the last in his superb series of historical fiction, and we can only hope that is not so. Still, we have to admit that it could not last forever. After all, O’Brian is well into his eighties, and the subject matter the Napoleonic wars has, with this 20th novel, come finally to an end, with Napoleon safely on St. Helena and Aubrey and Maturin fomenting revolution in Chile and sailing the frigid seas off Cape Horn. Without the backdrop of the French wars, O’Brian’s characters (assuming that he sticks to historical accuracy) would be about to enter two generations of peace. And while there is much peacefulness in this work, it relies on the electric excitement generated by the sudden appearance of an enemy on the horizon.

Perhaps, then, it is time to assess the whole series, of which this book is a worthy member. There is nothing unique in a series of genre fiction in which you could read any single book intelligibly or could view the whole series as a sustained narrative, nor in the addictive quality of this massive work. After all, people get addicted to genre writers from Danielle Steele to Zane Grey. What makes us want to give one of these books to every reading friend, to stay up all night with the latest installment, to reread the whole series in between new books, even to read the cookbook based on the series (anyone for soused pig face)? Well, you have to admire the manifest quality of O’Brian’s work. His erudition, for example, extends to the natural history of mammals, insects, and birds, to the ethnography of more cultures than I can count, to astronomy and navigational mathematics, to vintages of 18th-century wines, to naval tactics and practices, and to the truths of the human heart. We grow to know these fictional characters and to admire their foibles and courage so much that they become old, valued friends. And here, I suppose, is the secret of O’Brian’s art: that his genuine hard work at mastering and relating to us a body of arcane knowledge makes us trust him enough to listen to what he has to say about friendship, patriotism, courage, and love.

This is a work of genius, and in the face of its inevitable end, I can only think with pleasure at the now 20 volumes on my shelf. ¦ J.

W. Foster is an attorney in Columbia, South Carolina, and an avid sailor and equestrian.

Patrick O'Brian's publisher is saying Blue at the Mizzen may be the last in his superb series of historical fiction, and we can only hope that is not so. Still, we have to admit that it could not last forever. After all, O'Brian is well…