n his new novel, Where I’m Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.
These soldiers were under more than one gun, since their capture meant almost certain death by hanging or the firing squad. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, told his generals that officers of black regiments were to be “put to death” at the discretion of a military court. The black soldiers were to be returned to their masters, sold, or put to work helping the Confederate troops.
What usually happened was that black troops were hanged or shot when captured. At Fort Pillow, for instance, black soldiers surrendered their arms after being promised that all who did so would be treated as prisoners of war. Instead they were shot “without mercy,” according to eyewitnesses.
Where I’m Bound tells the dramatic story of black cavalry scout Joe Duckett, whose regiment roamed the Mississippi Delta, seeking slaves held by the Confederates and trying to keep vital waterways open for Union gunboats. The pictures of war are dramatic as seen through the eyes of black slaves who tried to escape to freedom and the troops who were fighting for the same freedom. It was not a pretty war for most, and cruelty was not the sole transgression of the Confederate troops. This is the first novel by Ballard, who teaches history and African-American studies at the State University of New York at Albany. He has written two nonfiction books on African-American history. Most of Ballard’s novel is historically correct, although he has fudged a bit for the sake of greater realism here and there.
Where I’m Boundis an absorbing story that will touch the reader in different ways, but it will entertain and educate about a war that is history, if it is, indeed, sad history.
Where I’m Bound should be required reading for true Civil War buffs, but it is well worthwhile for those who simply like a well-told story.
Lloyd Armour is a former newspaper editor.
n his new novel, Where I'm Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.
Prolific Joanna Trollope, descendent of equally prolific 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope, publishes romances in England under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey. Her U. S. popularity stems largely from Masterpiece Theatre adaptations of contemporary novels published under her own name, like The Choir and The Rector’s Wife. Banking on name recognition to reach an American market already acquainted with Trollope, Viking plans to publish Harvey novels under the Trollope name, starting with The Brass Dolphin.
Trollope sets her tale of self-discovery on rocky, history-laden Malta. Its stony heights and its peculiar mixture of middle East and Europe, of ancient and modern cultures, intensify protagonist Lila Cunningham’s internal conflicts about status, social class, and her own sense of place. A hand-forged door knocker in the form of a brass dolphin serves first as icon for the island of Malta, later as symbol for young LilaÔs discovery of her genuine self.
World War II, with its heavy Axis bombardment of this tiny English outpost, intensifies Lila’s sense of isolation and self-pity. She despairs of realizing her dream of release from a life of poverty and dutiful care of a crippled father. Trollope, who was herself born during World War II, renders the fatigue and grief of wartime experience mingled with the stuff of high romance.
Dislocated by poverty from her dream of London ( because that’s where things happen ), unhappily chained to an eccentric father she sees as worthless, Lila holds the Maltese world at arm’s lengthÐdespite the attentions of a young Maltese nationalist, Alfonso Sabila. Then she goes to work for Count Julius of Tabia Palace in the Silent City, and meets his two handsome sons, Max and Anton. Trollope knows better than to leave a plot at the level of melodrama. Her characters have intricate inner lives. She permits them slow and organic unfolding. She has the gift of making readers like an unlikeable protagonist. She does her homework, rendering her fictional worlds real, based on responsible research. She creates convincing if inconclusive endings that feel like life. In The Brass Dolphin the war itself proves a testing ground for Lila. She must come to terms with her narrow resentments, her oblique snobbery toward Maltese peasants, her desire to retreat into a sheltered world of refinement. If Lila can finally hang the dolphin knocker at her front door, readers, too, should come to a keener understanding of painful modern issues of caste and class.
Joanne Lewis Sears profiles artists for the Montecito Journal in California and writes travel articles for Senior magazine.
Prolific Joanna Trollope, descendent of equally prolific 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope, publishes romances in England under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey. Her U. S. popularity stems largely from Masterpiece Theatre adaptations of contemporary novels published under her own name, like The Choir and The Rector's…
Mark Twain Remembers is a fictitious account of a major American literary figure looking back at an incident which changed his life forever. It is a novel, but — as would be any book attempting to be a speculative biography — it is also opinionated. A substantial portion of the book and at least two complete chapters are devoted almost solely to the themes of slavery and God. The novel begins with Twain speculating about who will win a major boxing match after the turn of the century: A black man, or a white man. Twain is not sure who he hopes will win and it brings back the memory of a former slave. Twain then tells about himself, what the world was like when he was born, and the experiences that made him the man he is (although fictional in this particular case).
Mark Twain Remembers follows the adventures of Twain from a man who has never shaken hands with a black man to a man who owns one. Twain wins a slave in a poker game for the single purpose of setting him free, but the black man won’t take his freedom out of fear of what such freedom means. A friendship develops, and a lot of understanding as well.
If one has followed the unfair remarks against Mark Twain over the years, regarding his literary portrayals of minority characters set in the late 1800s (some people even suggesting that his books be banned from schools), one cannot help but think that Thomas Hauser wrote this novel in response to those allegations of prejudice. "To arrive at a just estimate of a man’s character, one must judge him by the standards of his time," Hauser writes in the voice of Twain. Mark Twain wrote America as he saw it then. The novel implies that if Twain wrote today, his subject matter would be different. The caricatures would probably be much worse, but we wouldn’t see it.
Clay Stafford is a writer and filmmaker.
Mark Twain Remembers is a fictitious account of a major American literary figure looking back at an incident which changed his life forever. It is a novel, but -- as would be any book attempting to be a speculative biography -- it is also opinionated.…
We begin each new reading year with high hopes, and sometimes, when we’re very lucky, we find our expectations rewarded. So it was with 2021.
It must be said that a lot of these books are really, really long. Apparently this was the year for total commitment, for taking a plunge and allowing ourselves to be swallowed up.
Also, it should come as no surprise that books-within-books frequently appear on this list. For all our attempts at objectivity within our roles as critics, we just can’t help but love a book that loves books. Amor Towles, Ruth Ozeki, Jason Mott, Maggie Shipstead and Anthony Doerr all tapped into the most comforting yet complex parts of our book-loving selves.
But most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations, such as in Will McPhail’s graphic novel, which made us laugh till we cried, and Colson Whitehead’s heist novel, which no one could’ve expected would be such a gorgeous ode to sofas.
And at the top of our list, a book that accomplishes what feels like the impossible: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ epic debut novel, which challenges our relationship to the land beneath us in a way we’ve never experienced but long hoped for.
Read on for our 20 best works of literary fiction from 2021.
To those disinclined to question the role that economic exploitation plays in supporting our modern lifestyle, reading this novel may prove an unsettling experience.
In his collection of short stories set in the ag-industrial maw of central California, Jaime Cortez artfully captures the daily lives of his characters in the freeze-frame flash of a master at work.
Francis Spufford’s graceful novel reminds us that tragedy deprives the world of not only noble people but also scoundrels, both of whom are part of the fabric of history.
Jonathan Franzen is one of our best chroniclers of suburban family life, and his incisive new novel, the first in a planned trilogy, is by turns funny and terrifying.
With hints of Jami Attenberg’s sense of mishpucha and spiced with Jennifer Weiner’s chutzpah, Melissa Broder’s novel is graphic, tender and poetic, a delicious rom-com that turns serious.
Robert Jones Jr.’s first novel accomplishes the exceptional literary feat of being at once an intimate, poetic love story and a sweeping, excruciating portrait of life on a Mississippi plantation.
“There are few things more beautiful to an author’s eye . . . than a well-read copy of one of his books,” says a character in Amor Towles’ novel. Undoubtedly, the pages of this cross-country saga are destined to be turned—and occasionally tattered—by numerous gratified readers.
Devastating, hilarious and touching, Torrey Peters’ acutely intelligent first novel explores womanhood, parenthood and all the possibilities that lie therein.
What does it mean to listen? What can you hear if you pay close attention, especially in a moment of grief? Ruth Ozeki explores these questions in her novel, a meditation on objects, compassion and everyday beauty.
Lauren Groff aims to create a sense of wonder and awe in her novels, and in her boldly original fourth novel, set in a small convent in 12th-century England, the awe-filled moments are too many to count.
A surrealist feast of imagination that’s brimming with very real horrors, frustrations and sorrows, Jason Mott’s fourth novel is an achievement of American fiction that rises to meet this particular moment with charm, wisdom and truth.
Like Dante leading us through the levels of hell, Colson Whitehead exposes the layers of rottenness in New York City with characters who follow an ethical code that may be strange to those of us who aren’t crooks or cynics.
In her exhilarating third novel, Maggie Shipstead offers a marvelous pastiche of adventure and emotion as she explores what it means (and what it takes) to live an unusual life.
From slavery to freedom, discrimination to justice, tradition to unorthodoxy, celebrated poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers weaves an epic ancestral story that encompasses not only a young Black woman’s family heritage but also that of the American land where their history unfolded.
Most of the books on this list hit home in ways we never could’ve prepared for, even when we had the highest expectations. Read on for the 20 best literary fiction titles of 2021.
“I suppose I prefer being in the thick of it,” American heiress Nanée Gold explains when asked why she hasn’t fled the dangers of Nazi-occupied France. She’s a flamboyant, daring character who flies a Vega Gull airplane and entertains friends with her beloved dog, Dagobert, who barks ferociously whenever he hears the name “Hitler.”
In The Postmistress of Paris, Meg Waite Clayton fictionalizes the fascinating story of Mary Jayne Gold, a wealthy American socialite who spent the early years of World War II helping to finance and shelter 2,000 Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees near Marseille, France, and aiding in their escapes over the Pyrenees. Gold worked with American journalist Varian Fry as part of the Emergency Rescue Committee, obtaining fake passports and planning escape routes to Spain and Portugal for luminaries such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt. Clayton is well versed in this era, having written bestsellers The Race for Paris, about two female American journalists in 1944 France, andThe Last Train to London, about the Kindertransport rescue.
Clayton excels at creating fictional worlds, weaving historical details with lively dialogue and rich scene-setting details. Readers meet Nanée in 1938 as she flies into Paris on a freezing cold night, quickly swaps out her wool stockings for silk and throws on several strings of pearls. She’s headed to a surrealist art exhibition, where she sees the works of Salvador Dalí and plays party games with André Breton. Danger is at the doorstep, but life is a joyful whirlwind for Nanée—until the Nazis invade Paris, abruptly forcing her to escape to the countryside near Marseille, where she rents a villa to house her artist friends.
Nanée falls in love with fictional Jewish German photographer Edouard Moss, a widower with a young daughter named Luki. Much of the novel focuses on Nanée’s attempts to rescue Edouard from a French labor camp, reunite him with his daughter and get the pair out of the country. While Clayton superbly crafts banter, parlor games, romance and philosophical discussions among her cast of talented, intellectual characters, her writing is at its sharpest whenever Nanée faces great danger—which is often. Tension builds throughout the novel, culminating in a grueling, dangerous escape attempt that’s full of surprises. Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris.
Meg Waite Clayton superbly crafts banter, romance and philosophical discussions, but her writing is at its sharpest when Nanée faces danger—which is often.
Australian author Colleen McCullough is probably best known for her beloved bestseller, The Thorn Birds. But in the years since the release of that brilliant work, McCullough has concentrated on other topics, mainly her epic series, The Masters of Rome. Now, in her latest, Morgan’s Run, McCullough returns to her beloved down-under to tell the story of that nation’s birth.
At the center of this powerful narrative is the gentle Richard Morgan. The son of an English tavern-keeper, Morgan is a hard working and devoted son, husband, and father. However, after the devastating deaths of his wife and son, Morgan falls in with unsavory company and finds himself the victim of an elaborate set-up. He ends up a convict in some of England’s worst prisons.
By chance, he is chosen to board the infamous First Fleet, which transported over 500 males and over 100 females from England to the mysterious Botany Bay at the end of the 18th century. But this was not a pleasure cruise. After spending many anguishing months aboard the filthy prison vessels, Morgan and his fellow inmates found their worst nightmares were just beginning: they were expected to civilize the hostile land.
A man of quiet strength and strong moral convictions, Richard Morgan is one of Colleen McCullough’s most compelling characters. He stands out among the rest of the convicts due to his keen intelligence, common sense, and gentle willingness to help others. Throughout his trials and tribulations, Morgan remains dignified, even in horrible situations that would have broken a lesser man. In Morgan’s Run, McCullough has created an epic drama rivaled only by her own bestsellers. But she has also interwoven throughout the story a detailed and precise history of life in England during the American Revolution, as well as the beginnings of the foundling nation of Australia. And, amazingly enough, though much of the book dwells on the hardships endured by Morgan, there are also moments of joy and beauty. Romance can be found in the oddest places, and McCullough includes moments of passion among the grief and heartaches of life. In her author’s notes, McCullough explains that the real Richard Morgan is the four-times great-grandfather of her husband, and that she found his story fascinating. Readers will find themselves agreeing with her, as they follow his unforgettable journey in Morgan’s Run.
Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Australian author Colleen McCullough is probably best known for her beloved bestseller, The Thorn Birds. But in the years since the release of that brilliant work, McCullough has concentrated on other topics, mainly her epic series, The Masters of Rome. Now, in her latest, Morgan's…
Cloud Cuckoo Land (15 hours) by Anthony Doerr chronicles the intersecting lives of an orphaned teenage girl and a village boy living in 15th-century Constantinople, an elderly librarian and a troubled teenager in present-day Idaho, and a young passenger aboard an interstellar ship generations into the future. It’s a dreamy, dynamic interweaving of stories about conflict, grief and hope.
Narrators Marin Ireland and Simon Jones make each character’s story feel personal, valid and alive—a challenging task with a cast this extensive and settings that span hundreds of years and miles. Ireland’s performances anchor every chapter in a myriad of voices and accents, surrounding the listener with an immersive experience. Between chapters, Jones playfully narrates excerpts from a fictional ancient Greek text whose relevance to each storyline is revealed gradually.
Listening to Cloud Cuckoo Land will transport you. It is magical and comforting, and likely to leave you with a new perspective on the power of resilience and the meaning of human connection.
Review By Sharon Galligar Chance Noted African-American author Connie Briscoe remembers as a child seeing two portraits of very light-complexioned women on her grandmother’s bureau and asking who the two white women were. She was told they were her great-great grandmother and great-great aunt. And they weren’t white ; both had been slaves up until the end of the Civil War. Being naturally curious, Briscoe set out to uncover the family history. From this research came A Long Way from Home. This emotional narrative is a multi-generational story of slavery, freedom, and the unbreakable bonds of family, as told through three unforgettable women. A Long Way from Home recounts the lives of Susie, her daughter Clara, and her granddaughter Susan. Born and raised as privileged house slaves on Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of President James Madison and his wife Dolley Madison, these women are united by love, a fierce devotion to each other, and, ultimately, a desire for freedom. For Susie, life holds no promise beyond the plantation. As a personal maid to Miss Dolley, she is content. Daughter Clara, however, longs to control her own destiny despite her mother’s words of caution: . . . You don’t know a thing about freedom, ’cause I don’t know anything about it. It takes money and know-how to live free. You don’t just up and do it. Life changes for both women with the death of James Madison and the departure of his wife for her town house. As a result of neglectful management, the plantation eventually falls to a series of owners, each posing a new threat to Susie and Clara and the other longtime Madison slaves. ÊAmid these devastating changes, Clara grows to womanhood and becomes a mother herself, giving birth to two light-skinned daughters, one of whom is Susan. She never reveals the identity of the girls’ white father, and raises them as slaves. Yet the threat of separation is forever lurking, becoming a terrible reality when the younger daughter, Susan, is sold to a wealthy businessman in Richmond. She must create a new life, and it’s in Civil War-torn Richmond that she finds love and the long-held dream of freedom. Briscoe vividly recreates her family’s history with dignity and honesty. This passionate tale pays homage to the African-American experience during the 1800s and to the ancestors, both black and white, whose lives and histories became forever entwined.
Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Review By Sharon Galligar Chance Noted African-American author Connie Briscoe remembers as a child seeing two portraits of very light-complexioned women on her grandmother's bureau and asking who the two white women were. She was told they were her great-great grandmother and great-great aunt. And…
Thirteen-year-old Weldon Applegate (as remembered by 99-year-old Weldon Applegate) is the unlikely hero of Josh Ritter’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All (7 hours). Set in Cordelia, Idaho, a lumber town at the end of the lumberjack era, and populated by ghosts, witches and demons, this rollicking tall tale is as true and honest as the honed edge of a jack’s favorite ax.
Ritter is a renowned singer-songwriter, and his language is exquisite, especially when describing the grandeur of a winter forest or the subtle evil of a greedy man. His nuanced narration gives an authentic voice to both young and ancient Weldon, endowing him with wisdom, humor and valor while never losing sight of the terrible beauty of his vanished world. Ritter’s talents as a ballad singer make this audiobook, which includes an original song, a special pleasure.
Josh Ritter’s talents as a ballad singer make this audiobook, which includes an original song, a special pleasure.
1943 and all that The British long have boasted that their island nation has not been invaded by a foreign power in nearly a thousand years, not since William the Conqueror’s little expedition in 1066. It’s a pretty boast, and it’s almost true. They tend to overlook that Germany invaded the Channel Islands, off the coast of France, in 1940 and occupied them throughout World War II.
The story of the occupation has been told before, most succinctly in Alan and Mary Wood’s Islands in Danger. But that was historical fact. Tim Binding now tells it in historical fiction in Lying with the Enemy (Carroll and Graf, $24, 0786706570), a novel set on Guernsey in 1943 that combines war story and whodunit to thumping great effect.
There are understandable reasons for shoving aside the inconvenient fact of occupation, because it brings in its train the embarrassing issues of capitulation and, especially, collaboration. The embarrassment was as true then as today. For what were they now? What identity did they possess? thinks Ned Luscombe, Guernsey’s unwilling police-inspector-by-default. England kept quiet about the Channel Islands as if she were punishing the islands for letting the side down. Collaboration is the subject of Lying with the Enemy (seemingly expressed in the possible double meaning of the title, though the British title was Island Madness). Are you a traitor, the story implicitly asks, if you work for the occupiers in order to support your family? Are you more of a traitor if you’re a businessman whose enterprise supplies the work? Are you a greater traitor still if you operate, or buy from, a black market when people are on near-starvation rations? The story asks these questions not because the author has the answers or even necessarily believes in the concept of treason but because the questions are always on the minds of the populace.
Conquerors and conquered manage to get on, sometimes swimmingly. Marjorie Hallivand, doyenne of Guernsey’s pre-war smart set, is exhilarated by the war and the German officers, especially Major Lentsch, the island’s commandant: They were of the same class, after all. Even those not of the island’s petty aristocracy, like Veronica Vaudin, find it advantageous to be pliant. What surprised these men, still dressed in their once-feared uniforms, was how quickly the women had embraced their way of life. The sharpest expression of the collaboration is the relationship of Guernsey women to the German men. War in an insular backwater apparently having inflamed both the island’s inhabitants and the author’s imagination, there is copulation on a wholesale scale, though its distribution as always, whether in war or peace is unequal. Luscombe and Lentsch, however, have equally shared the favors of Isobel van Dielen, though at different times. Isobel is the daughter of a wealthy, widowed contractor who is helping the Germans with a monstrous construction project being built by 16,000 slave laborers, known as foreigns, who toil in brutish conditions, ignored by the islanders. Luscombe and Lentsch are enemies in love and war, until Isobel turns up dead, her mouth and nose filled with cement. Her death and the search for her killer bring them gradually closer together, though Luscombe initially suspects that Lentsch had something to do with the murder. Here the novel’s tight construction tightens still further, as it screws itself up to rush down the multiplying dark avenues of a proper and highly satisfying murder mystery. Why has Isobel’s father disappeared? Did he kill her, as many islanders believe? Was the charming and cruel Captain Zepernick, who likes to romp au naturel through the Victor Hugo house with Veronica, involved in some way? Or was Isobel killed by one of the foreigns? The murderer and motive, revealed at the very end, are more banal than anything suggested by those possibilities. By that time we have learned of the fundamental decency of Lentsch and of the supposedly sluttish Veronica.
We also learn that much of this activity has been driven behind the scenes by a possible visit to the island by Hitler, to whom, throughout the story, the author refers in capitals He, Him, His like a deity. Germany was His after all, like the world is God’s, and who knows? maybe the future will wipe out the distinction.
But by that point in history such a consummation was not in the cards, however devoutly some Germans and some others wished it. Ah, war who the enemy, who the friend? Is collaboration treason? It depends.
Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer in Wisconsin.
1943 and all that The British long have boasted that their island nation has not been invaded by a foreign power in nearly a thousand years, not since William the Conqueror's little expedition in 1066. It's a pretty boast, and it's almost true. They tend…
As Patti Callahan’s Once Upon a Wardrobe opens, it’s December 1950 in Worcestershire, England, and 8-year-old George Devonshire knows he’s not going to get better. His congenital heart disease is worsening, and there are no treatments left.
George, an ardent fan of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, wants his adored big sister, Megs, to answer his question: Where did Narnia come from? Megs, who’s busy with her mathematics studies at Somerville College, Oxford University, tells her brother that she has no time for children’s books. But after reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Megs changes her mind. And as George reminds her, Lewis just happens to be an English literature tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Megs finds a way to introduce herself to Lewis and his older brother, Warnie, who live together outside Oxford, and she begins to visit them and listen to their stories about growing up in Ireland and their roles in the two world wars. Megs brings these stories home to George, who in turn narrates them to the reader: “Hours in bed have taught George how to find the soft edges of the facts and drop himself into the worlds he hears about or reads of. He closes his eyes, sets his mind’s eye on the words, and floats on them like a raft.”
Once Upon a Wardrobe pivots between Megs’ and George’s perspectives. Megs takes in the Lewis brothers’ stories and slowly develops a friendship with Padraig, a literature student from Ireland. George listens to Megs and then spins out the tales for the reader. It’s a gentle novel with some beautifully cinematic images of snow, Lewis’ childhood and Oxford’s medieval colleges. Some readers may wish for a little more conflict (for instance, between Megs and her parents, or even between Megs and George), but the novel offers a strong sense of the defining moments in Lewis’ life, as well as the mythical sources for the Chronicles of Narnia. It also shows how a writer’s life can inform fiction, and how stories offer meaning in times of trouble.
Callahan is well-versed on the subject of C.S. Lewis; she’s the author of the bestselling Becoming Mrs. Lewis, an account of the American poet Joy Davidman’s midlife friendship and marriage to the author. Once Upon a Wardrobe would make an ideal companion for family book clubs reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe together.
Patti Callahan’s gentle novel contains beautifully cinematic images of snow, C.S. Lewis’ childhood and Oxford’s medieval colleges.
“I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal,” Mr. Emerson tells Lucy Honeychurch in E.M. Forster’s novel A Room With a View. It’s a beautiful sentiment, one that Sarah Winman incorporates into Still Life, along with other enduring realities, such as the transcendence of art and the pain of war.
Winman’s fourth novel is a gambol through some of the major events of the mid-20th century, and much of the action occurs in Italy. It opens in 1944, as Ulysses Temper, a young private in the British army, is driving through Florence. Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old English art historian, waves down his jeep. She’s in Italy to “liaise with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives officers” and locate artworks sequestered from museums and churches. He gives her a ride.
From there, Winman takes the reader through 35 years of world history, from World War II to the moon landing to natural disasters in Florence, as seen through the eyes of her characters.
After the war, Ulysses returns to London, where he resumes work on the globe-manufacturing business he took over from his father. He spends time at a pub called the Stout and Parrot, where denizens include Col, the owner; piano player Pete; Ulysses’ unfaithful spouse, Peg; their daughter, Alys; and a blue parrot named Claude.
An unexpected inheritance prompts Ulysses to leave London and return to Florence. Winman’s plot at times relies too heavily on moments of serendipity like this one, but readers will nonetheless be charmed by Ulysses’ attempts to set up a pensione, as well as by Evelyn’s parallel story and her many lovers, and the ways in which her life and Ulysses’ become linked.
Still Life is, ultimately, a celebration of Italy, with loving descriptions of its buildings and countryside, of old women gossiping on stone benches, of Tuscany’s “thick forests of chestnut trees and fields of sunflowers.” It’s light yet satisfying, like foamed milk atop a cappuccino.
Sarah Winman’s fourth novel is light yet satisfying, like foamed milk atop a cappuccino.
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.
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…
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
