Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead, 2012
320 pp.
May, 2013
How someone as young as Maggie Shipstead has managed such sure-footed prose, mature insights, and sardonic humor is beyond me. For a writer in her then-late-20s, her debut novel Seating Arrangements is a remarkable feat. It would be so for a writer at any age.
The story opens as Winn Van Meter rises before dawn to head up to the family summer home on the Island of Waskeke. His eldest daughter is to be married there in three days, and the wedding party and families are already gathering.
With or Without You
Domenica Ruta, 2013
224 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
April 2013
I loved her straight off—Domenica Ruta's mother—though I knew I shouldn't. She's irresponsible, drug-addled, narcissistic, mercurial, and destructive, not just self-destructive but destructive toward her daughter.
Yet the portrait drawn of Kathi Ruta in this extraordinary memoir is endearing, often hilarious...as well as infuriating. It was too hard not to fall for such a woman.
The Death of Bees*
Lisa O'Donnell, 2012
320 pp.
January, 2013
Celebtated in Britain and now garnering stunning reviews in the U.S., The Death of Bees is a short read that packs a big wallop. But while the story is powerful and characters lovable, do take note: it might be a bit much for some. Grim...or grimly comic...or comically grim, The Death of Bees is not for everyone.
The novel, situtated in Glasgow, Scotland, is told through alternating voices: two sisters and their neighbor, Lennie. The girls, 12 and 15, are on their own, their parents "missing." Yet readers know from the get-go exactly where they are. And so do the girls.
Coral Glynn
Peter Cameron, 2012
224 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
October, 2012
The set-up seems straight out of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. A shy, untested young woman, lands herself in a musty English manor house complete with a handsome but brooding owner and a spiteful housekeeper.
Yet Peter Cameron is after something more than a gothic mystery tale—his mystery has to do with the complex workings of the soul. In spare, elegant language, Cameron seems to ask how we know ourselves, if we can, and how we love one another, if we do.
The After Wife
Gigi Levangie Grazer, 2012
298 pp.
September, 2012
There's obviously nothing funny about death, especially one unexpected, a life cut suddenly and cruelly short.
Yet, as in all her books, Gigi Levangie Grazer manages to rouse us to bursts of laughter and stifled guffaws. Even in grief, Grazer has created a heroine-narrator who speaks with a dark but very funny, sardonic voice.