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Reviews by Cathryn Conroy

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Shuggie Bain
by Douglas Stuart

Dark and Depressing But It's a Masterpiece: A Literary Descent into the Hell of Addiction (4/15/2023)

This is one of those books that just crawled into my heart and curled up. Fierce and unflinching, but also mournfully sorrowful, this 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel by Douglas Stuart is emotionally devastating and so brutal in parts that I felt almost bruised by reading it. …more

Just know this before you read it.

This is the story of beautiful and glamorous Agnes Bain—daughter, wife, mother, lover, friend, and most of all alcoholic. It is set in the slums of Glasgow, Scotland and an almost-deserted mining town on its peripheries during the 1980s when the coal mines closed, resulting in huge levels of unemployment. Agnes is married to Hugh "Shug" Bain, a taxi driver, and they live with her parents in a cramped Glasgow public housing apartment along with Catherine and Leek, Agnes's teenage children from her first marriage, and 5-year-old Shuggie, who gradually realizes as he gets a little older that he is not like other boys. Agnes is a drunk, and as the years go by, her drinking destroys not only herself, but also everyone around her.

This novel is a literary descent into the hell of addiction.

I think the most impressive part of the book is really very simple: The title. This may be Agnes's story, but because of the title, I kept thinking it was Shuggie's story first and foremost. I saw everything that happened to Agnes through Shuggie's tender, trusting, and loving eyes and heart and soul. And that's absolutely wrenching. Because this little boy tries so hard, as do most children of alcoholics, to hold life together for his mother. He is brave and resourceful, but he is just a child. And so he is doomed to failure. If the title alone is not enough, take a good look at the cover art. I realize this photograph is not the work of author Douglas Stuart, but this one image captures all of Shuggie's angst and anguish. It's brilliant.

Yes, this is a dark, depressing, and disheartening novel, but I'm so glad I read it. It is modern literature at its finest.

But here is something fun: The dialogue feels almost visceral because it is peppered with dozens of Scottish idioms, such as dout (a cigarette end), stour (dust), tick, (IOU), and dreich (gloomy). For what it's worth, it's pretty easy to figure out what these words mean from the context, but there is always Google if you get stuck. I did get totally stuck on "messages." It means groceries or shopping and sometimes errands, so context is critical. (less)

The Sea
by John Banville

This Is an Exquisite Book About the Meaning of Time and the Fleeting Tricks of Memory (4/15/2023)

Taking place at a seaside resort in Ireland, this Booker Prize-winning novel by John Banville is as much about time—past, present, and future—as it is about the sea. It's about memories of the past, the tricks and ravages of those memories, the ache of the present, and the …more

The End of Your Life Book Club
by Will Schwalbe

A Lovely, Deeply Felt Tribute to the Joys of Reading and Living—Even While Dying (4/15/2023)

This book should come with a warning label: It will inspire you to read many, many books. It could cost you some big bucks if you're not careful!

But even with all these wonderful book suggestions lining the pages, this is far more a loving account of a mother's life after …more

Golden Age: A Last Hundred Years: a Family Saga Novel
by Jane Smiley

This Three-Book Family Saga Is Truly the Great American Novel (4/15/2023)

The power of this book—as well as the other two books that comprise this gripping family saga trilogy—is the wisdom, compassion, and human insight of Jane Smiley's imaginative story arc.

This is the 100-year story of the Langdon family. Each chapter is titled with a year, …more covering 1920 to 1952 in the first book, "Some Luck," from 1953 to 1986 in "Early Warning," and from 1987 to 2019 in "Golden Age."

Rosanna and Walter Langdon had six children from 1919 to 1939, which means the family tree has greatly expanded its branches by the end of the 20th century. The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live not only on the farm in Denby, Iowa where it all started, but also New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, and San Francisco. While this puts them in the center of the action for political and current events, the book is far more about the minutiae of life—the hopes, heartbreak, and dreams of human existence that define who we are as individuals and where we fit into a family.

A Disappointment: Since everything that happens to the characters right from the first page of the first book is mirrored by corresponding current events of that year, Jane Smiley took a leap of faith by publishing this book in October 2015 (and presumably finishing the writing as much as year earlier) but still continuing the story through 2019. Beginning with the 2016 chapter, she creates current events that didn't happen from a president who was not actually elected to international skirmishes that are figments of her imagination. She was writing about an unknown future. It was disappointing to me in that it violated the basic premise she herself created at the beginning of the series—for the life of one American family to reflect the current events of the time. She should have waited the five years to publish the third volume or stopped the story in 2015. (Even so, it's still a five-star book.)

Two pieces of advice:
No. 1: You absolutely must read the books in order or they won't make sense. This really should have been one book. If you start with the second or third book, it's like starting halfway through a novel. It will be very confusing.

No. 2: The Langdon family tree is quite complex. Bookmark that page so you can easily refer to it later. If you are reading this on a Kindle, here is the most efficient way to figure out the characters: Search the name of the character (and first name is enough). The first search result you'll get is on the family tree. Go there. That puts you right where you need to be within the multipage family tree so you don't have to hunt. I was still doing this 70 percent into the story! THAT is how complex these relationships are.

This is an extraordinary family saga that almost serves as a mini-history of the United States, as well as quite the writing achievement for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley. When you view all three of the books as one, it truly is the Great American Novel. (less)

Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Powerful, Profound, and Astonishing Book That I Anticipate Some Will Try to Have Banned (4/15/2023)

I wonder how long it will take for someone to try to get this powerful, profound, and astonishing book banned? Translation: It's a must-read.

This is one of those brilliant novels that can be read on two levels. First, the highly imaginative plot and intriguing characters …more

The Forgotten Garden: A Novel
by Kate Morton

An Engrossing, Ingenious Page-Turner That Doubles as a Highly Imaginative Fairy Tale (4/15/2023)

This is a magical book.

What will draw in most readers almost immediately is the complex, multilayered plot that is so twisted (in a good way!) it's nearly impossible to figure out (too far) in advance. But this is so much more than an ingenious story. Author Kate Morton …more has crafted a novel that almost doubles as a fairy tale. The end result is a book that is both entrancing and highly original.

The novel bounces back and forth in time and place in way that could be jarring and absolutely discombobulated in the hands of a less-talented writer. But in the hands of Kate Morton, it is brilliant. And I can't imagine it being written in any other way. It's a little slow to get started—so stick with it—but it really takes off by the fifth chapter.

Taking place in the first two decades of the 1900s, 1975, and 2005, this is the story of several girls/women in one family. It opens with Nell, a four-year-old who boards a ship in England bound for Australia as she holds the hand of her dead mother's cousin and trusted friend. And then the cousin disappears, leaving Nell completely alone. After the ship lands, she is standing on the dock in Maryborough, Australia with her child-sized white suitcase when Hugh, a kind dockworker, takes her home. The only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales found in the suitcase. Hugh and Lil are childless and lovingly care for the little girl who has no memory of her name. They call her Nell. How Nell got to Australia, the stories of her grandparents, parents, the cousin who is the author of fairy tales, and Nell's own daughter and granddaughter make up the riveting story that follows. This is a tale filled with secrets galore—from family secrets to secret gardens—that takes place from colonial Australia to the sea swept coast of Cornwall, England.

Several fairy tales are part of the story, all written by one of the book's characters, and each cleverly presages the novel's next plot development.

Bonus: Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of the beloved book, "The Secret Garden," makes a cameo appearance.

This is an engrossing page-turner with characters so bright and bold they give the book a big heart and soul. The twists and turns of the plot and the mesmerizing storytelling result in a magical, gripping novel.

This is a delightful, escapist book that will take you far away from your real life. (less)

The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Read This Extraordinary Book for a Whole New Perspective of the Aftermath of the Vietnam War (4/15/2023)

A professional review published in the Sydney Morning Herald described this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen as "genre-bending." And that is apt. It's historical fiction. It's a spy thriller. It's satire of a highly intellectual kind. It's a war novel. It's …more philosophical. It's kind of, sort of darkly funny in parts. It's a disturbing tragedy. Oh, and it's highly entertaining even if it's not a particularly easy book to read.

The unnamed narrator, who defines himself as "a man of two minds" who can see both sides of an issue, is a 30-something Vietnamese man who was born in the north of that country and fled to the south with his mother in 1954 when he was nine years old. He is illegitimate and suffers greatly for that. His mother was a young teenager when she was impregnated by a French Roman Catholic priest she served as a maid. The narrator eventually goes to college in Los Angeles and learns to speak English without an accent, which he thinks of as a great accomplishment. He returns to Vietnam during the war. Because of his position in the South Vietnamese army, he is able to flee the country on the last plane out and ends up back in Los Angeles. But here is the narrator's deep secret: All along he has been a Communist spy, a "sympathizer," infiltrating the military of South Vietnam to rise to the rank of captain to report their movements, thoughts, and plans to the North Vietnamese. Our narrator, so trusted and even loved by his South Vietnamese friends and colleagues, is Viet Cong. The book is his supposed written confession to a mysterious "commandant," so right from the beginning we readers realize this mole has been outed—but not in the way you might expect.

The narrator is living a dual life in obvious ways as a Communist mole, but that duality penetrates everything about him. He is of two minds. It's this troubling, difficult-to-maintain dichotomy that truly defines everything he is and does and leads to his eventual downfall.

The greatest strength of this excellent, albeit complex, novel is in its point of view. We experience the Vietnam War's chaotic and brutal end as Saigon fell in April 1975, as well as get a real sense for what it was like to be a Vietnamese refugee in the late 1970s in the United States. Because the writing is so extraordinary, we empathize with these refugees' love of their country—a place from which they may forever be exiled—and how that influences everything they do.

This is the power of truly great literature: It places us inside others' lives. It offers us a perspective outside our own experiences. It gives us empathy. It makes us better human beings. (less)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson

An Extraordinary Book That Is So Well Written and So Compelling That It's Hard to Put Down (4/15/2023)

I learned so much from this book! And the reason is simple: perspective. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of caste and racism both in broad, sweeping historical terms as well as through poignant, troubling, tragic, and heartrending personal …more

Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Before You Read This, Know What You're Getting: It's ChickLit, Not Literature as the Awards Suggest (4/15/2023)

Reminiscent of Lauren Groff's brilliant novel "Fates and Furies," this remake is whiny, whiny, whiny, as well as a quite daringly sexy read, but most important it is not as erudite, intelligent, or shocking as Groff's literary masterpiece. In all fairness, author Taffy …more Brodesser-Akner probably doesn't think of this book as a "Fates and Furies" remake, but because the plot/structure similarities are unmistakably alike it's hard not to compare them.

And "Fleishman Is in Trouble" is a poor runner-up.

This is the plot set-up: Toby Fleishman, M.D. is a top hepatologist at a top New York City hospital, making a respectable quarter of million dollars a year. But that's not enough for his wife, Rachel, who has her own creative agency representing actors and makes five times what her husband pulls in. This is Manhattan in the 2000s and it's all about money because it takes a lot of it to buy the lifestyle of a tony apartment with the right address, private schools for the children, a house in the Hamptons, and vacations in Europe. She is greatly annoyed that Toby just doesn't care about any of that. Rachel is all about the money and prestige and impressing others. Toby is all about loving the children. Rachel and Toby's love story dissolves. They separate. They work out child custody. But before the divorce is final, Rachel disappears and goes completely incommunicado, leaving Toby (who has recently discovered sexy dating apps and has become weirdly obsessed with them) with the children.

The novel has three chapters, all told by the narrator—unnamed for quite some time, which is incredibly confusing, if not actually disconcerting—who is an old friend of Toby's named Libby whom he met in Israel during their junior year abroad and hasn't seen since. Libby is a former magazine writer turned happily married, stay-at-home New Jersey suburban mom. The first chapter is from Toby's point of view. The second chapter is mostly from Toby's point of view with a lot of Libby interjecting her own story, while the third chapter is from all three points of view. After all, every marriage—and its disintegration—has two sides.

I am willing to stretch my imagination for every novel I read and give the author a lot of artistic license. But Libby as the narrator is just too much—even for me. Libby is a distant friend, but somehow Libby knows intimate, incredibly personal details about both Toby and Rachel. It is completely, eye-rollingly implausible.

And did I mention it is whiny? Oh, so very, very whiny. Uber-privileged, rich white people who have everything in the world kind of whiny.

One more thing: The ending is awful. Very, very disappointing.

Longlisted for the National Book Award, this is a well-written, satirical novel that is amusing and entertaining, although quite pretentious, but it absolutely does not rise to the level of great literature as its National Book Award nomination would suggest. It is ChickLit. And because of all the whining, it's not even very good ChickLit. Just know you're getting ChickLit and not literature before you buy the book. I have no idea why it's so highly overrated. (less)

Transcendent Kingdom
by Yaa Gyasi

A Profound, Elegiac Examination of the Human Spirit with a Transcendent Message of Hope and Love (4/15/2023)

The intersection of religion and science is crooked if not actually broken. In a way, this book tries to make that intersection whole and seamless. And the result is magnificent.

This is a short but monumental novel that has so much depth, so many profound thoughts, and a …more

My Year Abroad
by Chang-rae Lee

A Wildly Bizarre, Highly Imaginative Book That Is So Manic It Can Be Exhausting to Read (4/15/2023)

This book is bizarre. No, really (really!) bizarre. Each sentence is a little word explosion, a mind-boggling and manic amalgam of letters and punctuation that continue and continue one after another to form a book—a wildly bizarre, but incredibly creative, book.

Is it good? …more Yeah. Sort of. It's long. And breathless. And almost giddy. If a book could break into uncontrollable giggles, this one just might do that. So even though it is highly imaginative and even innovative, all of this makes reading it a bit exhausting at times. It's almost too much. Hence, four stars and not five.

Written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Chang-rae Lee, this is the convoluted story of 20-year-old Tiller Bardmon, an average guy in every sense of the word—from looks to accomplishments. He has finished his sophomore year at a small, elite college and is spending the summer at home in Dunbar, New Jersey, a Princeton stand-in, before his junior year abroad. While caddying for the first time ever, he meets Pong Lou, and Tiller's life changes practically overnight. Cue the bizarre. Because what happens to Tiller over the next few months is so unbelievable it's preposterous. But wait! Back up! There are two plotlines in the book, and one of them begins on the first page with what happens to Tiller after his adventures with Pong Lou. Tiller (still 20 years old) is living with an older woman named Val and her obese 8-year-old son Victor Jr. Val and Victor Jr. are in the witness protection program after Val squealed on her now dead (but then alive and very crooked) husband to the FBI. Whew. Did you follow all that? Never mind. Reading the book is better than a plot summary anyway.

This is a story about the American dream, about integrating with other cultures, about finding balance and love and goodness in life, about unexpected adventures, about sharing the riches, about the inherent dangers in cheating and dishonesty, and about growing up in a tough world.

While most of the plot is implausible, just run with it. Embrace those little word explosion sentences, and see where they lead.

Bonus: Chapter nine tells the story—through the adult recollections of then-five-year-old Pong Lou—of the beginning of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in 1966. It is a harrowing and unrelenting account that offered me a whole new appreciation for the violence, degradation, and absolute societal upheaval that accompanied this movement. (less)

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge
by Phaedra Patrick

A Silly Little Love Story…and Sometimes, That's Just the Ticket (4/15/2023)

This is a silly little love story, and sometimes a silly little love story is just the ticket! If you're looking for a distraction from the so-called real world, check out this quick-to-read ChickLit novel by Phaedra Patrick.

In the British town of Upchester, there are a lot …more

Summer of '69
by Elin Hilderbrand

This Is a Beach Book with Brains That Perfectly Captures the Tumultuous Summer of '69 (4/15/2023)

Elin Hilderbrand is known as the "Queen of Beach Reads," so I had certain expectations—as in, light, frothy, ChickLitty—for this first book I have read by her. Well, that was wrong!

While this is a wonderful novel for summer reading, it is really a magnificent, intelligent …more blend of historical fiction and a beach book. It's a beach book with brains!

This is the story of the (very) privileged Nichols-Foley-Levin family of Brookline, Massachusetts, who have spent their summers for generations on the tony Massachusetts island of Nantucket. The novel focuses on four of the women in what is a larger cast of characters: 48-year-old mother Kate Levin, 24-year-old daughter Blair Foley Whalen, 21-year-old daughter Kirby Foley, and 13-year-old daughter Jessica Levin. The story is told in alternating chapters from their four voices.

Kate is overtly distraught and drinking way too much due to excessive worry for her son Tiger, who was drafted and has just been deployed to Vietnam. Blair, who is pregnant and due any day with twins, is in a romantically complicated and unhappy marriage to Angus, an MIT professor who is working on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Kirby, a Simmons University junior, gets a summer job at an inn on Martha's Vineyard in Edgartown, while recovering from a romance with a married man and embarking on a new romance with a Black Harvard student. And Jessie, who turns 13 the day they arrive in Nantucket, is experiencing all those adolescent demons and joys as she, too, worries about her big brother fighting in Vietnam. Each of these four women mirror a major life event most women experience—from adolescence to college to marriage and motherhood to the nearly empty nest—but from a vantage of changing times for women's roles and expectations.

This is a book that grabbed me from the first paragraph. The plot simply buzzes and has enough surprises and small twists to keep the pages quickly turning. And, just as the title says, this is all taking place during that momentous summer of 1969—the first moon walk, the Vietnam War, race relations, Betty Friedan, and Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Very cleverly, each chapter is titled with a song from the era, which gives just a whisper of a hint to the evolving plotline.

Read it! Take it to the beach or your own backyard. This is a summer novel that perfectly captures that tumultuous summer of '69. (less)

Great Circle
by Maggie Shipstead

A Brilliant Novel! Complex Characters, an Exhilarating Plot, and an Incredible Ending (4/15/2023)

Complex characters. An exhilarating plot. An incredible ending. This fascinating blend of fiction and history will not only keep readers turning the pages, but also pausing to really think about the inner meaning of what just happened.

Written by Maggie Shipstead, this is …more

Monogamy
by Sue Miller

A Cautionary Tale About the Fragility of Marriage—But Sad, Gloomy, and a Bit of Slog-Fest (4/15/2023)

This cautionary tale about the fragility of marriage begins as a page-turner that turns into a bit of a slog-fest before eventually redeeming itself. And that's disappointing because it's so good in the beginning!

Written by Sue Miller, this hybrid between ChickLit and …more literary fiction, is the story of a marriage and the heartbreaking betrayal of infidelity. Annie and Graham (second marriage for both) have been married for 30 years. They live in Cambridge in the shadow of Harvard University. A big man with an even bigger personality, he owns a thriving independent bookstore. She is a tiny little thing, who putters as an arty photographer. They live in a very small converted carriage house on a street of otherwise grandiose homes. Life is sweet. Because Graham has this habit, albeit one he has resisted for years, he embarks on an ill-advised affair with a friend of theirs. It's all about sex and nothing more. He ends it. And then Graham very suddenly and very unexpectedly dies. That's the page-turner part of the book.

After his death, Annie is understandably heartbroken and absolutely grief-stricken. While Miller portrays these emotions realistically, it just goes on seemingly forever. (And if she had skipped this part, we reviewers would blast her for taking grief too lightly. It's a no-win situation.) It's soon after Graham's death that Annie figures out he had the affair, which just sends her on a whole different kind of grieving—this time for her marriage. Eventually ("Finally!" says the reader), the book becomes an examination of all the characters' relationships and marriages—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and what makes a good marriage. This last part is much more readable, although not the page-turner it was in the beginning.

This is a very sad book. Deeply gloomy. There are several well-imagined minor characters, such as Graham's first wife, Frieda, and their son, Lucas, as well as Graham and Annie's daughter, Sarah. These characters add a lot to the story if only to give the reader a little break from all the grief.

Reader, beware. This is a book that can envelop you in sadness or, quite possibly, bore you because it just doesn't let up for so long. But most of all, it's disappointing. Sue Miller is such a good writer. This is not her best. (less)

The Boy in the Field
by Margot Livesey

An Old-Fashioned Fable at Its Heart, This Magnificent Novel Is Literary Fiction at Its Finest (4/15/2023)

An old-fashioned fable at its heart, this extraordinary book by Margot Livesey is literary fiction at its finest. It's the kind of novel that on the surface is nothing more than a good read, but then it sneakily wormed its way into my brain so I found myself often thinking …more

Autumn
by Ali Smith

An Eccentric, Albeit Charming, Literary Novel That Is Startling and Original (4/14/2023)

The first chapter in this novel is quite startling. It's weird. OK…very weird. But keep going.

When everything starts to make sense, this is a somewhat eccentric, albeit charming, story of an unlikely friendship between Daniel, a 101-year-old man, and Elisabeth, a 32-year- …more

Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman

Bewitch Yourself with This Charming and Delightful Book (4/14/2023)

If you want a charming and delightful book that is perfect for those cooler autumn evenings, bewitch yourself with this, the second in the four-part series, by Alice Hoffman, the mistress of the genre of magical realism. (And, yes, you should read them in order beginning …more

Silver Sparrow: A Novel
by Tayari Jones

What Happens When Your Daddy Has Another Family? A Poignantly Emotional Coming-of-Age Story (4/14/2023)

This is a deeply felt and poignantly emotional book about the coming of age of two teenage girls. The twist is that their father is a bigamist, but only one of them knows it.

Growing up in Atlanta in the 1980s, Dana Lynn Yarboro and Chaurisse Witherspoon are struggling with …more

The Fortunate Ones
by Ed Tarkington

This Is a Good Book but Not a Great One. It Could Have Been So Much More. (4/14/2023)

This is a good book — just not a great book. And that's a shame, because it could have been a lot more.

Written by Ed Tarkington, this is the story of Charlie Boykin, born in the 1960s to a 15-year-old mother whose family disowned her when she wouldn't go away quietly to …more

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