Summer reading list: Two juicy mysteries and two au courant memoirs

I haven't reviewed any books in nearly a year, so here's an attempt at catching up!
Here are links to four reviews of books I've read in the last few weeks -- two juicy mysteries and two au courant memoirs.

Mini review: Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro, Penguin Random House - read this memoir if you're thinking of getting your DNA tested! Read my review here.

Mini review: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott, Penguin Random House - read this if you're interested in reconciliation. If you're not, there is even more reason to read it! Read my review here.

Mini review: Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson, Penguin Random House - Jackson Brodie lovers rejoice - he's back! For Atkinson fans and newbies, a romp of a modern mystery. Read my review here.

Mini review: Conviction, by Denise Mina, Hachette - part grand escape, part private eye meets podcaster novel, this one's a page turner. Read my review here.

And finally, although I've already passed the books onto a friend and didn't review them, I want to put in a recommendation for Sally Rooney's two novels: Conversations with Friends and Normal People. I read Normal People first, loved it, and immediately ordered Conversations with Friends, which I also loved. Rooney is an Irish writer and very interesting to read.

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: Conviction, by Denise Mina, Hachette

This book is a tour de force. Denise Mina, Scottish author of 13 novels, keeps getting better and better. In Conviction, Mina hits us with action right from the first page. Anna McDonald, mother of two married to an older lawyer, gets hit with bad news first thing in her morning. Her husband is leaving her, to go off with her best friend, and taking their two daughters with him.
McDonald is shocked and distressed, but doesn’t fight back. Readers know why, right from the get go – it’s because she has been living under a false identity throughout her marriage and cannot travel without a passport.
McDonald escapes through a true crime podcast, which serves as a handy storytelling device for Mina to give readers the necessary background. The podcast is about a wealthy family, killed in France when their yacht mysteriously sinks. Podcast chapters alternate with real-time chapters about McDonald’s shock and distress in the opening parts of the book.
Soon, though, McDonald and a friend, Fin Cohen, an anorexic former rock star, are off on a grand adventure, one part running away another part determined to solve the mystery of the sunken yacht, which is, of course, linked to McDonald’s surreptitious past.
At times, Conviction seems a tad formulaic, particularly in the page-turning nature of some of the chapters. But the formula succeeds thanks to Mina’s storytelling skills – you won’t be able to put it down.
See other book reviews here.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson, Penguin Random House

Fans of Jackson Brodie can rejoice – he’s back chasing bad guys in Big Sky, Kate Atkinson’s latest novel. It’s been nine long years since the last Brodie caper and it’s been a long wait. Not that I’m complaining – Atkinson wrote some glorious novels in the interim, like Life After Life and A God in Ruins. But it’s damn good to have Brodie back.
He’s still a private eye – this time chasing an unfaithful husband to get proof of his infidelity for his wife – but more meaningful, if unpaid, work awaits. There’s a human trafficking ring operating underground just beneath the surface of the seemingly quaint, but slightly sleazy, seaside village, complete with pier attractions, where Jackson finds himself. He’s father to a growly teenage boy and a young woman about to be married.
As always, Atkinson packs so much into this novel that it begs to be read twice, just to catch all the finer details. But even for casual readers, this mystery is a joy. The characters are strong, including Crystal, a trophy wife, Reggie, a police detective who was a nanny in an earlier Brodie novel, and a pragmatic teenage boy named Harry, who works backstage at two of the pier attractions, most notably in the dressing rooms of drag queens and an aging, angry comedian.
The murder is almost a side note in this caper, but it does tie together the many subplots. When writing Brodie, Atkinson is always hilarious, but also profound. Little tidbits of depth – like one throwaway sentence when Jackson ponders the afterlife – are sprinkled throughout, adding to the reader’s experience.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott, Penguin Random House

Reconciliation is a buzzword in the lexicon of Indigenous relations in Canada. In the memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, author Alicia Elliott takes readers right into the heart of why reconciliation matters.
She is Indigenous, from the Six Nations of the Grand River, in Ontario. She grew up on the rez, in a two-bedroom trailer, with four siblings and her parents. Elliott goes deep, writing about mental health, suicide, residential schools, Indigenous child welfare and its relation to neglect or poverty, teenage pregnancy, sexual assault, racism and much more.
In a series of essays, she relates these big issues to her own life, while also linking them to global history and current events. There’s also an essay set in Vancouver, where Elliott was
the 2017-18 Geoffrey and Margaret Andrew Fellow at the University of British Columbia.
I don’t want to make the book sound depressing. Yes, it does take on tough subjects, head first with no holds barred, but it’s also compelling, funny and modern. It’s also hopeful. Consider this passage, an idea attributed to nehiyaw writer Erica Violet Lee: “If historical trauma is strong enough to alter our DNA and remain in our bones for generations, then there is no question in my mind that the love of our ancestors is in our DNA and our bones as well. The memory of that love is strong enough that it still exists in us.“
Canada is in a moment – a moment where reconciliation can go right or wrong. Readers who want to know more about why it’s crucial, need look no further. Read this book.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro, Penguin Random House

Who’s thinking about getting their DNA tested? If you are, be prepared for surprises.
In Inheritance: A Memoir of Geneology, Paternity and Love, author Dani Shapiro gets slammed with the shocking news that her father isn’t biologically related to her. She’s always been deeply connected to her father, and through him, her Jewish faith. But the DNA results make sense: she’s also the only blonde in her family and has been told repeatedly throughout her life that she doesn’t look Jewish.
Shapiro is a gifted writer – Inheritance is the first book I’ve read by her, but immediately after I finished it, I bought another one of her four memoirs and devoured it too. She’s also written five novels and has worked as a journalist.
I highly recommend this memoir for all readers, but if you’re considering a DNA test, it should be required reading. She not only explains the process, she deeply explores the ethics involved and the meaning of parenthood, love and culture.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
By Holly Ringland
Anansi

They say you can never judge a book by its cover, but in the case of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, they’re wrong.
The cover is beautiful and complex – so is the story inside. The cover has a black background that is bursting with about 20 different varieties of colourful flowers. The story inside is dark – yes, it is – but it has flowers – beautiful, light, sensual flowers – as its backbone.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is the story of Alice Hart, beginning from her early childhood. She’s growing up in Australia, but not the everyday version of Australia. Something is very wrong in her life – she doesn’t go to school, her mother is troubled, her father is angry. Eventually, a traumatic event separates Alice from her parents forever and she goes to live with her grandmother, June. Because of the dysfunction, she had never met her grandmother before.
June lives on a flower farm called Thornfield, where she teaches Alice the language of flowers, or the hidden meaning behind each species of flower.
Alice grows up not knowing the truth of her childhood, but the truth is always there, following her, shaping her personality. When she’s betrayed as an adult, the trauma of the earlier events rises back to the surface, causing Alice to completely change her life.
There is a sense of magic, of fate, in this novel. As I was reading it, I was reminded of the style of one of my favourite authors, Alice Hoffman. Later in the book, author Holly Ringland uses a quote by Hoffman to begin a chapter. In an author’s note at the end, RIngland thanks Hoffman for encouraging her and says, “Thank you for writing the books that I have carried with me around the world, they have shown me the way to be brave and to believe.” So clearly, Hoffman was an inspiration and it shows. In a good way.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart hooked me in from the first page. Towards the end, it kept me up late turning pages. It’s a beautiful story, lovingly told.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Transcription
By Kate Atkinson
Doubleday Canada

Anyone who follows my book reviews knows that Kate Atkinson is right at the top of my list of favourite authors. I loved her Jackson Brodie mysteries – please may she write another one! – but her other novels have also ranked way up there. Life After Life was such an incredible achievement, that I am still in awe of it five years after reading it. A God In Ruins was nearly an equal accomplishment. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, captured my imagination immediately and I’ve got a permanent and recurring note to self to reread it and every one of her books. So yes, I’m a fan.
Atkinson’s latest novel is Transcription, the story of Juliet Armstrong, a young woman who is mysteriously recruited into the secret service in London during the Second World War. She finds herself responsible for transcribing conversations between a British agent who is posing as the leader of a group of German sympathizers.
It goes even further when Juliet is asked to become a spy. She leaps right in, going undercover as Iris Carter-Jenkins, an alter identity who is tasked with infiltrating an upper-class friend group who may or may not be on Germany’s side.
Much of the novel feels like a lark — an adventure that Juliet has been thrust into, with little experience or training. She manages to scrape by – barely – but gets herself into plenty of pickles along the way.
Juliet is a literalist and Atkinson has some fun with language via Juliet’s thoughts. When Juliet overhears the question, “Cat’s got your tongue?” She thinks to herself: What an awful idea. … How would the cat get it – by accident or design?
Much of the novel takes place in Juliet’s inner dialogue, and that’s a fine place to be. Juliet is quite hilarious at time and she’s both clueless enough and intelligent enough to make the story interesting.
And when the story comes around to serious business – the business of murder and treason – it makes a very satisfying read indeed.
The book opens in 1981, when Juliet as an older woman has returned to London. She’s been hit by a car and is reflecting on her life. A couple of snippets from that early chapter reveal Atkinson’s wit and style.
“It was all such a waste of breath. War and peace. Peace and war. It would go on forever without end,” Juliet thinks to herself. Later, she thinks: “There was to be a royal wedding. Even now, as she lay on this London pavement with these kind strangers around her, a sacrificial virgin was being prepared somewhere up the road, to satisfy the need for pomp and circumstance.”
Atkinson based the novel on an MI5 document describing a wartime spy, who lived a regular life as a bank clerk. MI5 released documents including transcriptions of the spy’s conversations that made Atkinson curious about who might’ve typed them. Thus Juliet was born. And readers everywhere will benefit from that.
Atkinson will be appearing in Vancouver on Saturday, September 29 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church, 1022 Nelson Street. Tickets are available through the Vancouver Writers Fest.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Warlight
By Michael Ondaatje
McClelland & Stewart

The latest novel by Michael Ondaatje returns to the Second World War, a time he brilliantly illuminated in The English Patient, his 1992 novel which this summer won the Golden Man Booker Prize as the best of all Booker Prize-winning novels.
While The English Patient took place in Italy and North Africa, Warlight takes place in the decade just after the war in London. Two teenagers, Rachel and Nathaniel, are left behind by their parents, who move mysteriously to Singapore. They’re left in the care of a man they call The Moth, a man with an interesting cast of friends who take the children under their wing.
Later, their mother returns, under even more mysterious circumstances, with no sign of their father. As Nathaniel grows up, he tries to piece together his past to make sense of his teenage years.
Warlight is a complex story, in which nothing is quite as it seems. It’s a mystery, a spy story, a coming-of-age story and a tale of family bonds, but it’s not a novel that easily fits into any of those boxes. Ondaatje takes readers into the shadows of memory and time, occasionally bringing us into the conversation, but at other times leaving the details to our imaginations.
Warlight is beautifully written novel with a story that is exquisitely told by Ondaatje.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: The Possible World by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

The Possible World
By Liese O’Halloran Schwarz
Simon and Schuster

This novel brings together three seemingly disconnected stories – an emergency room doctor, an elderly woman in a care home and a young boy suffering with anxiety – and brings them together in a complex and compelling story.
Lucy is the ER doc, who finds herself newly single as she works a gruelling night shift schedule. Ben is the young boy, who witnesses a brutal murder and appears to have amnesia due to the shock. Clare is the elderly woman, who might be the oldest person in her small town at nearly 100 years old, but who also appears to have no evidence of her birthdate.
This is not a murder mystery – the perpetrator becomes known quite quickly and simply after the crime. Rather, it is a story of life – three lives to be exact – and how people can form connections and how they can lose those same connections.
O’Halloran Schwarz is an emergency-medicine doctor herself, working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Readers will recognize the accuracy in her descriptions of what it’s like to work an ER, including one hilarious scene that is sure to surprise.
Not only did The Possible World make this reviewer laugh, it also made me cry in its universal wisdom about the bonds between us and how ephemeral or enduring they can be. A beautifully written novel, The Possible World is a story that will enrich its readers.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George

The Punishment She Deserves
Elizabeth George
Viking

Elizabeth George is a perennial favourite of mine – I’ve been reading her mysteries for 30 years now, and I don’t think there has been one I haven’t enjoyed.
The upright, proper Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his brilliant-but-unconventional sidekick Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers are always a pleasure to follow around the British countryside, solving whatever murder they happen to be working on.
This time, the mystery is the apparent suicide of a church deacon who had been arrested after claims of child molestation. On first glance, it appears obvious that he killed himself while in police custody, but a closer look shows many unusual happenings in the small medieval British town of Ludlow.
Regular readers will love The Punishment She Deserves, for its focus on Lynley and Havers, who solve a traditional crime with lots of sordid details and side notes. Newcomers won’t be lost in the back story and can jump right in. George lives in Washington State, but usually sets her mysteries in England.
For the first 200 or so pages – the length of a regular novel – Havers is inspecting the suicide with Isabelle Ardery, the Acting Superintendent who is dealing with a bit of an alcohol problem. Ardery’s story is interesting, but I was beginning to wonder if the author had tired of Lynley and his story. But thankfully, Lynley is at the heart of part two of the book, which clocks in at another 500 pages. Yep, this is a long book. But it’s worth it.
There’s a bit of a treatise on motherhood hidden within the pages of this murder mystery. I won’t go into too many details, except to say that readers will meet a neglectful mother, a mother who is unable to let go and a mother who is unable to stop hovering. Throw in a bit of foreign culture, a bit of religion and a bit of the freedom and damage of the first couple of years of college and you’ve got the makings of a superb murder mystery.
The only complaint I have about Elizabeth George’s mysteries is that the back story – the story of Lynley, Havers, Simon, Deborah, and all of the other characters – moves so slowly. By my count, Deborah and Simon have been trying for a baby for several decades, but they’ve barely aged.
Moving their story slowly means readers keep coming back for a little tidbit about how these characters they love are doing, but it also means readers can be disappointed with little progress.
After 30 years of Lynley, faithful readers should know not to expect a whole bunch of personal details. The Punishment She Deserves is nonetheless a delightful read, and one that brings the series back to its traditional roots. We will just have to wait for the next one to find out the gossip.
tracy.sherlock@gmail.com