I read* 100 books in 2024, and exactly the same number in 2023. Yay for me. Some of them, quite frankly, are a blur. But some of them stand out as particularly moving and memorable.

*Reading includes audiobooks, obviously.

The muse hasn’t been with me these past couple of years, and this blog has sat pretty much dormant. I’d like to get back to it, if only for me to clear my head of the mess that’s in there.

So a blog about my favourite books read in 2024, in no particular order.

We All Want Impossible Things & Sandwich

Fabulous Catherine Newman has two spots on my 2024 list: her first adult novel, We All Want Impossible Things, and her follow-up Sandwich. I recommended We All Want Impossible Things to my book club, and they pretty much universally hated it (too much sex, depressing topic). But I adored it – a book about tending to your dying best friend while she’s in palliative care that makes you laugh out loud is pretty miraculous. It was a tight, sad, relatable and very funny book about grief and how it can impact you in surprising ways.

[By the way, I read about We All Want Impossible Things on a Substack called “What to Read If” – which I can’t recommend enough. Many many good suggestions of books I would never have come across on my own.]

Sandwich is Newman’s 2024 follow-up novel. If I hadn’t wanted to read more Catherine Newman, I would have read it anyways, with cover blurbs from a couple of my favourite authors: Ann Patchett and Kate Christensen. It’s a novel about women, aging, secrets, marriage, and reproductive rights. The women in this novel are given the agency and freedom to make tough choices about their bodies and their families, in a country that is currently robbing its citizens of those rights. It’s a story set in 2024 that may soon be seen as historical fiction.

Olive, Again & Tell Me Everything

Elizabeth Strout can do no wrong, in my eyes – and like Catherine Newman, she gets two spots on my 2024 list of faves.

Olive Kitteridge was a masterpiece and, of course, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction. I loved how Strout created a fierce, flawed, and pretty unloveable main character in Olive Kitteridge. I loved how she told Olive’s story through a series of short stories, told from different perspectives of residents in Olive’s Maine hometown, fleshing out a fully formed and unforgettable woman.

Olive, Again is the sequel to Olive Kitteridge, and it took me a long time to get to it. I got distracted by Strout’s many Lucy Barton novels that kept me company during the lonely and protracted pandemic (which I sincerely miss in many many ways). Lucy and I weathered the pandemic together with our aging and cranky partners. Olive is slightly more likeable in the sequel – she remarries (to an equally flawed character), proves a loyal friend in need, and tries (and horribly fails) to be a decent mother. Also told through short stories, an aging Olive becomes more herself and slightly less bristly.

Tell Me Everything is a gift to Strout’s readers: it brings together characters from her separate series: Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton, and Bob and Jim Burgess and their wives and ex-wives from The Burgess Boys. Lucy Barton is a renowned novelist who moves to Olive’s town during the pandemic, and she and Olive form an unlikely friendship, telling each other stories and anecdotes about the remarkable but undocumented lives of their friends, families, and acquaintances. Lucy quickly sees through Olive’s spiky defences and judges her for exactly what she is at her core: a scared and insecure bully. Lucy and Bob Burgess also form a very close, potentially romantic, and unique bond. They understand each other at a cellular level, always nodding and agreeing with their random sentiments. Until one day they don’t. Lucy asks Bob what he considers a stupid question, and their bond unravels – allowing them to recommit to their respective marriages. It’s a book I wish I could read for the first time, over and over again.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

I adored Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Like Eleanor Catton’s Birnham Wood from 2023 (another favourite of mine), Zevin’s book takes its title from Macbeth. It tells the tale of Sam and Sadie, two friends who met in hospital as children. Sam was in the hospital following a car accident that took his mother’s life; he retreated into himself and was basically nonverbal until visited by Sadie, who was at the hospital with her mother. Sadie brings Sam out of his trauma-induced shell by talking about their shared passion: videogames.

After a period of estrangement in their high school years, due to Sadie’s minor betrayal of Sam (she counted her hospital visits to recuperating Sam as community service, unbeknownst to Sam who thought they were truly friends), they meet again in college, resume their platonic friendship, and become very successful business partners as videogame creators.

The book is about friendship, male vs. female dynamics in relationships (social and professional), and love. And it’s ultimately about the necessity of creating and sharing art as a bridge between people. It’s beautiful and tragic and hopeful. A great novel.

Demon Copperhead

I have a love/hate relationship with Barbara Kingsolver. I love her early novels The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, full of whimsy and magic realism. I adore her novel Prodigal Summer. But a couple of her books are on my sad list of novels I really wanted to read but absolutely could not finish: The Poisonwood Bible (I swear I’ve picked it up and tried to read it at least five times, and can’t get past page 100) and The Lacuna (my notes from when I tried to read it in 2010: “reads like a textbook, unlikeable narrator”).

So I approached Demon Copperhead with a fair amount of ambivalence. I listened to the audiobook, and thank God for that. Charlie Thurston is the narrator of the 21-hour story, and within 10 minutes I was enthralled – he is magical. I don’t think I would have made it through this re-telling of David Copperfield if I had simply read the book – and the fact that NONE of my book club mates finished it (it was again my recommendation and they AGAIN universally hated it) reinforces that suspicion.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Demon Copperhead is a very difficult read. Set in Appalachia, it has more than its fair share of poverty, neglect, and abuse. It explores in grim and raw detail how oxy and fentanyl have ravaged an already pathetic and hopeless society. But Demon Copperhead narrates his story with a keen, honest, sardonic, and surprisingly hilarious perspective. Charlie Thurston’s narration brings him alive, and even in the grimmest moments, gives Demon the grace and humanity to survive.

I never read Dickens original, so I had to do some reading up to understand the parallels between the Victorian story and this update. It rightly won the Pulitzer Prize for its publication year. I survived reading it; it’s a rollercoaster with more dips than highs. It ends on a lovely (if somewhat creepy) note. Demon, who has always wanted to visit the sea, is on his way there, with someone who loves him. He’s a work-in-progress, but he’s a survivor and a cautious optimist.

The Wedding People

This is a novel about a woman whose marriage just dissolved, after she discovered her husband’s infidelity with her best friend. And her cat just died.

Phoebe checks into a posh boutique hotel in tony Newport, RI, to kill herself.

Hilarity ensues. Really. It’s optimistic and romantic. Absolutely fantastic.

You will fall in love with Phoebe.

Other notables

First, Michelle Williams did an amazing job as narrator. I’m glad Britney didn’t narrate, because quite frankly her voice annoys me.

But her family is a total nightmare, and I sincerely think Britney is a marvel and a survivor. Respect.

And Justin Timberlake is a douchebag.

I read this book after Matthew Perry passed away, and I’m thankful for it. To have read his book, with its cautiously optimistic ending where it appears he’s found a path to overcome his addictions … and then to hear that he died from them. That would have been brutal.

One of my favourite rom-com movies is Fools Rush In, with Matthew and Selma Hayek. And I was delighted to hear it was one of his favourite works. Although tragically also the movie that caused his initial injury and addiction to oxy.

My pal Candace & I both love The West Wing. This “Backstage Pass” is wonderful in so many ways. It chronicles the development of The West Wing, the casting choices, the casting changes (Rob Lowe/Joshua Malina etc.), the best episodes, the high jinks and pranks, the love of public service …

And it tells the stories of the charities and public service loved by the cast members. These people walk the walk and talk the talk. Sometimes at the same time, in typical West Wing fashion.

Highly recommended.

I already did a little book review on Hello Beautiful about why I loved it. It moved me. Stayed with me.

Did not love Maura Tierney as the audiobook narrator, though. Not at all.

Again, listened to the audiobook. Emily Henry + Julia Whelan = absolute perfection.

It’s pretty frank about the toll mental illness can take on a relationship.

One of my least favourite romance tropes is “second change” – but Emily Henry makes it work. It’s romantic and hopeful.

Billed as Thelma and Louise for teenagers. It works.

Extremely tough plot to pull off. FMC blames MMC for her sister’s death.

They meet in Hollywood years later, writing a TV show together. The inside look at Hollywood is fascinating. I also loved this theme in Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy.

How To End A Love Story is tragic and tough and beautifully written. It totally works. Beautiful ending.

Recipe for a Good Life

My first, but definitely not my last, Lesley Crewe.

This novel, set in Montreal and Cape Breton – one of my happy places – is like a warm hug, a mug of hot chocolate, and a cozy blanket all wrapped together.

Quirky characters who are real and flawed – they aren’t caricatures.

A plot about writer’s block and the writing process.

Falling in love – with a place, with a family, with a lover. Very romantic.

I wish I knew about Lesley Crewe earlier.

First came the NYT Top 100 Books of the 21st Century, as chosen by the critics. As my book club pal Janet said – perhaps a bit premature.

Statwise:

• 17 books read
• 7 books definitely want to read
• Many books I’d never even heard of (WTF)
• No interest in reading book #1: My Brilliant Friend

Read:

Bel Canto

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Olive Kitteridge

The Friend

The Plot Against America

The Great Believers

Middlesex

Life After Life

Persepolis

The Goldfinch

Between the World and Me

Americanah

Atonement

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Year of Magical Thinking

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Never Let Me Go

Definitely want to read:

The Human Stain

On Beauty

An American Marriage

Demon Copperhead

Fun Home

Wolf Hall

Small Things Like These

Then came the NYT Top 100 of the Century as chosen by readers. Now, this list is my vibe. Lotsa books I’ve read and loved.

Statwise:

• 28 books read
• 10 books definitely want to read
• Hardly any books I’d never even heard of
• Definitely, desperately want to read #1 Demon Copperhead

Read (* indicates on critics’ list also):

A Gentleman in Moscow (#3, yay)

The Goldfinch*

Educated

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow*

Never Let Me Go*

Atonement*

Middlesex*

Americanah*

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay*

Bel Canto*

Normal People

The Year of Magical Thinking*

The Great Believers*

Olive Kitteridge*

The Kite Runner

Life After Life*

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*

Between the World and Me*

Gone Girl (really?)

The Hunger Games (like, huh?)

Just Kids

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (yay)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (yay)

Tom Lake

When Breath Becomes Air

Life of Pi

The Plot Against America*

The Glass Castle

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Definitely want to read:

Demon Copperhead

Wolf Hall

Hamnet

Circe

The Book Thief

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Lessons in Chemistry

Small Things Like These

The Vanishing Half

The Dutch House

And what overlooked books should have been on one or both lists?

This was my first – and most likely last – Kristin Hannah novel. Recommended by my pal Brenda. I chewed her out part way through listening to the audiobook, saying “if XX happens, like I think it’s going to happen, I am going to be VERY angry at you for recommending this manipulative piece of crap.”

Her response: No spoilers, but Hannah is not known for her happy endings.

(We’re in the middle of the beginning of the end of days here. Trump revered as a hero and martyr? Biden taken down by his own party? Let’s grant ourselves a little happy ending right now.)

What I liked:

• Frankie’s time “in country” – the comraderie of the nurses and doctors, the diving into the deep end and becoming a great war nurse, the headiness and passion of the out-of-ordinary experiences that led to her relationship with Jamie (?) and then Ry
• The horror of war
• The brutality of coming home to a family and a country who were entirely dismissive of her contributions and her suffering
• Frankie’s dad telling everyone that Frankie spent time studying in Europe – holy shit – and covered up her tours in Vietnam
• Ditto the assholery of the VA: There were no women in Nam – this rang true and was a gut punch powerfully delivered by the author
• The true bonds of friendship between the nurses (Frankie, Ethel and Barb) – in country and back at home – where they literally dropped everything more than once to come to Frankie’s aid
  • Barb even moved with Frankie when she was relocated to a much more dangerous mobile hospital

What I really didn’t like:

• The pageantry and huge party with which Frankie’s brother Finley was sent off to Vietnam – is that historically true? Was any family ever that pleased to send a son off to war?
• The pretty slight reason that prompted Frankie to sign up to go to Vietnam (Rye’s comment, looking at her dad’s “hero wall”, that women can be heroes too) – when nothing in her life to date had in any way led to her joining the military
• The Peyton Place drama that accompanied Frankie’s return to America – the return to America, given the hostility of her family and country – plus her PTSD should have been enough to guarantee a hard landing – which I think is what the author wanted to highlight – no one was thankful to these women who risked their lives and their mental health, and for what
• I was OK with Rye’s being shot down and presumed dead – I mean, that was written on the wall as soon as Frankie left for home and Rye stayed behind
• But as soon as there was word of the war ending and POWs being sent home, I had a moment of dread – tell me that the author is NOT going to have Rye be alive, and come home so broken and damaged that he drags Frankie further down with him
• Yup
• And he comes home on the EVE OF FRANKIE GETTING MARRIED to a really nice decent guy who is also the father of her unborn child
• AND … he’s MARRIED (again, no predicate behaviour to suggest he was a cheating filthy psychopathic liar – he seemed like an upstanding guy when he knew her brother and “in country”)
• AND of course Frankie ends up losing the baby, because of course she does
• AND of course Frankie makes many many many bad decisions after that
• I get she had to hit rock bottom, but dear God, it was just too much and too manipulative (too soap opera)
• I’m not going to spoil the ending for others, but that ending was a bit too much, especially given the whole Rye drama (dead? alive? married?)

What I really liked:

• Silvie and William’s love seemed so pure and reinforcing for each of them. They just accepted each other as is.
• Kent’s unwavering support for William.
• Everyone on the search team calling Kent “Captain” even though they aren’t on a basketball team any longer.
• William’s endurance.
• William finding out what he’s really good at (physio/basketball coach).
• Cecelia’s murals with the faces of Alice and Charlotte and all the sisters.
• No bullshit, no lies – except everyone has bullshit, everyone keeps secrets (i.e., Sylvie and Julia reconnecting without William’s knowledge).
• Basketball being William’s first love that loved him back.
• A really good ending that worked for all the characters.
• You never escape the trauma of your parents:

This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

What I really disliked:

• Sorry to Maura Tierney, but I hated her as a narrator. She just seemed monotone and without emotion. And it was an emotional book. I am almost tempted to read the book now, because I think I might like it more without her affectless voice in my ear.
• Julia telling Alice at age 5 that her father was dead. That’s a psychopath move.
• Rose cutting her children (and grandchild) off at the knees.
• Julia cutting her sisters off at the knees.
• Julia, just generally – emotionless, without empathy, for her husband, her daughter and her sisters.
• Sylvie not telling William that Julia showed up.
• The parallels to Little Women – sisters vying to be Jo or Beth. I don’t know, it didn’t work for me and seemed heavy-handed. Perhaps it’s inevitable with a book about 4 sisters. No one ever competes to be Meg. Just saying.
• All the fucking similes – they were over the top and didn’t pop organically from the characters’ inner thoughts.

Questions:

Was Julia the villain of the book?

Do we all turn into our mothers?

Was this really William’s book more than the 4 sisters?

Should I read the book and see if it’s a different experience altogether, without the annoying narrator?

My best reads of 2022. In no particular order. These are not necessarily books published in 2022. Just books I read and loved this year.

These Precious Days

I enjoy Ann Patchett’s essays and non-fiction more than her novels. Her previous book of essays, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, was another favourite several years ago, and contains a great essay on how, at her policeman father’s urging, she tried out at the LA Police Academy.

These Precious Days was a book club pick for April – and I didn’t finish it until Fall 2022. Not because it’s a laborious read. The opposite. Almost every essay was a perfect treasure, and I doled them out to myself like prizes, slowly and sparingly.

Her essay called “Three Fathers” was in the New Yorker; I read it there, and then re-read it in her collection. It’s a brilliant study of how each of her fathers – her biological father and her two step-fathers – contributed in their own way to her success as a writer. One, her real dad, by being entirely skeptical of making a living as a writer – giving Ann the perfect incentive to say fuck you and succeed. Her first step-father was her greatest fan, which she takes with a grain of salt, because he fancied himself a writer also, and every piece of his writing he ever sent her to review was God-awful. And finally, her second step-father, who was indifferent to her writing and just loved Ann for Ann.

Two of her essays focused on Patchett’s growing indifference to “things”. One of her friends inspired “My Year of No Shopping” – a challenge to buy only consumables (food, drink) and nothing else for one whole year. No clothes, no books, no purses. Ann gives it a shot – and she’s quite successful at it. Enjoy what you have. Read the books you have. Wear the sweater from the back of the closet. Buying things doesn’t fill you up or make you happy.

In “How to Practice”, she describes the tedious archeological chore of helping her best friend, Tavia, clean out her hoarder-father’s house after his death. Vowing to not leave a mess for her estate to clean up, she starts de-cluttering her own house, giving things away, throwing things away, repurposing. She and her husband Karl were neat and tidy, but still, they just had Too. Much. Stuff.

I have been recommending These Precious Days to all and sundry. If you, like me, are trying not to acquire so much stuff, then feel free to borrow it from the library. The Libby app has multiple e-book and audiobook copies available.

Also, if you haven’t read Patchett’s non-fiction book Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with author Lucy Grealy (author of Autobiography of a Face), well, please do.

Still Life

What a joyful masterpiece this was to listen to. I borrowed the audiobook from Libby. And then even before I finished it, I went to my local Book City and bought the paperback. Because it’s the kind of book you need to have in your hands, and flip through, and underline passages and dogear pages. This novel reminded me a lot of one of my favourites from last year, A Gentleman in Moscow, with its similar themes of kindness, gentility, finding family, and seeking out beauty in the everyday around us.

Sarah Winman’s writing is beyond lovely. She creates memorable real characters. There’s a fair bit of magical realism, including Claude the Parrot who seems to have a preternatural understanding of humanity’s flaws and who may also be the reincarnation of Shakespeare. I wasn’t entirely taken with the last chapter of the novel, but that’s my only quibble.

The Stranding

This novel was a recommendation from my friend Candace, and I borrowed it from her. But of course now I want my own, because it was such a good read.

I just went to Amazon (to get the .jpg of the book’s cover) and made the colossal mistake of accidentally seeing a reader’s random comment about The Stranding:

This book was fairly pleasant but somewhat forgettable.

An idiot

I can only assume the reader read an entirely different novel than I did.

The Stranding was not at all pleasant – it’s set partly in a post-apocalpytic, post-nuclear world and partly in the days leading up to it. Our female main character ends up saving herself from the apocalypse, with a stranger, by climbing into the rotting carcass of a whale. Ruth’s salvation – as the world ends – comes after she somewhat impulsively re-locates from London to New Zealand, desperate to escape the environs of her loathsome married lover. She and the stranger band together to survive. They may be pretty much the only people in the world. They encounter a stranger or two, hear stories – but of course they aren’t getting updates on their Twitter feed, because the world has basically ended. All technology has ended. It’s back to the land and the sea, and raiding the local department stores until their inventory depletes.

Pleasant? I wouldn’t have said so.

Forgettable? Haunting, I would have said. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought of this book since I read it; the characters are real to me. (This reminds me of The Time-Traveler’s Wife, where the characters stayed with me for months and months after I read it. Like friends I kept expecting to hear news about.)

One of the blurbs on the back cover of The Stranding noted how hopeful the novel is. Again, I wouldn’t have said so. But it’s thought-provoking, inventive, stressful, oddly romantic, and harrowing.

It’s also so embedded in my mind that I asked the author Kate Sawyer on Instagram to please write a sequel. Ruth and Nik, as strangers will when they are possibly the only two people left on Earth, end up with two daughters. What happens to those daughters … well, I kinda need to know, Kate.

Kingdom of Ash

I started reading Sarah J. Maas and her YA fantasy/romance books at the recommendation of my next door neighbour, who shares my sensibility for pop culture. I inhaled the first four books of A Court of Thorns and Roses in a few short months, one after the other, obsessively. Then I started in on Sarah J. Maas’ first YA fantasy series, Throne of Glass, which she started writing when she was 16, I believe.

TOG (as we in the YA world call it) is the first of SEVEN novels in the series, plus there’s a prequel. TOG and the second book, Crown of Midnight, I also consumed quickly and ferociously.

Then, according to the list of Books I’ve Read that I’ve kept religiously since 2004, I instructed myself to read something other than YA fantasy before downing the next 5 novels (list says “OKAY KOB read some adult books before more TOG”). Which, surprisingly I did, reading Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaladdin and then The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. But then I jumped right back into Book 3 of TOG, Heir of Fire. My first book of 2019 was Book 4, Queen of Shadows. And then the streak ended and I was Maas-ed out. No Maas. This burn-out, or oversatiation, also hit when I read Harry Potter years ago. Once I finished Goblet of Fire, I could not handle any more Harry, and it took several years to pick up Order of the Phoenix and proceed to devour the end of the series.

In 2021, I picked TOG back up and read Empire of Storms, which was very very stressful. It ends with our heroine in a horrible bind, having been captured by her arch-nemesis and imprisoned – in a lead coffin with a lead face-mask. So normally, I’d pick up Book 6 and find out what the hell happens after that cliffhanger. Except, in what I can only consider to be a Sarah J. Maas mental breakdown, Book #6 goes on a whole fucking 668-page tangent to follow two minor characters (including Chaol, who everyone kinda hates) on a quest to find allies in other worlds to take our heroine’s side in the war. Tower of Dawn defeated me. I started it, realized I didn’t give a fuck about its characters, and put it down. This Tweet could have been me:

Shout out to the dude in this airport lounge who opened a book, read five or six pages, sighed, closed the book, stood up, walked a few steps, and dropped it right into the trash can.

— caleb smith (@calebsmith203) December 27, 2022

In 2022, I vowed I had to finish TOG. I had it on good authority from Candace that Kingdom of Ash was an amazing ending to the series – I had to know what happens.

So, I cheated. Yup, I admit it. Instead of reading Tower of Dawn, I read the Wikipedia page to find out what transpired. (I had also done this, head hanging in shame, with the last Twilight book, which I could only stomach until the baby was born, and then regained my senses and put that shit down.)

Dispensing with the horrible Chaol and that whole stupid diversion, I picked up Kingdom of Ash and prayed that Aelin would get free from horrible Queen Maeve as quickly as possible, because to see her chained, imprisoned in a coffin, and tortured repeatedly wasn’t super fun. And once she got free (yeah, like that’s a spoiler), all by herself, not relying on any dude to rescue her, the rest of the novel (all 989 pages) just flew by.

And, again, I would like to beg the author for a sequel. Because after about 5,000 pages, it was kinda nice to see Aelin and Rowan happy, not: imprisoned; at war; tortured; separated; betrayed; or in imminent danger.

They were together, safe, and optimistically rebuilding Aelin’s war-marked Terrasen. It would be a nice little gift, just saying Sarah J. Maas, to throw your fans a happy “normal times” novella like you did for ACOTAR with A Court of Frost and Starlight.

Please.

Intimacies

This was a recommendation of a friend of a friend, and I bought the hard cover at my local Book City on Easter weekend because it was Independent Booksellers’ Day. And the book clerk assured me it was a great and quick read. And indeed it was. (And, by the way, that’s why I love Book City – pretty much half the time I buy a book there, one of the clerks has read it and praises my choice. How many of Amazon’s books do you think Jeff Bezos has read?)

A novel about a never-named female translator who works at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Intimacies is a study in juxtapositions. (Okay, yes, I was an English Lit major in undergrad, and yes, every essay was something like “A study in grey: The juxtaposition of light and dark in Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn”, or some such nonsense.) But the competing themes are apt in this novel – juxtapositions between things that bring people together (the rather intimate art and science of translating and interpreting someone else’s words and ideas, creating a bridge between languages) and the distances that can never be overcome between people (miscommunications, estrangements).

I thought it was brilliant. And I read it in an afternoon.

A Town Called Solace

Another book club pick. I have loved some of Mary Lawson’s previous novels, including Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge. She’s Canadian and her novels are set in Northern Ontario, where I spent a couple impressionistic years in my youth.

I listened to A Town Called Solace on Libby and absolutely loved it. There are three narrators, as the events are told from three different viewpoints: Clara, a young girl and neighbour to the recently deceased Mrs. Orchard in Solace, Northern Ontario; Mrs. Orchard herself, an absolutely lovely elderly lady who we learn over the course of the novel committed a heinous crime in her past; and Liam, a newly divorced man with an undefined relationship to Mrs. Orchard who unexpectedly inherits her house in Solace.

It’s a lovely read – it was long-listed for The Booker in 2021, justifiably so. Once I finished it, I missed Clara, Mrs. Orchard, and Liam. I still miss them.

Clara is a favourite character from this year. Precocious, skeptical, and superstitious, she is deeply-traumatized by the disappearance of her 16-year-old sister Rose, which is a mystery that hovers over the day-to-day events of the novel. Again – I’d love to read a novel dedicated to Clara as an adult. She’d be fascinating and scary.

Truly, I will read anything by Mary Lawson. She’s a gem.

Oh William!

Ditto, I will read anything written by Elizabeth Strout, who won the Pulitzer in 2008 for Olive Kitteridge. I thought Olive Kitteridge was a masterpiece when I read it. And I declared so to my book club. My book club presentation focussed on why Olive Kitteridge is really a novel, instead of a set of inter-related short stories, and I felt quite passionate on the subject at the time.

As much as I loved Olive Kitteridge, it’s Strout’s Lucy Barton series that I love even more. I remember reading My Name is Lucy Barton in Antigua, by the pool in the hot sunshine, shortly after it was published in early 2016. I was reading it on my Kindle and inserting note after note because I was going to be presenting it to book club. I read it after Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and right before Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial. What a great vacation that was.

My Name is Lucy Barton introduced us to Lucy Barton, a writer from an extremely impoverished and dysfunctional Midwest family. Lucy is living in New York City, in a dysfunctional marriage with William, whom she met at college (her intelligence being her ticket out of her family squalor). In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy ends up in hospital with a never-diagnosed ailment. And out of nowhere, her estranged mother comes to visit her. The novel is a fascinating study in the truly broken dynamics of mother and daughter. It’s about trying desperately to escape from family but never being able to escape your history.

Lucy Barton resurfaces in Strout’s Anything is Possible, which I confess I found to be a bit of a slog. It’s a series of short stories that are based in Lucy’s hometown, with an awful lot of horribly damaged characters.

Oh, William! is a chronological sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton. It was a fun fun listen on Libby, and it was a joy to meet up with much older versions of Lucy and William, now long-divorced. William is remarried and Lucy newly widowed.

William is not, and was never, an attractive or pleasant character. Lucy latched on to him in My Name is Lucy Barton because she sees him – a young professor – as her knight in shining armour, rescuing her from the fate of returning to her family and hometown. But William is just as much of a smothering, critical, abusive force as her mother. Lucy, suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, can never seem to break free of William, even after years of divorce.

Which leads us to Oh, William! – and the unexpected turn of events that transforms the novel into a road trip adventure when William drags Lucy along to meet, for the first time, his biological sister. Lucy can’t seem to do without William, even though William is as bullying and insensitive as always. I guess we are always our own worst enemies when it comes to many relationships.

Songs in Ursa Major

Songs in Ursa Major wasn’t a book club pick or a recommendation from a friend. It somehow fell into my lap, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I think it’s supposed to be a veiled dramatization of Joni Mitchell’s love affair with James Taylor in the late 60s, early in her career. I listened to it months ago, and it reminded me a lot of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and The Six. A strong sense of time (late 60s, early 70s), a female protagonist trying to make it in a very male-centric music industry, a doomed love story.

The Most Fun We Ever Had

This novel reminded me a lot of the elements I used to love about John Irving – a great big (20 hours plus as an audiobook) multi-generational story. Reminded me in many ways of Garp (which I will always say is my favourite book ever, read when I was in high school) – a great big love story between two likeable characters who are both horribly flawed. They raise four girls, and it’s not glamorous. But you root for them to stick it out as their four girls grow up and inevitably fuck up their own lives.

The Palace Papers

I was highly ambivalent about this read/listen, but after both Marie and Holly in book club strongly recommended it, I put it on hold on Libby. It’s a good 17+ hours as a listen, and every time it became available, it was a “Skip the Line” copy, which gives you only 7 days before it has to be returned. 17+ hours over 7 days is quite the commitment, and eventually I just gave up and bought it on Audible.

I’d say it’s a highly enjoyable and well-researched book that I’m still seriously ambivalent about.

Tina Brown, the author, narrates the audiobook in her highly snobby British voice. I confess I haven’t finished it, and likely won’t. I couldn’t get through the chapters on Meghan Markle, whom Tina Brown clearly dislikes. In the Foreword, Tina basically says that she’s written this book because it’s the book Meghan Markle should have bloody well read before marrying into The Firm. Do your research, Meghan, is the very clearly-stated thesis of The Palace Papers.

Then there’s the very off-putting chapter on Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew’s very creepy affiliation with him and Ghislaine Maxwell. It’s a super dishy chapter because Tina Brown, creator of the website The Daily Beast, was the first to publish details of Jeffrey Epstein’s very generous sentencing in Florida for what was clearly child trafficking. Brown ran in the same circles as both Epstein and the Royals, and she’s as much a character in the chapter (without the taint) as the main players. It’s horrific, but very entertaining. Andrew comes off as a bobble-headed, daft horndog who would do just about anything for cash.

But if you like Netflix’s The Crown, The Palace Papers covers the exact same territory and timeline, with Brown’s very biased but interesting takes on the players. She adores and respects Camilla, who’s never said a word against The Firm, and is the anti-Meghan. She reluctantly admires Kate as the scheming manipulative temptress who spun her web and, albeit slowly, snared William. Kate appreciates and respects The Firm and, according to Brown, will make a good Queen. She won’t make waves, she’ll wear the right colour pantyhose, and all will be right with the world.

Now, either you love Meghan Markle or you hate her. I personally adore her, and I reject Brown’s thesis that once you marry into The Firm, you need to bend to its traditions. Maybe Meghan didn’t do her research – how could any outsider, especially an American, appreciate what it’s like to marry into Batshit Crazyland, and be victimized by the misogynistic and racist British press? Brown basically equates The Firm with the mafia – once you’re in, you can’t get out. Well, huzzah to Meghan & Harry, who said Fuck This Shit, we are out of here.