What I'm Reading This Week (April 1, 2024)

 

Despite being left with the feeling that I had squandered every minute of the time I spent reading one of the three books I finished last week, the week ended up having more pluses than minuses in the end, and that's all about any of us can hope for these days. I finished The Storm We Made, A Death in Denmark, and Ordinary Human Failings, and was very pleasantly surprised by Ordinary Human Failings. I've also picked up Kat Timpf's You Can't Joke About That again and pretty made good progress on a couple of other novels.   

I have a lot that I want to say about Megan Nolan's Ordinary Human Failings but I find myself wanting to let it all simmer in my mind a couple of more days before tackling a review. I had no idea what to expect of this one or its young author when I picked it up for the first time, but I found myself only reluctantly putting it down again after I had. It's only 215 pages long, but it left me feeling that I had just finished one of those long, multi-generational family sagas that I used to enjoy so much. There's a whole lot packed into this tragic story. It's a definite 5-star novel for me.

There was a little chatter last week about reading Alice McDermott, and that made me want to go back and read her National Book Award winner Charming Billy again. I don't remember many of the details about the book, but I do remember being completely caught up in the lives of Billy and his Irish-American friends and family. What I remembered most vividly about the story is its opening sequence at Billy's wake where all of Billy's old friends tell stories and speculate about his life. I've reread those pages now, and they are even better than I remembered them from my first reading. Lots to look forward to, I think.

I needed something a little less demanding, and decided to see what all of the hype is about concerning this T.J. Newman novel. I have to tell you that I just about chucked it after reading the way-over-the-top introduction to Falling, but I decided to read the first chapter before doing that, and I'm glad I did. I've only read two chapters so far, but the book seems to be very well written and nicely constructed in spite of the silly dream sequence that opens it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that turns out to be the case.

Crow Talk has been a little more difficult for me to get into than most novels, but I'm a firm believer in Eileen Garvin's work, so I'm not about to give up on this one. I'm probably 35% of the way through the book now, and now that I'm into the characters and the family dynamics of the main character, it's all becoming pretty intriguing. Garvin's characters in The Music of Bees were so vividly painted in my mind that I still remember them well, and I think that's going to be the main strength of Crow Talk, too.

So, if you throw in The Plague (one I neglected last week) and You Can't Joke About That, I begin the week with five books in progress. And depending on which ones I finish during the week, most of the more likely candidates I'll start later in the week come from the Women's Prize for Fiction longlist:

South Korean author Mirinae Lee set this one in North Korea

Liberian born author Peace Adzo Medie set this one in Ghana

Aube Rey Lescure is a French-Chinese American writer

If any of those three turn out to be as good as Ordinary Human Failings, which is part of the same longlist, I'll already consider myself fortunate to have taken a hard look at this year's prize nominees. I hope you all had a pleasant Easter weekend, and will look forward to visiting with you during the week. Read on.