What I'm Reading This Week (October 9)

 I feel as if my reading pace slowed down drastically last week, but I still managed to complete three of the four books I started the week reading: Rabbit Hole, Between Them, and The Heron's Cry, despite reading very little in the last two days. I'm also well into the upcoming James Lee Burke short story compilation, Harbor Lights, and I've started a story collection by new-to-me author Eric Puchner. So, I'll be kicking off the new week with these:

I can't imagine a short story collection more James Lee Burke than Harbor Lights. The stories are surprisingly dark, however, even for Burke. There are few winners in the bunch, and if there is a word darker than "noir" to describe the stories, that's the word I'm searching for. A typical James Lee Burke hero is a man who cannot stand to watch powerful people abuse those incapable of defending themselves; it bothers them so much that they willingly put their own lives and futures in jeopardy in order to bring some measure of justice to the bad guys. These stories are filled with crusaders who suffer greatly for their consciences, and the Louisiana bayou/Texas Gulf Coast setting is right up my alley, so I'm really enjoying the book.

Eric Puchner's stories focus on family internals and relationships between friends, and in a different way, it's almost as dark as the Burke collection. The common theme through the first several stories in Last Day on Earth is the fragility of family and friendships, and how easily those relationships can be destroyed or forever altered via carless words or behavior.Some of the stories fit neatly into th science fiction genre, giving them a little twist that is very entertaining and thought provoking.

Proving yet again that I should never actually go inside a library to return a book, I ended up walking away with more books than I returned the day I brought The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra home. I was so taken with the plot, that I immediately wanted to read it. It's about a Mumbai detective who is on his last day of the job, when an intriguing case drops suddenly into his lap. It's also the day that the inspector learns that he's just inherited a baby elephant. I have only read a chapter so far, but I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy Vaseem Khan's writing style. 

In addition, one or two of these will probably be started later this week:

Jane and the Final Mystery is the fifteenth book in Stephanie Barron's Jane-Austen-as-Detective series, and it's going to be the final one because Jane succumbs to illness at the end of this one. I'm doing the series-thing completely backwards with the Jane Austen mysteries because I have not read any of the previous fourteen books in the series, and have heard almost nothing about them. I figure that if I like this one, the other fourteen can easily be read as an extended prequel to it. By the way, the fact that Jane dies in this one is in all the publisher information provided about the book, so that's not a spoiler...seems to be a key element in the book publicity.

I know very little about General Benedict Arnold other than the basic fact that he was a traitor to the country during America's Revolutionary War. I anticipate that Jack Kelly's upcoming book God Save Benedict Arnold is about to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about the man and the illustrious military career had had right up to the moment that he decided to switch sides in the fight. Apparently, he's believed to have been the best combat commander on either side during the Revolutionary war. I'm very curious about this one.

I'll admit that it was the cover that grabbed my attention on Intercessions, but the plot description is certainly the icing on that cake. It's the story of what happens in later life to a woman who experienced a deadly traumatic experience as a young girl on the day that she and a friend on their way to school together were approached on the road by a stranger. Only one of them made it home that day; the other died. Now, the survivor is experiencing tremendous guilt about her behavior and is beginning to doubt her own memories of what really happened to her and her friend.

As usual, I suffer from an abundance of choices, with a large stack of books here patiently waiting for me to give them their chance. Among these are: Suffer Little Children by Freda Hansburg, The Murder Specialist by Bud Clifton, Not Dead Enough by Phillip Thompson, and The Rise by Ian Rankin. And those are just the tip of the TBR iceberg that sits atop my desk today (and every day).

The Heron's Cry - Ann Cleeves

 

The Detective Matthew Venn novels, of which The Heron's Cry is the second book in the series, follows four previous mystery series of varying degrees of popularity created by British author Ann Cleeves. Readers are most likely to be familiar with the Shetland series featuring DI Jimmy Pérez and the DCI Vera Stanhope series that followed it because each of these served as the basis of a long-running television series. Cleeves's earlier work includes eight novels featuring elderly bird watcher George Palmer-Jones and another six that feature Inspector Ramsay. (New editions of the six Inspector Ramsay books are said to be planned for publication beginning in June 2024.)

The Heron's Cry begins with the murder of a hospital inspector who is looking into the suicide of a teenager who may have been prematurely released by the psychiatric hospital to which he had been admitted for treatment. That investigator, Dr. Nigel Yeo, has apparently been stabbed to death by a sharp piece of glass taken from the remains of a vase created by his own glassblower daughter. But Matthew Venn's investigation of the murder will barely be underway before another victim is killed in the same manner. Frustrated as Venn is at times by the close relationship between his husband and the first victim's daughter, he knows that he and his team are going to have to eliminate the list of prospective killers one by one. 

The mystery at the heart of The Heron's Cry is a solid one enhanced by Cleeves's manner of presenting it. An Ann Cleeves novel can always be counted on to include an atmospheric setting and memorable side-characters; in this case, those are Venn's second-in-command DS Jen Rafferty and the often oversensitive DC Ross May. Her mysteries are always complex, so there are more than enough potential murderers in this one to keepVenn, Rafferty, May, and readers busy for quite a while eliminating one red herring after another. 

Matthew Venn is proving to be a little more difficult for me to warm up to then some of Cleeves's other centerpiece characters. Part of that, I think, is because Venn is such a cold fish of a character, a man who struggles to display his emotions or to really understand the different personalities that surround him on a given day. I am sympathetic to Venn and the terrible upbringing he endured that shaped him into the adult he became, but he never seems to try very seriously to change himself for the good even after he recognizes his flaws. That said, I'm an Ann Cleeves fan, and I am curious to see what she has in mind for Matthew Venn, so I'll probably be reading the third installment of Venn's story soon. 

Between Them: Remembering My Parents - Richard Ford

 

"From almost the first moment in the room where he had died, I felt my father's death surrendering back to me nearly as much as it took away. His sudden departure, the great, unjust loss of his life, handed me a life to live by my own designs, freed me to my own decisions. A boy could do worse than to lose a father - even a good father - just when the world begins to array itself all around him."   Richard Ford

Richard Ford's father died of heart failure in 1960, four days after Richard's sixteenth birthday. Fifty-five years later Ford wrote a short memoir focusing on what he could remember about the man and their relationship. His mother died in 1981 from cancer, and this time Ford almost immediately produced a memoir about her and the two decades he shared with her following his father's sudden death. Between Them: Remembering My Parents pulls together both memoirs, beginning with the memoir focusing on Ford's father and ending with the piece on his mother. 

Ford was an only child. He believes that his parents "all along" wanted children but that it simply had never happened for them after fifteen years of marriage. And by the time it did happen, Parker Ford was an unhealthy 38-year old traveling salesman, and Edna, 33, was enjoying riding along with her husband on most of his extended sales trips throughout the South. The couple rented permanent quarters for weekends, but much preferred the more exciting lifestyle of living together in the hotels Parker frequented on his trips. 

Suddenly, though, that lifestyle was at an end because the family's new addition had literally come "between them." Now Edna had to stay home. After Parker left on his regular Monday-Friday road trips, she and her son had to create a new lifestyle for themselves in his absence. As it would turn out, Richard's father would not be around a whole lot during the sixteen short years following his son's birth, leading to Ford's regret that he never had the opportunity of having an "adult conversation" with his father.

After Parker Ford's death, Edna stoically went on with her own, now more independent, life. She was a self-contained woman who did not demand much from life or from her son, and after Richard left home for the first time to attend Michigan State, he never lived with his mother again. Their relationship for the rest of Edna's life was a loving one, but it was one always maintained from a distance, something that does not seem to have particularly bothered either of them. 

Richard Ford, childless himself, and now approaching 80 years of age, is very much the son of Parker and Edna Ford. Between Them: Remembering My Parents is an unusual approach to memoir writing, but it proves to be a very effective way of explaining the somewhat unusual upbringing Ford had and the influences that shaped him into who he would ultimately become. 

"Had my father lived beyond his appointed time, I would likely never have written anything, so extensive would his influence over me have soon become."   Richard Ford

Parker, Richard, and Edna Ford

  

Rabbit Hole - Kate Brody

 

Going in to Kate Brody's Rabbit Hole, I thought I knew what to expect because the novel's promotional material describes it as "a sexy debut novel exploring the dark side of true crime fandom and the blurry lines of female friendship..." For sure all of that is there, but for me Rabbit Hole is much more a study of the destructive impact that longterm grief can have on survivors and entire families than it is anything else. 

Ten years after the mysterious disappearance of her high-school-senior sister, Teddy Angstrom is still obsessed with finally learning what really happened that night.  Angie's disappearance tore a hole in the family fabric that can never be mended now that her father, as a consequence of his own personal grief, has killed himself. Teddy understands that this second family tragedy has largely undermined her mother's ability to cope with life, but still she fails to recognize her own obsession for what it has become, the single thing she can focus on anymore. While attempting to reconstruct her father's final few months, Teddy falls into a deep Reddit rabbit hole filled with true crime fanatics who, when they are not making personal attacks on each other, spout one false lead or new conspiracy theory after the other. Now Teddy doesn't know know what to believe or whom to trust, especially after her internet life and her physical life begin to collide. 

Teddy needs a knowledgeable guide, someone to lead her through the dark world she's entered, and she hopes that she's found one in the form of Mickey, a teenaged internet detective as obsessed with Angie's disappearance as Teddy is. But who is Mickey, really, and why does she always seem to have all the answers Teddy needs?

Rabbit Hole is a very good debut novel, and I think its ending is particularly strong because of the insights that Teddy gains concerning her own mind and the fallibility of human memory. Has she been an unreliable narrator from the beginning, or did things happen as she remembers them? Will she ever know for sure? Will we?

Kate Brody (author photo)

Rabbit Hole will be published on January 2, 2024.

What I'm Reading This Week (October 1, 2023)

 It's hard for me to believe that it's already the first of October, but according to the title of this post, it must be true. It's a little cooler in this part of the country now, but we are still topping out at somewhere between 93 and 95 degrees every day, and we've had less than two total inches of rain since July 4. Let's just say it doesn't feel as if the seasons have changed even a little. 

I did finish three of the books I started last week with, and I managed to post reviews of all three: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, Wifedom, and Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. I think that's the first time all year long that I've read three books in a row authored by women - something I used to do fairly frequently - and two more of the three I'm carrying in to this week are also written by females: The Heron's Cry by Anne Cleeves and Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody.

The Heron's Cry, a 2021 book by Ann Cleeves, is the author's second novel in her "Two Rivers" series featuring Detective Matthew Venn. I've owned a copy for over a year, but it took the recent publication of the third series book to finally get me to pick this one up. I'm not taking to the Venn character as quickly as I did to Vera, or my favorite of them all, Jimmy Perez, so I haven't felt a great urgency to read it. But I'm over halfway through it right now, and Matthew Venn is finally starting to grown on me, I think.

Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody has both feet firmly planted in contemporary culture. It's the story of a young woman whose older sister disappeared several years earlier after attending a party with high school friends. Now their father has killed himself and the woman feels guilty about not sharing everything she knew during the initial investigation of her sister's disappearance. After she starts using the internet to begin her own investigation, things go off the rails and the only person she can trust is a true crime fanatic a decade younger than her.

For Between Them, Richard Ford takes the unusual approach of sharing his memories of his parents in two entirely separate sections, the first devoted to his father, the second to his mother. The two sections were written thirty years apart. As Ford puts it, "I was one person raised by two very different people.." I love this from Ford, too, "...entering the past is a precarious business, since the past strives but always half-fails to make us who we are." As with everything else I've read by Ford, I'm finding his prose to flow very smoothly for me.

Last Day on Earth is a compilation of short stories from Eric Puchner. I haven't started reading the stories yet, but at first glance they seem to share the theme of difficult coming-of-age experiences. For instance, one boy fears his mother might really be a robot, another is desperate to keep his mother from putting his father's favorite dogs "to sleep," and one story is about a world in which parents no longer have that role. This 2017 book will be my first experience with Eric Puchner's writing.

I hope to finish at least three of these during the week, so I'll likely be starting others along the way. The most likely ones to be chosen are ones I've mentioned before like Harbor Lights, the James Lee Burke short story collection; The Lemon Man, an Australian crime novel by Keith Bruton; and Peter Skinner's coming-of-age novel Full Beaver Moon. I'm also considering a copy of Stephen King's Holly which was sent to me by someone wondering how I would react to what is said by many to be King's least disguised political rant to date. I'm not sure that I can get through it if what I've read about it is true, but I'm really curious to see if King may have jumped the shark (he has come dangerously close to doing that before) with this one, so we'll see. Maybe what I've read and been told about the novel is wrong.

Have a great reading week, y'all. Can't wait to talk with everyone during the week ahead.

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You - Lucinda Williams

 

I first became a big fan of Lucinda Williams music after stumbling upon some of her early recordings. I remember being immediately taken by her stunning voice and phrasing. Back then her music was hard to find, but I put together a decent collection of her LPs and CDs, and then after I learned that Williams had deep roots in my part of Louisiana, and that she spent some early, musically formative, years around Houston and Austin, I wanted to learn more about her. My digging around, however, usually left me with more unanswered questions than I had when I started digging for answers. Now via her Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,  Lucinda Williams fills in most of the blanks for me. 

Because she had lived in twelve different cities by the time she was eighteen, lots of places can lay claim to having played a significant role in the life of Lucinda Williams. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Williams lived in Mississippi, Utah, and Georgia before she was five years old. She then spent a year in Santiago, Chile before returning to Louisiana for her pre-teen years, and even lived for a few months in Mexico before bouncing around for the next two decades between New Orleans, Fayetteville (Arkansas), San Francisco, Houston, Austin, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Nashville. 

Lucinda Williams was born to an academic father and a mother who suffered from mental illness all of her life because of the horrible sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Williams's father would eventually become a well respected writing teacher and poet, and he recognized his daughter's rebellious spirit early on, even to supporting her when she decided never to return to high school after being expelled for skipping school in order to march in peace and racial justice protests. As a result, Williams educated herself by sitting in on many of her father's creative writing workshops and befriending some of the most famous and creative writers of the day. 

"When I say, "I'm a southerner," many people think, "That must mean you're racist, you're this, you're that." There are all these stereotypes associated with being southern, which is a whole problem in and of itself. I think that's why my dad instilled in me, 'We are southerners, and we have to fight the people who think that all southerners are racist, all southerners are hicks, all southerners are stupid.' That's how I was raised. That's my South."

Nowhere is this influence more apparent than in Williams's poetic song lyrics. As confirmed in Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, her songs are largely autobiographical in nature, most of them being based on real life emotional experiences she was having with the men who were in her life at the moment (she has been happily married to Tom Overby since 2009). In the memoir, Williams includes the lyrics to many of her most personal songs and explains their often surprising origins. 

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You offers an intimate look into the mind of a creative artist not afraid to her expose her feelings to the world. It is an honest look at who Lucinda Williams considers herself to be today at 70 years of age and how she got to be that way. My only regret is that the memoir does not address the stroke that Williams suffered in 2020, a stroke severe enough to rob her of her ability to play guitar for three years. Maybe that's another book. But she's back and she's healthy now, and I'm grateful for that.

Lucinda Williams (wikipedia photo)