The River by Peter Heller is a novel set in the wilds of Canada. I’m not sure why I read this, because I did not like another book I read by this author and should have learned my lesson. I believe I have now. Two college students—one who grew up on a ranch in the West and one from a small town in Vermont—are on a long canoe trip northward to Hudson Bay before returning to college for the fall term. They are both skilled outdoorsmen, but otherwise have very different personalities. The writing is florid, to the point of being distracting, and the plot, once things start happening (like the massive forest fire that is looming), is extreme melodrama. This will appeal to some people, but that sort of adventure story isn’t for me.
Beware the Tall Grass by Ellen Birkett Morris is a touching if somewhat familiar story told in two timelines. We first meet the parents of a newborn. The mother, Eve, is extremely protective of the baby, Charlie, who grows up under her watchful eye. Meanwhile, young Thomas, in an earlier time, grows up on a ranch and ultimately joins the army and leaves for Vietnam. In the present, Charlie exhibits odd behaviors and uses words he can’t possibly know, words a GI might speak. Eve’s worries about Charlie cause stress in the marriage. Although the reader guesses what’s going on, it isn’t until late in the novel that the text fully reveals itself.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a grief memoir about the death of the author’s mother. Zauner is a Korean American musician whose Korean mother died of cancer. While the book begins with her death, it then retraces the path from diagnosis, to treatment, and back to death. What makes the book a little different from other grief memoirs is the element of Korean culture, especially food (which is why H Mart, a Korean grocery chain, figures prominently). Because of my own connections to Korea, that was enough to keep me interested in the book.
Supreme Madness of the Carnival Season by Phyllis A. Duncan is a novel inspired by Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado.” A romance novelist and her husband have recently moved to a small town in Virginia. While renovating one of the rooms, they discover the bones of an infant that, apparently, had been entombed in the wall at the time the house was being built. The police aren’t so sure, and a nosy neighbor is keeping a close watch on what’s going on. In a separate timeline from World War II, we get clues as to who the baby might be and why it was in the wall. (The author is a member of my book club and we chose it for our selection this month.)
