Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia by Elizabeth Catte was my book club’s selection for May. Although the accounts of the victims of the eugenics movement were moving, I didn’t think the author’s insertion of her opinions on some matters to be appropriate, and those opinions detracted from the overall impact of the book for me. It also seemed as though there were significant omissions, and limiting the discussion to Virginia weakened the argument.
The Hunter by Tana French is the second in the author’s series about a Chicago cop who has moved to a village in Ireland. I didn’t love the first in the series, but other people did, so I thought I’d give #2 a try. I think I’m done now. I didn’t hate it, but the main character, the cop, doesn’t do much for me. And most of the people in the village are awful, so I don’t think I’d stay. (He does have a love interest now, but I bet she’d leave if he asked her to come with him.) The story includes a mystery, of course, but the resolution isn’t satisfying, in my view.
The Bird Hotel by Joyce Maynard is a novel set primarily in a fictional Central American country. The main character, Irene, had her life upended when her hippie-ish mother was killed in a Weather Underground explosion in Manhattan. Living a secret life with her grandmother and never feeling rooted, she eventually finds herself running a small hotel. While the protagonist is charming and likeable, the novel consists of many episodes of visitors to the hotel. While there is a plot—she struggles to hang on to the place—there’s a lot of filler that, while pleasant, doesn’t move the story forward.
The Mexican Messiah: A Novella & Stories by Jay Kauffmann is a breathless ride into a spiritual landscape. Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, the haunting title novella will move you as much by what is left out as what is included, as the trajectories of its central characters launch and collide. And the accompanying short stories render tightly focused portraits of men and their complex relationships in far flung locales—Europe, North Africa, East Asia. Jay Kauffmann has given us a collection of rich narratives that attempt to answer unanswerable questions about love and, especially, loss. (I blurbed this book and also had the pleasure of interviewing the author as part of his book launch.)
Broken-Heart Syndrome by Anne Colwell is a book I was asked to blurb: “Through all the heartbreak and loss, the mistakes and disappointments, I was cheering for every last one of the characters in Anne Colwell’s debut story collection, Broken-Heart Syndrome,to make it. Doctors and nurses, patients and their loved ones, all are drawn with such care that they truly come alive on the page. The hospital around which these stories revolve is fertile ground for the dramatic, and Colwell lets her tales unfold with rare compassion and honesty. It’s a big cast of characters, but I fell in love with them all.”
Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens by Elaine Mary Griffin is an engaging mystery set in the early 19th Century featuring Chester Carter, a charming young bank apprentice who finds himself embroiled in a small-town scandal when he witnesses a robbery at his bank. Despite pressures from every corner, Chester strives to do the right thing, even while looking out for his own interests. Horse lovers will appreciate Fisheye, Chester’s enthusiastic racehorse companion, who does his best to help.
