Endling by Maria Reva was this month’s selection for the International Book Club at a local bookstore. It is a darkly comic, absurdist novel with metafictional elements set in Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022. What is intriguing at the start is the main character who travels in her mobile lab attempting to rescue snails in danger of extinction (“endlings”). To finance her work, she is paid to be a “bride” in a scheme to attract foreign men to Ukraine in search of wives. Two other women who work this way have other plans, and somehow they all end up kidnapping 13 prospective bachelors right at the beginning of what turns out to be Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chaos ensues.
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky, is a dark novel with a unique structure that basically tells the story of the 20th Century in Central Europe from the last days of the Hapsburg Empire to the fall of the Nazis in World War II through one woman’s alternative lives.
Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom is an unusual historical novel about an actual Native American woman who married a white fur trader in the 1870s. Based on an actual person and written with the cooperation of her descendants, the story follows her during her stormy marriage and her witnessing of a horrific massacre of an Indian village. Whisky is one of the antagonists of the novel, but frontier attitudes toward Indians is also to blame for what happens.
A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer is a recent title and my book club’s selection for August. Through nine stories, the book debunks some myths about history and also fills in some blanks, revealing resistance movements that were news to me. Or, in some cases, adding a lot of detail that was unfamiliar. The book also includes a handbook for resistance that could come in handy as we continue to struggle against our country’s growing authoritarianism.
The Dawning: 31,000 B.C. by Richard Wise is a highly imaginative story about humans living in the late Stone Age. The story centers on Ejil, a thoughtful young man who is in love with Lada. When Lada and a friend are out foraging, they are taken by another tribe that has a different culture and language. That tribe then attacks Ejil’s tribe and kills nearly all the men and children, stealing the women. Ejil and his brother, who are at odds, join with another tribe and prepare to do battle to get the women back.
Grow Old and Don’t Die by Ari Phillips. I was asked to blurb this novel: In the hills of West Virginia, time has quietly broken its promise. In Grow Old and Don’t Die, a romp of a novel by Ari Phillips, a secluded family thrives for generations without aging, sustained by waters rumored to be a modern-day fountain of youth. When a ruthless tycoon arrives determined to bottle immortality, he sets in motion a collision of greed, loyalty, and legend—summoning even the restless ghost of George Washington to bear witness. Lyrical, suspenseful, and richly imagined, this speculative tale explores the cost of eternal life and the fragile beauty of mortality. This haunting, wise, and wholly original novel lingers long after the final page.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a science fiction story about time travel and pandemics and glitches in the simulation in which we all live, apparently. It’s the gripping story of a man in a future time who is researching certain anomalies in the timeline that affect the lives of several people at different points in time, including a writer who has written a popular novel about a pandemic. I’ll definitely be reading more by this author.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is a poignant story of a man in late middle-age living in a world where people leave so much unsaid. His family has a secret or two, but so do others. He does say a few important things, though, such as that he loves his son (and his son says it back). There’s a funny reference early in the book to Strout’s Olive Kitteridge (“[H]is wife had loved some book—about a crotchety old woman from Maine …”). The book gets political, surprisingly. In the middle of the novel the election happens and father and son fret about the horrible things that will happen. These are the views of the characters, though. Should the reader assume that’s how the author feels? (Many reader reviews on Goodreads do assume that.)
