3.48
12,422
Apr 25, 2023
Apr 25, 2023
it was amazing
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a B Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a Bookseller is the debut novel by Alice Slater. Published in 2023, it's a first-person account of a young bookstore clerk and true crime fan in the northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Given to morbid self-intentions, she becomes obsessed with a radiant co-worker, who narrates her segments of the story as well. I can't recall which page Slater made me abandon my distaste for first-person narration or switching points of view and enjoy what she was cooking, but she does it quickly with precise and often witty writing, a fascinating milieu, and a suspenseful story that kept me turning the pages.
Brogan Roach works at her local branch of Spines, a bookstore chain whose arrival in the 1990s forced two local booksellers to shutter and in 2019, is now on its last legs. Roach lives in a flat above the bar her mother operates. She keeps a giant African land snail named Bleep as a pet and consumes true crime books, electing herself curator of that section at Spines. She dismisses the "Pumpkin Spice Girls" who flock to true crime like any new trend. A loner who surrounds herself with books and morbid explorations of death, Roach considers herself above the "normies."
Laura Bunting appears to Roach like a vision, a pretty and confident and well-liked bookseller who transfers to her branch with a new manager and the male bookseller Laura is fixated on. Her mother the victim of a serial murderer, Laura writes poetry that champions the lives of victims. Without sharing her macabre family history, Laura takes offense to Roach's gothic obsession with death. The harder her new co-worker tries to win her approval, the more Laura ignores her. Bad idea.
I have a sweet spot for any story about work and workplace dynamics. Slater doesn't stop there, identifying a favorite milieu of writers and readers alike--the bookstore--and on its most immediate level, Death of a Bookseller is a great book about books. Slater writes what I've thought about: management, perky co-workers, popular books or trending topics, and finally customers, who interfere with what otherwise would be a fun job. Her writing is sharp, substantive and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
I've always fancied myself a death row bride. I'd rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the '70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim.
The toxic male-female friendship in the novel is really well written. Laura's co-worker Eli enjoys the attention Laura bestows him--and his girlfriend perhaps doesn't--while Laura wastes her youth on a man who's unavailable. Neither possess the maturity to shake hands and retire to their separate corners as colleagues. Slater also associates alcohol consumption and blackout drunks among people in their twenties struggling with adulthood, depression and palpable fear of going home to an empty flat and vacant lives.
Psychologically, Slater takes all the best lessons from Patricia Highsmith. Her narrators are not very good people, but the more of their stories they told, the more empathy I felt for them. Finally, I understood them, and took a rooting interest in them escaping prison or death despite the best efforts of the other characters in the story to do them in. I finished the novel in four days, a good land speed for me, and anticipated getting back to it every day. This is the easiest five stars I've given a novel in months and recommend it highly.
The Christmas and New Year's Eve setting the novel stalks toward was an accident and made the book that more enjoyable to me, particularly as Roach shares her thoughts on the consensus best book of the year (it's not Yellowface).
The book of the year was Flower Crowns of the Arctic, like I give a shit. Another mass-market paperback with a pseudo-smart title for book clubs full of Lauras to fawn over. It was about some girl's dead mother, and climate change. Laura had written a neat little recommendation card for it: a sweeping novel about the way things can feel broken beyond repair, how things can feel ruined, and how we must heal before we can move on. Laura xox. Sentimental bullshit. ...more
Death of a B Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a Bookseller is the debut novel by Alice Slater. Published in 2023, it's a first-person account of a young bookstore clerk and true crime fan in the northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Given to morbid self-intentions, she becomes obsessed with a radiant co-worker, who narrates her segments of the story as well. I can't recall which page Slater made me abandon my distaste for first-person narration or switching points of view and enjoy what she was cooking, but she does it quickly with precise and often witty writing, a fascinating milieu, and a suspenseful story that kept me turning the pages.
Brogan Roach works at her local branch of Spines, a bookstore chain whose arrival in the 1990s forced two local booksellers to shutter and in 2019, is now on its last legs. Roach lives in a flat above the bar her mother operates. She keeps a giant African land snail named Bleep as a pet and consumes true crime books, electing herself curator of that section at Spines. She dismisses the "Pumpkin Spice Girls" who flock to true crime like any new trend. A loner who surrounds herself with books and morbid explorations of death, Roach considers herself above the "normies."
Laura Bunting appears to Roach like a vision, a pretty and confident and well-liked bookseller who transfers to her branch with a new manager and the male bookseller Laura is fixated on. Her mother the victim of a serial murderer, Laura writes poetry that champions the lives of victims. Without sharing her macabre family history, Laura takes offense to Roach's gothic obsession with death. The harder her new co-worker tries to win her approval, the more Laura ignores her. Bad idea.
I have a sweet spot for any story about work and workplace dynamics. Slater doesn't stop there, identifying a favorite milieu of writers and readers alike--the bookstore--and on its most immediate level, Death of a Bookseller is a great book about books. Slater writes what I've thought about: management, perky co-workers, popular books or trending topics, and finally customers, who interfere with what otherwise would be a fun job. Her writing is sharp, substantive and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
I've always fancied myself a death row bride. I'd rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the '70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim.
The toxic male-female friendship in the novel is really well written. Laura's co-worker Eli enjoys the attention Laura bestows him--and his girlfriend perhaps doesn't--while Laura wastes her youth on a man who's unavailable. Neither possess the maturity to shake hands and retire to their separate corners as colleagues. Slater also associates alcohol consumption and blackout drunks among people in their twenties struggling with adulthood, depression and palpable fear of going home to an empty flat and vacant lives.
Psychologically, Slater takes all the best lessons from Patricia Highsmith. Her narrators are not very good people, but the more of their stories they told, the more empathy I felt for them. Finally, I understood them, and took a rooting interest in them escaping prison or death despite the best efforts of the other characters in the story to do them in. I finished the novel in four days, a good land speed for me, and anticipated getting back to it every day. This is the easiest five stars I've given a novel in months and recommend it highly.
The Christmas and New Year's Eve setting the novel stalks toward was an accident and made the book that more enjoyable to me, particularly as Roach shares her thoughts on the consensus best book of the year (it's not Yellowface).
The book of the year was Flower Crowns of the Arctic, like I give a shit. Another mass-market paperback with a pseudo-smart title for book clubs full of Lauras to fawn over. It was about some girl's dead mother, and climate change. Laura had written a neat little recommendation card for it: a sweeping novel about the way things can feel broken beyond repair, how things can feel ruined, and how we must heal before we can move on. Laura xox. Sentimental bullshit. ...more
Notes are private!
4
1
Dec 26, 2023
Dec 30, 2023
Dec 09, 2023
Hardcover
1951213866
9781951213862
B0CC9RV71Z
3.64
839
Sep 05, 2023
Sep 12, 2023
None
Notes are private!
0
not set
not set
Sep 01, 2023
Kindle Edition
1984820494
9781984820495
1984820494
3.10
17,309
Jun 20, 2023
Jun 20, 2023
None
Notes are private!
0
not set
not set
Aug 28, 2023
Hardcover
0593547500
9780593547502
0593547500
3.66
22,582
Feb 14, 2023
Feb 14, 2023
really liked it
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2023, Rachel Koller Croft's debut novel Stone Cold Fox sounded the cash register bell for lots of what I want in a crime thriller, specifically one about a gleefully sinister woman. It often reminded me of a '90s film noir like The Last Seduction (1994) where a diabolical femme fatale takes down everyone who gets between her and the bag. This is a book that starts slowly and haltingly, but once it gets going downhill, hooked me in the way Season 1 of a thrilling TV series might. Croft is a screenwriter. It shows. Her first novel is un-put-downable.
[image]
The story is the first-person account of "Bea," a senior business development director who's shot to the top of a big advertising agency in New York, albeit with phony credentials and references. Bea's goal is to marry wealthy and against all odds, has snared the mark of a lifetime: Collin Case, Chief Marketing Officer of a huge consumer goods company that's been in his family for a hundred years. Young, good-looking, callow, he's fallen hard for the character Bea has tailored for his desire. The more Collin's mother Haven or his smitten childhood friend Gale Wallace-Leicester protest his union to this outsider, the more committed Collin is to living his life beyond their control.
The story flashes back to a childhood Bea spent with "Mother," a self-destructive flim-flam artist who keeps the two of them moving from dope to dope. Bea tells herself she's nothing like her ruthless mother. When Gale Wallace-Leicester makes it her mission to expel Bea from the Case family, Bea returns these efforts with the backhand of Maria Sharapova. As Collin proposes to and marries her. Bea even turns what began as a rivalry with her fiancée's assistant Sylvia into an alliance, perhaps a friendship, her only one. Bea doesn't know what Gale knows about her sordid past, and can't shake the feeling that Mother is close by.
Stone Cold Fox made a poor first impression on me. First-person narratives suffer when narrators come across as insipid. Bea is crass and materialistic, appraising people strictly by their physical attributes as if they were horses, and chasing affluence. She also narrates her story in a very plain manner that reminded me of a teenager at times. She shares thoughts with the reader like, Truthfully, when I get the opportunity to dance, I take it, because it's the only time I feel like I can actually be myself. Wow, thanks for that insight, Bea. I'll alert the Nobel Committee.
Another narrative choice I'm prejudiced against is jumping around in time or swapping narrators. Croft stays in Bea's head, but moving back in time stalled the pacing a bit. After two hours of reading, I considered quitting the book. Croft checks a crucial box I ask of any author when I open their book: Do I want to know what happens next? The prose grows neither more luscious or significantly sharper, but the dialogue and interactions between the characters do. I savored watching Bea duel with Gale. Like a Patricia Highsmith novel, I had to keep reading to see if the narrator would be exposed and led away in handcuffs.
What I loved about Stone Cold Fox is how strong the felonious protagonist is. Characters who are particularly bad at their jobs or make increasingly dumb decisions turn me off. High competency gets me turning the pages. I'm learning things. Bea is good at what she does. She recognizes how pampered and inbred the wealthy are, but doesn't respond with bitterness or entitlement for what they have. She uses that to her advantage. She gets to work. She knows exactly what she wants and how much work is required to take it, whether that means hacking social media accounts or breaking into a safe. I was with her.
What initially irked me about Stone Cold Fox moving back and forth in time sets up an inevitable confrontation between Bea and Mother that was fun to anticipate. The enemies that Croft sets against Bea hail from a variety of backgrounds and are fun to watch get outfoxed. She writes a compelling male character in Collin Case, a decent man and good husband material whose shortcomings are convincingly portrayed as becoming a full-time job for Bea to manage, lest they fester and destroy the life she's carefully planned. I could visualize this novel being Season 1 of a TV series, with Sydney Sweeney and Cameron Diaz in the daughter-mother roles.
I'm looking forward to what Croft publishes next, what looks to be a vampire novel that has The Hunger vibes.
First paragraph: I decided that I would marry Collin Case after the fifth time we fucked. His performance had been consistently adequate, both in the bedroom and while we were out socially. We had been on seven dates, each more lavish than the one before it, raising the stakes suitably during our early courtship. Collin always selected an upscale bar or restaurant in a desirable neighborhood where people made no mistake about who he was, and therefore we were treated appropriately. He didn't tip like a Rockefeller, but I'd wager Rockefeller didn't even tip like a Rockefeller. Old money is old money for a reason and it's not to brighten some downtrodden server's day. So I didn't really care about Collin's standard 20 percent, since it was neither overtly cheap nor blatantly embarrassing. There was nothing blatantly embarrassing about Collin. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing terribly exciting about him either, but I knew that taking up with a man like Collin Case wouldn't exactly lead me down a path of intrigue and excitement and hot sex, which was precisely the point.
Memorable prose: I actually made it a point to care about his well-being. I knew intimately that if you couldn't rely on your own mother, you're inevitably fucked-up forever about where to go for any sort of help. You just let any and all issues fester on the inside until you explode or melt down or spiral into a deep pit of despair, like Collin. Or use it as fuel, like I did, but most people weren't like me. ...more
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2023, Rachel Koller Croft's debut novel Stone Cold Fox sounded the cash register bell for lots of what I want in a crime thriller, specifically one about a gleefully sinister woman. It often reminded me of a '90s film noir like The Last Seduction (1994) where a diabolical femme fatale takes down everyone who gets between her and the bag. This is a book that starts slowly and haltingly, but once it gets going downhill, hooked me in the way Season 1 of a thrilling TV series might. Croft is a screenwriter. It shows. Her first novel is un-put-downable.
[image]
The story is the first-person account of "Bea," a senior business development director who's shot to the top of a big advertising agency in New York, albeit with phony credentials and references. Bea's goal is to marry wealthy and against all odds, has snared the mark of a lifetime: Collin Case, Chief Marketing Officer of a huge consumer goods company that's been in his family for a hundred years. Young, good-looking, callow, he's fallen hard for the character Bea has tailored for his desire. The more Collin's mother Haven or his smitten childhood friend Gale Wallace-Leicester protest his union to this outsider, the more committed Collin is to living his life beyond their control.
The story flashes back to a childhood Bea spent with "Mother," a self-destructive flim-flam artist who keeps the two of them moving from dope to dope. Bea tells herself she's nothing like her ruthless mother. When Gale Wallace-Leicester makes it her mission to expel Bea from the Case family, Bea returns these efforts with the backhand of Maria Sharapova. As Collin proposes to and marries her. Bea even turns what began as a rivalry with her fiancée's assistant Sylvia into an alliance, perhaps a friendship, her only one. Bea doesn't know what Gale knows about her sordid past, and can't shake the feeling that Mother is close by.
Stone Cold Fox made a poor first impression on me. First-person narratives suffer when narrators come across as insipid. Bea is crass and materialistic, appraising people strictly by their physical attributes as if they were horses, and chasing affluence. She also narrates her story in a very plain manner that reminded me of a teenager at times. She shares thoughts with the reader like, Truthfully, when I get the opportunity to dance, I take it, because it's the only time I feel like I can actually be myself. Wow, thanks for that insight, Bea. I'll alert the Nobel Committee.
Another narrative choice I'm prejudiced against is jumping around in time or swapping narrators. Croft stays in Bea's head, but moving back in time stalled the pacing a bit. After two hours of reading, I considered quitting the book. Croft checks a crucial box I ask of any author when I open their book: Do I want to know what happens next? The prose grows neither more luscious or significantly sharper, but the dialogue and interactions between the characters do. I savored watching Bea duel with Gale. Like a Patricia Highsmith novel, I had to keep reading to see if the narrator would be exposed and led away in handcuffs.
What I loved about Stone Cold Fox is how strong the felonious protagonist is. Characters who are particularly bad at their jobs or make increasingly dumb decisions turn me off. High competency gets me turning the pages. I'm learning things. Bea is good at what she does. She recognizes how pampered and inbred the wealthy are, but doesn't respond with bitterness or entitlement for what they have. She uses that to her advantage. She gets to work. She knows exactly what she wants and how much work is required to take it, whether that means hacking social media accounts or breaking into a safe. I was with her.
What initially irked me about Stone Cold Fox moving back and forth in time sets up an inevitable confrontation between Bea and Mother that was fun to anticipate. The enemies that Croft sets against Bea hail from a variety of backgrounds and are fun to watch get outfoxed. She writes a compelling male character in Collin Case, a decent man and good husband material whose shortcomings are convincingly portrayed as becoming a full-time job for Bea to manage, lest they fester and destroy the life she's carefully planned. I could visualize this novel being Season 1 of a TV series, with Sydney Sweeney and Cameron Diaz in the daughter-mother roles.
I'm looking forward to what Croft publishes next, what looks to be a vampire novel that has The Hunger vibes.
First paragraph: I decided that I would marry Collin Case after the fifth time we fucked. His performance had been consistently adequate, both in the bedroom and while we were out socially. We had been on seven dates, each more lavish than the one before it, raising the stakes suitably during our early courtship. Collin always selected an upscale bar or restaurant in a desirable neighborhood where people made no mistake about who he was, and therefore we were treated appropriately. He didn't tip like a Rockefeller, but I'd wager Rockefeller didn't even tip like a Rockefeller. Old money is old money for a reason and it's not to brighten some downtrodden server's day. So I didn't really care about Collin's standard 20 percent, since it was neither overtly cheap nor blatantly embarrassing. There was nothing blatantly embarrassing about Collin. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing terribly exciting about him either, but I knew that taking up with a man like Collin Case wouldn't exactly lead me down a path of intrigue and excitement and hot sex, which was precisely the point.
Memorable prose: I actually made it a point to care about his well-being. I knew intimately that if you couldn't rely on your own mother, you're inevitably fucked-up forever about where to go for any sort of help. You just let any and all issues fester on the inside until you explode or melt down or spiral into a deep pit of despair, like Collin. Or use it as fuel, like I did, but most people weren't like me. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 11, 2023
Dec 13, 2023
Jul 22, 2023
Hardcover
0812998626
9780812998627
3.29
88,120
May 16, 2023
May 16, 2023
really liked it
My 500th book review is for The Guest by Emma Cline. Published in 2023, this is the author's second novel, her follow-up to The Girls. Like that book,
My 500th book review is for The Guest by Emma Cline. Published in 2023, this is the author's second novel, her follow-up to The Girls. Like that book, its power isn't in what happens but what the reader is allowed to imagine happens or has happened. It features many of the characteristics of the so-called "hot sad girl" novel--in which a beautiful but alienated young woman drifts through her existence, often with the assistance of drugs or alcohol--but subverts tropes by making the reader an active participant in the story rather than act on us.
Alex (no last name, no ethnicity implied) is a twenty-two-year-old woman whose existence has been reduced to the favors she can elicit from men. After spending almost two weeks living comfortably with an art dealer in his Long Island beach house, Alex is expelled. With no money, no friends (or people willing to remain her friend), and an erratic ex-con she stole from texting her, Alex chooses to live by her wits for six days until she can crash her lover's Labor Day party, at which she's certain all will be forgiven.
One of the visceral qualities of The Guest is how Cline reduces Alex's world to the whims of whatever patron she's attached herself to for survival. One social miscue or errant look could mean being forced onto the street. It's never spelled out what this woman's trade is. Alex reaps all the penalties of sex work--subject to the gratitude of her clients as well as their wrath--with none of the rewards, like a bankroll, or a pimp who invests in her. She doesn't use bathrooms as much as she pilfers them, for painkillers first and foremost. It's a feral existence.
Often taking place on or near a beach, The Guest meets some of the standards of a summer or beach read, but rather than dispense candy, challenges the reader. This isn't the Hollywood version of a con woman on the make, it's the French New Wave version. Cline follows Alex around with absolute freedom, even if it leads to mundane encounters or repetitive conversations with men capable of little more. Her style is the literary equivalent of natural lighting or handheld camera: clean prose, rejection of plot, and a willingness to go off on tangents. I found this liberating and ultimately, very exciting.
First paragraph: This was August. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day.
Memorable prose: She hadn’t ruined anything. Misfortune hadn’t touched Alex; it had only come close enough that she felt the cold air of a different outcome hurtling past. ...more
Alex (no last name, no ethnicity implied) is a twenty-two-year-old woman whose existence has been reduced to the favors she can elicit from men. After spending almost two weeks living comfortably with an art dealer in his Long Island beach house, Alex is expelled. With no money, no friends (or people willing to remain her friend), and an erratic ex-con she stole from texting her, Alex chooses to live by her wits for six days until she can crash her lover's Labor Day party, at which she's certain all will be forgiven.
One of the visceral qualities of The Guest is how Cline reduces Alex's world to the whims of whatever patron she's attached herself to for survival. One social miscue or errant look could mean being forced onto the street. It's never spelled out what this woman's trade is. Alex reaps all the penalties of sex work--subject to the gratitude of her clients as well as their wrath--with none of the rewards, like a bankroll, or a pimp who invests in her. She doesn't use bathrooms as much as she pilfers them, for painkillers first and foremost. It's a feral existence.
Often taking place on or near a beach, The Guest meets some of the standards of a summer or beach read, but rather than dispense candy, challenges the reader. This isn't the Hollywood version of a con woman on the make, it's the French New Wave version. Cline follows Alex around with absolute freedom, even if it leads to mundane encounters or repetitive conversations with men capable of little more. Her style is the literary equivalent of natural lighting or handheld camera: clean prose, rejection of plot, and a willingness to go off on tangents. I found this liberating and ultimately, very exciting.
First paragraph: This was August. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day.
Memorable prose: She hadn’t ruined anything. Misfortune hadn’t touched Alex; it had only come close enough that she felt the cold air of a different outcome hurtling past. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 13, 2023
Dec 02, 2023
May 17, 2023
Hardcover
0593315448
9780593315446
0593315448
4.27
14,087
Apr 18, 2023
Apr 18, 2023
really liked it
Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the
Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the milieu of Western classical music and once again is propelled by a puzzle. This would be a unique sub-genre of mystery/ suspense as is--what if John Grisham had gone to Julliard instead of University of Mississippi Law School?--but Slocumb distinguishes the book further by featuring Black protagonists. Neither the prose or dialogue stand out, but his narrative is so propulsive that after a chapter or two, I was hooked.
The story opens in 1936, sixteen hours before the death of Frederic Delaney, a celebrated American composer. Backstage, Delaney (who reminded me of Aaron Copland if his productivity and global reach rivaled Walt Disney) indulges in his normal performance ritual, opening a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses before the show and two after. No one knows who this second glass is intended for, and the phantom does not reveal itself backstage.
In the present day, Professor Bern Hendricks of the University of Virginia, considered the foremost expert on Delaney, is summoned by the Delaney Foundation for a hush-hush commission. Bern, who grew up poor in Milwaukee and like many children who couldn't afford otherwise, owes his entry to music to the charitable work of the Foundation. He feels that Delaney was the greatest composer in the world. Among the man's achievements is the Five Rings of Olympia, an opera cycle based on the blue, yellow, black, green and red rings of the new Olympic flag, each ring representing a different region of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas).
The first four operas debuted between 1921 and 1926, but the final opera, RED, missed its delivery date and didn't premiere until 1936. After changing his story, Delaney ultimately conceded that the delay was due to him losing his original draft. Between that boner and the spectacularly bad reception RED received when it finally debuted, Delaney became something of a joke late in his life. Bern hopes that the Foundation has found the lost version of RED and he can help restore Delaney's reputation.
Flown to New York on the Foundation's private jet and put up in an apartment, Bern learns that the long-lost RED has been recovered and that the Foundation wants him to prepare the score for a performance in six months, interpreting what are known as Delaney Doodles, whirls and geometric shapes that usually annotate the music. The recovered RED consists only of Doodles, including a new one that appears to read JaR. To help decipher the code, Bern seeks the help of a colleague named Eboni Washington, an expert in cybersecurity.
Eboni, a native of the Bronx who does not worship Delaney or revere the Foundation, pushes for access to the original document instead of a scan. She and Bern discover that "JaR" is actually JoR. They match this to a Black woman in the Delaney archives named Josephine Reed who accompanied him on his first European tour and was on his payroll. Historians have ignored her. Eboni suspects Josephine was Delaney's mistress, but tracking her people down to North Carolina, Bern and Eboni find a trunk full of never-before-seen Delaney Doodles. It becomes apparent to them that Josephine Reed wrote the music Delaney claimed credit for.
Symphony of Secrets jumps back to 1918 as Josephine Reed arrives in New York and meets a struggling pianist named Freddy Delaney. Josephine is what today would be called "neurodivergent." She is able to translate everyday sounds into colors and music. Often enigmatic, money doesn't seem to interest her and she lives on the street, but is a more skilled, instinctive jazz piano player than Delaney. Starting as his tutor, she's soon sleeping on his floor. Then she shares her ability to compose catchy tunes, which Delaney discovers he can sell, provided they keep her involvement a secret. Delaney promises to split their earnings 50/50.
The fact that I related all of this indicates the novel's strength: it's a damn good yarn. Slocumb--a former music instructor at the public and private school level and a violinist--creates very believable musicians, and their music and lyrics. I tend to dislike novels or movies that fabricate celebrities or their fake work (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and That Thing You Do! are two of the more credible showbiz films) but Symphony of Secrets is rich in these areas. Five Rings of Olympia has the feel of something incredible and Slocumb describes opera a way that was easy for me to understand.
Like The Violin Conspiracy, this is a modern faerie tale. I was actively rooting for Josephine to break out of the tower she'd been locked in and through efforts past and present, receive credit for her work. Slocumb does a supremely good job of writing a white character who starts out with good intentions, but lives under segregation and is a product of that system. Greed ultimately clouds any moral judgment Delaney might have possessed. The novel is not subtle and I would've preferred if the forces marshaled against Josephine and Bern weren't so melodramatic in their evil. But I was caught up in the tale and wanted to see how good would triumph.
By accident, this is the third book I've read (one non-fiction, two fiction) this spring that deals with masterworks of 20th century art whose full authors or contributors have been lost to history (spoiler alert: a white man received sole credit). The cover art, though it looks a tad generic, is a ring design featuring blue, yellow, black and green, with the fifth ring of the Olympic flag (red) missing, a la the missing opera RED in the novel. ...more
The story opens in 1936, sixteen hours before the death of Frederic Delaney, a celebrated American composer. Backstage, Delaney (who reminded me of Aaron Copland if his productivity and global reach rivaled Walt Disney) indulges in his normal performance ritual, opening a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses before the show and two after. No one knows who this second glass is intended for, and the phantom does not reveal itself backstage.
In the present day, Professor Bern Hendricks of the University of Virginia, considered the foremost expert on Delaney, is summoned by the Delaney Foundation for a hush-hush commission. Bern, who grew up poor in Milwaukee and like many children who couldn't afford otherwise, owes his entry to music to the charitable work of the Foundation. He feels that Delaney was the greatest composer in the world. Among the man's achievements is the Five Rings of Olympia, an opera cycle based on the blue, yellow, black, green and red rings of the new Olympic flag, each ring representing a different region of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas).
The first four operas debuted between 1921 and 1926, but the final opera, RED, missed its delivery date and didn't premiere until 1936. After changing his story, Delaney ultimately conceded that the delay was due to him losing his original draft. Between that boner and the spectacularly bad reception RED received when it finally debuted, Delaney became something of a joke late in his life. Bern hopes that the Foundation has found the lost version of RED and he can help restore Delaney's reputation.
Flown to New York on the Foundation's private jet and put up in an apartment, Bern learns that the long-lost RED has been recovered and that the Foundation wants him to prepare the score for a performance in six months, interpreting what are known as Delaney Doodles, whirls and geometric shapes that usually annotate the music. The recovered RED consists only of Doodles, including a new one that appears to read JaR. To help decipher the code, Bern seeks the help of a colleague named Eboni Washington, an expert in cybersecurity.
Eboni, a native of the Bronx who does not worship Delaney or revere the Foundation, pushes for access to the original document instead of a scan. She and Bern discover that "JaR" is actually JoR. They match this to a Black woman in the Delaney archives named Josephine Reed who accompanied him on his first European tour and was on his payroll. Historians have ignored her. Eboni suspects Josephine was Delaney's mistress, but tracking her people down to North Carolina, Bern and Eboni find a trunk full of never-before-seen Delaney Doodles. It becomes apparent to them that Josephine Reed wrote the music Delaney claimed credit for.
Symphony of Secrets jumps back to 1918 as Josephine Reed arrives in New York and meets a struggling pianist named Freddy Delaney. Josephine is what today would be called "neurodivergent." She is able to translate everyday sounds into colors and music. Often enigmatic, money doesn't seem to interest her and she lives on the street, but is a more skilled, instinctive jazz piano player than Delaney. Starting as his tutor, she's soon sleeping on his floor. Then she shares her ability to compose catchy tunes, which Delaney discovers he can sell, provided they keep her involvement a secret. Delaney promises to split their earnings 50/50.
The fact that I related all of this indicates the novel's strength: it's a damn good yarn. Slocumb--a former music instructor at the public and private school level and a violinist--creates very believable musicians, and their music and lyrics. I tend to dislike novels or movies that fabricate celebrities or their fake work (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and That Thing You Do! are two of the more credible showbiz films) but Symphony of Secrets is rich in these areas. Five Rings of Olympia has the feel of something incredible and Slocumb describes opera a way that was easy for me to understand.
Like The Violin Conspiracy, this is a modern faerie tale. I was actively rooting for Josephine to break out of the tower she'd been locked in and through efforts past and present, receive credit for her work. Slocumb does a supremely good job of writing a white character who starts out with good intentions, but lives under segregation and is a product of that system. Greed ultimately clouds any moral judgment Delaney might have possessed. The novel is not subtle and I would've preferred if the forces marshaled against Josephine and Bern weren't so melodramatic in their evil. But I was caught up in the tale and wanted to see how good would triumph.
By accident, this is the third book I've read (one non-fiction, two fiction) this spring that deals with masterworks of 20th century art whose full authors or contributors have been lost to history (spoiler alert: a white man received sole credit). The cover art, though it looks a tad generic, is a ring design featuring blue, yellow, black and green, with the fifth ring of the Olympic flag (red) missing, a la the missing opera RED in the novel. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jun 23, 2023
Jun 29, 2023
May 02, 2023
Hardcover
1638930244
9781638930242
1638930244
3.20
7,418
Feb 21, 2023
Feb 21, 2023
really liked it
My introduction to the fiction of Margot Douaihy is Scorched Grace. Published in 2023, this novel introduces a wonderful amateur detective in Sister H
My introduction to the fiction of Margot Douaihy is Scorched Grace. Published in 2023, this novel introduces a wonderful amateur detective in Sister Holiday Walsh, a thirty-three-year-old chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun who matches wits with an arsonist who seems to have targeted Saint Sebastian's School in New Orleans. Like many strong writers turned loose with a first-person narrative, Douaihy riveted me in the early chapters as she established her world in the voice of a completely original sleuth.
Sister Holiday has been given sanctuary by the Sisters of the Sublime Blood. She's the youngest staff member of Saint Sebastian's, teaching a guitar ensemble class (taking students from the Ramones to Django Reinhardt, with quantifiable results). As one of four nuns at the school, she's given up conveniences like a cell phone, personal computer, car, mirrors and money of her own. Gloves and a neck scarf cover up her tattoos, remnants of her days playing bass for an all-girl punk band in Brooklyn called Original Sin. Her vice remains cigarettes, which she obtains by confiscating them from the student body.
Stepping into the alley that serves as her private smoking lounge before supper on Sunday, Sister Holiday witnesses one of Saint Sebastian's janitors, Jack Corolla, fall on fire from the second floor of the east wing of the school. She rescues two students she finds huddled in a classroom, both of whom are seriously injured by smoke or glass. A young arson investigator, Magnolia Riveaux, confides to Sister Holiday that arson is the cause. Unsatisfied with the progress of the police investigation, Sister Holiday begins to search the school, church or rectory for clues. She has a history of sleuthing, dating back to high school.
They talked so freely in front of me, they must have thought I was praying. And I let them think that. I made the sign of the cross again. People view nuns as nameless clones, a collective noun rather than individuals. That was ironic, because, denuded of so-called luxuries like cell phones and social media, leading lives of service and prayer, nuns cultivated rich inner worlds. Real inner dialogue. Most female mystics were nuns. Beatrice of Nazareth. Consolata Betrone. Sister Helen Prejean is more of a badass than most self-proclaimed radicals moaning about the ethical failings of single-use plastic straws. Nuns forge genuine connections, soul to eternal soul. What choice do we have but to be achingly present?
Margot Douaihy's prose, her sensibility and her one-of-a-kind protagonist put Scorched Grace over the bar for me. The paragraphs flooded by description--of New Orleans, of fire, of sex--knocked me out. I was absorbed by the activities of a private Catholic school and the rituals of Sister Holiday's faith, though the book contains more of the former than the latter. Vivid and witty, Douaihy establishes why a nun is well-suited to solve crime. The mood is similar to Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt mysteries, rough as opposed to cozy. Douaihy exhibits her punk rock influence admirably.
My wisdom held a kind of grace, I'll admit.
I offered my students the only thing that mattered in life--honesty--and I served it the way I meted out revenge, ice cold. I was a fuckup about most things, but when it came to commitment, I was all in, like a python eating a goat, sinew and toenails and skeleton and all. Like my Sisters, I did everything I could to lift each student, to help them carry the light in their own hands, not hold it for them. Sometimes that meant calling out their sloth and turpitude. And I knew how to clock BS because I lived it. To break a horse or a human, you must first understand wildness.
Scorched Grace is Douaihy's debut novel and my criticism of it is that a mystery is not incorporated in a strong way. Sister Holiday is a detective who spends most of her time ambushing investigators or others and not that much time detecting. Her social work takes her to the Women's Birth Center of a prison, a location fertile with intimate mysteries. In contrast, Sister Holiday's relationship to the janitor or her school feel tenuous. I thought she would've been fine had investigators done their jobs. The mystery element comes off with very low import.
As debuts go, Scorched Grace is dazzling. I'm looking forward to the next in the series. I would've enjoyed a novel set in Sister Holiday's guitar ensemble class, that's how much I enjoyed this character. The book has a bananas cover design and illustration by Will Staehle. It sold me this book quicker than a box of Girl Scouts cookies.
[image] ...more
Sister Holiday has been given sanctuary by the Sisters of the Sublime Blood. She's the youngest staff member of Saint Sebastian's, teaching a guitar ensemble class (taking students from the Ramones to Django Reinhardt, with quantifiable results). As one of four nuns at the school, she's given up conveniences like a cell phone, personal computer, car, mirrors and money of her own. Gloves and a neck scarf cover up her tattoos, remnants of her days playing bass for an all-girl punk band in Brooklyn called Original Sin. Her vice remains cigarettes, which she obtains by confiscating them from the student body.
Stepping into the alley that serves as her private smoking lounge before supper on Sunday, Sister Holiday witnesses one of Saint Sebastian's janitors, Jack Corolla, fall on fire from the second floor of the east wing of the school. She rescues two students she finds huddled in a classroom, both of whom are seriously injured by smoke or glass. A young arson investigator, Magnolia Riveaux, confides to Sister Holiday that arson is the cause. Unsatisfied with the progress of the police investigation, Sister Holiday begins to search the school, church or rectory for clues. She has a history of sleuthing, dating back to high school.
They talked so freely in front of me, they must have thought I was praying. And I let them think that. I made the sign of the cross again. People view nuns as nameless clones, a collective noun rather than individuals. That was ironic, because, denuded of so-called luxuries like cell phones and social media, leading lives of service and prayer, nuns cultivated rich inner worlds. Real inner dialogue. Most female mystics were nuns. Beatrice of Nazareth. Consolata Betrone. Sister Helen Prejean is more of a badass than most self-proclaimed radicals moaning about the ethical failings of single-use plastic straws. Nuns forge genuine connections, soul to eternal soul. What choice do we have but to be achingly present?
Margot Douaihy's prose, her sensibility and her one-of-a-kind protagonist put Scorched Grace over the bar for me. The paragraphs flooded by description--of New Orleans, of fire, of sex--knocked me out. I was absorbed by the activities of a private Catholic school and the rituals of Sister Holiday's faith, though the book contains more of the former than the latter. Vivid and witty, Douaihy establishes why a nun is well-suited to solve crime. The mood is similar to Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt mysteries, rough as opposed to cozy. Douaihy exhibits her punk rock influence admirably.
My wisdom held a kind of grace, I'll admit.
I offered my students the only thing that mattered in life--honesty--and I served it the way I meted out revenge, ice cold. I was a fuckup about most things, but when it came to commitment, I was all in, like a python eating a goat, sinew and toenails and skeleton and all. Like my Sisters, I did everything I could to lift each student, to help them carry the light in their own hands, not hold it for them. Sometimes that meant calling out their sloth and turpitude. And I knew how to clock BS because I lived it. To break a horse or a human, you must first understand wildness.
Scorched Grace is Douaihy's debut novel and my criticism of it is that a mystery is not incorporated in a strong way. Sister Holiday is a detective who spends most of her time ambushing investigators or others and not that much time detecting. Her social work takes her to the Women's Birth Center of a prison, a location fertile with intimate mysteries. In contrast, Sister Holiday's relationship to the janitor or her school feel tenuous. I thought she would've been fine had investigators done their jobs. The mystery element comes off with very low import.
As debuts go, Scorched Grace is dazzling. I'm looking forward to the next in the series. I would've enjoyed a novel set in Sister Holiday's guitar ensemble class, that's how much I enjoyed this character. The book has a bananas cover design and illustration by Will Staehle. It sold me this book quicker than a box of Girl Scouts cookies.
[image] ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jun 14, 2023
Jun 19, 2023
Jan 14, 2023
Hardcover
0316457914
9780316457910
0316457914
3.75
8,757
Jan 10, 2023
Jan 10, 2023
it was amazing
Everybody Knows is the second novel by Jordan Harper and surpasses his excellent debut She Rides Shotgun as exhilarating crime fiction and the epitome
Everybody Knows is the second novel by Jordan Harper and surpasses his excellent debut She Rides Shotgun as exhilarating crime fiction and the epitome of Los Angeles noir. Published in 2023, the book weaves the investigations of a publicist and her ex-lover, a private security contractor, and is one of those I stayed up past my bedtime to finish. And I rarely miss my curfew.
Writing in close third person, Harper begins Everybody Knows alternating between two equally compelling narratives:
Mae Pruett is a publicist entrusted with catching and killing stories damaging to the reputations of her firm's wealthy clients. Mae's boss asks her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a drink, triggering concern. Rather than solicit her sexually, he proposes partnering with him on something he's working on off the books. Mae senses blackmail, but before she can find out what he's got his big toe in, her boss is gunned down by a man with gang affiliations. The LA County Sheriff's Department catches and kills the shooter, with what to Mae's trained ear sounds like a cover story.
Ex-sheriff's deputy Chris Tamburro works for the private security firm BlackGuard as hired muscle. He's the guy wealthy men call when they need to send a message to someone who won't file assault charges. BlackGuard's owner summons Chris to his home and employs him to use his contacts in the LASD to find out whether the shooting is on the up-and-up. Mae and Chris soon discover they're pursuing the same answer and work together to get to the truth.
Harper exhibits great finesse articulating the cynicism of his characters as they sift through the garbage of some of the worst human beings in Los Angeles County, which puts them in the running for worst human beings on Earth. He writes like a thief, breaking into mansions and reporting back on what he found in the bedrooms and closets.
-- Blackmail isn't unheard of in the black-bag world. Shakedowns happen. Too many secrets worth too much money float through people's hands. Too many cell phone videos and scorned employees. Usually the shakedowns happen UNSAID. You triple-charge the client and dare them to ask you why. The bill is saying here is what the secret is worth.
-- Here’s what being an ex-cop teaches you: There’s all these invisible walls that keep everybody in line. And if you refuse to see them, they just aren’t there anymore. Once you walk through the walls, they never come back up again.
Harper's choice of narration limits the whiplash of head-hopping I usually experience with books that bounce from narrator to narrator. There's some summarization, but the plot is so crackerjack that I didn't mind some telling here or there where showing might've been more compelling. I didn't know where the story was headed or what might become of the protagonists.
While I usually dislike novels that fabricate celebrities--Harper name drops real ones who aren't required to contribute depraved behavior--those in Everybody Knows are credible. Thinly veiled versions of tweener sitcom producer Dan Schneider and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are featured. Disgust rises, like it should in great fiction. In addition to depicting how a conspiracy works--things go UNSAID instead of said out loud--the book's refrain is that in LA, nobody talks, but everybody whispers. Rather than titillate with sleaze, Harper offers the only way for an industry--which among many things, preys on child actors--to change is for the whisperers to go public with how they participated. Easier said than done.
Non-Angelenos might skim the descriptions of neighborhoods or freeways, but I loved seeing details of my city, accurately reflecting how spread out LA is, why Hollywood is completely different than Brentwood, and why Venice has a whole other vibe from Koreatown. Ignore the terrible cover art. Wildfire, not earthquake, is illustrated by Harper as the region's most disruptive natural disaster. ...more
Writing in close third person, Harper begins Everybody Knows alternating between two equally compelling narratives:
Mae Pruett is a publicist entrusted with catching and killing stories damaging to the reputations of her firm's wealthy clients. Mae's boss asks her to meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a drink, triggering concern. Rather than solicit her sexually, he proposes partnering with him on something he's working on off the books. Mae senses blackmail, but before she can find out what he's got his big toe in, her boss is gunned down by a man with gang affiliations. The LA County Sheriff's Department catches and kills the shooter, with what to Mae's trained ear sounds like a cover story.
Ex-sheriff's deputy Chris Tamburro works for the private security firm BlackGuard as hired muscle. He's the guy wealthy men call when they need to send a message to someone who won't file assault charges. BlackGuard's owner summons Chris to his home and employs him to use his contacts in the LASD to find out whether the shooting is on the up-and-up. Mae and Chris soon discover they're pursuing the same answer and work together to get to the truth.
Harper exhibits great finesse articulating the cynicism of his characters as they sift through the garbage of some of the worst human beings in Los Angeles County, which puts them in the running for worst human beings on Earth. He writes like a thief, breaking into mansions and reporting back on what he found in the bedrooms and closets.
-- Blackmail isn't unheard of in the black-bag world. Shakedowns happen. Too many secrets worth too much money float through people's hands. Too many cell phone videos and scorned employees. Usually the shakedowns happen UNSAID. You triple-charge the client and dare them to ask you why. The bill is saying here is what the secret is worth.
-- Here’s what being an ex-cop teaches you: There’s all these invisible walls that keep everybody in line. And if you refuse to see them, they just aren’t there anymore. Once you walk through the walls, they never come back up again.
Harper's choice of narration limits the whiplash of head-hopping I usually experience with books that bounce from narrator to narrator. There's some summarization, but the plot is so crackerjack that I didn't mind some telling here or there where showing might've been more compelling. I didn't know where the story was headed or what might become of the protagonists.
While I usually dislike novels that fabricate celebrities--Harper name drops real ones who aren't required to contribute depraved behavior--those in Everybody Knows are credible. Thinly veiled versions of tweener sitcom producer Dan Schneider and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are featured. Disgust rises, like it should in great fiction. In addition to depicting how a conspiracy works--things go UNSAID instead of said out loud--the book's refrain is that in LA, nobody talks, but everybody whispers. Rather than titillate with sleaze, Harper offers the only way for an industry--which among many things, preys on child actors--to change is for the whisperers to go public with how they participated. Easier said than done.
Non-Angelenos might skim the descriptions of neighborhoods or freeways, but I loved seeing details of my city, accurately reflecting how spread out LA is, why Hollywood is completely different than Brentwood, and why Venice has a whole other vibe from Koreatown. Ignore the terrible cover art. Wildfire, not earthquake, is illustrated by Harper as the region's most disruptive natural disaster. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Mar 19, 2024
Mar 22, 2024
Jan 13, 2023
Hardcover
0063273004
9780063273009
0063273004
2.96
3,578
Feb 14, 2023
Feb 14, 2023
it was amazing
My introduction to the fiction of Robin Yeatman is her debut novel Bookworm. It shares a characteristic with a lot of my favorite novels in that it do
My introduction to the fiction of Robin Yeatman is her debut novel Bookworm. It shares a characteristic with a lot of my favorite novels in that it doesn't fit evenly into any category. Three bookstore clerks might place this on three different shelves. The cover suggests a cute or whimsical romp through reading and love, and if plotting the murder of your domineering husband is cute or whimsical, I imagine it could be. The novel shares characteristics with Patricia Highsmith and Mary Gaitskill, with noir undertones highlighted by an inappropriately creative protagonist. I laughed often.
Victoria is an unhappily married woman in her mid-thirties. She's employed as a massage therapist at a spa in Montréal, a job that her mother-in-law landed her and that places no demands on Victoria. Her "important" job is her husband Eric, a promising young lawyer who her parents set her up with five years ago. Victoria has settled into a subservient existence: cooking, nurturing and providing as few distractions as possible for her fussy husband. Victoria's passion, which Eric does not share, is reading. She can often be found with her nose in a book, either at Café au Lait before she has to prepare dinner for her husband, or at home in the evenings while he watches TV.
Everything changes the day Victoria sees an attractive man at her café reading the same book as her, a long and torturous account of one man's suffering that Victoria is suffering through as a reader. Feeling an unspoken connection to this stranger, she returns to the café three more times, wearing a carefully selected outfit, in the hope she might encounter Him again. Her book ultimately serves as an icebreaker. The stranger's name is Luke and he makes wood furniture for his own store. Convinced that Luke and she are destined to be soul mates, Victoria's fantasies of some tragic accident befalling her husband begin to multiply.
Victoria stared at the back of Eric’s neck and saw how slender it was. How tender and slight, how hurtable it was, with just a few muscles and sheath of skin for protection over the bones. A miracle that he walked around all day without breaking it. Things fell all the time, didn’t they? He walked downtown, by old buildings made of brick and stone. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that, one day, the music would be in sync and a large cube of cement would come loose at the right moment and down, come down to bring his face flat against his chest at an acute angle, his neck bones splintered and divorced from each other, the break so sudden and sharp that the skin at the back of his neck would be pierced and the pearly bone poking out, ghostly white, almost plastic in appearance, protruding from the red hole, visible only for a handful of seconds before being drowned in a bloody pulse, a pulse that slowed exponentially to nothing, with each breath bringing her closer to the end, to the end of marriage, to freedom.
She saw herself being told the news—the doorbell ringing, her phone ringing, serious faces, kind voices, a hand on the shoulder. “He didn’t suffer. It was instant. I’m so sorry.” Her tears, her tears, so many tears, each tear healing an unspeakable hurt. The funeral. The eulogy. All the well-wishers. And then that night, returning to the apartment, she would shower and come to bed naked with her hair wet against the pillow, and she would look up at the ceiling and feel lightness in her heart, and sleep would come for her and sleep would find her so effortlessly all she had to do was to turn to her side with one leg pulled up to her chest the way she had done in her mother’s womb and she would be gone.
The candy that Yeatman serves with Bookworm comes in two bags: woman plots to murder her husband, and woman comments on books. I'd be surprised if these topics were foreign to any married woman reading this review. Yeatman doesn't name the book that Victoria loathes, a 721-page tome with a crying man on the cover (likely A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara) but A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Nutshell by Ian McEwan and Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith become valuable resources for Victoria as she plots murder. She also reads and enjoys Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, The Dinner by Herman Koch and The Sundial by Shirley Jackson. Victoria compares one of her clients to a Stephen King character.
She was a tiny woman who resembled Shelley Duvall, with stringy, long black hair and a face that often wore an expression of horror, not unlike Mrs. Torrance’s in the bathroom scene in The Shining. Her name was all wrong: Bernadette. She looked much more like a Maude or a Mildred, or maybe even an Olive, given her appearance. Victoria decided she was too insubstantial to merit three syllables, the name too weighty for her.
Bernadette now lay on her back, head wedged in the black circular resting spot on the massage table, and had the appearance of being asleep. In this supine position, her small breasts were flattened to an almost androgynous status. Only the triangular outlines of her brassiere visible through the sheet hinted at their existence.
From the moment she was introduced, Victoria understood who Bernadette was. It took only a few moments to see that she was a mouse, a quivering, pathetic creature who had been living with alley cats her whole life. Victoria saw Bernadette as slave to a domineering mother, an obese woman who wore a wig and lay, day and night, on a sagging, flowered couch. She’d hurled demands and insults at Bernadette as a child, and still did. Bernadette was single, had never been paid the least attention by men (unless you counted Uncle Pete, who was dead now, thankfully), and was so lonely she took to people watching using an old telescope she’d found in a box in the upstairs closet.
Yeatman does a terrific job of rooting interest in her character and building anticipation of what she's going to get up to next. I rocketed through the book and never hit a dull spot. Nothing is introduced not related to Victoria's twin obsessions and I would've liked a bit more complexity or perhaps another twist to Luke's character that for a moment, I felt was coming. Better than funny, Bookworm is smart funny, with sharp prose and excellent dialogue. The petty cruelties spouses inflict are realized extremely well. I'm looking forward to discovering what the author tackles next.
Disclaimer: I've been a Goodreads friend with the author since 2014. She sent me a galley proof of Bookworm to review. ...more
Victoria is an unhappily married woman in her mid-thirties. She's employed as a massage therapist at a spa in Montréal, a job that her mother-in-law landed her and that places no demands on Victoria. Her "important" job is her husband Eric, a promising young lawyer who her parents set her up with five years ago. Victoria has settled into a subservient existence: cooking, nurturing and providing as few distractions as possible for her fussy husband. Victoria's passion, which Eric does not share, is reading. She can often be found with her nose in a book, either at Café au Lait before she has to prepare dinner for her husband, or at home in the evenings while he watches TV.
Everything changes the day Victoria sees an attractive man at her café reading the same book as her, a long and torturous account of one man's suffering that Victoria is suffering through as a reader. Feeling an unspoken connection to this stranger, she returns to the café three more times, wearing a carefully selected outfit, in the hope she might encounter Him again. Her book ultimately serves as an icebreaker. The stranger's name is Luke and he makes wood furniture for his own store. Convinced that Luke and she are destined to be soul mates, Victoria's fantasies of some tragic accident befalling her husband begin to multiply.
Victoria stared at the back of Eric’s neck and saw how slender it was. How tender and slight, how hurtable it was, with just a few muscles and sheath of skin for protection over the bones. A miracle that he walked around all day without breaking it. Things fell all the time, didn’t they? He walked downtown, by old buildings made of brick and stone. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that, one day, the music would be in sync and a large cube of cement would come loose at the right moment and down, come down to bring his face flat against his chest at an acute angle, his neck bones splintered and divorced from each other, the break so sudden and sharp that the skin at the back of his neck would be pierced and the pearly bone poking out, ghostly white, almost plastic in appearance, protruding from the red hole, visible only for a handful of seconds before being drowned in a bloody pulse, a pulse that slowed exponentially to nothing, with each breath bringing her closer to the end, to the end of marriage, to freedom.
She saw herself being told the news—the doorbell ringing, her phone ringing, serious faces, kind voices, a hand on the shoulder. “He didn’t suffer. It was instant. I’m so sorry.” Her tears, her tears, so many tears, each tear healing an unspeakable hurt. The funeral. The eulogy. All the well-wishers. And then that night, returning to the apartment, she would shower and come to bed naked with her hair wet against the pillow, and she would look up at the ceiling and feel lightness in her heart, and sleep would come for her and sleep would find her so effortlessly all she had to do was to turn to her side with one leg pulled up to her chest the way she had done in her mother’s womb and she would be gone.
The candy that Yeatman serves with Bookworm comes in two bags: woman plots to murder her husband, and woman comments on books. I'd be surprised if these topics were foreign to any married woman reading this review. Yeatman doesn't name the book that Victoria loathes, a 721-page tome with a crying man on the cover (likely A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara) but A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Nutshell by Ian McEwan and Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith become valuable resources for Victoria as she plots murder. She also reads and enjoys Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, The Dinner by Herman Koch and The Sundial by Shirley Jackson. Victoria compares one of her clients to a Stephen King character.
She was a tiny woman who resembled Shelley Duvall, with stringy, long black hair and a face that often wore an expression of horror, not unlike Mrs. Torrance’s in the bathroom scene in The Shining. Her name was all wrong: Bernadette. She looked much more like a Maude or a Mildred, or maybe even an Olive, given her appearance. Victoria decided she was too insubstantial to merit three syllables, the name too weighty for her.
Bernadette now lay on her back, head wedged in the black circular resting spot on the massage table, and had the appearance of being asleep. In this supine position, her small breasts were flattened to an almost androgynous status. Only the triangular outlines of her brassiere visible through the sheet hinted at their existence.
From the moment she was introduced, Victoria understood who Bernadette was. It took only a few moments to see that she was a mouse, a quivering, pathetic creature who had been living with alley cats her whole life. Victoria saw Bernadette as slave to a domineering mother, an obese woman who wore a wig and lay, day and night, on a sagging, flowered couch. She’d hurled demands and insults at Bernadette as a child, and still did. Bernadette was single, had never been paid the least attention by men (unless you counted Uncle Pete, who was dead now, thankfully), and was so lonely she took to people watching using an old telescope she’d found in a box in the upstairs closet.
Yeatman does a terrific job of rooting interest in her character and building anticipation of what she's going to get up to next. I rocketed through the book and never hit a dull spot. Nothing is introduced not related to Victoria's twin obsessions and I would've liked a bit more complexity or perhaps another twist to Luke's character that for a moment, I felt was coming. Better than funny, Bookworm is smart funny, with sharp prose and excellent dialogue. The petty cruelties spouses inflict are realized extremely well. I'm looking forward to discovering what the author tackles next.
Disclaimer: I've been a Goodreads friend with the author since 2014. She sent me a galley proof of Bookworm to review. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Aug 08, 2022
Aug 13, 2022
Jun 02, 2022
Paperback
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