It’s the last day of summer, and it’s certainly still felt like summer these past few weeks, with only the cooler mornings and the changing leaves hinting at the season to come. I’ve got three books to tell you about, but I also want to get outside and enjoy the day, as we’ve got a couple of days of rain coming, so these entries will be brief.
The first book is The Believers by Zoe Heller. I read What Was She Thinking: notes on a scandal a number of years ago and really enjoyed it, so when I happened to see it on my bookshelf, I thought that surely she’s written other books, too. The Believers was written after Scandal, but was just as intriguing. It follows the Litvinoff family, wife Audrey, husband Joel and their three children, daughters Rosa and Karla and adopted son Lenny, after Joel has a heart attack and is in critical condition in a hospital in New York. Audrey is a reluctant mother at best, and she is critical of everything her daughters do and believe in, but willingly indulges drug-addict Lenny and continues to sing his praises. Joel and Audrey married after a brief acquaintance when he visited London to speak at a Socialist rally in the 1960s, and after being uprooted to New York, she’s been a devoted supporter of Joel's for 40 years. So when a woman appears claiming to be his mistress, Audrey is in shock. How can she not have known this about her husband? And how can she go on, with the knowledge she now has? This book was incredibly engaging, and while I didn’t really like any of the characters or condone their actions or attitudes, I felt compelled to get to the end and find out how things got resolved. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys books dealing with family secrets, especially those told with a side of satire.
Then I read a book for my Volunteer Book Club, Anthony Horowitz’ Magpie Murders. I watched the PBS series and really enjoyed it, and I had the book on the shelf but had surprisingly never read it, so I was delighted to pick it up and dive in. This book tells the story of Susan Ryeland, an editor who is reading the latest in a mystery series featuring fictional detective Atticus Pünd (think Poirot but Greek-German instead of Belgian), but she reaches the end of the manuscript to find that the final chapter is missing. When she tries to find this missing chapter, she discovers that the author, Alan Conway, has died in much the same way as the main character in the manuscript, also called Magpie Murders. As Susan tries to discover the truth behind Conway’s death, she begins to spot parallels between fiction and reality, and is drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery until she must back away or risk her own safety. Oh, and Conway’s entire book is presented within the book, making this one of the cleverest novels I’ve ever read, a true example of meta-fiction. It was a great hit with the book club members, and would be an excellent choice for any book club.
And I just finished the book for tomorrow night’s Friends Book Club meeting, Harriet Tubman: live in concert by Bob the Drag Queen. This novel tells the unlikely story of Harriet Tubman and her band, the Freemans, and their efforts to record a rap album and go on tour in order to reach young people and tell their story. A phenomenon called The Return makes it possible for historical figures to return and live among us in the present day, and Harriet reaches out to Darnell, a music producer, to help with this project. Darnell thinks of Harriet as a Black superhero, and is thrilled and more than a little nervous to take on this project, as he’s been writing advertising jingles for the past 15 years due to some personal crisis years earlier. This may be the thing that puts him back on the music map, but will he overcome the obstacles he’s facing in order to complete this momentous project? Can Harriet help to lead him to his own freedom? You’ll have to read this strange, interesting novel to find out. It was certainly not something I’d pick up on my own, but was definitely worth reading.
That’s all for today. Get outside and enjoy the sunny day!
Bye for now... Julie
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