It’s snowing this morning, but it won’t stay on the ground for long. Still, it’s setting the “Christmas season” mood for sure. I’ve got a hot cup of tea and a bowl of chopped local apples and pears to keep me fueled and warm as I tell you about two book I read recently.
The first is A Man Downstairs by Canadian author Nicole Lundrigan, which was our November book club selection. This psychological thriller is set in a small east coast town where Molly Wynters returns with her teenage son to help care for her elderly father, from whom she’s been estranged for the past couple of decades. Her mother was murdered when she was just three years old, and her testimony helped put a local teen in jail. When questions of witness reliability came up a few years later, he was released, but killed himself shortly afterward as he suffered terrible guilt over what he’d possibly done. Molly and her son are renting part of a house from Russ, a man she knew growing up, but she’s not really receiving a warm welcome back to her hometown. When strange things start happening and she gets anonymous calls telling her to think about the day of her mother’s murder and face the truth, she begins to doubt her own memory. Can she rely on her memory about the tragic event, or is someone else guilty of the crime? This was not well-liked by anyone in the group. We all thought it had too many characters and too many inconsistencies, too many threads left unresolved and too many red herrings. We thought it was written well enough, but we all struggled to finish and none of us would recommend it. Too bad, because I’ve read two other books by this author, An Unthinkable Thing and Glass Boys, which were both very good. Anyway, don’t bother with this one.
Then I read another fantastic book by Catherine Newman, Wreck, which is the sequel to probably the best book I’ve read this year, Sandwich. In Wreck, we are reunited with Rocky and her family two years after their last Cape Cod vacation. This novel begins with the collision of a train and a car, killing the driver of the automobile. Anxious Rocky learns about this tragedy and discovers that the driver was a young man who went to school with her son, which escalates her anxiety because this proximity reminds her that it could happen to her children too! She’s also developing a strange rash and must see many different specialists to get a diagnosis. It all takes place in the fall, which was perfect timing, as it just came out and I read it as soon as I picked it up from the bookstore. While I thought that Sandwich was a better book, Wreck was also amazing. It had me laughing out loud while also commiserating with her about the challenges of aging. I was happy to hear more about their cat, Chicken, too, as well as meet their new kitten, Angie. I think Sandwich was such a surprise and delight that I set the bar too high and was comparing them as I read Wreck. I also think that the mystery in the first book, and meeting the characters for the first time, made it a bit better. Wreck was more of a “slice of life”, which was also delightful, but in a different way. (I think that my view was tainted because I felt there was a bit too much raunch in this follow-up - just my opinion). One of the authors quoted on the back of the book said something like, “Endorsing a Catherine Newman book is like endorsing puppies or chocolate cake” and I totally agree! Obviously I would highly recommend these books to any woman "of a certain age".
That’s all for now. Stay warm and keep reading!
Bye for now…
Julie
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