The Ruth Gallagher mystery novels, by Elly Griffiths

I won't belabor here, yet again, my lifelong on-and-off relationship with mystery novels. But I will say that I have just had a prolonged "on" period, reading the Ruth Galloway mystery novels of Elly Griffiths. These were recommended to me by my dear friend Mary V., and once I started reading the series (in order, of course!), I couldn't stop! I have now read all fifteen novels in the series, ending with "The Last Remains" (Mariner Books, 2023), which Griffiths has told us is the final book in the series. I wish there were more! Ruth Galloway is an archeologist and professor, and is often consulted by the police when they find bodies buried, sometimes ancient and sometimes recent, as happens often -- at least according to these novels -- near the sea in Norfolk, England, where there is so much history and so much mysterious, even mythic, atmosphere. I like Ruth, who is smart and accomplished, confident yet modest and unpretentious. She loves her cottage in the marshlands and her cats. She is good with people but really loves solitude as well. She has an unplanned but dearly loved young daughter with DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) Harry Nelson, the result of a brief affair, but as he is married, they have an unsettled relationship except for sharing a love of that daughter, and except for working together on many cases where police work and archeology overlap. Let's say their relationship is "complicated." There are other interesting and believable characters in the novels, such as Ruth's friend the druid Cathbad, her other friends, her lovers, her colleagues at the university where she teaches, and Nelson's family members and detective colleagues. A real bonus of this series is that if one reads several or all of the books, one has the pleasure of seeing the characters and storylines develop, although each book also stands alone. The mysteries are well-plotted and intelligent, and in each one I learn (in a non-didactic, "goes down easy" way) interesting things about areas of England, about English history, mythology, architecture, and culture, and how English police departments work, as well as, of course, about archeology. I highly recommend this mystery series.

"Banyan Moon," by Thao Thai

My friend SM, who recently recommended the novel "Bellies," by Nicola Dinan, to me (see my post of 1/27/24), also recommended "Banyan Moon" (Mariner Books, 2023), by Thao Thai. This is a novel about three generations of Vietnamese American women and their fraught histories and complex relationships with each other. Although Minh and Hoang originally came to the U.S. from Vietnam in the wake of the "Vietnam War," the bulk of the book is set in the Florida family home, Banyan House, where the grandmother, Minh, lived and died, and where the mother, Huong, who lives nearby, and her daughter, Ann, who lives in Michigan, came back after Minh's death. These three women had all had difficult relationships with men, and with each other. The two older women each raised a daughter mostly on her own, and now Ann is possibly on the same path. The novel is about family, but family greatly complicated by historical, cultural and social forces. Each chapter is told by one of the three women; we see their different perspectives and learn about the devastating secrets that formed them and divided them. "Banyan Moon" is at times painful to read, as readers are taken on a difficult journey through the family's history, individually and collectively. But despite the elements of anger, misunderstanding, and self-protection, there are also threads of fierce love throughout. This is a powerful and compelling book, one which I am glad I have read.

Three (More) Books about Loss and Grief (by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paul Auster, and Joan Didion)

Regular readers of this blog know that my beloved husband died just over two years ago, and that since then I have read quite a few books about loss, grief, and mourning. I have posted about some of these (e.g., 2/22/22, 12/1/22, 2/24/23, 11/7/23, 11/15/23). Reading these books is always painful, and at first I could not read them, but after some time I found that they were sometimes comforting, in the sense of connecting me with others' experiences of loss, and experiencing the universality and community of bereavement and grief. I have just read three more books about grief, and will describe each one very briefly here. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Notes on Grief" (Knopf, 2021) is a slim volume, an acute cry of pain at the recent death of her dear father, one which also celebrates the person and father he was. "Baumgartner" (Grove, 2023) is a novel by Paul Auster in which the title character deeply mourns his wife Anna, who died nine years before, and cannot seem to get past his grief and pain. Auster explores the intertwining of pain and happy memories, and the nature of memory itself. The third book is one I read almost twenty years ago, soon after the death of my dear father: Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" (Knopf, 2005; Vintage, 2007), about the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne (and the illness and later death of her daughter Quintana, about whose death Didion later wrote a book titled "Blue Nights," which I have also read). I was struck at that time by Didion's description of her feelings and actions during the year or so after her husband's sudden death, many of which resonated with me about my father's death, especially such aspects as disbelief/denial, numbness and confusion. I tried to re-read the book about a year ago, but just couldn't; I have just now finally read it again, and found it as powerful and resonant as ever, now in light of the profound loss of my husband of decades. Among other aspects that Didion describes well is the terrible tangible loss of the dailiness, the ongoing conversations and habits, of a long-married couple's life. These two nonfiction books and one novel are all extremely difficult and sad to read, but also insightful and reassuring in a strange way: they remind us that although each death is unique, it is also part of all deaths, and that all mourners have many things in common. We who are left behind are part of a huge community of the bereaved, those who are grieving loved ones.

"Season of the Witch," by David Talbot

I was absolutely blown away by "Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love" (Free Press, 2012), by David Talbot. The story of the city of San Francisco from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, the book is riveting: well-researched, well-written, well-shaped, propulsive, full of vivid details, and shot through with the thesis that what happened in San Francisco was, on the one hand, unique, and on the other hand, a sort of representation of trends that would reverberate throughout the United States. Among the many events and themes covered are the rise and fall of the Haight Ashbury district, the pioneering music scene, the freedom that the city provided to many who fled the Midwest and other parts of the country, the home that S.F. provided for gays and lesbians, the best and the worst of city politics, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the Jim Jones/Guyana tragedy, the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the scourge of AIDS and the ways in which S.F. pioneered compassionate treatment and care and support of sufferers of the disease. My connection to the time period and events of the book, as a resident of San Francisco for a good part of the period covered, was obviously one reason for my appreciation of and enthusiasm about the book. Reading this book brought back many memories, and at the same time provided new information and details that I hadn't known at the time. Although the book was published in 2012, and the events covered are only up to the mid-1980s, and although San Francisco has changed in many ways since that time period, the city and its residents are still, whether we/they realize it or not, influenced by the powerful events and trends of that time period. I thank my brother P., who was also a resident of San Francisco during a large part of this time period, for recommending this book to me. I think anyone who lives in, or has lived in, S.F./the Bay Area, would be caught up in this book, as would other readers in or from other places who will recognize the profound and widespread consequences of what Talbot describes in "The Season of the Witch."

The Ten Best Books I Read in 2023

Most years, I have posted on this blog a list of "the best books" or "my favorite books" that I have read during those years. Today I list the ten best books, in my opinion, that I read during the calendar year 2023. Most, but not all, of the books were also published in that year. I list the books in the order that I posted on them here, with the date of each post in parentheses. 1. "Signal Fires," by Dani Shapiro (2022) (novel) (see my post of 2/2/23). 2. "Hello Beautiful," by Ann Napolitano (2023) (novel) (5/13/23). 3. "You Could Make This Place Beautiful," by Maggie Smith (not THAT Maggie Smith) (2022) (memoir) (6/12/23). 4. "Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages," by Carmela Ciuraru (2023) (biography) (7/4/23). 5. "Tom Lake," by Ann Patchett (2023) (novel) (8/13/23). 6. "A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Novelists Begin Again," by Joanna Biggs (2023) (biography) (8/30/23). 7. "Somebody's Fool," by Richard Russo (2023) (novel) (9/24/23). 8. "All Things Consoled," by Elizabeth Hay (2018) (memoir) (10/14/23). 9. "A Living Remedy," by Nicole Chung (2023) (memoir) (11/7/23). 10. "Day," by Michael Cunningham" (2023) (novel) (12/12/23). Although novels will always remain my first love in reading, I notice that this year my list tilts more heavily to memoir and biography than usual. I also note that as usual I have read more books by women authors than by men. (I do not claim that books by women are "better," only that they very often appeal to me more, and often I can relate to them more.)

"Onlookers," by Ann Beattie

How could I forget about Ann Beattie? I have been reading her fiction, especially her stories (for which she is most known) for decades. Perhaps I haven't thought of her recently because I have seen fewer of her stories in The New Yorker, where she used to publish regularly? In any case, when I saw that she had a new story collection, "Onlookers" (Scribner, 2023), I was delighted, and immediately requested a copy at my wonderful local library. I have just finished it, and (mostly) liked it very much. There are six stories, each quite long, and the stories are somewhat interrelated (although mostly peripherally, just enough to establish that many people in the city are acquainted with each other), but each stands on its own. All the stories are set in Charlottesville, Virginia, before, during and after the time of the tragic, shocking white nationalist rally in 2017, in which one woman was killed and other people were injured. Intertwined with this event was and is the controversy over the Confederate monuments in the town, most notably the statue of General Robert E. Lee on his horse, and whether these statues should be removed. (Eventually that statue and others were removed.) The stories in "Onlookers" are, as suggested by the title, not directly about that rally or those statues, but about the lives of people who lived in Charlottesville and how they were affected by the events and issues, directly or, more often, indirectly. Without being didactic, Beattie makes readers confront the continuing presence of racism and the lasting effects of the Civil War, and the way those historical and current elements of American society infect and contradict the reputation of beauty and gentility in a city such as Charlottesville, and by extension in the larger society. As always, Beattie's characters are intriguing, vivid, often anxious, sometimes eccentric, imperfect, but usually understandable and often relatable. One common theme is the decline of many of the characters of old age, illness, incipient dementia, and sometimes just exhaustion; their caregivers are also vividly portrayed. Beattie's writing in this book is as good as that in any of her books. How fortunate we readers are to have had the gift of her 22 books (so far!)

"Bellies," by Nicola Dinan

When my friend SM recommends a book, I listen. Over the years, I have written here about several books she recommended to me. Today I write about a novel she recently spoke highly of: "Bellies" (Hanover Square Press, 2023), by Nicola Dinan. This novel is the kind I most like: about relationships. In this case, the relationships include those among friends, lovers, and sometimes family members. The two main characters here are Tom and Ming, two young men who meet in college and are both friends and lovers. They have a group of friends who have various gender and sexual identities. There is also an international context to their story, as they mainly live in London, but Ming is from Malaysia, and part of the story takes place there. Tom's and Ming's relationship is changed and complicated when Ming, who had earlier dated women, then men, begins transitioning to female. Tom and Ming truly care for each other, and continue to be a couple for a while, but their time together becomes more complex, more fraught, as they try to find their way through these evolving identities and circumstances. These two young people and their friends live in a world of privilege but at the same time of uncertainty and vulnerability. The novel is original and absorbing, and made me think about the complex intertwined identity issues portrayed. But the author never uses the characters just as examples of certain identities; they are distinct and mostly relatable young people whom the reader can empathize with.