The Long Way Home by
Louise Penny has recently retired Quebec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, seeking
balm in the picturesque town of Three Pines. His neighbor Clara Morrow’s artist husband has failed show up as promised on the
first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache to help find him, so a
trusty band of friends set out to solve the mystery. The writing starts out
almost lyrically, but gets a bit bogged down in the middle. The NYT
found “ elements of the police procedural with a deep-delving
psychology,…a sorrowful sense of the precarious nature of human goodness, and
the persistence of its opposite, even in rural Edens.” Maybe, but maybe it tries a little too hard.
**Prague Summer
by Jeffrey Condran is an insightful, beautifully written story of a
happily-married State Department employee and her rare-books-dealer husband who enjoy a good life in Prague. Their routine is thrown into chaos by the
arrival of an old friend whose own
husband has been mysteriously imprisoned.
She hides a sinister agenda that is gradually revealed in a tantalizing
and ingeniously constructed study of relationships and human character.
“"Like the city itself, Prague Summer is romantic and mysterious,
with a refined literary bent.”
*City of Thieves by
David Benioff is based on his grandfather's stories about surviving WWII in
Russia. Alone in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught
looting a German paratrooper's corpse. To avoid execution, he and his cocky side-kick
are given the challenge of finding a
dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. The touching Quixotic
buddy story blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age tail, an oddly touching quest with humor blended with the grisly absurdities of
war.
*Children Act by
Ian McEwen probes the dread beneath the surface of most post-middle-age lives in
his best book since Atonement.
Through the perspective of Fiona Maye, a
leading High Court judge who is renowned for her intelligence, exactitude,
and sensitivity, McEwen examines legal, medical and religious issues, while exploring the human experiences of anger, sorrow, shame, impulse, regret and
yearning. He rejects religious dogma that lacks compassion, but also questions
secular morality as well. “Few will deny McEwan his place among the best of
Britain’s living novelists."
The Hundred Year
House by Rebecca “Makkai is a “
twisty, maximalist story with…a natural ear for satire”. Partially screwball comedy, intellectual sex farce,
historical drama and fashioned ghost story told backwards in time and with an
impressive array of colorful, yet forgettable, characters. The Hundred-Year House unfolds
the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate and
sometime artist colony .. “ feels like the precocious love child of John
Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire and a rousing game of Clue.”
