Ian McEwan – Lessons

Ian McEwan – Lessons

Eleven-year-old Roland Baines’ life changes dramatically when his Africa based parents decide to send him back to England to attend a boarding school and get the classic education. While the political landscape forms itself after the Second World War, the boy takes piano lessons with Miss Cornell who will shape not only his idea of music, she will become his first love. Incidentally or initiated by fate, Roland’s life will remain closely connected to global events, be it the cloud coming from Chernobyl, the beginning and end of the Cold War, or major crises such as AIDS and the pandemic. As we travel through his life, he has to learn some lessons, some taken light-heartedly, others a lot harder and leaving scars.

I have been a huge fan of Ian McEwan’s novel for years and accordingly, I was keen to open his latest novel “Lessons”. What I have always appreciate most in his books is his carefully crafted characters who – hit by events outside their control – need to cope and to adjust. He is a wonderful narrator who easily makes you sink into the plot and forget everything around you. Even though “Lessons” does not focus that much on a single question as in “The Children Act” or “Saturday” and was much longer than most of his former writings, I hugely enjoyed how his protagonist’s character unfolds in front of us and becomes who he is when his life closes.

The novel has been announced as “a chronicle of out times” and admittedly, that’s just what it is. By the example of Roland, he illustrates the last six decades, he chronicles British and European politics, arts, music and mind-set. Roland’s process of learning does not stop, life is a continuous process of trial and error, of mistakes and good decisions which all leave their mark.

Interestingly, the protagonist is a rather passive character. He only ever reacts to what happens, his piano teacher’s advances, his wife’s running away, his career: Roland does not actively shape his life, it is the first and foremost the women he encounters who make him move and – even though they all remain minor characters – it’s them who bring the verve and dynamics into the action.

I can imagine that some readers will find the novel a bit slow and lacking focus, yet, I totally adored it and enjoyed every minute of the read.

Elizabeth Strout – Lucy by the Sea

Elizabeth Strout – Lucy by the Sea

When the pandemic hits New York, her ex-husband William convinces Lucy Barton to leave the city and to come to live with him in a house in a small town in Maine, by the sea. Lucy trusts Williams, in these fields he knows much better what to do and thus, she leaves her apartment behind, while their two daughters also flee the metropolis. Lucy experiences the first weeks and months like many of us did: life has come to a standstill, everybody is afraid of the fatal virus and interaction with human beings is reduced to the absolute minimum. However, this new situation also offers room for reflection and questioning decisions made, things said and done and all that ultimately matters in life.

I was not really sure if I was already willing to read a novel in which the pandemic was a central aspect while the virus is still raging. However, I totally adore Elizabeth Strout’s novels and since I have met Lucy Barton before, I was looking forwards to “Lucy by the Sea”. As anticipated, I found the novel a wonderful read, slow in pace, which was simply perfect for the time portrayed and the topic, and deeply reflective which I personally perceived just like an invitation for myself, to take some time and seize the chance of the standstill to look back and ponder on where I have come from and where I want to go to.

Apart from the new rules in life – keeping a distance, wearing a mask, obeying lockdown – Elizabeth Strout again focuses on the fragile and complex family bonds that her characters are born in and cannot escape. William finds a part of his family and gets closer when everybody is getting more distant; their daughters Chrissy and Becka have grown up and find a renewed sisterly bond. Lucy has to accept that the girls have become independent and do not need their mother that much anymore. But also the couples’ relationships are put to a test. William and Lucy have been friendly for some time after their divorce, but can living under the same roof work? Lucy comes to understand that love can take different forms and is expressed in diverse ways and loving also means that losing is hard.

Without a doubt one of this year’s absolute highlights. The protagonist feels like a dear and close friend and towards the end, I did not want the novel to stop, but just to go on forever. Elizabeth Strout, again, has not only captured the mood of the pandemic and chronicled our lives but also demonstrates her deep insight in our human condition and what makes us real humans.

Thanks for the free book PRH International.

Liza Klaussmann – This is Gonna End in Tears

Liza Klaussmann – This is Gonna End in Tears

Olly, Ash and Miller have grown up together. In their community, they have always been perceived as a unit which nobody could intrude. In their small East Coast town, life is easy in the 1950s and dream are big. Forty years later, things are different. None is left of their friendship, Olly is on his own, now also without a job and Ash and Miller are negotiating their separation. It is Olly’s aunt Tassie that cannot stay any longer in her care home that brings them together again. It is not easy to confront the past, especially while watching a young threesome bunch repeating their mistakes.

I totally adored Liza Klaussmann’s novels “Tigers in Red Weather” and „Villa America“ and thus was eager to read her latest novel “This is Gonna End in Tears”. She did not disappoint, quite the contrary, the story is the perfect read for a hot summer where you sense that it needs some escalation to be able to breathe again. Full of suspense even though it is not a mystery, you read on to find out how all the tension between the characters will finally dissolve.

“Well, that was the point, what he’d only recently realized: there is no point; everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story, when actually there’s no story at all. Just an outline that gets filled in with nonsense and accidents and happenstance and luck. And the, well… and then nothing.”

What I appreciated most was how the author detailed the characters. They are all unique in their disappointments of life, in their mixed emotions and inability to actually speak about what goes on in their mind. The atmosphere profits from this, you feel that something must happen, that they cannot just go on like this.

It is a novel about friendship and dreams and expectations of life, about creative minds and everyday chore, about bonds that are strong and bonds that can feel like handcuffs. An intoxicating read from the first page which I could hardly put down.

Amanda DuBois – The Complication

Amanda DuBois – The Complication

Seattle attorney Camille Delaney rushed to the hospital where her friend Dallas Jackson has to undergo an emergency operation with a fatal outcome. When the former nurse accidentally sees his folder, questions arise. What happened in the operation room? And why was nobody aware of the seemingly critical state her friend was in? As her company only represents hospitals and high profile doctors, thus she cannot pursue her inquiries. Instead this brings her to a point where she has to ask herself if she has given up her ideals for the money and status. As a consequence, she decides to run the risk and leaves the company to start her own firm with her first case. She soon realises that nobody wants to talk about Dr Willcox, responsible surgeon in the operation room, but her gut feeling tells her that something is totally going wrong in this hospital.

There are some similarities between the author and her protagonist. Amanda DuBois herself was a trained nurse before she became a lawyer and medical malpractice has been her area of specialisation. “The Complication” is her first novel which highly relies on her profession knowledge combining medical aspects with law. From a seemingly unfortunate operation, the case develops into a complicated conspiracy which brings the protagonist repeatedly into dangerous situations since she has to deal with reckless people who do not care about a single life.

What I liked about the novel was how the medical details were incorporated and explained along the way so that the reader with limited medical knowledge could smoothly follow the action. The characters are authentically drawn, especially Camille’s discussion with her mother about her ideals and principles raising the question what use she makes of her legal capacities while working for a law firm that puts more interest in the billing hours than helping to serve the law was interesting to follow.

Even though I would estimate that the case is realistically depicted with Camille again and again coming to dead ends and only advancing slowly, I would have preferred a higher pace since as a reader, you have a lead and soon know what scheme is behind it all.

Martin Walker – To Kill a Troubadour

Martin Walker – To Kill a Troubadour

Summer could be enjoyable and light hearted but then, the cosy Périgord region is caught in Spain’s trouble with Catalonia’s independence movement. “Les Troubadours”, a local folk group, have published a song supporting autonomy for the region that shares their cultural heritage. The song goes viral and soon not only the Spanish government but also shady groups become aware of the poet and the band. When the police find a sniper’s bullet and a stolen car in the woods, the know that the situation is much more serious than they thought and that people are in real danger as the Troubadours are about to perform a large concert.

Martin Walker continues his series around the French countryside chief of police Bruno Courrèges. Even though also the 15^th Dordogne mystery offers a lot to recognise from the former novels, “To Kill a Troubadour” is much more political and takes up a current real life topic. Apart from this, you’ll get exactly what you’d expect from the series: a lot of food to indulge in, history of the region and the French countryside where everybody seems to be friends with everybody.

One would expect the life of a countryside policeman to be rather unspectacular and slow, however, this could not be farer away from Bruno’s reality. Not only do big conflicts come to his cosy province, but also a case of domestic violence demands his full attention.

What I appreciated most, like in other instalments of the series before, was how the cultural heritage was integrated into the plot and teaches about the history you along the way in a perfectly dosed manner.

Full of suspense while offering the well-known French countryside charm, a wonderful read to look forward to summer holidays in France.

Louisa Reid – The Poet

Louisa Reid – The Poet

Emma is 25 and a promising poet and PhD student at Oxford. She is researching into a long forgotten female poet named Charlotte Mew whose work she uncovered and analyses. When she, the girl from the north and a middle-class family, came to the prestigious college, she felt like not belonging, her accent revealed her background, but her professor Tom saw something in her. He didn’t tell her that he was still married with kids and she didn’t mind. Now, years later, she finds herself in a toxic relationship. The renowned professor knew how to manipulate the young woman with low self-esteem doubting herself. Despite the success with her own poems, he can exert control over her, her thinking and cleverly gaslights her. He goes even further until she reaches a point where she has to decide to either give up herself or fight.

Louisa Reid’s novel “The Poet” is the portrait of a young woman who encountered the wrong man at the wrong time. She falls for her teacher who is charming, who sparks something in her, who makes her feel special and talented. Yet, she does not realise at which point this positive energy turns into the negative and when his second face is revealed. The power he has over her, the power his position attributes him, bring her into an inferior position from which it is hard to be believed and to escape.

The arrangement of power the author chooses is well-known: male vs. female, older vs. younger, rich background vs. middle class, academic vs. working class. All factors play out for Tom and from the start put him into the position of control. Emma, young and naive, is only too eager to succumb to it since she falls for his intellect and charm. He is idolised by students as well as his colleagues, quite naturally she is flattered by his attention.

On the other hand, we have the manipulative scholars who knows exactly what makes his female students tick. He has noticed Emma’s talent and knows how to profit from it. Systematically, he makes her feel inferior, stresses her weak points – her background, her family, the lack of money – keeps her from progressing with her work. He makes himself the Ubermensch in her view and manages to keep her close as he needs her, too. Not emotionally, but in a very different way.

Wonderfully written in verse and yet, it reads like a novel. Heart-wrenching at times, analytical at others the book immediately seduces and keeps you reading on.   

Sophie Jai – Wild Fires

Sophie Jai – Wild Fires

It is the death of her cousin Chevy that brings Cassandra from London back to Toronto where her family is based after having left Trinidad. But she not only returns to the funeral but to a whole history of her family that suddenly pops up again. Stories she had forgotten but now remembers, things which have always been unsaid despite that fact that everybody knew them and secrets that now surface in the big house in Florence Street where the tension is growing day by day. The sisters and aunts find themselves in an exceptional emotional state that cracks open unhealed wounds which add to the ones that have come with the death of Chevy.

Sophie Jai was herself born in Trinidad just like her protagonist and grew up in Toronto, “Wild Fires” is her first novel and was published in 2021. It centres around a family in grief, but also a family between two countries and also between the past and the present and things that have never been addressed between the members. Having been away for some time allows Cassandra a role a bit of an outsider and she sees things of her family she has never understood.

The author wonderfully interweaves the present story of the family gathering at the Toronto home to mourn the loss and Cassandra’s childhood recollections and well-known family stories. Thus, we get to know the deceased and his role in the family web. Like Chevy’s story, also the aspects that link but also separate the generations of sisters are uncovered thus exposing long avoided conflicts.

The novel raises the questions if you can ever flee from the family bonds and how to deal with what happened in the past and has never openly be spoken out loud and discussed. Sophie Jai finds the perfect words to express the nuances in the atmosphere and paces the plot according to the characters’ increasingly conflicting mood.

I liked how the characters and their story unfolds, yet, I would have preferred a more accelerated pace and at the beginning, I struggled to understand the connection between them which was a bit confusing.

Emily Henry – Book Lovers

Emily Henry – Book Lovers

Nora Stephens, in the book industry also known as “shark”, is a successful New York agent whose life is dedicated to her job. Accordingly, relationships have not been that successful so far, but that’s ok for her. When her sister Libby asks her for a four-week stay in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, the place where one of her best-selling books is located, Nora is reluctant, she cannot stay away from work so long; yet, Libby is pregnant and Nora does not want to refuse her sister’s greatest wish, she is the only family she has. Nora knows all the stories about New Yorkers coming to small towns and falling in love, she has read them all, even published some of them, therefore, she can only ironically comment the fact that on her first day, she runs into Charlie Lastra – her biggest nemesis.

Admittedly, I am not really a fan of rom-coms, no matter if they come in form of books or movies. However, I really enjoyed Emily Henry’s “Beach Read” and as there was so much talk about “Book Lovers”, I was looking forward to reading it. Of course, the bestselling author did not disappoint, quite the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed how she does not take the genre too seriously but lets her characters comment on it mockingly again and again throughout the novel.

“We know how this ends.”

Libby squeezes my arm. “You don’t know. You can’t until you try.”

“This isn’t a movie, Libby,” I say.

You do not need to find the typical tropes, Nora will find them for you and Emily Henry does not leave out a single one: the big city girl who looks down in small town life, the sister who mysteriously vanishes during daytime and does not tell what is doing or where she is going, the incidental meeting with the one man she does not want to see far away from home, the charming bookshop, cringeworthy small town activities, another attractive man – who does not like the first, of course – you name it. Even though there are no big surprises, I totally enjoyed diving into the story and seeing all the clichés unfold.

As a book lover, it was easy to fall for this one, a lot of references and hints to the industry offer the perfect setting for the two protagonists to fight their feelings which, needless to say, they cannot admit at first. Another perfect summer read by Emily Henry.

Sara Novic – True Biz

Sara Novic – True Biz

Charlie has always been hearing impaired, her parents wanted her to be a normal girl and opted for an implant instead of catering for her special needs. As a result, the teenager is excluded from communication and learning as her implant never worked properly. It is only at the River Valley School for the Deaf that she discovers a world that she had been shut out from. She learns to sign and finds friends. Even though the school is a safe haven, this does not mean that people there are without problems and even golden boy Austin whose deaf family is something like a star in their community has to fight with mixed emotions when his baby sister is born hearing.

Sara Novic opens a world which is widely unknown. “True Biz” not only narrates the story of teenagers who – like any other – have their fights with their parents but also struggle with who they are and who they want to be. Being impaired does not make this easier. Along those lines the novel opens the discussion about how to live in a society with high superficial standards when it comes to being considered “normal” and the tricky question about what is best for a child.

Even though I was aware of some of the problems pupils face with limited hearing capacities in average schools, Charlie’s situation of being withhold proper means of communication is repelling. It would be easy to blame her parents, yet, their intentions were good, but good isn’t always the best. The same is true for the complicated case of Austin’s baby sister, decisions have to be made where there is not really a best way to go.

One scene sticks especially with my memory. When the baby is born and Austin asked if she is ok, his father answers that she is perfect. Not too strange a reply, yet, the girl is hearing whereas Austin is not. Does this distinction make him less perfect for his parents, underlining the widespread notion of only the physically not impaired are the ones to be happy about.

Characters that are loveable and sympathetic to follow make it easy to understand their reasoning and view of the world. A lot of information is integrated adding to the book’s enlightening for the reader. A great read in so many respects that I can only highly recommend it.

Lara Williams – The Odyssey

Lara Williams – The Odyssey

It’s been five years now that Ingrid has left her husband and former life to work on board the luxury cruise liner WA. She regularly has to rotate between the different departments and thus has become an expert of the ship and knows every corner. With Mia and her brother Ezra, she has befriended two colleagues with whom she passes her limited free time. When she is selected for a mentorship programme and promoted to manager, things become more complicated between them, Mia is obviously envious of her friend’s new position. Yet, Ingrid is not sure if she can fulfil the high expectations of Keith, captain and guru of the team. But she is willing to give all – and that is more than you could ever imagine.

After having finished reading “The Odyssey”, I was left wondering and confused. Lara Williams’ novel was a hilarious read until it wasn’t anymore. It is somehow a totally exaggerated caricature of the cruise ship and well-being industries and on the other hand, from the middle of the novel on, I was wondering if the plot actually takes place on a cruise ship or if much rather the staff are actually patients of a psychiatric ward for whom the “cruise ship” is a kind of simulation of real life.

The cruise liner offer all a tourist might want to ask, there is no need to leave it since you have several restaurants serving all tastes, all kinds of shops and treatments to make your stay a perfect break-out. It doesn’t matter that the staff is hardly trained, they are friendly and the guest is king. Just as the employees are pretend-professionals, all aboard is just fake and serving a superficial image of perfection. Had social media not been invented yet, this cruise liner would surely underline the need for it.

Ingrid’s past is slowly revealed throughout the novel. That she more or less fled her former life is obvious, however, the reasons remain in the dark for a long time. The non-life she leads has become the perfect escape and spending hours in her small cabin staring at the ceiling is all she wants to do. The mentorship programme forces her to get out of her cave and think about herself and her life. Keith is the ultimate travesty of a guru. His concept is quite limited but with enough cold water and matcha tea he can create a spiritual atmosphere to impress his underlings.

This might all be very funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it seemed much too real to me. Even though the cruise ship is a special setting, what happens there is not too far from our life that has become more online fake than real for many and where behind the sparkly facade, you can find highly insecure and troubled people. Reckless gurus can easily become leaders spreading their nonsense and making masses of people follow their rules not matter how senseless.

A novel you can laugh out loud while reading but which leaves you with an uneasy feeling when thinking about what you’ve just read.