A Family Affair

A Family Affair by Robyn Carr
4/5/22; 336 pages
MIRA Books

A Family Affair by Robyn Carr is a highly recommended family drama.

Anna McNichol has just lost her husband Chad. Her three adult children, Jesse, Michael, and Bess are at his memorial service, as is a young pregnant woman that Anna doesn't know. She could be a patient of his or what Anna really suspects is that Chad was having an affair with her. He had been unfaithful before and he was keeping some sort of secret. At the same time Anna's mother's health is declining. While she and her children are dealing with their grief, Anna learns the truth about the young woman at the service and it will change her family.

The novel mainly unfolds through Anna's point-of-view, but there are chapters through her children's perspective too. The focus of the plot is the year after Chad's death. Grief brings with it a trunk full of issues and added to these are secrets, struggles with mental health, relationship issues, dementia, aging, anger, and even more secrets. The characters all work together and individually to overcome their issues which all leads up to a positive ending upholding family. The pandemic enters into the plot too and that is a disappointment as is the depiction of Bess.

This is a complex family drama and the characters are basically portrayed as realistic individuals struggling with their own flaws and shortcomings along with grieving. The infidelity of Chad is not covered as realistically as it would most likely actually unfold in a family. As a therapist, Chad should have considered the result of his actions on his family. Learning what they do about Chad as a husband and father would be an earth shattering experience for most people. Additionally, all the characters are professionals rather than average people in average jobs. There are some poor choices made that are likely due to their grieving.

The quality of the writing is actually excellent. Even when what is written might bring some other questions to mind, Carr captured some real truths about the complications of relationships, families, and aging. Early in the narrative there is some profound insight about cheating men who say they are unhappy to explain away affairs. Honestly, it is a bit too much of a romance for my tastes, but the forgiveness that Anna is willing to embrace to help her and her family move on is admirable. 3.5 rounded up

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of MIRA Books.

The Club

The Club by Ellery Lloyd
3/1/22; 320 pages
HarperCollins

The Club by Ellery Lloyd is a recommended locked room murder mystery set in an exclusive resort off the English coast.

Ned Groom is CEO of the Home Group, which has several members only clubs across the world. They are known for catering to their very elite clientele, so when the Island Home is opened up off the coast of England, the three day launch party is a coveted invitation. Island Home is located on a private island and is accessible by car only by a causeway at low tide. In the prologue two unidentified people are driving on the causeway when, as the tide rises, they realize they are not going to make it. Naturally a death on this island is big news, so more than one is unthinkable.

The narrative is told from the third person point-of-view of four characters: Jess, a new housekeeping manager; Annie, the head of membership; Nikki, Ned's personal assistant and one of the founding members; and Adam, Ned's younger brother and a co-founder. Additionally excerpts from a Vanity Fair article are inserted at the end of each chapter.

This follows the formula for a classic locked room mystery. While very well-written, after the opening car scene the pace slows way down and readers will have to have patience for being introduced to fictional celebrities, background information, and gossip. And there is a plethora of background information and characters to learn. For the purposes of a mystery following this closed-room structure, it might have behooved the husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos who are Ellery Lloyd to make the introduction of the characters and their stories more succinct to keep the plot moving along which would assist in holding a readers interest.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.

The Shadow House

The Shadow House by Anna Downes
4/5/22; 320 pages
Minotaur Books

The Shadow House by Anna Downes is a highly recommended psychological thriller.

Alex Ives flees Sydney with her two children to a three month trial rental in Pine Ridge, an ecovillage in the Australian countryside. Her teenage son, Ollie, 14, scoffs at living in a commune while her baby, Kara at 8 months is teething and cranky. Pine Ridge is quiet and tranquil, surrounded by forests and the residents seem friendly. Alex is sure her family will be safe here and can start over, but unsettling things begin to occur almost immediately when Alex finds a dead bird in a box on their doorstep. She eventually learns about the stories of the Pine Ridge witch, which she is sure is just a legend, but as new disturbing things happen, she begins to wonder if there are some facts behind the rumors.

In alternate chapters the story of Renee Kellerman is told. She and her husband, Michael once owned the farm that became the site of Pine Ridge. They have a teenage son, Gabriel.

While waiting for the two narrative threads to join together, Downes creates a great deal of tension as new alarming and frightening incidents occur. Adding to the sense of an impending disaster are the ominous dreams Alex is having while she is sleep deprived from Kara's unrest. It is clear from early on that Pine Ridge may not be the bucolic and peaceful setting Alex believed it would be when they moved there. There are secrets held by many characters and the tension rises with each chapter as some new alarming incident happens.

The characters are basically well-drawn and realistic. Downes does an especially credible job writing the teenage characters. While we don't learn right away why Alex was fleeing, which is a plausible reason, it is still less straightforward why she would chose an ecovillage as her refuge, simply based on the handsome man who told her about it. Admittedly, her character is a little less appealing due to poor decisions. Starting a relationship with Kit, the man who started Pine Ridge, was farfetched. After mumbling at her to not move to an ecovillage without any conviction about the lifestyle, I sort of wanted to yell at Alex to at least wait until she has weaned her baby before casting about for someone new. She doesn't make good choices.

It does create a creepy atmosphere, but loses it's way after the start. The action does slow down in the middle of the novel. The ending leaves something to be desired. 3.5 rounded up

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley.

The Candy House

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
4/5/22; 352 pages
Scribner

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan is a very highly recommended imaginative novel of our world, but different. The story is told through an interlocking narrative structure by multiple and inter-generational characters. This novel is brilliant! 

Remember: Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise, even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Hansel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free.

Bix Bouton is a wildly successful tech giant of Mandala. What he is searching for now is eluding him; he is seeking a new idea or advancement. When he encounters a conversation group meeting after a talk at Columbia, he joins while disguised and finds the direction his next advancement will take.  "Own Your Unconscious" allows people to download their memories giving them access to every memory they have ever had. They are stored in a Mandala Cube. This evolves into the ability to upload your memories to "the Collective Consciousness" which then gives you access to the thoughts and memories of everyone in the world who has also shared with the collective. 

Millions are seduced, but not everyone. There is a problem that emerges about what to do with so much information. Additionally, not everything or every story needs to be told. There is a counter group of "eluders" who understand the temptation of the candy house and  resist it while "counters" are those who track and exploit the measurable tendencies of people.

This is an ingenious, brilliantly written novel, technically accomplished and stylistically masterful. The three parts of the novel are titled: Build, Break, Drop. The chapters are all like interconnected short stories that build the narrative and plot through the voices of a variety of characters and narrative styles. Chapters range from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, an exchange of emails and a chapter of tweets. Characters from A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010) reappear here, but The Candy House is a stand-alone novel.

The characters and their children are all developed as complex individuals as the novel covers a large span of time. The voices and points-of-view of the characters are all unique. The advancement of the plot is told through the voices of all these characters in the unique chapters. It is impressive how the narrative threads in each chapter begin to coalesce to create a complex plot and compelling accomplished novel. I am in awe. One of the best books of the year!

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Simon & Schuster via NetGalley.

Out There: Stories

Out There: Stories by Kate Folk
3/29/22; 256 pages
Random House

Out There: Stories by Kate Folk is a highly recommended collection of fifteen short stories examining odd and disturbing peculiarities existing during common experiences found in alternate bizarre realities.

These speculative fiction stories have a science fiction/alternate reality/magic realism quality to them. The ordinary experiences in the stories are understandable to our sensibilities, but they all have an absurdist twist toward the realities they really represent. For example dating app sites being infiltrated by blots, handsome biomorphic humanoids posing as real men, that Russian hackers use to steal data;  a medical facility for a nighttime bone-melting disorder; a house that requires an exacting and time consuming level of care; a tourist finding a way to survive a sudden violent revolution; and a void that is slowing expanding and erasing Earth. 

All of the stories have been previously published and the writing is excellent. The stories can be humorous and horrifying at times. Folk's gives her characters development, and the plots in her short stories are compelling and vary widely. As with any short story collection, there are hits and misses. Out of the fifteen stories presented in the collection all were basically successful (with varying degrees of satisfaction) except for two stories which were absolute misses for me.

Stories included are: Out There; The Last Woman on Earth; Heart Seeks Brain; The Void Wife; Shelter; The Head in the Floor; Tahoe; The Bone Ward; Doe Eyes; The House’s Beating Heart; A Scale Model of Gull Point; Dating a Somnambulist; Moist House; The Turkey Rumble; and Big Sur.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Random House via NetGalley.

The Younger Wife

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth
4/5/22; 352 pages
St. Martin's Publishing

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth is a very highly recommended novel of domestic suspense set in Melbourne, Australia.

Tully (Natalie) and Rachel are already concerned as they cope with their mother Pamela Aston's deterioration with early-onset Alzheimer’s and her move into a nursing home. When their father Stephen, a heart surgeon, announces that he is going to marry again to a much younger woman, Heather, after divorcing their mother, his daughters are aghast. Clearly she must be after his money. Tully and Rachel have several concerns, including the fact that Pam occasionally talks about how life with Stephen was awful, maybe even implying it was violent. The sisters both have several other personal issues they are grappling with as well. Heather is also beginning to doubt the wisdom of wedding plans with Stephen.

Opening with the wedding between Heather and Stephan where someone is gravely injured out of the sight of observers, the tension and questions immediately multiply right at the start. The narrative then jumps back in time and covers the events leading up to the fateful wedding. Information is provided through the point-of-view of Tully, Rachel, and Heather. All of these women have secrets they are hiding and are dealing with their own issues. These characters are all depicted as real people, with talents, fears, failings, secrets, and issues galore.

This novel is full of secrets, lies and deceit as the characters question the truthfulness of others and confront their own issues. Readers can carefully follow clues and carefully take note of what is real and what is implied in order to piece together what is truly happening. Hepworth does an exceptional job creating tension while telling this story. The pages will fly by while the drama increases and you know from the opening, that something bad is coming up quickly. Once you get there, all bets are off.   

The writing is exceptional, the suspense is palpable, and I rushed to finish reading The Younger Wife. The ending has sparked some emotional reactions for some readers, but while it was unexpected, I really appreciated Hepworth's writing even more after it was done. 4.5 rounded up

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Macmillan Publishers via NetGalley.

All the White Spaces

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes
3/29/22; 368 pages
Atria/Emily Bestler Book

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes is a so-so exploration, horror, and coming of age novel.

Jo lost her two brother in the great war so she transitions to Jonathan Morgan and with the help of her friend Harry stows away on an expeditionary ship of the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall on his trip to Antarctica. There is tension and trials aboard the ship, clearly evident during Jonathan's efforts to prove his worth. When the ship is burned, the men must set out into unexplored and inhospitable land. If that isn't enough, it also seems that something or someone is threatening the safety of the group.

Wilkes knows a lot about ships and the events that would occur on a long voyage in a cold, hostile environment. The whole crew is haunted by something in their past. This helps in the creation of the frigid atmosphere and the disorientation and mental deterioration of the group as supplies run low.  The tension increases as the plot unfolds. This is a slow moving novel and actually not that frightening. There are a lot of characters, but a list is provided at the opening of the novel to help you keep track of them. The writing style didn't encourage a connection with any character.

Sorry, but this is not comparable to The Terror. I like my historical fiction to keep true to the actual historical times rather than take current sensibilities and place them in the past. Having Jo become Jonathan adds nothing to the plot but does appeal to current sentiments. The actual technicalities of being a biological woman among men is not addressed nor is any disguise or adaptation, besides having short hair. I forced myself to finish this one, but probably should have skipped it. The synopsis didn't actually describe the novel well.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author.