Books with Buzz: Justin Cronin's "The Twelve" -- and a Giveaway of "The Passage"

Trilogies are tricky. No matter what you do, if the first book has been a slam dunk success the way that Justin Cronin's The Passage was two summers ago, you'll struggle to deliver something that fans find just as overwhelmingly impressive. On the flip side, the story isn't over yet: your second novel is a bridge that readers need to find compelling enough that they'll read it through and come back for the final installment. None of that is easy.

That said... if you loved The Passage, you'll find a lot in this sequel to like, and maybe you'll even end up loving it, too -- if not quite as much. (Just don't try to read this as a stand-alone book; you'll struggle to make sense of what is going on.) It's just as convoluted and dense a novel, jam-packed with characters. It's actually slightly more confusing, because while in The Passage Cronin began with the events of the year Zero and then moved forward to his main time frame, 97 years later, focusing on the small group of survivors in the Colony in California and the challenges that confronted them, in The Twelve he is trying to wrangle a larger number of characters and a much larger canvas, one ranging from the very real survivor community of Kerrville, Texas, to the surreal/fantastical "world" that Amy visits as part of her own quest. Indeed, each of the main characters is on a kind of quest here, and the novel's focus skips and jumps, back and forth in time and into different parts of the post-viral era to give the reader a complete view of what's afoot. The problem is that there is so much happening that I was a third of the way through the book before I even began to see how the various bits and pieces fit together. And I was more than halfway through before I reached the stage where I couldn't put the book down and do something else.

So, what's the sequel all about? Well, when it opens, the surviving members of the Colony's expedition to take Amy to Colorado are now mostly scattered. Alicia and Peter are still together, but in the Expeditionary, hunting the twelve disciples of "Zero" in hopes to eliminating the viral menace. Michael is working on the oil road, keeping Kerrville supplied with fuel and power. Amy has joined a group of Sisters and is overseeing five-year-old Caleb, the son of Theo and Mausami. But the "survivors" aren't just from the colony; Cronin takes us back to the year zero, and re-introduces us to figures like Lila, Carter and even Wolgast, and introduces us to new characters to help fill in some of the backstory for some of his main ongoing characters and help set the stage for what will happen in the final third of the book. Cronin does a good job of managing the myriad narrative threads and alternating breathtaking suspenseful segments with more thoughtful passages that remind us that there is a new kind of everyday life still going on in the widely-dispersed survivor communities. The question becomes: what kind of survivor existence will triumph? It's hard to say more about the plot without venturing into spoiler territory, but the bottom line is that while it's a less straightforward narrative than in The Passage, the sequel offers a dystopian future that is less nuanced than that Cronin depicted in the Colony, but even more chilling for being more explicit.

Something that struck me more forcefully in this book, and that had begun to irritate me toward the end, is that this novel is even more intensively visionary, with more explicit religious imagery of a Christian nature. There are the Twelve of the book's title -- only instead of apostles, they are virals. Yes, they consume flesh and blood as Jesus invited his apostles to do at the Last Supper -- but they consume human flesh and blood. There's a sacrifice, late in the book, with someone pinned to a Y-shaped frame rather than a cross, preparing to sacrifice their life for their comrades and fellow humans. There is the image of pursuing the light, and the fact that virals (like vampires) cannot sustain themselves in the light. There is resurrection, of sorts, and transformation.  There are the labels like "Michael the Clever, Bridger of Worlds" or "Amy of Souls". At times, this simply became too heavy-handed for my taste, and my religious views aren't such that I would be offended by the hijacking or distortion of the Biblical narrative; those who are likely to take offense to the above, even in the midst of a book whose core message revolves around salvation and divinity, should probably avoid this at all costs.

This isn't a literary novel. Yes, the book is well-written, but ultimately it's an up-market thriller, with Big Themes and Big Ideas, but characters who will be familiar to anyone who has ever read a Good vs Evil chronicle. Admittedly, Alicia appears to be a complex character in this book -- but while her body may be divided, her heart and soul are in the right place. There's really none of the moral ambiguity or grey areas that, to me, characterize a complex narrative. Here, the complexity is reserved for the sprawling plot, and Cronin certainly has enough on his hands dealing with that. Think latter-day "Lord of the Rings" in nature, with (obviously) a very different kind of plot, writing style, characters and setting, but not that different in scope and essential nature.

If you loved The Passage, I'd certainly suggest trying this -- although be careful of letting your expectations become too high. If you haven't read The Passage, don't try this until you have -- and even if you already have read the first book in Cronin's proposed trilogy, it might be a good idea to re-read it before diving into this sequel. Be patient, and brace yourself for the  slow pace of the revelations.

I obtained an advance readers' edition of The Twelve from the publishers at BookExpo (BEA) in June.

The Giveaway!!

Yes, I can almost see you, tapping your toes in impatience, asking when I get to the giveaway...

I am giving away one copy of the promotional paperback edition from BEA AND one Kindle version of The Passage to two randomly selected winners. You must be a follower to enter; e-mail me at uncommonreading@gmail.com and tell me which version you would prefer. (Yes, you have to pick either the dead-tree mass market paperback or the cyber-version.) One entry per person, please. Make sure I have your e-mail address, and I'll let you know directly as well as posting the winner's names here. The winner of the dead-tree book will need to provide his/her mailing address, and the e-book winner will need to give me the e-mail address associated with their Amazon account. Sorry, I'm not set up yet to do this via Nook.  

The deadline? Next Wednesday, October 17, the day after The Twelve hits bookstores. I'll select the winners at 11 p.m. (Eastern) North American time.

My Pick for the Booker: The Garden of Evening Mists

Later this week, the suspense will finally be at an end, and we'll know which of the half-dozen novels on this year's shortlist will win the Man Booker Prize. While I loved Hilary Mantel's sequel to Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, my favorite candidate has to be this nearly perfect novel by Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists. It's one of those rare novels to which I want to award a sixth star, just for reminding me that there is always something new to discover in the world of books, and that there are authors out there capable of crafting prose that I have to stop and savor every few pages.

When this novel opens, Yun Ling Teoh's professional career is ending; she is retiring after many years as a judge in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, a career that began when, in her early 20s, she joined the team prosecuting Japanese soldiers for the crimes they committed during the World War II occupation of the then-British colony of Malaya. As we soon realize, Yun Ling's life -- however successful she has been in her career -- essentially ended when, at the age of 17, she herself became one of those victims, and the sole survivor of a hidden camp in the Malayan jungle. Tan Twan Eng deftly steers the reader back and forth from the past to the "present" (the 1990s), as Yun Ling's experiences during the war and her later attempts to come to grips with them at the height of the Malayan "emergency" in 1951 (a Communist insurgency) are set in the context of her final attempt to bring about a kind of resolution.

At the heart of this story is the garden of the title. It was designed by a former gardener of Emperor Hirohito, a Japanese expatriate named Aritomo, whom Yun Ling seeks out after the end of the war, in 1951, to ask him to design a garden in memory of her sister, who died at the hands of the Japanese. Aritomo refuses -- but he agrees to accept her as an apprentice. In order to achieve her goal, Yun Ling must find a way to swallow her revulsion for Aritomo -- a Japanese, and moreover, one connected to the emperor himself -- and learn from him. While the garden itself, Yangiri, seems to be a place disconnected from time and space, it proves to be anything but, as the Emergency becomes more intense, martial law is enforced more stringently, and the terror-style tactics of the Communist guerillas threaten Yun Ling, whose recent legal cases have involved prosecutions of some captured leaders. All this is set against a much later narrative, as Yun Ling returns to Yangiri -- now her own property -- for the first time since the Emergency -- to finally address all her demons. By the novel's end, we have learned the answers to the questions that emerge gradually as the story unfolds; how Yun Ling came to be the only survivor from her camp; how she came to own Yangiri and why she has allowed a Japanese scholar to visit her now to study Aritomo's ukiyoe prints.

One of the elements that made this novel especially vivid for me was the fact that I had visited the Cameron Highlands, where it is set, in the 1980s, and was left stunned by its beauty (imagine, for a moment, seeing poinsettias growing wild against a backdrop of tree-covered mountains shrouded by a hazy mist) and fascinated by its history. It's the kind of landscape in which mystery and concealment are eminently possible; indeed, at one point, Eng introduces the reader in passing to one Jim Thompson, a former intelligence agent turned silk entrepreneur in Bangkok, who would later vanish while out on a Sunday walk in the same area. Eng captures the setting and the atmosphere of the various time periods in which he sets this novel, especially the Emergency, which he portrays mostly through the eyes of three different kinds of outsiders -- Aritomo, a Japanese; Yun Ling, member of the Straits Chinese minority (a privileged group) and Teoh family friend Magnus Praetorius, a South African Boer with little love for the British colonial rulers of Malaya.

Any attempt to describe this book is almost certain to be inadequate. To me it's the epitome of what a novel that wins the Booker should be: beautifully written (that's a given), with strong characters and a vivid setting, but, above all, a narrative that makes the reader stop, think, re-read, and stop to ponder once more. It has won a spot on my personal "top 100 books of all time" list, although I confess I haven't yet decided which book to kick off it to make room. Just read it. I can't imagine that you'll be disappointed. Although I will be if it fails to win the Booker, despite the fact that it has some tough competition this year.

Mystery Monday: Inger Ash Wolfe's Identity Revealed!

I've been wondering for a while who the author of the rather compelling series of mysteries featuring small town Ontario detective Hazel Micallef might be. The books themselves -- which I began reading with the debut of "Inger Ash Wolfe" a few years back -- are interesting. The setting appears to be the traditional kind of backdrop for a "cozy" (aka "cosy") mystery -- a small town, plenty of people who know each other well and have for decades, lots of domestic conflict that might escalate to the point where one person flings a cup of scalding Darjeeling over another, or someone keys the brand-new car purchased by their rival. Until a serial killer comes to call, that is. It's that odd mismatch of what appears to be a tranquil backwater and some really gritty, complex crimes that captured my attention -- and the character of Hazel herself. She is feisty and cantankerous; in her 60s, divorced and with a characteristically ambivalent relationship with her ex-husband. (Book #2, The Taken, opens as she is recuperating from back surgery in the basement of the home her ex shares with his new wife; they are stuck looking after her because her octogenerian mother -- just as feisty and cantankerous -- isn't physically able to do so. )

It is Hazel and her attitude that has kept me reading these books. She is a welcome antidote to the usual breed of supersleuths found in many mysteries, or the women who often feature in those books -- women who are in the book to provide a love interest, or who end up feeling torn between their personal lives and their police careers, etc. etc. With the exception of a handful (Val McDermid's Carol Jordan, for instance, or the character of Vera Stanhope, created by Ann Cleeves, with her tendency to call everyone "pet" while fixing them with a laser-like glare), there are relatively few women around whom a series has been built that remain interesting characters from book to book. Above all, she is human and fallible. As she admits to her sidekick, James Wingate, midway through The Taken, she has ""a man trapped in my computer, live animals and body parts appearing on my desk, a CO who thinks I've outlived my usefulness and expensive gifts coming from missing friends, I also happen to have a pill problem ... So I'm slightly less than OK."

So who, I wondered, was behind the fictional creation of Hazel Micallef? All that readers were told was that Inger Ash Wolfe was the nom de plume for a Canadian novelist, and I mentally ran through a list of candidates, trying to figure out who that might be. Turns out all my guesses and wildest speculations were off base -- and mostly because I committed the tremendous faux pas of assuming that because (a) the author's name was female and (b) Hazel was female, the author must be female. Whoops... As it turns out, the author is Michael Redhill, who confessed in a column for the Globe & Mail in Toronto that he had long been fascinated by here the idea of "being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself." At a younger age, he had tried acting; now, he decided to immerse himself inside the personality of another kind of writer, a crime novelist and a woman.

Readers' responses to the Ash Wolfe/Redhill novels have varied, but I have relished them, including the one that just landed in bookstores, A Door in the River. As before, the author blends the image of a small Ontario community with the reality of an ugly underbelly, the two meeting in what Micallef is one of the only people to suspect might even be a crime. When Henry Wiest is found dead, apparently of an allergic reaction to a bee sting after stopping off at a smoke shop on a local Indian reserve (a smoke shop being the place where the tribe is able to sell cigarettes free of taxes), Hazel can't help wondering. Henry didn't smoke -- so what was he doing there? And what bees are out and stinging at night? Hazel has never played well with others, so it's no surprise that when she starts investigating she ruffles feathers at the reserve, where a thriving new casino might explain Wiest's presence on the reserve -- if not his death. But what she uncovers turns out to be far uglier than a gambling addiction, and what starts off as a police procedural mystery ends up being a gripping suspense novel.

A bonus: the first two books are available very cheaply if you have a North American Kindle (less than $3 each) and the paperback editions aren't that much pricier if ordered from Amazon.com. Start with The Calling and read them in order so that you don't get irritated by the failure of Ash Wolfe/Redhill to provide a lot of background with each new book. The middle book in the series is slightly weaker, but only slightly, and the latest is gripping and compelling reading -- even if it does end with a new character arriving on the scene and the fate of an old one hanging in mid air. Oh well, let's just hope Mr. Redhill is writing very, very rapidly and that book #4 in this series will be making its debut soon...

Just Added to My Shelves:

The obsession continues....  That said, this is a shorter list than the last one. The downside? It's only been about a week since I put together the last list. Sigh. And yes, the above would be my dream armchair. All the books I might need, within easy reach.

• Above All Things by Tanis Rideout (Amazon Canada purchase)
• Until the Night by Giles Blunt (Amazon Canada purchase)
• Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius for (Re)invention, Shunning the Naysayers and Creating a Personal Revolution by Jon Friedman (from publisher directly)
• Shake Off by Mischa Hiller (LibraryThing Early Reviewer program)
• Say You're Sorry by Michael Robotham (NetGalley)
• Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell (Library)
• And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman (Kindle)
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Kindle)
• The Devil's Cave by Martin Walker (Amazon UK purchase)
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Amazon UK purchase)
• The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (NetGalley)
   

"It's like something you'd read in a novel."

 

That's putting it mildly. Dan Fesperman's latest suspense novel is an entertaining homage to the entire genre of spy novels, as well as being one in its own right, and the combination make this even more entertaining than it might otherwise have been. Let's start with the fact that the advance reader copy of the book (which is due to be published next Tuesday) arrived in one of the most curious packages I have seen. Normally, these advance galleys are simply softcover versions of the eventual hardcover book, printed on lower-grade paper, with no illustrations and often with acknowledgments and other miscellaneous additions missing. Occasionally, the publishers won't even go that far, and will just slap a generic cover onto it with some text or some blurbs from well-known writers. This time, however, Knopf went overboard: the image here, on the right, is what showed up in my mailbox. inside the box from Amazon.

OK, the book itself wasn't really wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, just encased in a wrapper cleverly designed to make it look as if it was. Which is, in itself, a nod to the book's plot, which has protagonist Bill Cage, a middle-aged PR guy in Washington, DC, thoroughly disillusioned with his life, head off to central Europe in an apparently quixotic quest to prove that one of his youthful idols, reclusive spy-turned espionage writer, Edwin Lemaster, may in fact have been a double agent. Once, years ago when Cage was still an ambitious journalist, he had unexpectedly scored an interview with Lemaster, and even more surprisingly winkled out of the novelist the admission that he had contemplated becoming a double. "For the thrill of it. The challenge." When Cage publishes his story, the news becomes a brief sensation, Lemaster becomes still more reclusive and never grants another interview. That's where this particular novel begins, linking Cage, Lemaster and Cage's father in espionage and tales of espionage. But what is reality? It ends up seeming just as difficult for Cage to discern as a mysterious series of letters (written on distinctive paper he keeps locked up in his study at home) spark his investigation and questions swirl about the real meaning of a mysterious series of book sales and exchanges dating back decades -- all of the books wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

Fesperman doesn't have the prowess of Ambler or LeCarre, but fans of those iconic figures can still delight in this book as a tribute to their heroes. Segments of classics of the espionage genre are clues, ushering Cage on his way at critical points in his quest to discover the truth about Lemaster. A mysterious handler -- clearly a former "spook" far better versed in CIA tradecraft than is Cage, whose knowledge has been derived from the spy novels he devoured in his youth -- is paving his way, but to what end? And who else might be interested in discovering the truth about Lemaster, or perhaps about other Cold War secrets long buried? Each step Cage takes seems to take him closer to some of those discoveries -- perhaps... -- but also further back into his own personal history. The clues lead him from one to another of the cities he inhabited at the height of the Cold War, a motherless child whose father was posted to U.S. embassies in Belgrade, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Berlin. Cage's handler seems to know an awful lot about his personal background as well as his interest in Lemaster -- and could Cage have played more of a role than even he suspected in those long-ago events. Is Bill Cage now starring in his own spy novel? And if so, who is the author; who is scripting the action?

There are many entertaining twists and turns here, and even if some of them are slightly predictable, I would have felt churlish complaining about that, given the intricacy of the narrative, as Fesperman entwines his own story with that of the history of the espionage thriller itself. Certainly, watching Cage transform from a former devoted reader of classic spy novels -- a passion he once shared with both his father and Lemaster -- into a participant in the Great Game. Ultimately, it simply didn't matter much to me that this novel isn't as accomplished as many of the classics that Fesperman cites. It was simply a fun read, both in its own right and for the "wink, wink; nudge, nudge" factor as the author drags in one twist after another ripped from the pages of those classics. Fan fiction at its best, and a "thumping good read" in its own right. What is artifice and fiction, and what is reality? Not even the characters seem to know, all the time. "Next you'll think I'm acting like someone in a book, and I'm guessing I won't like the comparison," one character tells Cage midway through the novel, rather bitterly.

The bottom line? If you're looking for nonstop thrills, chills and action, this isn't the book for you. (It's more like Alan Furst's novels than those of Daniel Silva, with the emphasis on character and a gradually increasing sense of tension, rather than violence.) It's a novel about the secrets that spies keep -- both professionally and personally -- and the layers that must be unraveled in order to arrive at something resembling the "truth". I'm giving it 4.5 stars, and recommending it heartily to fans of the genre.

My copy of this book -- complete with the imaginative packaging -- came from the publisher via Amazon.com's Vine reviewer program.

The Fabulous Adventures On Which An Unreliable Narrator Can Take You...

I happen to believe that unreliable narrators -- yes, including ones who aren't all that appealing -- are among the biggest gifts that an author can present to his or her readers. It's easy -- relatively speaking -- to come up with a likeable character: all you need to do is imagine someone you'd love to spend time with or fall in love with, endow them with all kinds of characteristics, from beauty and wisdom to wit and charm, and send them marching through a plot that is calculated to show all those qualities to best advantage. Wrangling an unreliable or dislikeable narrator, on the other hand, is far trickier. Somehow, you need to delicately, over time, make it clear to the reader that this is a flawed person, someone who perhaps can't be trusted, but still the only person able to tell this particular tale the way it should be told. Someone you can't rely on, but whose narrative and character quirks you can resist, even as you sometimes end up squirming in discomfort.

I've run across a few novels of this kind in recent months that I found extraordinarily good -- all have ended up on my "best books of the year" longlist -- and although none of them need all that much more publicity, I can't prevent myself from giving them another round of applause on this blog.

First of all, there's the tour de force that is Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, published last year in London, and which appeared on the Orange Prize shortlist early this year. It's a tribute to an author's skill in bringing to life an unreliable narrator, this time in the form of one Miss Harriet Baxter, spinster, who recounts her experiences in Victorian London from the "safety" of London in 1933, many decades distant. It's hard to go into details without delivering spoilers, so let's just say that Harriet is telling us the story of her relationship with the painter Ned Gillespie -- unjustly overlooked, in her eyes -- and his family. Throughout, we get a lot of reasons to second, third and even fourth-guess ourselves and the narrator -- which could have been bad news had it not been that Harris's hands are very trustworthy ones for any reader to find him/herself in. Great Literature? Nope. But it's creative and imaginative in a very different and yet familiar way -- combining what feels like a Victorian gothic with a classic suspense novel. I was surprised to see that Politics & Prose (my fave bookstore in Washington, DC) had classified it as a mystery -- at that point, I had read the first 60 pages or so -- but after finishing it, I understand why. But in contrast to a conventional mystery, this story is full of mysteries, layers upon layers of them, and the author can never be entirely sure if the narrator is misleading herself as well as us. If all this sounds oblique, it's because to say too much about it gives away some of the joys of discovery. What I most delighted in is the extent to which, even at the end, Harris still leaves a lot to our imaginations. Could it be that...??? This was a 4.8 star book for me -- and a "thumping good read".

My second candidate, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, is still up there on the bestseller lists -- and rightfully so. (I liked it so much that I raced out to get one of Flynn's earlier novels, Dark Places, which also promises to be excellent but perhaps even darker....)  By the time Nick Dunne, one of Flynn's two unreliable narrators in this suspense novel, tells us that he is "a big fan of the lie of ommission",  we've already figured it out, thanks to Gillian Flynn's masterful ability to drop one twist after another into this chilling tale, in such as a way to cause a kind of literary double take of such magnitude that if it were a physical response, I'd by now be hospitalized with whiplash. We know he is a liar -- we just don't know what lies it is that he is telling, to whom, and about what. Until Flynn slips the truth in slyly and takes the reader's breath away. In all likelihood, this is the best thriller I'll read this year, and possibly this decade -- and I don't say that lightly. Flynn took me on a hair-raising journey, the equivalent of speeding along a slick, twisting highway at night, with not even a railing separating the car from a plunge down a cliff and into the ocean -- and I simply couldn't put the novel down. Every time I thought I had figured out where she was taking me -- and at what point this novel would relapse into classic "thriller mode", with a relatively predictable denouement -- she proved me wrong. Better yet, she made each twist completely convincing.

The novel itself is the saga of an unraveling marriage that climaxes in the disappearance of Amy Elliott Dunne, Nick's wife, on their fifth wedding anniversary. It's an ironic nod of sorts to so many true-life tragedies (there's even a vitriolic Nancy Grace-style television commentator!), but also a deep dive into a kind of toxic relationship that had me thinking three or four times about every individual I've come into contact with. Amy is the photo-perfect victim: blond, beautiful, the model for her parents' best-selling series of children's books featuring "Amazing Amy". But just how amazing is Amy? Well, fairly -- if perhaps not in the sense that we are used to viewing our "victims". Because, you see, Amy is our second unreliable narrator -- how much can we rely on what she tell us through her diary, or in person? The slow and gradual revelation of the layers of this story is tantalizing; the nature of what is revealed is chilling. And the real climax of the book is quite possibly the best I've read in any thriller -- Flynn shuns any thought of the "easy out" when looking for a conclusion. Good to hear this already has been optioned by Hollywood (Reese Witherspoon has apparently picked up the rights.) The bad news? Well, be prepared to distrust everything that anyone tells you and question even your relationship with your spouse. That's how convincing a tag time of unreliable narrators can be in creating an ominous atmosphere. This is going to stay with you for weeks, and will chill you to the bone no matter how hot it is outside. 4.5 stars. 

 Anne Enright's latest novel, The Forgotten Waltz, is a different kettle of fish. It's a literary novel, not a mystery or suspense yarn, and the narrator isn't consciously deceiving us, her readers. Rather, she is deceiving herself -- but it's up to the reader to decide when that takes place. Are her lies about not being interested in the married man she first meets at her sister's holiday barbeque? Or is she lying about being happy later, after both she and he have left their spouses (not a spoiler: it becomes clear that this is the denouement fairly early on in the novel) and moved in together? When Gina first meets the man who will become her lover, she reflects, he "is just a little rip in the fabric of my life. I can stitch it all up again, if he does not turn around." This novel captured for me, better than any other I have yet read, the irrationality and occasional downright inconvenience of unexpected love. Gina Moynihan knows not only that this is a person who is married and thus technically out of bounds, even if she weren't already with the man who will become her husband; she is also clear-eyed, at least in retrospect, about the many ways in which she finds him odd or even how he should not appeal to her. And yet...  Gina evaluates her own behavior and finds it as irrational as others might; describing and not really falling into the trap of rationalizing or excusing her actions. But is she deceiving us?

To many, Gina will end up being not merely a mildly unreliable narrator but a downright unappealing one, to boot. She's an adulterer -- and apparently is rewarded for her misbehavior, in contrast to Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, who suffer miseries before they expire for their sins. Unacceptable, immoral behavior to many. But it's about real-life situations, and it's a story about getting what you think you want and then realizing that life is still "real life".  Gina recognizes this: "I thought it would be a different life, but sometimes it is like the same life in a dream: a different man coming in the door, a different man hanging his coat on the hook... I don't know what I expected. That receipts would not have to be filed, or there would be no such thing as bad kitchen cabinets .... Sean exists. He arrives, he leaves. He forgets to ring me when he is late and so the dinner is mistimed... sometimes the intractability of him, perhaps of all men, drives me up the wall."

Enright has found a lot of critics for letting the story be told by a relatively unrepentant and unapologetic Gina rather than by one of the "victims" of the story. But Enright doesn't ask us to approve of Gina's choices or even to let her off scott-free with her rationalizations or self-justifications. It's one woman's story, and I rated it 4.4 stars despite the occasionally rambling, discursive style that left me feeling claustrophobically trapped inside the narrator's head.

Three very different books; three different kinds of unreliable narrators -- and three very good novels.

Just Added to My Shelves:

Given that the image above is probably fairly close to wish fulfillment on my part, perhaps it's not that surprising the shelves keep groaning under the weight of new additions...

Herewith, some of the latest additions. As always, I'll be reading and commenting on some of these on this blog in the coming weeks and months, but who knows which ones, much less when!

• The Double Game by Dan Fesperman (ARC from Amazon Vine)
• The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair (Kindle, Amazon Sale)
• Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino (ARC from Amazon Vine)
• Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch (Kindle)
• Mission Flats by William Landay (Library)
• The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan (NetGalley ARC)
• The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg (NetGalley ARC)
• The People of Forever are Not Afraid (NetGalley ARC)
• Red Ink by David Wessel (NetGalley ARC)
• Homesick by Roshi Fernando (ARC from Amazon Vine)
• Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld (ARC from Amazon Vine) 
• Winter Journal by Paul Auster (ARC from Amazon Vine)
• Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays by Siri Hustvedt (bookstore purchase)
• Ghost Milk by Iain Sinclair (bookstore purchase)
• Ransom River by Meg Gardiner (Library)
• The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade (Kindle)
• Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis (NetGalley ARC)