Review of The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray

The Murder of Mr. Wickham

by Claudia Gray

Vintage Books (Penguin Random House), 2022. 386 pages.
Review written June 30, 2022, from my own copy.
Starred Review

A huge thank you to my sister Becky, who sent me this book for my birthday — such a perfect gift!

The Murder of Mr. Wickham is about a house party that brings together characters from all of Jane Austen’s novels. Emma and George Knightley are hosting the party, and they’ve invited Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy, along with their oldest son Jonathan. From Sense and Sensibility, we’ve got newly married Marianne and Colonel Brandon, who it turns out is Emma’s cousin. Much to my delight, it turns out that Catherine Tilney has become a novelist, and her daughter Juliet has been invited to provide another young person. And Hartfield was being rented to tenants Captain Frederick and Anne Wentworth — but a staircase collapsed, so they’ve been invited to join the party. On top of everything, Knightley’s clerical relative Edward Bertram is coming with his wife Fanny.

So we see all these characters we know and love, a varying number of years after their marriages. But then on a dark and stormy night, Mr. Wickham turns up, and it turns out that all the characters gathered there have reasons to hate him, mostly because he’s been investing other people’s money, but for some other dark reasons as well.

So when young Juliet Tilney finds the dead body of Mr. Wickham, it turns out that one of the other guests is probably responsible. Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney are the only ones without a strong motive, and they begin doing a little investigating together. The magistrate, Frank Churchill, seems to be overlooking some evidence, after all.

I found this book completely delightful, and the author even managed to pull off an ending that satisfied me. I loved the look at all these beloved characters as married couples. All of the marriages were having some strain when thrust into this difficult situation — and the specific tension in each marriage was consistent with the characters of the people involved. Claudia Gray really made me believe this is how the futures of these couples might turn out. And it was tremendous fun to read about their interactions.

This is a must-read for all Janeites.

claudiagray.com
vintagebooks.com

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Review of The Reading List, by Sara Nisha Adams

The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams
read by Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, and Paul Panting

HarperAudio, 2021. 12 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written June 8, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

This book is about a handwritten reading list that several people find in different surprising places in Wembley, a suburb of London. And then how reading those books changes people’s lives.

The two central characters who get most of the book’s time are Aleisha, a 17-year-old who’s working at the library as a summer job, and Mukesh, an elderly Indian gentleman who lost his wife two years before. Aleisha has her own pressures as she and her older brother are trying to care for their mother, who keeps the house dark and rarely leaves her bed. Aleisha’s planning to head to university and study to be a lawyer when the summer is over.

The first time Mukesh comes to the library, he encounters Aleisha, who has no recommendations for him and is quite rude. But Aleisha feels guilty, so when she finds the Reading List, she decides to read the books and then pass them on to Mukesh. Both their lives are profoundly touched.

I love the way this book highlights how a good book can affect you so deeply. Books can give you insights into your own life and even help build relationships. Besides Mukesh and Aleisha, Mukesh also gains new ground with his granddaughter through books.

I’ve read and loved all but three of the books on the list. Here are the books:

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier
The Kite Runner, by Kaled Hosseini
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

The book The Time Traveler’s Wife is also featured.

The three I haven’t read are The Kite Runner, Beloved, and A Suitable Boy. Now I want to go out and read those three if they’re anything as good as the others.

I did laugh that my favorite on the list – Pride and Prejudice – was the least favorite of the characters in the book. Oh well! At least it got included.

So it was all a wonderful story. I particularly loved the narrator who read Mukesh’s chapters. I felt like the character was talking with me and this kind elderly widower won my heart.

I did have some things that bothered me a lot about their portrayal of a library. Maybe things are different in the U.K., but I’m not really convinced they are.

First, a student working in the library for the summer is not called a librarian. A librarian is someone with a master’s degree in library science. Although a customer might mistakenly call such a person a librarian, the workers would not perpetuate that mistake.

Next, this poor hardly-occupied library needed library outsiders – Mukesh and Aleisha – to come up with an idea to “save” it – by having a program! A program where the community gets together. That’s all well and good and they had a very nice reason for it. But come on, is the author aware that most libraries have a full schedule of programs to engage their communities? It’s not actually a novel idea.

I did think it was interesting that while they talked about a few regulars, that particular library didn’t have any patrons experiencing homelessness. Maybe that’s not a problem in England? Of course, the library in the book was much, much less frequented than the one where I work. We get more than 800 customers on a typical day. I know there are libraries that don’t get so many, but the portrayal – in a book reminding us how reading can change lives – made me wince a little bit.

I also really wondered how the books on the list were chosen. It was interesting that there was only one children’s book – Little Women – and it’s a very old children’s book, set in 1860s America. But that of course got me thinking: If I were to make a list of my favorite books, books that had power to move people deeply and affect their lives and relationships, which books would I choose?

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Review of Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison

Lawn Boy

by Jonathan Evison

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2018. 312 pages.
Review written May 28, 2022, from a library book

Okay, I’ll be honest — the only reason I read this book was to find out what all the fuss was about. After another library in our system included this title in a display of banned books, a resident protested, and Fox News picked it up — and people from all over the country called our library and complained. I particularly remember a man from Arizona yelling at me and telling me that I approve of pornography.

So let me tackle the objections head-on. My first reaction after actually reading the entire book is disgust — disgust at the book banners, not at the book.

First, let me point out this is a book for adults. It is published for adults and marketed for adults. However, it features a 24-year-old protagonist who’s figuring out how to make a living and move out of his mom’s house, so it may well be of interest to juniors and seniors in high school who are thinking about their future. It won an Alex Award, which is specifically for adult books that have appeal for teens. So it is appropriate for high schools to carry it. Not middle schools, but I doubt that’s even an issue.

And I have read so many adult books that are much, much more explicit in sexual content. The difference? Most of those other books involve heterosexual relationships, and I can’t help but think it’s the same-sex relationship that bothers the book banners.

But — get this — there is absolutely no “on-screen” sex in this book. I’ll give a little bit of a spoiler that the main character finds a wonderful and affirming relationship with another man and spends the night with him. But the book pretty much fades to black and he simply wakes up in the morning next to his partner. Absolutely no description of having sex.

And I don’t hear much about that. What the banners seem to object to is that the main character mentions some experimentation with another boy in fourth grade. The other kid’s idea, but it was a mutual activity, and not by any stretch of the imagination does it constitute “pedophilia,” as the caller from Arizona seemed to think. The narrator does talk about it using coarse language, and he’s a tiny bit more detailed when he talks about losing his virginity with a girl six years before the book opens, but it’s funny how the banners don’t mention that.

Yes, the book is full of profanity. It’s talking about working-class families where this is how they talk. It would feel very inauthentic if they talked like a suburban mom. Now, I personally prefer novels where characters do talk like me, a suburban mom, and don’t use profanity. But sometimes it’s good to read about lives I wouldn’t otherwise know anything about and build some empathy.

Let me, finally, talk about the story. It’s about a kid named Mike Muñoz who loves landscaping. He even has a talent for topiary. But he currently works for a company that watches his every move and makes him pick up dog droppings (not referred to so delicately), and he has enough, so he quits. But he’s already living with his mom, who works two jobs, and caring for his three-hundred-pound older brother with special needs. It’s not easy to find something new. And meanwhile, there’s a waitress he has his eye on, but how can he impress a girl without having any money?

The book follows his efforts and his stumbles. He encounters various people who seem like they’re going to help but then let him down. About halfway through the book, I told myself I was only finishing it because I wanted to know what I was defending. However, I was glad I did finish. As the book progresses, Mike does learn from his mistakes and his setbacks — even the ones that weren’t his fault. And he really grew on me.

I’ve already given away that there’s a same-sex romance — that happening is the first Mike realizes he’s gay. The portrayal of that relationship is beautifully done and it’s lovely to see Mike relating to someone who builds him up instead of exploiting him. Outside of that, Mike figures out who he is and what he wants — and yes, the book has a happy and deeply satisfying ending, and I’m so glad I didn’t stop in the middle.

I’ll admit this novel is not for everyone. In fact, it’s not the sort of book I typically recommend. But I ended up very happy I’d expanded my horizons by reading this book and gaining empathy for someone whose life is quite different from mine.

So I do recommend putting this book on hold at your local library. Chances are good you won’t find it on the shelves because with all the attention it’s been getting, the Holds list is long.

algonquin.com

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Review of The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, read by Carey Mulligan

The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig
read by Carey Mulligan

Penguin Audio, 2020. 8 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written May 17, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

This audiobook was a lot of fun and kept me entertained and absorbed to the end — which is saying something because I’m not in the target audience. I don’t believe in parallel universes.

The characters in this book say that it’s science, but I’m sorry, just because a physicist came up with a theory to explain some equations, that doesn’t mean it’s science. This isn’t a theory you can verify, after all. To me, the theory that a new universe is created every time you make a decision, besides seeming wildly unlikely, takes away a lot of human agency. What does it matter what choice you make if in another universe you made a different one?

In fiction, it also takes away from the story — why should I care about this particular character if another character just like them is doing something different in another universe? Why should I care about this particular set of choices? But if your choices do make a difference — you’ve got a story.

The way parallel universes come up in The Midnight Library is that Nora Seed has some sad things happen and decides to end her life. After she attempts to do so, she finds herself in the Midnight Library. It’s a library with infinite shelves where the time is always midnight. She sees her old school librarian there, who tells Nora this is her chance to undo her regrets. Each book in the Midnight Library represents another life that Nora could have lived. Choosing a book and reading it takes Nora into another life in an alternate universe where she made a different decision somewhere along the way. If she finds a life that she likes, she can stay.

So, in this context, the alternate universes do provide a fascinating way to explore Nora’s regrets. She quickly sees that if she had done what other people wanted her to — things didn’t always turn out so wonderful. So can she find the life she actually wants?

It does work as an interesting frame, but I still have trouble with the logistics. Nora dropped into lives without the memories of the alternate-Nora from that life. A lot of good it would do to be a polar researcher if you know absolutely nothing about the topic, after all. And I kept wondering, Where did the alternate Nora go? And wouldn’t it be a shame to have fallen in love and gotten married and had a child if you couldn’t remember doing any of those things? So it didn’t seem like a fair trial of the alternate lives. And without having actually made the choices that got her there, they talked about Nora’s “root life” — as if that Nora is the real person and her alternate selves are disposable.

But if you think of this book as a version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — a vivid look at what would have happened if things had been different — and don’t get too bogged down in the details (as I tend to do), it is always fun to speculate how things might have turned out if you had made different choices.

This book also helped me realize that I’ve outgrown my regrets. There was a time when I wondered how life would have turned out if, for example, I hadn’t dropped out of a PhD program in mathematics. But after my divorce, that all seems like water under the bridge. My divorce was something that got me wondering if I could have done something differently to prevent it (even though it was my ex-husband’s idea). But now, twelve years after the divorce was final, my career as a librarian is blossoming — and if I hadn’t gotten divorced, I would have been content to continue to work part-time. But because I got my library degree and became a librarian, I got to serve on the Newbery committee, and just this week, I got word that I landed my dream job as Youth Materials Selector for my whole public library system. Life is good! So who needs regrets?

Still, this book, and this interesting story of Nora and many different things she might have done, is what got me thinking about how nice it is to live without regrets. So if you can keep yourself from thinking too much about the mechanics, I do recommend this book.

matthaig.com

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Review of To the Land of Long Lost Friends, by Alexander McCall Smith

To the Land of Long Lost Friends

by Alexander McCall Smith
read by Lisette Lecat

Recorded Books, 2019. 9 hours on 8 compact discs.
Review written June 16, 2021, from a library audiobook

Okay, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series seems to me like it’s getting more slow-moving than ever. But I have come to love the people who inhabit the pages, and I’m happy to spend time with them. My impatience with the pace is mitigated by listening to Lisette Lecat’s lilting accent during my commute. And I have to say that I did enjoy my time spent listening to this book, visiting with old friends. This is the 20th installment.

The first book in the series had some very clever solutions to cases. This one did cover a few cases, but the solution ended up having some fairly large coincidences bring about a solution. It’s fun, but doesn’t necessarily highlight their detective work.

Mma does reconnect with some long lost friends in this book, which gives the title. As always, this book is loaded with charm and philosophical musings about things such as meeting up with long lost friends.

And Charlie! Charlie, who for a long time was just a “young apprentice” as a mechanic, is now jostling for respect as an “apprentice detective,” and he wants to get married! He has to come to terms with what he’s willing to do to make that happen.

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Review of Once Upon a Wardrobe, by Patti Callahan

Once Upon a Wardrobe

by Patti Callahan

Harper Muse, 2021. 292 pages.
Review written March 28, 2022, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com

I ordered a copy of this book because of how much I loved the author’s other novel involving C. S. Lewis, Becoming Mrs. Lewis.

In this book, we’ve got a 17-year-old Oxford mathematics student in 1950 named Megs who is devoted to her younger brother George, who is frail and dying.

George reads The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and it opens his life and his imagination. He asks Megs where it all came from — and Megs decides to find out from C. S. Lewis himself.

Surprisingly, Jack Lewis and his brother Warnie are sympathetic to Megs’ story of her brother and welcome her into their home. But they don’t really answer the question. Instead, Jack begins telling Megs stories from his life, stories that help understand the creation of Narnia.

When Megs goes home and tells these stories to George, they always begin with “Once upon a wardrobe, not very far away…”

I enjoyed this book, but I’m afraid the framing didn’t quite work for me. Probably because we’re told Megs was a maths student who loved mathematics because of its order and logic. She wants everything to make sense, to have exact answers.

Trouble is, I was a math major myself, and I know many mathematicians. I don’t know a single one who feels that way about stories or a single one who’d have the cognitive problems Megs had with it. On the contrary, several of my college classmates especially loved The Chronicles of Narnia. I would say that math students are more inclined to love metaphor, not less.

So I wasn’t quite pulled into the book as much as I’d like to be — but I still enjoyed the stories from the life of C. S. Lewis and the book in general. It’s always wonderful to think about Narnia and where such powerful magical stories come from.

patticallahanhenry.com
harpercollinsfocus.com/harpermuse/

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Review of Crucible of Gold, by Naomi Novik, read by Simon Vance

Crucible of Gold

by Naomi Novik
read by Simon Vance

Recorded Books, 2012. 10 hours.
Review written May 29, 2021, from a library eaudiobook

This is the seventh book in the Chronicles of the dragon Temeraire and his human, Captain Laurence of His Majesty’s Air Corps. By now, Naomi Novik has stopped trying to explain the world and drops you right in. She doesn’t make much effort to explain what went before – and this series is better read in order, to follow the developments. As for me, it had been a long time since I listened to Book Six, but there were enough reminders that I could follow what was going on and enjoy the familiar characters, dragon and human. (Simon Vance is good at being consistent, giving each character a distinctive voice.)

This book opens with Temeraire and Laurence in Australia, but they are given an offer to be reinstated to the Air Corps in order to help with a situation in Brazil. However, their voyage is met with disaster, and it takes the whole book before they get to Brazil.

Beginning with a sinking ship and continuing when they are picked up by a French vessel, they face one problem after another. I did enjoy that old friends and enemies show up at different times in the book.

Something I like about this series is how Temeraire and Laurence end up visiting all the continents and we learn how the dragons of that continent developed in this alternate world. All while Temeraire and his companion dragons are commenting and interacting. In this book they meet the Incans and their dragons and want to make an alliance before Napoleon can do so, no matter what it may take. I do like the back story of these dragons, who slaughtered Pizarro after he dared to kill a dragon’s human. Unfortunately, though, the human population has been decimated by plague, so dragons there are always looking for more humans. Add to that the dragons from Africa trying to recover the people stolen into slavery, and you’ve got a world that is diverging further and further from what happened in our world’s history.

Another novel of Temeraire! If you haven’t yet begun this saga, start with His Majesty’s Dragon, and you’re in for many hours of entertainment. It looks like I still have three more books to read before I’m done.

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Review of The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Tom Doherty Associates, 2018. 431 pages.
Review written September 3, 2021, from my own copy purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

I tend to love novels where the main character is a mathematician, and when that main character is a woman, that love goes over the top.

The Calculating Stars is set in 1952, featuring Elma, a woman who was a WASP pilot and now works as a computer for NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Her husband is a lead engineer for NACA.

Yes, this is a different timeline from the one we’re living in – and as the book begins, a meteorite strikes the earth, landing in the Chesapeake Bay outside Washington, DC – which is completely wiped out.

Elma and Nathaniel are in the Poconos when the meteorite strikes. I love the way they both know enough about explosions to know it is not an atomic bomb because the radio continues to play, so they know there wasn’t an electromagnetic pulse. Since an earthquake hits four minutes later, they figure out it was a meteorite and know to get to shelter before an air blast hits. This tells the reader these are highly intelligent scientists – but in an extremely tense scenario.

When they do get to safety, after much difficulty, much of the East Coast has been obliterated. As Elma is doing calculations to figure out what the meteorite was made of – she realizes that earth is in trouble. After some years of extreme cold, things are going to heat up until earth is uninhabitable.

So the rest of the book happens in 1956 and is about the push to go into space – much more quickly than happened in our timeline. Because if those calculations are correct, humans are going to need to build colonies off our home planet.

Elma is an experienced pilot and a genius mathematician – but it’s 1956, and she’s a woman. Many believe that a woman’s place is in the home. Can she prove she has what it takes to become an astronaut? And doesn’t anybody understand they’re going to need women in space to establish colonies, anyway?

This book had me following the gripping storyline all the way through. Elma’s voice telling the story is practical but engaging. I love the way she built in actual things about the space program in our timeline – for example that engineers were male but human computers were female – and that women were allowed to train to be astronauts but were not accepted – and the discrimination that was prevalent at that time. All of this is built into what feels like a very realistic story.

It was disconcerting to read about a disaster that would render earth uninhabitable at the same time fires are raging and huge hurricanes are striking and a pandemic is killing people all over the world. I thought it was just as well she set the disaster in the past so it didn’t feel like something that might soon happen. I could reassure myself this was just fiction!

One thing puzzled me a little after I finished the book. Elma and her husband are young and healthy, and they have lots of sex throughout the book. The book covers five years, but Elma never gets pregnant. Perhaps she’s on birth control pills (maybe developed earlier in that alternate reality?), but she sees a doctor and doesn’t talk about that. And medication for anxiety becomes a big issue for her career. Plus at one point she vomits from anxiety and her husband thinks she’s pregnant, but she tells him she just had her period a week ago. If they’re taking steps not to be pregnant, why would he think that, but if they’re not taking steps, why aren’t they concerned? The book covers five years, so I’d expect a young married couple having lots of sex to be thinking about this issue, one way or another. And especially if they’re living in the 1950s. And even more so if they’re making the case that women need to go into space to help build a colony. Perhaps this will be an issue, one way or the other, in later books.

But that’s a minor quibble. The only time it occurred to me when I was reading the book was when I was puzzled the husband thought she was pregnant. By then, I’d assumed there were strong reasons she wasn’t.

One thing I do know: I want to read the next two books in the series. I’m hoping the lady astronauts will help save mankind.

maryrobinettekowal.com
us.macmillan.com/tomdohertyassociates

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Review of Miss Benson’s Beetle, by Rachel Joyce

Miss Benson’s Beetle

by Rachel Joyce
read by Juliet Stevenson

Random House Audio, 2020. 12 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written June 5, 2021, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

I read Miss Benson’s Beetle because of a recommendation from the “Silent Book Club” Facebook group of it as a Feel-Good Read. The book delivered! This is a delightful and quirky novel about following your dreams.

It’s 1950. Miss Benson has lived through two world wars. She’s been teaching domestic science at a school for girls for twenty years. One day an incident makes her realize that the girls and the staff are laughing at her, in all her frumpiness. She throws it all off and decides to revive her childhood dream. She’s going on an expedition in search of the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. It has been seen by some, but no specimens have been gathered, so as far as science is concerned, it doesn’t exist.

Since she doesn’t speak French, she advertises for an assistant. That doesn’t go quite as planned, but eventually she and an assistant head off on an ocean liner toward New Caledonia, in search of the golden beetle.

This book never goes for a likely plot. In fact, the things that happen border on ridiculous. But I’ve read that readers can tolerate coincidences that make things difficult for the characters, because that feels like life. What they can’t tolerate are coincidences that solve the characters problems. And yes, Miss Benson’s careful planning gets mostly stymied. The difficulties she faces are outrageous and completely win the reader’s sympathy.

Fortunately, Miss Benson has a companion who won’t let her give up on her vocation.

I should say that I do bear a grudge against the author for something that happened at the end, but this book still qualifies as a Feel-Good Read. It’s in a category all by itself, not a romance, not exploring issues, not helping you know more about a historical period. But it’s a book that’s full of a wild seize-the-day sort of joy, about an ordinary older lady throwing off convention and following her calling.

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Review of One By One, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

One By One

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020. 13 hours and 8 minutes.
Review written November 13, 2021, based on a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

One By One is a mystery and thriller designed with nods to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The setting is a ski chalet in the Alps. Soon after a ski outing where a guest goes missing, there’s an avalanche that cuts them off from civilization.

The guests this week are from Snoop, a U.K.-based app that lets you listen to the music other people are listening to. But Snoop’s in trouble financially, and they have to decide whether to take a buyout offer or try to turn things around with new technology. Tension is high because of that decision, and millions of dollars are at stake.

But the new technology is location-based and using it shows them the missing founder is in the bottom of a gorge. And may not have landed there by accident. When deaths follow that are definitely not accidental, we know that a killer is stuck in the chalet with them.

As is traditional, we start the book with ten people in the chalet — eight from Snoop, plus the two staff for the chalet, Erin the hostess and Danny the chef. We get alternating perspectives from Erin and from Liz, who was once a personal assistant at Snoop, and is now the smallest shareholder with two shares. But that means she’s the deciding vote for whether the company should take the buyout or not, which puts her under lots of unwanted pressure.

We get a window into the complicated relationships among the Snoop coworkers from Liz, who thought she’d left it behind long ago. Erin has an outsider’s perspective, but we get hints of some secrets of her own.

As time goes by, their phones have no connection, their power goes out, the temperature drops, the snow keeps falling, and the police fail to come. All while more deaths happen and tension builds.

I wasn’t surprised by Whodunit — I’ve read enough Agatha Christie mysteries to suspect this person — but I still thoroughly enjoyed the way it was unveiled. And yes, as is traditional with thrillers, figuring out the solution puts the one who figures it out in terrible danger.

I had to find things to do that would let me listen to this book to finish it as quickly as possible. Too much suspense to set it aside! Wonderful!

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