I decided last month to take a look at my auto buy authors. You know the ones, your ride or die authors whose books you know will deliver. If you want to look at my criteria and read about my first auto buy author, Thomas H. Cook, you can visit that post here.
This month’s auto buy author is another Thomas: Thomas Christopher Greene.
Thomas Christopher Greene is an American writer and co-founder and past president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He’s the author of seven books, of which I have read four. There’s a great interview with him here.
My first experience with Greene was back in 2011 when I read his novel Envious Moon. About that book I said: “Love is the one emotion that drives people, especially young people, to reckless behaviour. Greene’s novel captures that love-fueled momentum and propels Anthony, Hannah and the reader on a journey that is both heart-felt and heart-breaking.”
Like I said in my review, I am a sucker for star-crossed lovers or any book that taps into angsty longing and Envious Moon had that in spades, so of course I was going to seek out more books by this author.
Here’s what I’ve read:
The Headmaster’s Wife: One of the delights of this books (if you can actually call a novel about grief ‘delightful’) is letting the pieces of this puzzle click together in their own time. This is a book that sort of reads like a mystery, but isn’t that what life is at the end of the day? An unfathomable mystery. I read it in one sitting.
The Perfect Liar: Max W. and Susannah meet at a fancy art party in New York City. They are drawn to each other almost immediately and soon after, they are married. Now they live in Vermont where Max has taken a job as a lecturer at a small liberal arts college. One morning, while Max is away giving a lecture at an art institute in Chicago, Susannah discovers a note pinned to their front door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Couldn’t put it down.
If I Forget You: The novel opens in 2012. Henry, a poet and lecturer at NYU, sees Margot – for the first time in 20 years – on the street in Manhattan. When their eyes meet, “the face Henry sees travels to him from a lifetime ago.” Instead of speaking to him, though, she runs away. It is from this point that their story unspools – toggling between their college days and this point in the present. Lives lived and all that.
Greene seems to walk that line that I love so much between page turner and literature, often with a heaping helping of angst thrown in.
I still have some Greene books to look forward to: Mirror Lake, After the Rain, I’ll Never be Long Gone, and Notes from the Porch: Tiny True Stories to Make You Feel Better About the World. I can’t wait to track these books down.
my favourite. Even if I had read it during a different period in my life, I would have loved this story about a girl who discovers a dark secret about her family’s history. It had all the things I love in a book.
First up is Peter Abraham’s novel The Tutor.
centers around two New Tork City journalists, Maureen and Harold English. Everyone believes the couple has a happy, stable marriage, and despite strange events, no one suspects domestic abuse could plague their seemingly perfect life together.
The Longings of Wayward Girls – Karen Brown
The Fates Will Find Their Way – Hannah Pittard
The Risen – Ron Rash
Occasionally, a book that I have read before ends up on my TBR shelf. Usually, it’s a book that I read a long time ago, and that I remember really fondly and want to revisit. That happened with 
long-time fan of Straub, although I don’t read him much anymore (even though I have several books on this shelf: see below.) I think the last book I read by him was Lost Boy, Lost Girl, which I recall not liking very much. His earlier stuff, though, is fantastic. Check out Ghost Story or If You Could See Me Now, both of which probably deserve a re-read.
of a man and woman who meet by chance at Heathrow airport. Over a drink, the man reveals that he thinks that his wife is having an affair and he wants to kill her – which may be a bit of an extreme reaction, but there you go. The woman offers to help the man’s fantasy become a reality and the novel does not let up from there.
One last book you should add to your tbr pile is M.O. Walsh’s debut 
Of the books I read in 2019, a couple really stand out. Gabriel Tallent’s debut novel 
I stumbled upon, purely by chance, Sherree Fitch’s 
bit on social media, and in fact back when my book club read Our Daily Bread, she graciously offered to answer any questions we had in real time via Twitter.
How many times did I read those lines, the opening words of 
As if that weren’t enough, Ms. Fitch was there! She happily read (well, recited more like) 
just off Piazza della Erbe, tells another story of a soldier who fell in love with the daughter of a rich and powerful man. He would not let his daughter marry the soldier, convincing her that he was only interested in her money. She told her lover that he must prove himself to her, so he threw himself in the well. When she realized what he had done, she threw herself in after him, thus uniting the lovers for eternity. Sad that the motorcycle is in the picture, but you can see the two lovers at the front of the well.
The library was housed upstairs in this building. Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to visit it as a tourist. I actually couldn’t quite believe that. Bologna is a university town and there were bookstores galore. Sadly, I don’t read Italian. 🙂 It’s also a city made up of arcades or porticos…40 kilometers of them to be exact. They are a nice reprieve from the sun.
The Ludic Reader 