Although everyone and their octopus was talking about this book for a while, I probably would never have read it. Then, it was chosen for my IRL book club so…
Sowell Bay is a small community in the Pacific Northwest and it is here that we meet a group of characters including Tova Sullivan, a 70-year-old widow who works as a cleaner at the local aquarium; Ethan, the town gossip and owner of the local grocery store; and Cameron, who is not a native, but who arrives in Sowell Bay to locate the father he has never known. They are not the most interesting characters though; that honour belongs to Marcellus.
Who am I, you ask? My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. Typically, they call me that guy. For example, Look at that guy–there he is–you can just see his tentacles behind the rock.
I am a giant Pacific octopus. I know this from the plaque on the wall beside my enclosure.
I know what you are thinking. Yes, I can read. I can do many things you would not expect.
Yep, one of the characters in Shelby Van Pelt’s novel Remarkably Bright Creatures is a sentient octopus, and he is actually the most interesting character in the whole book. I wish we had way more of him and way less of some of the other stuff in this book.
This is a novel about people in transition. Cameron is a 30-year-old man, but he acts like he’s a kid. He plays in a rock band with one of his best friends, he keeps getting fired from jobs, his girlfriend has finally had enough of him, his Aunt Jeanne is supportive, but frustrated by his lack of resilience. Sure, his mother abandoned him when he was nine and sure he doesn’t know who his father is but, c’mon. When Jeanne gives him a box of stuff his mom left behind, Cameron uses a clue in the box and sets out for Sowell Bay.
Tova is a taciturn Swede who lives in the house her father built. She has been grieving the loss of her son, Erik, for 38 years. She has never understood what happened to him; he was just about to go off to college; he was happy. Then, one night, he just didn’t come home.
Marcellus, watching from his tank, sees what other people don’t see. His perspective was my favourite and I wish there had been more of it. Known to be highly intelligent in the real world, Marcellus, the character in the book, sees what others do not. He calls humans “remarkably bright creatures”, but I think he is being generous.
I suspect that many readers would love this book. It gave me Bear Town vibes and I didn’t like that book at all. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a little too sweet and the characters’ manufactured quirkiness just wasn’t my cup of tea.
It takes a lot to really surprise me when it comes to thrillers. Amy Tintera’s novel Listen for the Lie did not surprise me, but it was an okay diversion from the shitstorm of the world in which we are currently living.
Lucy Chase returns to Plumpton, Texas for her grandmother’s– the feisty Beverly– 80th birthday. Lucy hasn’t been home in five years. Lucy’s life is pretty much off the rails: she’s just been fired and her boyfriend, Nathan, is on the precipice of kicking her to the curb. (Literally, since they live together.) Lucy really, really doesn’t want to go home.
When she left Texas for L.A., it was to escape the side-eye she was getting from everyone after the death of her best friend Savvy. Why all the suspicion? Well, no one knows quite how Savvy died, but what everyone does know is that she and Lucy were seen fighting and then Lucy was found covered in blood with no memory of what happened. No charges were ever brought against her, but that doesn’t really matter. Everyone thinks she killed Savvy. Geesh, even Lucy herself isn’t convinced that she’s not guilty.
Enter Ben Owens, host of the popular true crime podcast Listen for the Lie.
Is it true that no one believes Lucy Chase? Is she hiding something, or have the people of Plumpton accused an innocent woman of murder for five years?
Let’s find out.
Ben sets about interviewing all the people who know Lucy: her mother, her high school besties Maya and Emmett, Savvy’s ‘boyfriend’ du jour Colin, Savvy’s family and Lucy’s ex-husband, Matt. Eventually, Lucy agrees to talk on the record. I am sure that if you’d listened to this novel on audio you would have had an interesting reading experience, but I am not an audio reader.
It’s hard to say why this book wasn’t a winner for me. Maybe it was because I didn’t really like any of these characters, including Lucy herself (who spends a lot of time fantasizing about how to kill the various people she encounters.) The podcast scripts in novels has certainly been done before (Sadie, None of This is True) and here it is used to offer up potential explanations, and perhaps to incriminate other people.
When Lucy does finally start to remember what happened, it’s just a bit over-the-top. For me, I would slot Listen for the Lie in the okay category. The writing, the mystery, the reading experience were all okay.
I suspect others will like like it a lot more than I did.
High school junior Joel Higgins has a hard time speaking his truth, so instead he writes texts to people: his principal, his best friend, Andy, and Eli, the girl on whom he has a major crush. He doesn’t actually send the texts, though.
Joel lives with his parents and five-year-old brother, Jace. He hasn’t really found his niche yet. He says “Basically the things that I am good at, they don’t teach in high school.” Other than Eli, Joel is pretty solitary. “I’m always surrounded by people, but I have no real friends. […] The things most kids care about don’t matter to me.”
Joel (and Eli) volunteer at the local soup kitchen as part of their graduation requirements. Many of the people who come in for food are veterans who have been abandoned by the system. Joel forms a sort of attachment to one of these men, and this relationship – although this man does not speak – starts to crack through Joel’s protective shell.
Words We Don’t Say cares very much about words, actually. When Joel’s English teacher suggests his students read all the banned books they can get their hands on (after ranting about how books like Winnie the Pooh have been banned because the bears are anthropomorphized and don’t wear pants), Joel realizes that
free speech [was] something we should protect even if that means sometimes we had to hear stuff that made us uncomfortable and how lucky we were to read whatever we wanted to read even if that only meant sitting on the curb and reading a book out loud to a man who has a Purple Heart that came with delusions and a heartbreak of an illness that nobody could fix.
This book is quite often very funny, but also filled with heart and empathy for a wide variety of characters. Joel eventually starts to understand that he is not the only person who has to carry a broken heart around with him, and it is only when he really starts to reach out to people that he starts down the path to healing.
If Ania Ahlborn’s novel The Devil Crept In had been the first book I’d read by her, I am not 100% positive that I would be adding her backlist to my TBR, but it was not. My first encounter with this author was her novel Brother and that book was both creepy and emotionally devastating and made my top books of the year list, pretty close to the top. This novels suffers only by comparison because The Devil Crept In is an objectively creepy book.
Ten-year-old Stevie lives with his deadbeat teenager bother, Duncan, his mother and his bully of a stepfather. Stevie has some weird ticks; his words jumble up in his head and come out sounding like nursery rhymes. And sometimes he’s prone to an overactive imagination, like that time he hallucinated and stuck his hand in the garbage disposal, losing a couple fingertips in the process.
Stevie’s best friend (and cousin) Jude, 12, lives next door. They are each other’s only friends and even though Jude is a bit of a hell raiser, was “tough [and] unforgiving”, Stevie worships him. Then one day, Jude vanishes.
Jude Brighton was gone, like he’d never existed; vanished as though he and Stevie hadn’t spent their entire lives stomping the pavement of Main Street and living the summer in those woods. To them, the ferns were landmarks. Each bend in Cedar Creek, a compass. If someone had chased Jude through those trees, he would have outrun them. If they had dragged him deep into the wilderness, he would have broken free.
But then, one day, Jude reappears. He doesn’t remember where he’s been and although the adults are certainly glad to see him, Stevie’s concern soon turns to dread because Jude is “Like a corpse brought back from the dead.”
There is another narrative thread in this novel and that belongs to Rosie Aleksander. I wasn’t quite as invested in this part of the novel because it felt like exposition — although it is necessary to the whole plot.
The action really ramps up in the last third of the book and I read until the wee hours (on a school night, no less) so that I could see how it would all wrap up. One thing I have admired about Ahlborn is her willingness to draw the reader down a dark path without the promise of a happy ending.
Those Across the River is my second novel by Christopher Buehlman (The Lesser Dead) and he now joins the ranks of my auto buy authors.
Frank Nichols and his soon-to-be-wife Eudora have just landed in Whitbrow, a backwater town in Georgia. Their life is a little bit in flux. Frank was essentially chased out of Chicago, where he’d worked at a college, because Eudora had been married to a colleague. The two meet at a faculty luncheon.
She was twenty, wearing a sweater the color of an Anjou pear. I was still built like the St. Ignatius basketball center I had been fifteen years before.
We were in love before the salads came.
It is 1935 and Frank is a WW1 veteran, prone to night terrors; Dora is a school teacher. They land in Whitbrow because Frank has inherited a property. The letter that tells him about this inheritance also cautions him to sell the property, that there is “bad blood” there, but with limited options, they decide to move. Frank is going to write the history of Savoyard Plantation, a derelict property owned by his ancestors.
As Frank and Dora settle into their new lives, they find it to be both secretive and charming. For one thing, the townspeople gather once a year to release pigs into the woods as a sort of sacrifice. But to what? Then there’s the plantation, which is located somewhere across the river, but Frank finds that no one is interested in taking him there. One of the locals tells him “Them woods is deep and mean.”
Just how mean? Well, it takes a while for Frank (and the reader) to figure out just what the heck is going on. Some readers might get frustrated with the slow pace at which the story unfolds, but I liked it. I really enjoy the way the Buehlman writes; he’s also a poet and it shows in his prose. One reviewer suggested that the main characters are wooden and the plot not that compelling, but I disagree. I was wholly invested in this story.
I won’t spoil the reveal. I did figure it out before the end, and while it isn’t a scary horror novel, it is atmospheric and a compelling read.
The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner’s YA debut, was one of my favourite books of 2024. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with reading his follow-up, Goodbye Days. Geesh. Who is this Jeff Zentner guy and why does he insist on breaking my heart?
Carver Briggs, aka Blade, would have been pretty excited about his final year at Nashville Arts Academy if he hadn’t just buried his three best friends: Blake Lloyd, Eli Bauer and Mars Edwards. Now, though, he has to navigate this last year of high school without the rest of the Sauce Crew and deal with the overwhelming guilt that he is, in fact, responsible for their deaths.
He doesn’t think he killed them on purpose. And he knows that no one thinks he “slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines.” But he did text Mars, who was driving, and the authorities did find Mars’s phone at the crash scene with a “half-composed text” to Carver. That was right before his friends slammed into the semi.
Now Carver is having panic attacks and debilitating feelings of guilt which are compounded by the fact that he is growing closer to Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend. It’s all too much. And he knows that he is not the only one who is suffering.
When Blake’s grandmother suggests that the two of them share a “goodbye day” for Blake, Carver is initially reluctant. She proposes that they spend a day together, doing the things that Blake used to love to do, and sharing their stories about him. A ‘goodbye day’ of sorts.
“Funny how people move through this word leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all these people put their puzzle pieces together.”
Goodbye Days is my first five star read of 2025. In all the ways I loved The Serpent King, I loved this one just as much. Zentner is so gifted at writing teenagers who are thoughtful and funny and broken and hopeful. This book was profoundly moving and yep, I cried.
For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.
A former student, someone for whom I have a lot of respect and admiration, encouraged (aka begged) me to read Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend, a book that was recently named #1 Book of the Century by the New York Times. I didn’t own the book and I don’t know whether I would have ever gotten around to reading the book given the state of my physical TBR pile, but I was next up for book club and so I chose this one, mostly in deference to Luke. Despite the fact that it was published in 2012 and is relatively popular (and has its own series on Prime), none of the members of my book club had ever read it.
This novel is the first of a quartet by the famously private Ferrante. Apparently, no one actually knows who she is, so the author’s name is actually a pseudonym, and since we don’t know very much about her, claims that My Brilliant Friend is autofiction is also an unfair characterization. How can we say the events of the novel are drawn from the author’s own life if we don’t know anything about her? Or him? Whether or not who the author is makes any real difference is beside the point at any rate.
Luke loved it. Two of the women in my book club of eight didn’t finish it. Three women loved it. (My best friend, Michelle, is on book three and has already watched the entire series.) Two women hated it (one of these is one of the DNFers). And two of us (myself included) felt just meh about it.
In a nutshell, the novel opens when 60-something Elena (also known as Lenu) receives a phone call from Rino, the adult son of her oldest friend, Lila (also known as Raffaella or Lina). Lila is missing. Poof. Vanished. This news seems unsurprising to Elena even though “it’s been three decades since [Lila] told [her] that she wanted to disappear without leaving a trace.”
Elena seems annoyed by the news and she doesn’t offer Rino much in the way of comfort. Instead she thinks
I was really angry.
We’ll see who wins this time, I said to myself. I turned the computer on and began to write– all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory.
And that’s essentially what My Brilliant Friend is, the written account of the friendship/rivalry love/hate relationship between these two girls beginning in the 1950s, in a neighbourhood outside of Naples, Italy. It’s the story of poverty, crime, the power of education, loyalty, family and friendship.
This is what Luke said:
“I loved the portrayal of friendship and how central it was to forming them into who they are. I loved the background setting of Naples and how poverty is corrupting everyone’s life. All of the characters come alive for me and I find her such an incredibly powerful writer. I was so invested in Lila and Elena’s relationship. […] I think she’s a beautiful writer telling a wonderful story…”
Luke and I talk about books whenever we have the chance. When he was in my Young Adult Lit class he read more than anyone and he read widely. If I talked about a book I really loved, chances were pretty high that he would read it. So it hurt me a little bit not to love this book as much as he loved this book. For me, I found it sort of slow and dry and although the friendship between the two characters was well-drawn, I didn’t especially care about either of them. I certainly feel no compulsion to carry on with the books, although I may watch the series this winter.
The New York Times compiled their Top 100 books by asking 503 literary luminaries to provide their list of all-time best books based on the following criteria: impact, originality and lasting influence. It’s an interesting list which demonstrates just how subjective a ‘best books’ list can be. Number 2 was The Warmth of Other Suns, a book I have never heard of by an author I have never heard of. Kazou Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go barely made the top ten. Atonement by Ian McEwan was #26. 26!!! Both my children would say Atonement is one of the best books ever written…and I would agree. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer (although not without controversy), came in at #46. Station Eleven was #93.
I tasked the ladies in my book club to pick their top three books of all time based on the criteria provided by the Times. We’ll share those Top 3 lists at our next meeting and with their permission, I will share them with you here after we meet.
The fact that no one reads the same book is one of the best things about reading, but I am sad that I didn’t love My Brilliant Friend more than I did. Sorry, Luke.
Although I am posting this review on Jan 9, 2025, C.J. Tudor’s (The Chalk Man, The Hiding Place) novel The Drift was actually my last read of 2024. I finished it up poolside while on a family vacation in Florida. It’s a cheat that it’s ending up in my book count for 2025, but who cares?
Told from three different perspectives, The Drift is a dystopian horror novel that concerns three different groups of people, all of whom seem to be stranded.
There’s Hannah, a medical student who had been on her way to the Retreat, when the bus she was on crashed. That’s not all. “Snowstorm outside, coach tipped over and half buried in a drift.” And Hannah figures abut half the passengers are dead.
Meg wakes up in a cable car suspended a thousand feet in the air. She’s not alone, but nobody can really remember how they got into this situation. Worse, no one is really sure how they’re going to get out of it. It’s a blizzard out there.
Finally, there’s Carter, one of a group pf people holed up at The Retreat.
…the Retreat was large. And luxurious. The living room was all polished wooden floors, thick shaggy rugs and worn leather sofas. There was a massive flatscreen TV and DVD player, games consoles and a stereo. A wooden sideboard housed stacks of CDs, dog-eared novels and a collection of board games. The kitchen was modern and sleek with a huge American fridge freezer and a polished granite island.
Residents at the Retreat were well looked after.
What these three groups of people (and our narrators) have in common is part of the fun of this locked room, puzzle box of a novel. There’s a mysterious virus (C.J. Tudor came up with the idea in 2019, just before Covid slammed its way into our lives), a creepy group of people called Whistlers, some gross body horror and lots of wondering who can be trusted. The voices of the three characters aren’t necessarily distinct, but the pages will practically turn themselves as you try to figure just how everything fits together.
One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is to reflect on the reading year that was, and Jamie aka The Perpetual Page-Turner makes this very easy to do by providing this list of questions.
Number Of Books I Read: 66 Number of Re-Reads: 1 Genre I Read The Most From: literary fiction/YA (not really genres, I know – but in those categories I read a lot of thrillers, mysteries, realistic fic)
This is an epic story because it takes place over many years. It is also a story that moves swiftly. There’s a lot of dialogue in this story and so despite its length it almost begs to be read in one sitting. I think Whitaker’s super power is his characters. I loved Saint and Patch, who are revealed to us through their actions and their dialogue. But they are not the only characters to love. There’s Chief Nix, Norma and Sammy, too. I felt like I knew and cared for each and every one of them.
Maybe if I hadn’t read The Roanoke Girlsor The Familiar Darkfirst, I would have liked I Did It For You more than I did. I read a lot of thrillers, and this one stacks up just fine against many of them. But I was really hoping for the sucker punch The Familiar Dark offered, or the dark family secret hidden in the depths of The Roanoke Girls. For me, this just didn’t have the same emotional depth as those two books. That said, the last third of the book definitely outpaced the first two thirds and while I suspected one thing, I was surprised by another revelation. So, not a total miss – really not a miss at all, just not as good as I’d hoped.
3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?
Tim Johnston’s Distant Sons surprised me when I realized that the two main characters, Sean (Descent) and Dan (The Current) were known to me. I was delighted to spend more time with them. Johnston is a must-read author for me.
4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did)?
My most recommended books this year have been: The Serpent King, Shiner, Distant Sons. Loads of people are already reading All the Colors of the Dark, so I don’t feel as though I have to talk about that one as much.
5. Favorite new author you discovered in 2024?
Jeff Zenter. I can’t tell you how much I LOVED The Serpent King. I will also be reading everything of Amy Jo Burns I can get my hands on.
6. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?
I am not going to pretend to understand anything about the science that happens in this book, but I honestly don’t think that it matters all too much if you do. I really liked this sci fi/thriller hybrid novel.
8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?
I couldn’t put Talking at Night down. It isn’t a thriller, nor is it action-packed. But I read it in two long gulps.
9. Book You Read In 2024 That You Would Be MOST Likely To Re-Read Next Year?
It is unlikely I will re-read anything next year that I read this year. So many books, so little time.
10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2024?
Here are two of my favourite covers of 2024.
11. Most memorable character of 2024?
It would be impossible not to include the titular character of Demon Copperhead in a list of memorable characters. That said, I would also include Wren Bird from Shiner, all the characters from All the Colors of the Dark, and Dill, Travis and Lydia from The Serpent King.
13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2024?
Lots of food for thought in Demon Copperhead.
14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2024 to finally read?
The Serpent King (2016) has been in my classroom library for ages, but when someone on Litsy mentioned they thought I would love it, I moved it up the ladder.
When I think about the qualities of a five star book, I am looking for a great story, great writing, realistic characters. Icing on the cake is a book that makes me laugh – which I did. Sometimes these characters, particularly Lydia, say amusing, quippy things. The needle goes up a notch – don’t ask me why – if a book makes me cry. The Serpent King definitely made me cry.
15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2024?
“Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Lydia said. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won’t stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written.”- Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King
25. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?
The Do-Over by Lynn Painter is a frothy confection of a novel and although I tend to like my romances more tart than sweet, I couldn’t help but fall in love with Emilie as she tries to find a way out of the time loop she seems stuck in.
26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2024?
The Serpent King 100% made me cry. I cannot tell you how much I loved the three teens in this book. These characters are so heartbreakingly human that when tragedy strikes, it rips your heart out. I also welled up reading All the Colors of the Dark and Mayflies.
27. Hidden Gem Of The Year?
I am not sure how ‘hidden’ it was, but I really enjoyed Sweet Dream Baby by Sterling Watson. It captures the innocence of youth, and the sharp tang of sexual longing and sets it all to the soundtrack of the music of the period. The book doesn’t go where you expect it to and ends up being quite a bit darker, too. I pulled it off my shelf, where it has been languishing for ages, and it was a pleasant surprise.
28. Book That Crushed Your Soul?
I guess that would have to be The Serpent King and All the Colors of the Dark. But I would also add Mayflies.
29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2024?
Chasing the Boogeyman is a clever and compelling (fake) true crime book complete with photos, that is also a nostalgic look at coming home again. It is clear that Chizmar is a fan of the genre and he certainly does it justice here. I really enjoyed my read and I would definitely read more by this author.
30. Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?
I don’t think I read a book this year that made me mad.
1. New favorite book blog/Bookstagram/Youtube channel you discovered in 2023?
I have really enjoyed Night Nerves take on horror fiction this year. I am also a big fan of Canadian content creator, Nick’s Books are Sick. Both are also on Instagram.
2. Favorite post you wrote in 2024?
Although I didn’t love Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things, I loved writing about it because I love talking about vampires and this book references lots of my favourites. First of all, she quotes Buffy the Vampire Slayer right out of the gate (crypt?) and anyone who knows me knows that Buffy and I are tight. I like vampires in general; they are my favourite fantasy creature (except for the sparkly ones).
3. Favorite bookish related photo you took in 2024?
Nada.
4. Best bookish event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, etc.)?
I wrote a short story that was included in a local anthology, Lost in the Fog, and we had a book launch in November, which was cool. The book is available on Amazon.
5. Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2024?
Any interaction with other readers is lovely.
6. Most challenging thing about blogging or your reading life this year?
I had a miserable few weeks in April when a close family member’s health declined. I barely read anything for about six weeks, which is why I didn’t make my reading goal. 😦 It was really hard to get any momentum back.
7. Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?
Corrupt takes the prize again with 766 views. What is it about this post?
This year my blog had almost 60,000 views, with an average of 172 views per day! When I started this blog in 2004, my average views per day was 4. 🙂
8. Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?
I am gratified that people are visiting, even if they mostly lurk.
9. Best bookish discovery (book related sites, book stores, etc.)?
I think I only learned about The Folio Society this year. I don’t own one yet, but I am hoping to start collecting some of my favourite classics beginning in 2025. I also made an account on Fable this year, although I haven’t spent much time there. I haven’t used it very much yet. (I am The Ludic Reader there, too.)
10. Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?
Nope.
1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2024 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2025?
There are about 500 books I didn’t get to in 2024.
2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2025 (non-debut)?
My Brilliant Friend is my book club pick for our meeting early in January. I am going to start reading it at the beginning of the new year. It was recommended by a former student with whom I talk about books all the time. He loved it and begged me to read it. Despite its accolades, no one in my book club had read it yet.
3. 2025 Debut You Are Most Anticipating?
This look interesting:
Just Want You Here – Meredith Turits (March 11)
From the publisher: An intimate and deeply moving coming-of-age novel about second chances and the inextricable bonds between lovers and friends.
4. Series Ending/A Sequel You Are Most Anticipating in 2025?
Nope.
5. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2025
New year, same answer. Keep on keeping on. Maybe leverage Insta a little better. Or try to be more active on Fable. I dunno.
A frothy confection of a novel and although I tend to like my romances more tart than sweet, I couldn’t help but fall in love with Emilie as she tries to find a way out of the time loop she seems stuck in.
Captures the innocence of youth, and the sharp tang of sexual longing and sets it all to the soundtrack of the music of the period. The book doesn’t go where you expect it to, and ends up being quite a bit darker, too.
A breathless romp through a malevolent fairy tale world, but it is also a mystery and a timeless tale of what sacrifices siblings might be willing to make for each other.
While the monsters might be dreamt from White’s very scary imagination, the big ideas- of acceptance, or personal autonomy, of the dangers of blindly following- are anything but fiction.
For anyone who has more behind them than ahead of them, this book will certainly speak to the person you were, the memories, and people you shared the journey with.
Shiner is about the way “mountain men steered their own stories, and women were their oars.” It’s about finding your voice and making choices. It is about family. I loved every single second of it.
When I think about the qualities of a five star book, I am looking for a great story, great writing, realistic characters. Icing on the cake is a book that makes me laugh – which I did. The needle goes up a notch – don’t ask me why – if a book makes me cry and this one definitely made me cry.
The fact that I had to stay awake – in fact, couldn’t fall asleep even after I finished – to find out what happened to these people I had fallen in love with should tell you everything you need to know about this book.
Addendum: In December I read Talking at Night by Claire Daverly and it would have most certainly have made my top 20 list, if I had read it before the list was compiled in late November.
Andrew McCarthy was a member – although according to his memoir Brat: an 80s story only peripherally – of the “Brat Pack“, a group of young up-and-coming actors making their way in the 1980s. The moniker comes from a less-than-flattering Rolling Stone article which was initially intended as a bit of press for Emilio Esteves in advance of St. Elmo’s Fire, but was ultimately “a stinging indictment of a group of young, successful actors.” (Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald)
McCarthy’s membership in this group was reduced to a footnote in the article.
one of the New York-based actors in St. Elmo’s Fire, a costar says “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity, I don’t think he’ll make it.”
I was coming of age at the same time as these young actors were. In fact, McCarthy is just one year younger than me…and it is almost impossible to think of this guy being in his 60s. I loved St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink (you couldn’t be a person of a certain age the 80s and not love anything John Hughes did).
Brat: an 80s story isn’t a tell-all memoir. It’s an introspective look at a kid from New Jersey who stumbled into acting in high school. The youngest of four boys, McCarthy was introverted and lacked ambition, but he decides, after a fluke part in the school play, that he has discovered something that he actually might be good at.
He heads to NYC and fumbles around, taking classes and drinking himself into oblivion. He lands some great roles and is definitely in some iconic movies, but he eventually shifted to a behind-the-camera rolls and has directed many, many episodes of television – everything from Orange is the New Black to New Amsterdam.He has also written a travel memoir, The Longest Way Home, and the YA novel Just Fly Away.
Although Brat wasn’t particularly juicy, I really enjoyed my read. I knew all the players and I liked how honest McCarthy was about his own shortcomings, idiosyncrasies, and insecurities. He’s self-deprecating and he doesn’t throw anyone under the bus – except maybe himself.
The Ludic Reader 