I guess I have been spoiled by Thomas H. Cook, who never fails to amaze me with his layered and intelligent mysteries. Hallie Ephron’s debut novel Never Tell A Lie, while not horrible, wasn’t all that the praise had promised.
Ivy and her handsome husband, David, are hosting a yard sale at their Victorian home. Ivy is hugely pregnant and she’s nesting like crazy, trying to rid the house of years of accumulated junk – most of which belonged to the previous owner. She is approached by a woman, Melinda, with whom she went to high school. Melinda used to play in Ivy and David’s house as a child and she asks if she can see it once more. David offers to give her a tour and Melinda disappears. Sounds pretty fishy, eh?
What follows is a by-the-numbers mystery where Ivy and David must fight to prove their innocence and everything is suspect. The plot unravels at a pretty quick pace but it’s a clunker. Puzzle pieces turn up relatively easily and lock into place without too much effort and even Ephron’ s attempts to toss the reader some plausible red herrings are only mildly diverting.
Ultimately a book like this depends on the reader’s investment in the character. Ivy isn’t unlikable; she actually manages quite well considering she’s nine months pregnant. She’s resilient and smart and figures out the mystery of Melinda’s disappearance quite handily.
Before I talk about Allison Pearson’s delightful novel, I Think I Love You, I have to talk about David Cassidy. I think it’s important for you to understand my total predisposition to love this book based on my adolescent feelings about David. I LOVED HIM! Oh, I know I wasn’t alone – millions of girls my age loved him. It’s just that I loved him more. And to illustrate the deep personal connection we had, let me tell you about what happened to me in 1995 at the backstage door of the London production of Blood Brothers. For four weeks only, David Cassidy played the role of Mickey. As luck would have it I was living in England at the time, where I’d been teaching high school English in a little town outside of Birmingham. We were due to fly home for Christmas and so we arranged to go down to London early so I could see the play. I was 34.
Let me back up. My love for David Cassidy came on the heels of my love for Davy Jones (The Monkees). Call me fickle, but who hasn’t heard “Day Dream Believer” and fallen just a little bit in love with Davy’s accented voice?
Then The Partridge Family debuted on television and I was knocked off my feet. I joined the fan club (wish I still had that little plastic record they sent!) I bought TigerBeat magazines by the truckload; I still have have scrapbooks and pictures galore. I sent hundreds of friendship books and slams through the mail. (Anyone else remember those?) I bought all the records – still have them – and the puka shells and the Indian cotton shirts. I believe when I was 13, I even had David’s shag hair style. Trust me, it didn’t look nearly as good on me!
So to be sitting in a theatre where I would be hearing David sing live was slightly surreal. I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous. I was dreading that moment when I learned that my childhood memories of him were eclipsed by the reality. After all, he was 20 years older, too. And what if he couldn’t really sing? I shouldn’t have worried. While he didn’t sing enough, when I did hear that clear beautiful voice live for the first time it took me straight back to my childhood. I think I started to cry after the first note. I think I cried pretty much through the rest of the performance.
The musical was spectacular and so was David. After it was over, I said “I need to meet him.” In my head, our eyes would lock, I would invite him for drinks and because I was from North America and so was he, he’d agree and it would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I wasn’t counting on the fact that at least 75 other women of my vintage would also be waiting for their opportunity to have their moment with David. Even when I turned the corner of the theatre and saw them all standing there, I was still convinced that he’d pick me.
Finally the stage door opened and David appeared, with Petula Clark (the hussy!) on his arm. There was an audible intake of breath from all the ladies — and an amused chuckle from their long suffering husbands — and then David spoke: “Thanks for coming. I’m happy to sign autographs for everyone, but if I could just ask you to take a step back that would be great.”
I hung back and rehearsed what I would say to David. “Hi. I’m from Canada. I’ve loved you since I was 10. I have all your records. Do you want to go for a drink?” Something like that. Not very eloquent, I guess, but it was the best I could do considering the blood pounding in my head and my heart racing in my chest. David Cassidy!OMG!
The crowd didn’t exactly thin out, but as women got their autographs, they’d move aside and let others have their opportunity. The kind lady standing next to me offered me her pen when I realized I didn’t have one and then…
I was standing in front of him, playbill in hand, staring up into those soulful hazel eyes (he was standing on a step; height isn’t one of DC’s attributes, sadly!) I think David said “Hi. Thanks for coming.” I think I said, “Grdodvnlsnolrijosrivl.” He signed my programme and then I burst into tears and had to be led away.
Soon afterwards, David and Petula got into a fancy car of some sort and sped off into the London night. I wish I could say that this was the only time a celebrity has made me cry. I’ll save my story about David Boreanaz for another day, though.
Here’s a great clip of David and his brother Shaun talking about performing in Blood Brothers on Broadway on the Regis and Kathy Lee Show. Near the end, they sing together. It never fails to make me teary.
All this brings me to Allison Pearson’s novel, I Think I Love You.
Petra is thirteen, Welsh and hopelessly devoted to David Cassidy. She remarks early on in the story:
Honest, it’s amazing the things you can know about someone you don’t know. I knew the date of his birth – April 12, 1950. He was the typical Aries, but without the Arian’s stubbornness. I knew his height and his weight and his favourite drink, 7Up. I knew the names of his parents and his stepmother, the Broadway musical star. I knew all about his love of horses, which made perfect sense to me because when you’re that famous it must be comforting to be around someone who doesn’t know or care what famous is.
I Think I Love You captures — in glorious detail — that first giddy adolescent crush just about every girl has had on a celebrity. Petra is a very real creation. She’s smart and beautiful (but not in the right way for a 13 year old) and she plays the cello. She longs to be popular like her classmate, Gillian. Her one true friend, Sharon, shares her love of David and the two girls spend hours in Sharon’s bedroom, making scrapbooks and taking turns kissing David’s posters. (Petra’s stern German mother would never let her put posters of a pop star on her walls.)
Petra’s story is paralleled by Bill’s. Fresh out of college with a degree in English, Bill is hired to write for The Essential David Cassidy Magazine. Not just hired to write, hired to be David Cassidy — writing notes about his life and answering letters from fans. There’s a hysterical moment when he arrives for his interview and mistakes a picture of David on the cover of a magazine for a girl, exclaiming she’s not his type.
Petra and Bill’s lives collide when they both attend David’s famous White City concert. At the height of his career, when David Cassidy was pretty much the biggest star on the planet, he played a show at this London venue and a young girl died. David retired from performing after that.
Pearson’s novel isn’t just a trip down memory lane, though. We revisit Petra as an adult just as her life begins to unravel – as lives sometimes do. Her mother has just died and her husband, Marcus, has recently announced that he is leaving her. Her daughter, Molly, is 13 and has her own celebrity crush on Leonardo Di Caprio. Suddenly Petra is adrift. The life she thought she built is falling apart and she isn’t quite sure what to do about that. Her salvation comes, strangely enough, in a pink envelope addressed in her very own hand.
I Think I Love You was so much fun to read. I was that girl — totally in love with a pop star. I have also been adult Petra, trying desperately to hold onto the dangling ends of my fraying life. Lots of touchstones in this book for me.
And I don’t think you have to have been a David Cassidy fan to appreciate the references to those popstar magazines we all read religiously. Sure, being of a certain age allows certain references to resonate more strongly, but I Think I Love You has lots to say about first love, childhood friendships, dreams dashed and even more miraculously, realized.
Peter Straub, a writer I have admired for several decades said that Norman Partridge is “probably the most exciting and original voice in horror literature to have appeared in the last decade.” Coming from the man who wrote Floating Dragon and Ghost Story, two books I read with the lights totally on, this is high praise.
An unnamed Midwestern town is cursed. Every Halloween the October Boy (or Ol’ Hacksaw Face or Sawtooth Jack) rises from the cornfields and heads to town where all the eligible teenage boys try to kill him. They’ve been denied food for the past few days and the October Boy has a gut full of candy. This year, Pete McCormick is one of those boys. He’s had a rough few months: his mother has died of cancer, his father’s grief led him to the bottle and that led to the unemployment line. Killing the October Boy is Pete’s way out of town because that’s what the prize is: a way out of the one-horse town he lives in and free everything for his dad and little sister.
What Pete doesn’t know is that the October Boy is on a quest, too. He has to make it to the church by midnight and so he’s every bit as determined as Pete. Neither of them know the town’s dark history or its secrets, though.
I liked Dark Harvest. Was it the scariest book I’ve ever read? Uh, no. It was unusual, though. Creative. And strangely, I sort of felt myself rooting (no pun intended – but you’ll have to read the book to know what I mean) for both Pete and the October Boy. It’s a short book, you could read it in a couple hours if you were so inclined. Save it for Halloween night.
One Day was the first book of our book club’s 2011-12 reading season (and our 12th year together!) After last year’s (mostly) snooze-a-palooza, it was terrific to come back to some current fiction. One Day comes with a little bit of hype, but I think it totally delivers on its promise.
Emma and Dexter meet on the eve of their graduation from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. Although Emma has admired Dex from afar, this is their first real encounter and she is totally smitten. Although they come from different worlds (Emma is working class and Dexter comes from money) their one (unconsummated) night begins a friendship that we see in snapshots over twenty years. The beauty of Nicholl’s novel is that we revisit Dex and Emma on the same day, July 15th, and sometimes threads of their lives are left dangling.
In the beginning, both Emma and Dexter suffer from post-college malaise. What are we going to do with our lives? Dexter travels and Emma writes him long letters. He falls into a plum job in TV production. Emma works at a crappy tex-mex restaurant, then becomes a teacher. Through it all they prop each other up and tear each other down in the manner of friends who might be more if only they could get their act together.
This is one of the things Nicholls handles so beautifully in this novel. He juggles their lives – their various liaisons and miscommunications- with such finesse. Even when Dexter is acting like a complete prat we see exactly what Emma sees in him. When Emma is perhaps too serious, we just want to shake her. They are beautifully realized characters, flawed and heartbreakingly fragile.
But Nicholls has even more in store for the reader. The book’s denouement adds a layer of richness to the story, bringing us full circle and allowing the reader to consider the infinite possibilities inherent in just one meeting. Oh, the difference a day makes.
An epistle is a letter sent to a person or group of people that is generally elegant, formal and didactic in nature. This is the form of Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger’s collaborative novel, The Letters.
Sam and Hadley West have lost their only child, Paul, in a plane crash in Alaska, where he had gone to teach. The loss of their son throws their marriage into turmoil and they are now on opposite sides of the continent waiting for their divorce to become final. Hadley, an artist, is holed up in a little cottage on an island off the coast of Maine. Sam, a sports journalist, has gone to Alaska in an effort to recreate Paul’s last days and see the site of the plane crash. The Letters (no surpise here) is the shared correspondence between the two as they work through their individual grief and slowly make their way back to each other.
In theory, this sort of novel is fraught with problems from the get-go. First of all, it’s all tell. Dear Hadley, today I did this. Dear Sam, today I thought this. I mean, people don’t write this sort of letter anymore, do they? Geesh, I don’t think people write letters at all anymore and I say this as a life-long letter writer who might write a half dozen letters a year now– most of them scribbled notes. So, as a reader, if you can get past the conceit, you then have to decide whether the novel has the emotional resonance the topic deserves.
I liked The Letters. Hadley and Sam were two people faced with an unbearable tragedy. Their letters allow them to work through their grief, unload some of their anxiety and face up to past mistakes. It also allows them the opportunity (and the reader, too) to trace the trajectory of their lives – from the moment they met to this place they now find themselves…where they need each other more than anything and yet make the very human mistake of pushing each other away.
In less competent hands, The Letters might have been a hot mess, but Rice and Monninger do an admirable job of making Sam and Hadley people with real flaws and their story should be relatable to anyone who has ever lost a child or almost walked away from the very person they need most.
Jane Green (author of books like The Beach House and Promises to Keep) says Sarah Duncan’s novel Adultery for Beginners is“completely engrossing. Like having an affair with (thankfully) none of the guilt.” I find that endorsement sort of strange, really. Like we all dream about having affairs or something. Is there something titillating about them?
Duncan’s novel tells the story of Isabel and Neil. They’ve been married for a while, living the ex-pat life because of Neil’s job as an engineer and have only recently returned home to England with their children, Katie and Michael. Isabel has been a devoted wife and mother, but now that she’s back in England and her children are a little older, she’s decided that she wants to work, perhaps in an office, filing.
“Darling, it’s easy to see it’s years since you’ve been in an office. No one does filing anymore; it’s all on computer,” is her husband’s useful response to that notion.
But Isabel does get a break, through a casual conversation with another mother, and soon she finds herself working for Patrick, a gorgeous egomaniac who somehow manages to find Isabel devastatingly attractive even though Isabel herself feels rather frumpy.
The lesson here: all affairs end badly. Yes, in the beginning, it’s all exciting and sexy but Isabel is not unattached. She has responsibilities which soon get short shrift as she spends her afternoons having wild sex with Patrick. It doesn’t take Isabel very long to figure out that in order to have what she thinks she wants, she’s going to have to give up everything she already has. It’s certainly not a new dilemma, but Duncan does a good job of making Isabel sympathetic, especially to readers of a certain age.
And Neil, as it turns out, is not the man scorned and that opens up a whole other set of problems. If I have one niggle about the book it’s that the suffering and recriminations – when it comes – isn’t really realistic. And Isabel, for all her hard-won freedom as she works out her issues and takes the steps necessary to find the woman she left behind in order to be a wife and mother, falls rather too quickly, if not exactly into the arms of another man, into a man-like safety net. That said, Adultery for Beginners is entertaining and well-written.
Beautiful real estate agent Annie O’Sullivan is just finishing up an open house when her world comes crashing down. That’s when David arrives, begging for an opportunity to see the house before she packs up. David, however, isn’t what he seems and Annie’s life is about to get ugly. David abducts Annie and holds her captive for many months in an isolated cabin in the woods.
This is Chevy Stevens’ ( who is very beautiful, btw – not that it matters, but she is) first novel and in many ways, it’s a doozy. The first person narrative alternates between sessions with Annie’s shrink where she recounts the details of her horrific captivity and the details of her arduous journey back to emotional health.
I found Still Missing quite a gripping book. Annie is no shrinking violet. During her time in the cabin she is constantly trying to outmanoeuvre David – not an easy task because he’s batshit crazy. Annie’s fear is palpable, but equally convincing is her desire to stay alive and it’s that motivation that keeps the story humming along.
What didn’t work so well for me was the novel’s resolution. I’m one of those people who doesn’t need the neat and tidy ending, loose ends gathered into a orderly bow. Likely most readers won’t be bothered by how it all ties up because the mystery of who orchestrated Annie’s abduction isn’t really what’s facinating about Still Missing.
It was bound to happen sooner or later; my first Cook novel to elicit a lukewarm reaction. That’s not to say it was horrible; I don’t actually think it’s possible for Thomas H. Cook to write a horrible novel. The Cloud of Unknowing was a bit of a bust for me, though.
David and Diana Sears were raised by their brilliant but schizophrenic father. Now they are adults and they carry all the baggage from that often difficult childhood. David is a married lawyer with a teenage daughter. Diana is also married, with a young son who suffers from mental illness. We meet David as he sits in an interrogation room at the local police station. Diana’s young son, Jason, has drowned and Diana blames her husband, Mark. More than blames him; Diana thinks Mark has murdered their son.
The Cloud of Unknowing cleverly weaves David’s deposition and the backstory necessary to make Diana’s story both believable and suspect. David is, as many of Cook’s protagonists are, an average man – honest and hard working. This novel has less to do with the mystery surrounding Jason’s death, and more to do with David’s feelings of helplessness as Diana’s fears about Mark grow and as she pulls other people into her orbit.
I can’t fault Cook’s writing. As always, I turned the pages quickly. The Cloud of Unknowing just didn’t have either the emotional payoff or the clever twist I’ve come to expect from Cook’s novels. My ho-hum feelings about this novel in no way undermine my deep admiration for Cook’s work. I intend to read every single one of his novels: I love him that much.
For many years I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly and for a while Stephen King contributed a monthly column called ‘Pop of King’ where he rattled on about pop culture – movies and music and such. I love King; I love the way he writes and I love his ‘every man’ sensibilities when it comes to popular culture. Every year he did a book round up – sort of a top ten books list and I would avidly copy down the names of books I found interesting. That’s how Sandra Brown’s novel hello, darkness came to be on my tbr shelf. Actually, although the book was on my tbr list for a few years, I only just purchased it in May when I discovered it at the annual library book sale. I was familiar with Brown’s name, but hadn’t ever read anything by her.
hello, darkness is the story of reclusive radio host Paris Gibson. Every night she listens to people tell their tales of woe and plays them a song to cheer them up. And then she gets a call from a man called Valentino who tells her that his girlfriend had acted on some advice she’d given her and dumped him and now Paris is going to pay. “I’m going to make you sorry that you gave her that advice,” he warns her. He vows to hold her, torture her and kill her within 72 hours.
The girl in question is the wild child daughter of a local judge and once the authorities know she’s missing, they bring in police psychologist Dean Malloy to help solve her disappearance and her connection to Valentino. This isn’t exactly good news for Paris. She and Dean have a history. You know what that means, right? All sorts of unfulfilled lust and crossed wires and missteps until they finally get it…um…together.
In the meantime, there are red herring subplots galore to keep the reader guessing about Valentino’s true identity. It comes right down to the wire, and then all is resolved. I have no doubt that fans of the genre (romantic suspense thriller) will be wildy satisfied with both the suspense and the romance. As for me – I was wondering why it made King’s top ten. Sure, it was a decent thriller and Brown is a capable writer – but it felt formulaic for me.
Still, chuck it in your beach bag. It’ll kill a satisfying hour or two.
Emily Giffin is really popular, I guess, but I’d never read her. I’m a huge consumer of chick flicks, but not much of a reader of chick lit. I tend to like my fiction a little grittier and heroines in these sorts of books almost always settle – at least in my view.
Not even a full year after she’s married upstanding and handsome lawyer, Andy, (who also happens to be the older brother of her best friend, Margot), Ellen runs into Leo crossing a busy Manhattan street. Leo is “the one who got away” although in this instance, it’s more like the one who fizzled away. Ellen is sent into a tailspin of memories and she indulges every one of them, glossing over how Leo was kind of a schmuck at the end of their relationship.
Okay – so far I’m with you Ellen. I mean, seriously, who hasn’t had the same sort of intense relationship – the one where you’re up all night…um…talking? But Ellen has moved on from all that. Now she’s a successful photographer and Andy, he’s a great guy. She hasn’t settled. At least she doesn’t think she’s settled until Leo comes crashing back into her life.
And that’s when my cell phone rang and I heard his voice. A voice I hadn’t hears in eight years and sixteen days.
“Was that really you? he asked me. His voice was even deeper than I remembered, but otherwise it was like stepping back in time. Like finishing a conversation only hours old.
“Yes,” I said.
Oh, Ellen. Don’t go down that road. But we all do. We all wonder about the might have beens and question the choices we make. Ellen’s marital bliss is about to get bumpy as she hides her reunion from her husband and best friend, and then makes all sorts of minor adjustments to the truth so she can sort through her feelings for Leo.
The truth, it turns out, is more complicated than it appears on the surface. And so is the first year of any marriage. When Ellen and Andy move to Atlanta to be closer to Andy’s family, sister Margot included, Ellen is further tested.
I’ll give Giffin props; Love the One You’re With isn’t sheer fluff because Ellen is a character who is deeply conflicted about her feelings even though she never doubts her love for her husband and the life they’re building together. The new improved Leo is worth a second look, but Ellen is also mature enough to know what the consequences of taking that leap of faith might be.
I guess I have been spoiled by Thomas H. Cook, who never fails to amaze me with his layered and intelligent mysteries. Hallie Ephron’s debut novel Never Tell A Lie, while not horrible, wasn’t all that the praise had promised.
The Ludic Reader 