A Likely Story

A Likely Story, is such a fun mystery novel written by Leigh McMullan Abramson.

Written as a coming of age story about Isabel Manning who grows up the daughter of a famous author, Ward Manning,  and her mother, Claire, the perfect society hostess.  Ward is the epitome of a selfish self  made man.  He thinks only of himself and never wants to reveal the low income family he left behind.   

Claire, who cam from a wealthy family but has put her devotion to her husband and his career before everything else.  Until she has her daughter Isabelle.  Isabelle becomes here reason for staying in the marriage and she focuses all her energy creating a wonderful life for her daughter.   Ward, who never wanted children, now finds he loves encouraging his daughter to emulate him. For Isabelle, being an author becomes her life's dream.  

When her mother dies unexpectedly,  Ward and Isabelle's lives are turned upside down.  Their worlds were dependent on Claire for success and connection.  As Isabelle struggles to write a publishable novel, Ward is struggling to write his final work.  He tries a variety of ways to find the inspiration that usually helps him write and nothing is working.    Isabelle is looking for her father's adulation and publication and neither are coming through. Though the one person who adores her, Brian tries to be there for Isabelle she cannot see how he cares and ignores him.

The novel moves through the narrative with different voices telling the story from different viewpoints, and there are secrets and unexplained tragedies that are revealed slowly as the plot unfolds.

When Isabelle finally discovers what her mother sacrificed and her father hid from her , all her relationships are changed forever.  Can Isabelle find the satisfactory fairytale ending that every good novel desires?

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, by Mark Haddon.  This is the second time I am reading this book.  It definitely holds up to the test of time.  

This a wonderful story about a young boy, Christopher John Francis Boone, who is on the autism spectrum.  He is living with his father and his mother has left them.  The father led his son to believe that his mother is dead. The story opens with the boy going out at night and finding a dead dog in the neighbor's yard. 

We hear the story from the young child's point of view.  He talks in a very patterned tempo that is rhythmic and sounds like a young person on the spectrum.  He loves prime numbers.  It is an interesting cadence to the story that the author develops very well.

We follow him as he interacts with his father, who loves him, but is also suffering his own loss of his marriage.  We watch Christopher learn to interact with his neighbors and travel across London by himself, totally out of his comfort zone.  He is trying to find his mother.  He is writing a story about his adventures for his teacher at school.

We watch all the relationships unravel and then fall into place agin in a different order at the end.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the second novel, written by Jonathan Safron Foer is as unconventional as his first novel.  

Written in multiple voices, this novel examines love, loss and how to process these emotions. In alternating chapters we read the story of nine year old Oskar, who has lost his father in the World Trade Tours on 9/11.  As he tries to come to grips with the loss and the emotions he is feeling, he sets off on a journey.  He finds a key in a vase in his father's closet.  The envelope has the word Black written on it. He uses this small clue to find a person named Black who would have met his father. 

He goes through the New York phone book and lists all the people there under the name Black.  He travels around the five boroughs ringing doorbells and asking about the key and his father.  Along the way he makes friends and learns life lessons. In alternating chapters there are stories of other people who have suffered loss in other major tragedies.  Oskar's Grandmother, who writes about her husband, Oskar's Grandfather who looses his first family in Dresden, Germany.

Oskar has Asperger's syndrome and finds comfort in truth.  He is looking to keep his father close even in death.  He would say he is not emotional but he is  trying to keep a connection to his father.  He is also rational and scientific.

The Prison Minyan

 Recommended to me by a friend, The Prison Minyan, by Jonathan Stone is a very unusual novel.  

Cleverly, Stone has built a novel around the news story that Michel Cohen, President Trump's, fixer was sentenced to prison and requested being sent to Otisville Prison.  This is a real minimum security prison 75 miles outside New York City. Because of the number of Jewish white collar criminals housed here they actually offer kosher meals, religious classes and Shabbat services.

In this novel we are introduced to thee minyan attendees.  Fifteen men who have been convicted of a variety of white collar crimes.  The rabbi leads the service and then leads the men in Talmud discussion afterwards.  Rabbi Morton Meyerson, in for five years for embezzling 3.5 million from his New Jersey congregation.  Among the members are Abe Rosen, an art dealer, in for forgery of old masters, Matt Sorcher, four years for funneling a portion his clients tax refunds electronically into his own account, Manny Levinson, serving six years for bribery and graft.  The list continues as we meet all the members of the minyan and also Big Willie, who is the prison guard who watches over this group of inmates. 

Life is pleasant for these men, taking a poetry class, exercising in the yard and eating delicious meals with treats like rugelach and blintzes.  When a new celebrity prisoner is introduced to the group things begin to change.  When the new prisoner nicknamed "The Pisk" joins the group unidentified outside forces, directed by an unnamed sitting president, attempt to make Otisville ever more unpleasant place for The Pisk and his fellow prisoners.  The minyan is slowly reduced to less than ten men being able to gather together. Then the chef is transferred and the rugelach and blintzes are gone.  

The prisoners decide to take matters in to their own hands.  Using their discussions about Judaism and the poetry writing class they participate in to look into the thoughts of these criminals, we watch them first use their abilities to change the system but also think about their crimes. 

The novel presents the ideas of right and wrong, teshuvah and repentance, exploring whether they can really change, learning from their mistakes or remain the same, learning instead how to be a better criminal, not to make the same mistake again that landed them in jail.  Using Talmud and Torah to set out the lessons they should learn the plot also touches on the Holocaust and White Nationalist and Anti Semitism.  An entertaining plot with serious messages.

The Fashion Orphans

 The Fashion Orphans written by Randy Susan Meyers and M J Rose.... fabulous.

Two terrific authors have joined forces and written a very entertaining novel.  Randy Susan Meyers has written a number of interesting novels about family relationships and MJ Rose is also a prolific author writing historical novels about fashion and jewels.  Together they took the story of two half sisters who have grown apart and brings them back together after their mother dies and leaves her apartment and belongings for them to work together on distributing and clearing out.

Like so many sisters each has a very different personality with ideas and lifestyle differences.  Like so many sisters they have to find a way to connect and not argue.  Gabrielle is the first born daughter and she grew up in a in a luxury apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan.  She is a costume designer on Broadway and recently  divorced.  Lulu grew up in a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, mainly  raised by her grandparents.  She is a grieving widow now, working to make ends meet at a bakery owned by her in laws.

The two sisters come to the reading of their mother's will each hoping to divide the estate and walk away with enough money to set their lives in order and leave the other sister behind.

To their surprise they have been left a secret collection by their mother, who it seems starts talking to them from the next life through inspiring messages she has left behind in her vintage clothes and accessories.

The sisters become closer to each other and to the group of friends they never knew their mother had. These friends also help the sisters learn so much about their mother and each other.

Written in a light and entertaining style there really is a great depth to this novel, so much to think about and aa great discussion starter.

Sam

 Allegra Goodman takes this plot in a different direction for the new novel, Sam.  This novel is about family similar to her previous work, but this time the topic of religion does not play a major role. 

This is the coming of age story of Sam, a girl living in a very dysfunctional family situation and how she finds herself and makes a success of her life.  We meet Sam when she is seven, living with her mother, Courtney, a hairdresser and her half brother, Noah who is two.  They are living in Beverly, MA in a small cottage on the property of Noah.s father's parents.  When the relationship between Courtney and Jack, Noah's volatile father goes wrong, Courtney moves the children out to an apartment in town.  She takes on a second job and tries hard to impress on Sam how important success in school is for her future.

Sam's father, Mitchell, is a dreamer, making his living as a magician, juggler and poet.  He is in and out of Sam's life over the years, never able to really settle down and be successful.  He introduces Sam to wall climbing and that becomes her saving experience.  She becomes involved in rock climbing both in the indoor gym and out in the boulder filled public park, Red Rocks, in Gloucester.  The rock climbing is a beautiful way to watch Sam grow from a child lost between the cracks to a young woman who can look at the rock formation and figure out the way to use each stepping stone on her way to the top.

Though she falls off the wall aa few times in the end she finds the footholds that take her to the pinnacle.

We watch her struggle through the relationship with her mother, her father and learning about love.  her relationship with a brother who has behavior and learning issues. We are routing for Sam all the way through the book.

Miss Aldrige Regrets

 Miss Aldridge Regrets is a wonderful historical novel wrapped up with a murder mystery, written by Louise Hare.

It is 1936 and Lena Aldridge is working as singer in a basement club in Soho.  Her father Alfie has recently passed and Lena is feeling alone, after she breaks it off with her married lover. Her best friend Maggie, is stuck in an unhappy marriage. Maggie's husband owns the the club Lena sings in.  He is unfaithful and Lena cannot stand up for Maggie because she is afraid to loose her job.

Lena's life is complicated by here mixed race racial heritage passing for white. When mysterious invitation is offered to her to sail to America to star in a play on Broadway she is ready to leave. Traveling in first class on the Queen Mary to New York, things get more complicated when one of the party she is traveling with is murdered.

Beautifully written, Hare lets the reader imagine you are on the Queen Mary sailing across the ocean.  Giving the reader a good historical view of the lifestyle of that time period and the feelings of how people prejudices look at white and black people.  How mixed race people would try to pass for an easier life.

Also this is a entertaining mystery novel, with some great twists and turns leaving confused about the murder until the end.

Small World

 Small World by author Laura Zigman is her newest novel after Separation Anxiety.  The story of two divorced sisters who come together to live and start discussing their childhood.

All of us are born with our own unique personality.  But we are also influenced by the home and social environment we grow up in.  This is the story of two sisters who now as adults  are  coming to terms with how their childhood shaped their lives.  

Eleanor, who was born with cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, dies only a year after her parents reluctantly send her to the Walter E. Fernald State School, once known as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded.  She is the middle sister to Linda and Joyce and the daughter of Lenny and Louise.

It was reluctantly that Louise and Lenny made the decision to send their child to the school, but they could not take care of her at home anymore.  Louise has tried everything to keep her family together and really never recovers from the trauma.  She spends the rest of her life doing charitable work for other disabled children,  Lenny dies of a drug overdose.  Joyce narrates this story of her life and her interaction with her sister who comes to live with her.

Two adult sisters living together for the first time since their dysfunctional childhood.  They have both had trouble in their marriages and now both divorced are trying to find a way to live together.  Trust and openness are a problem.  When the new neighbors move in upstairs there are so many secrets and falsehoods being the neighbors may not really know what is true and what is a story.  

As the sisters interact in different ways with the neighbors upstairs, they continue to push each others buttons. The hurt feelings, the jealousy, the feelings of neglect all surface as the two sisters try to understand their own reactions to their past and find some inner peace.

Don't we all wonder how the sibling we have is so different from us, even though we come from the same parents and grew up in the same house.  Based on real life events in her own life Zigman has written a compelling novel that really makes the reader think.