Keep the Flame of Reading Alive

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims—When Margo first walks into a small unassuming public library in the Midwest and takes a job as a Circulation Assistant, she is walking away from her former life as a nurse, a life where she cared about her patients, sometimes a bit too much. They needed her and she needed them to do what was best for them…die. It seems her former life was going to stay in the past until Patricia takes a job as a reference librarian, sitting across from the charismatic Margo. But Patricia, who originally wanted to be a writer, cannot help herself from jotting down notes about her strange coworker. Their strange symbiotic relationship and the book they both were obsessed with (We Have Always Lived in the Castle) is what kept me reading this sometimes too real library page turner.

What could be better than a novel about a serial killer working in a library…in a public library! Sometimes funny, sometimes spine-tinglingly creepy, the patrons alone bring back memories of “life behind the desk”. Somehow Meryl Streep pops up as the perfect Margo.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson—Whether or not you realize it you know who Shirley Jackson is. She wrote The Lottery and Haunting of Hill House, two very unsettling novels. As is “The Castle”.

Constance and Merricat live in their family home along with Uncle Julian, a diminished old man forever recounting the deaths of their family. Constance is constantly cooking and cleaning and taking care of Julian and Merricat, her  18-year old sister, (she certainly seems younger) who lives in her own world, burying bits and pieces of her former life and dreaming of flying to the moon.

Six years earlier, the rest of their family were poisoned at the dinner table. Constance was accused but not convicted and has never left the family house since. But the villagers haven’t forgotten and whenever Merricat ventures out, she is taunted by them but dreams of revenge.

When Cousin Charles comes to visit and doesn’t leave, Merricat’s idyllic life is shattered. But Merricat finally inflicts her retribution. Who is the real villain, the people from the village, Cousin Charles or Merricat? Maybe all.

And this is the book that Margo and Patricia were fascinated by in May I Help You.

Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles—After I finished reading the first short story of this new Towles collection, I knew I had to own this book. Pushkin, a perfectly happy Russian serf, and his wife, get a chance to move to Moscow after the revolution. It takes a while for him to find his way in the new bureaucracy while his wife plunges ahead working for the government. He discovers his place in the many queues in the new revolution, waiting for potatoes, shoes, clothes and food, while making friends and basically networking. And his talent brings him and his wife farther afield. It was a lovely story and there are five more after that, although I wished for more of the innocent, naïve Pushkin.

The other stories take place in New York City, in high class restaurants, in Carnegie Hall, in used bookstores, and in La Guardia Airport. All are, as I have learned to expect from Towles, stories about civility and love and loyalty.

The last part of this delicious book is a novella, taken from the last part of Towles’ Rules of Civility where one of the characters, Eve, boards a train to return to Indiana and at the last minute decides to continue on to Hollywood. The Novella, “Eve in Hollywood” takes off where the novel ends.

Living in the Beverly Hills Hotel, Eve befriends a young Olivia de Havilland, and becomes her protector. When de Havilland is blackmailed with photos that could destroy her reputation and career, Eve, along with a retired police detective and a has-been actor set out to solve the crime in a plot that could rival Dashiell Hammett. “Eve in Hollywood” is a homage to 1930s Hollywood and proves that Towles can write about anything, anywhere in any time period. And that’s why I bought the book.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks—Much like walking into the wrong tent at a book festival, Horse led me down a path I didn’t know I wanted to go.

Tracking the life of a famous horse, Lexington, led Brooks down a different path as well. As the reader becomes familiar with his birth and his trainer, Jarrett, we learn about the history of Black groomsmen in pre-Civil War South and the fragility of their lives where a horse, especially a famous one, is more important than theirs. We learn about horse portraiture and the lives of itinerant painters. We learn about Smithsonian scientists in 2019 who research the horse and his bones and what led to his death.  We are reminded that the racism in 2019 is not that much different than 1865. And we also learn that much of what she wrote about and the people in Horse are real. This is a fascinating novel and whether you’re an equestrian or not, makes no difference.

The Last Boat Home by Rachel Sweasey—Daisy meets Alphie on the brink of WWII in the seaside town of Poole, England. They fall in love, get married and settle down to live their happily ever after life when he is called up to serve at Dunkirk. As she is waiting for him to return, she meets Luke, a young Frenchmen who was picked up while literally spending the night in the water, waiting to be rescued. But Alfie wasn’t that lucky. They never recovered his body after his ship was attacked. And she is now, like so many other women, a war widow. But Luke is there for her. And that’s where her second love story begins.

Her granddaughter, Felicity, in 1996, also waits for her husband to return home from his boat but he never does. And after grieving for a year, she finally ventures out with her friends to the French coast and meets a handsome baker who introduces her to much more than bread!  What does her love story have to do with her grandmother’s? Read The Last Boat Home that marries romance, family and the heartbreak of war.