Book Review: "The Quick" by Lauren Owen

Full disclosure: I received an advance readers copy of this book from NetGalleys in exchange for an unbiased review.

This was an interesting and well-written book, but so much of its appeal came from not knowing what to expect, so I'm going to be fairly vague in my review.

Siblings Charlotte and James Norbury grew up on an aging estate in the English countryside. With a deceased mother and a virtually absent father, they were raised mostly by servants and a distant relative, and left to their own devices. Charlotte took good care of her younger brother, serving as his teacher, protector, and occasional tormentor. But as the estate—and their family's financial position—declined, they were free to pursue their imagination and challenge their bravery.

Book Review: "Family Life" by Akhil Sharma

Eight-year-old Ajay, his older brother Birju, and their mother live in India in the late 1970s, waiting for their father to send for them and bring them to America, where he has been working. While they don't truly know what to expect, they dream that America will bring them all of the luxury and privilege they are hoping for, even beyond anything they can imagine.

When their father finally does send their plane tickets, and they are forced to give away almost all of their possessions in preparation, Ajay begins to wonder whether migrating to America is really worth it.

"Till then, I had not fully understood that going to America meant leaving India."

Book Review: "Astonish Me" by Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead's debut novel, Seating Arrangements, was a funny and touching comedy of manners which chronicled a man's search for sanity and solace in the midst of the days leading to his daughter's wedding. Shipstead chose a completely different route for her second novel, Astonish Me, which focuses on the world of ballet as well as the obsessiveness of relationships and the secrets they foster.

Joan Joyce is a ballet dancer in the early 1970s. For as long as she can remember, she has lived for nothing more than to dance, and she is conscious of the sacrifices she must make to do so, knowing that time is the greatest enemy of her dancing career. Deep inside, she knows she may never be more than a member of the dance corps, but she still feels the need to give her body and her emotions fully to every dance.

"She has been trained to believe that the motions are enough. Each motion is to be perfect, repeated endlessly and without variation, strung in a sequence with other motions like words in a sentence, numbers in a code."

Book Review: "A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade" by Kevin Brockmeier

"He has always been the kid who cries too easily and laughs too easily, the kid who begins giggling in church for no reason at all, who blinks hotly in shame and frustration whenever he misses a question in class, living in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes."

If I had to pick a memorable year in my life to recount in a memoir, I don't know that I would have picked seventh grade, but for Kevin Brockmeier, that year in 1985 clearly resonated, for good and bad reasons. Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Kevin and his fellow seventh graders were sent to a new school, a combined junior high and high school, so suddenly he was thrown into a world with even more uncertainty, even more potential to make him feel more uncertain about himself.

Seventh grade is an interesting year for Kevin. He falls in and out of infatuation with various female classmates, harnesses his ability to make people laugh, discovers his creative talents (which aren't always as appreciated as they should be), experiences his first kiss, and becomes infamous for his speed in getting ready for gym class. It's also the year when two of his childhood best friends turn on him for no reason and mock everything he does, when he is desperate to outsmart the bully who keeps stealing his lunch out of his locker, when he wants more than anything to fit in, to be loved (or at least liked), to not feel like he always needs to wonder if he's on solid footing.

But Kevin doesn't always make it easy for himself. His desperation to fit in leaves him prone to saying just the wrong thing at the wrong time. He's a little more sensitive and tightly wound than he should be. And for some reason, his schemes to make himself popular (such as dressing up like Dolly Parton for Halloween) make him stand out in the wrong way.

Book Review: "Past the Shallows" by Favel Parrett

Full disclosure: I received an advance readers copy of this book from NetGalleys in exchange for an unbiased review.

Wow, what a brutal, beautiful, sad book this was.

Joe, Miles, and Harry are brothers growing up in Tasmania. Their lives have been harder since their mother's death, and their father, a struggling fisherman, has become increasingly erratic, vacillating between hard drinking, hard working, and unpredictable rage. When Joe gets old enough to move away from their father's moods, it leaves Miles to work on his father's boat, and take care of Harry, who gets easily seasick, often daydreams, and likes finding treasures in the sand near the water.

As their father struggles with the supply of fish, his moods become more volatile, and Miles does all he can to meet his expectations and keep Harry out of their father's line of sight. He'd much rather be surfing all he can, but knows Harry needs his protection, and the more time he spends with his younger brother, the more memories of his mother's death come to the surface—as does a startling and disturbing revelation. One day during a storm, everything comes to a head. Miles knows he must protect his brother at any cost.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, and although at the start it was hard to figure out exactly what was happening and how the story would unfold, as the entire narrative came to light it became more and more compelling, and more and more poignant. Favel Parrett is a beautiful writer—her imagery of the sea at both calm and in fury is breathtaking, and the way she gradually unfurled the plot was very skillful.

I loved the way Parrett drew the boys' characters. Joe isn't as much of a presence as Miles and Harry, but they were all very different. George, the mysterious, damaged man whom Harry befriends, was very interesting, and I wish we had the opportunity to know more about him and what made him tick. Clearly, the boys' father was the heavy in this novel, and although Parrett gave us glimpses of the man behind the rage, he seemed a little too one-dimensional, although understandably so.

This was a short but very powerful, beautifully written book that will definitely leave an impression on you, much like the treasures Harry found in the sand. Not a perfect read, but tremendously intriguing and moving.

Book Review: "Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea" by Dan Lopez

I've said many times before that I marvel at the way short stories can move you, or make you think, in just a small number of pages. Good stories often leave you wanting more—not that the stories necessarily feel unfinished, but rather they get you so hooked on the characters that you would love to spend more time with them.

Dan Lopez's short collection, Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea, included five reasonably short but intriguing stories, several of which I wished were longer because I wanted to know more about the characters. The stories are linked by the sea—the water and boats factor in each of the stories, as do the roller coaster ride of emotions that relationships take you on.

In "Coast of Indiana," a man must decide if he should give up his own career and life's routines to follow his boyfriend, who will be attending graduate school in a small Indiana town. Time on the beach and on a ferry gives him more time to consider this decision. "The Cruise" follows a group of gay men on a cruise who are all lusting after a deckhand, who has ambitions of his own. In "Volumes Set Against a Twilight Sky," an architect, confronting grief after the death of his partner, decides to take the man's diaries on a cruise with a friend, and must come to terms with what he reads. And in the moving title story, two men are brought together by their shared grief about losing custody of their daughters.

I don't know where I heard about this collection, but it was really beautifully written and several of the stories were very moving. I really wish that some of the stories were longer because I would have appreciated getting to know some of these characters more, and better understand what made them tick. One or two seemed to end sooner than I would have liked, and left me wondering what happened next. But Dan Lopez is a tremendously talented writer, and these stories resonate even after they're done.

Book Review: "And The Dark Sacred Night" by Julia Glass

How much of our life's future direction can be gleaned from who we are, or who we believe we are? Do questions about our heritage really influence the way we think about ourselves?

Kit Noonan is an unemployed professor of art history with a strong interest in Inuit art. He was an excellent instructor but lost his job because he couldn't bring himself to finish his book, a condition of his continued employment. In fact, he can't seem to motivate himself to do much of anything but cook for his family and shake himself out of his daily paralysis to keep some basic routines. This inertia is having a tremendously negative effect on his marriage to Sandra, a strong-willed landscape architect.

Sandra believes that the reason Kit is afraid to move forward with his life is that he's stuck in the past—specifically the fact that he doesn't know who his father is. Raised by a secretive, stubborn mother, Daphne, who refused to tell him who his father was or even share the circumstances of his conception, Kit has always been curious but has tamped down his desire to know where he came from for fear of causing trouble. So Sandra forces Kit out of their New Jersey home, encouraging him to seek answers from Jasper, the outdoorsman and former ski instructor whom his mother married when he was a young child, and was the only father figure he ever knew.

"To change direction, to go somewhere entirely new, maybe you need to know exactly where it is you came from in the first place. A secure foothold. Don't you think?"

Kit's time with Jasper reawakens feelings of nostalgia in both men, as well as stokes the resentment of both toward Daphne. Despite his promise to Daphne never to share the details of Kit's paternity, Jasper points Kit in the direction of Lucinda Burns, the wife of Vermont state senator Zeke Burns, a woman who has been dealing with her own grief for a number of years, and tried to find ways to carry on with her life the best she could. Lucinda has answers to Kit's questions, and leads him on a path of discovery that has tremendous ramifications in his life and for many others. (Even though some reviews of this book divulge more of the plot, I'm going to leave a little mystery for the readers.)

This is a moving and compelling book about the need to understand who you came from, the need for answers, the need to feel a part of something larger than yourself. It's also a book about the strength of relationships, how they can build us up and tear us down, even years after they've ended. It's about trust and sacrifice, guilt and pain, and the pull of family, those to whom we're related by blood and those we choose to make part of our family.

I really love the way Julia Glass writes, and it was good to revisit a few characters from some of her earlier books. Her characters are so nuanced, so complex, they draw you into their lives and you want to know everything about them and what makes them tick. The plot is at times tremendously emotional, at times tremendously frustrating because of the things left unsaid.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but interestingly enough, I found Kit's character to be the weak link of the book, even though he is the linchpin around which the other characters revolve. It was almost as if the inertia that Sandra accused him of translated into his character, because he seemed almost lifeless despite what was going on around him. However, this is still a beautifully written book worth reading, a book that will make you think and make you feel—and maybe it might even make you a little emotional.