Married Love and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

I read "Silk Brocade" in the July 27, 2015 issue of The New Yorker Magazine and I knew immediately I discovered another author to love. In a tale about a young dressmaker, post-war England, a daughter, and a length of silk brocade, I discovered a writer who is a master of the short story. In just a few pages, Tessa Hadley lays out lifetimes and heart lines that stun and continue to linger well after the page has been put down.


I couldn't get enough of Ms. Hadley's writing, so I immediately purchased "Married Love and Other Stories." Not only a New York Times Bestseller, it was also the New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year for 2012. In these twelve stories, I found the skills of Chekhov and Mansfield emanating from one of today's writers

A young co-ed marries her much-older professor, not finding what she longed for. A cleaning woman sits in judgment of another woman she works with. A young couple meet each others' families, discovering they see life through different lenses. A love triangle finally simmers down into one tidy couple - post World War I. A girl creates an unlikely companionship during her parents' parties. A brother worries about his sister while snowed in at an airport. A soap actor offers a respite to a woman during a family gathering. Three godchildren observe and begin to understand the intimacies of adulthood. The mourning of a suicide and a misunderstood song lyric bring truth. The Caves of Lascaux hint at the "slight thing" that tilts a relationship in the wrong direction.
"Pretending" doesn't change reality. And the death of a producer leads to the "ordinary."
Ms. Hadley's writing is understated, incisive, and penetrating. Her stories are real - not contrived. She manages the tangled labyrinths of human relationships and embraces the essential elements of womanhood. There is a fine line between observing and becoming absorbed, and the reader is encouraged to walk that line.

The sentences of these tales imperceptibly melt into paragraphs. The paragraphs blend quietly into sections, developing into nice, neat packages. Everyday existence - the beautiful highs and the dramatic lows - are ordinary, but also beautiful and telling. The details are exacting, unearthing more than we realize within our own lives. Noting the character's subtleties encourages us to notice such nuances in the world around us. 

Thoughts - once secret and vulnerable - are now put out in the open in "Married Love and Other Stories." The characters are mysterious creatures to themselves no longer. Instead, they find kindred souls in the readers, enchanted by Tessa Hadley's storytelling.

This review originally appeared in The Canon City Daily Record.

Photo credit:  http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516x3%2Beqi-L._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

 

This review first appeared in The Canon City Daily Record.

I love to drive through town just as the sun goes down and the lights inside the houses are turned on. I can see into the homes. I see kids around the table, heads bent over homework. I see a blue light reflected in a man's glasses as he sits at a computer. I see a woman laughing, coaxing hair behind her ear. A front door opens, letting out a dog, allowing me to see furniture, pictures on the walls, dishes in the sink. I've seen so much, yet I've never seen foul play.

Rachel Watson, The Girl on the Train, passing through the outskirts of London, looks through windows, too. She sees a couple - a "golden couple" - on her morning and evening rides. She feels connected with them, creates idealized stories about them, imagines she really knows them. And then something unexpected happens - something that does not match her fantasy of this couple. There is a news report that suggests dark, suspicious events. Lonely Rachel may have answers. But can her questionable perspective be trusted? This startling spine-chiller has only just begun.

Saying too much may give away important details, for this story echoes Hitchcock's mastery of the psychological thriller. The details are the story. Facts cleverly unfold within the novel, keeping the reader entertained, convinced - only to be surprised, again, by the ending. Suspense is part of the compelling magic of this book.

The Girl on the Train is representative of a new genre: thrillers concerning the domestic lives of women. Themes of motherhood and marriage feature prominently, the backbone of Ms. Hawkins's fast-paced story. It has been compared to another New York Times Bestseller, Gone Girl. These novels are relatable, examining the lives accepted as the norm, and bringing crimes against women to the discussion. But this isn't a feminist diatribe. This is a story about a woman who must overcome her blemished past in order to solve a fatal mystery.

The pacing of the unpredictable plot overlaps the steadying lull of a train - morning and evening. It is narrated, alternately, by three different women, each with a unique perspective on the events at hand. Rachel, Megan, and Anna are each convincingly and painfully flawed without being feminine archetypes. They are complex, lives entangling.

Paula Hawkins began her writing career as a journalist in London. While The Girl on the Train is her first thriller, she has also written under a pen-name, Amy Silver. Her earlier works were romantic comedies, but she favors writing tragedies in contemporary settings. And here, in this unconventional work, it is obvious she has found her niche.

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is real, honest, witty, and vulnerable. Arnold Spirit chooses to leave the Reservation for his high school education.  This book shares his experiences.  I ached for him as he struggled to make sense of racism, poverty, alcoholism, and being a teenager.  

This book is presented as Arnold's journal with fantastic sketches and comic drawings by Ellen Forney.  Through the images and the words, we hear Arnold's voice as he falls in lust and love, encounters death, and plays some pretty mean basketball.  

And despite all the major sociological issues confronting this young man, Sherman Alexie deftly covers the inane details of teenage life - the details that actually create the biggest milestones.

A New York Times Bestseller and a National Book Award Winner, it is probably one of the best contemporary teen male voices I have read in a long time. 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Previously published in the Canon City Daily Record on April 25, 2015.


All the Light We Cannot See has spent 50 weeks on The New York Times Besteller List and just has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. And for good reason. As soon as I finished the 530th page, I immediately turned back to the beginning. I had to read it again. It is a beautiful book that I did not want to end.

Anthony Doerr's tightly knit story began as a simple idea: a blind girl reading to a boy over a radio, and developed into a gorgeous World War II novel of depth and honesty.

The striking cover was my original attraction to the book. It is a photograph of the town of Saint-Malo in France, but it is not traditional black and white. It is many shades of blue. The lyrical title is in pure white font, bright, above the horizon. Still, I put the book down and walked away. I didn't want to read another book about World War II.

I am glad I was again pulled to it, for this is not your average World War II story. There is no discussion of the Holocaust or the Japanese. It is not about the British or the North African front. It concentrates on these two children and how their experiences overlap, even running headlong into each other. It is about the intersection of human hearts.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc has been blind for ten years and learns to find her way around the neighborhood by scale models built by her father, the Master of Locks at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Werner Pfennig, an orphan in a German mining town, finds that his talent for radios lands him in an elite Nazi-run school, where he is forced into an existence that confuses and overwhelms him.

Mr. Doerr's details and imagery are crafted in such a way that I was swept into the world of Marie-Laure, blind, working in the Resistance, seeking to do the right thing. At the same time, I was drawn into the dark and celebrated world of Werner, and his path - finding and destroying those resistant to Hitler. These children are caught up in a very "grown-up" war. They are called to make decisions that both cost and save lives.

I found that the short chapters and shifting points of view create a fast-paced book. It is sweeping and cinematic, but, at the same time, small and focused. There is suspense and grief - with moments of celebration and hesitation. It is about the strength of a seaside town against a giant enemy and a jewel called the Sea of Flames. It is about the power of radio as propaganda to the poor, the masses, the foot soldiers. It invites us to examine what we choose when we are alone and the decisions we make in the presence of others.

With realistic characters and a surprise ending, this story challenges the notion that the difference between good and evil is clear in people. People are not so polar. They cannot be. For people are filled with "all the light we cannot see."