{"id":8076,"date":"2019-07-17T07:04:52","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T11:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8076"},"modified":"2019-07-17T07:04:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T11:04:52","slug":"booky-booky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8076","title":{"rendered":"Booky, Booky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Reading\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Four books out of sync with my new crime fiction reviewing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, even I occasionally tire of a reading life of crime. And sometimes I want to catch up with a book from prior years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And book clubs make choices . . . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

****Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Gail Honeyman \u2013 Which of us hasn\u2019t felt saddled by a\ncritical parent? One whose admonishing voice we hear when we least need it? Who\namong us isn\u2019t more likely to remember a parent\u2019s upbraiding rather than the\npraise? Eleanor remembers, to a miserable extreme. Patterning herself after her\nultra-demanding mother, she needs to (to learn how to) unwind a bit, no, a lot.\nShe longs for human connection and gets in her own way when she tries. Vodka\nhelps, until it doesn\u2019t. Although the plot doesn\u2019t surprise, Honeyman has\nestablished a strong, if painful, voice for Eleanor, just too smart to stay\nlocked inside herself forever. A prime example of the new literary trend called up-lit<\/a>\u2014\u201cbooks\nthat give us hope.\u201d In many ways similarly plotted to Where the Crawdads Sing<\/em>, it raises both hope and skepticism for the\nsame reasons. The author, not the character, seems in charge, if that makes any\nsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

****Murmur <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Will Eaves \u2013 This is literary fiction and far from as straightforward\nin the telling as Eleanor Oliphant. It\u2019s based on the life of Alan Turing (Alec\nPryor in the book), the brilliant British mathematician and computer scientist\n(now on the \u00a350 note) who later led the Bletchley Park team that helped unravel\nthe secrets of the Nazi code machine, Enigma. Ping-ponging between dreams,\nmemories, letters with a woman friend, and more in the months before his\nsuicide, the novel has been called \u201ca hallucinatory masterwork.\u201d Much of it\nlooks back to Pryor\u2019s adolescence, his discovery of his homosexuality, and the\nsocial and school problems that resulted. Murmur<\/em>\nhas won numerous prizes. Will Eaves is a poet and a teacher, as well as a\nnovelist. This is the first of his books published in the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

***Blood Sisters<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Kim Yideum, translated from the Korean by Jiyoon Lee \u2013 I\njoined a book club that sends novels by international authors several times a\nyear, as a way to become acquainted with other voices and sensibilities. This\nbook was a hard go in the beginning, partly because of the unadorned writing\nstyle, but became easier, page by page. The narrator has left home (more\ndifficult, hypercritical parents), and lives as cheaply as possible in a room\nover a caf\u00e9 called Instant Paradise (yeah, right). She has a great many challenges\nincluding physical injuries, a parent who deserted her, plus an unexpected\nromance. Wait, am I writing about Eleanor Oliphant again? Totally different\nbooks, striking parallels, but without the too-easy resolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

****The Word is Murder<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Horowitz \u2013 OK, back to my comfort zone. Horowitz\nis a crimewriter and TV scriptwriter (Midsomer\nMurders, Foyle\u2019s War<\/em>). This novel starts with the murder of a woman who\nappears to have predicted her own demise. A gruff former police detective,\nDaniel Hawthorne, is called in to take a look at the case, joined by a clueless\nwriter named Anthony Horowitz who\u2019s looking for some new plot ideas and manages\nto blunder about spectacularly. \u201cFull of surprises and suspense,\u201d said The Washington BookReview<\/em>. And comic\nmoments. This adventure has been followed up by 2019\u2019s The Sentence is Death<\/em>, again featuring Hawthorne and Horowitz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four books out of sync with my new crime fiction reviewing. Yes, even I occasionally tire of a reading life of crime. And sometimes I want to catch up with a book from prior years. And book clubs make choices … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Booky, Booky - four capsule reviews of (mostly) wildly different novels.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,366,40,311,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-drama","category-fiction","category-novel","category-reading-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Reading-Carlos-Martinez.jpg?fit=288%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-26g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8077,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076\/revisions\/8077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}