Day for Night by Jean McNeil
I didn’t actually enjoy this book all that much. It takes place in London during the Brexit vote. Richard is an independent film writer and director and his wife, Joanna, is a wealthy movie producer. They decide to make a film about Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish intellectual who killed himself in Spain in the 1940s while trying to escape the Nazis. What’s weird is Richard seems to see and talk to Benjamin throughout the novel – to get his take on things.
The other main story line is when they cast a sexually ambiguous young actor to play Benjamin and Richard embarks on a sort of affair with him.
All it all I just found the book too weird for my taste.
Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty by Lauren Weisberger
This was by no means great literature, but it was interesting enough and definitely topical. It focuses on Peyton Marcus, a news anchor who has reported on college bribery scandals when her husband is accused of bribing officials at Princeton to buy their daughter’s way in. Ironically, their daughter didn’t even want to go there in the first place; she wanted to go to an arts school.
This has far reaching implications for innocent victims including their daughter, Max, whose offer is rescinded. In addition, Peyton’s sister Skye loses funding for a shelter for at risk girls that she has been devoting her life to (and getting into debt that her husband doesn’t know about).
It certainly kept my attention to find out how everybody sorted their lives out in the end.
Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
This was a bit of a slow read but the characters were interesting enough to keep it going. It deals with Flora and Julian, a couple who have moved from New York to L.A. and are finally finding some financial stability. Flora does voice over work and Julian has a regular job in television instead of devoting all his time and energy to the struggling theatre company they ran in New York.
When their daughter Ruby is graduating from high school, Flora is looking for a picture of the three of them and their best friends Margot and David. While looking for it she comes across Julian’s wedding ring which he claimed to have lost when Ruby was five years old. Through flashbacks we learn what happened that summer – and see the impact it has on both Flora’s marriage and her relationship with Margot.
The Last Bookshop in London by
This is another book that takes place during the London blitz. Grace, a young girl who had a horrible relationship with her rural father and step mother moves to London when they tell her she can no longer live with them. She, and her best friend, Viv, move into the home of her late mother’s best friend.
In London Grace befriends her mother’s friend’s son. Her mother’s friend also convinces an elderly local bookshop owner, Mr. Evans, to hire her as an assistant. There, she slowly modernizes the shop and wins over Mr. Evans. She also meets a handsome RAF officer who introduces her to literature, starting with The Count of Monte Cristo.
However, the war intervenes, her beau and her mother’s friend’s son are sent overseas. The only communication they have are infrequent letters. Grace also joins the neighbourhood watch brigade where she helps to shepherd people to shelters when air raid sirens ring, and to clean up the devastation after bombings.
When the main, posher, street of book shops is severely damaged, Grace’s shop literally becomes the last book shop in London. So, she makes space for other book sellers to sell their stock from her shop – even those who had always behaved badly toward her.
The story provides an interesting angle on how everyday Londoners managed to survive the blitz despite terrible personal loss and hardship.
That Summer by Jennifer Weiner
Another excellent novel by one of my favourite authors. Like last year’s Weiner novel, much of the action in this one takes place in Cape Cod.
In the past, Diana spends a summer living with a professor that her single mother works for at the university. She spends her days working and her evenings hanging out with summer residents of the town, including a private school boy who seems to take an interest in her. However, the summer ends on a bad note when the boy and two of his friends get her drunk and rape her. Years later we see where the girl has ended up and the lasting impact the rape has had on her life.
At the same time we are told the story of Daisy, an upper class housewife living in the suburbs with her much older husband and their daughter, Beatrice. Daisy is struggling with Beatrice who has been kicked out of a fancy private boarding school and with her husband who is indifferent to her, at best.
While I do not want to give the story away, over time, the two narratives come together in an interesting fashion. While somewhat predictable, Weiner builds in enough twists to keep you really interested.
If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais
This story takes place in South Africa, in the townships and the countryside, leading up to the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela. The novel centres on a very young black girl, Zodwa, who, while living in a squatters camp, is raped and becomes pregnant. While she does not really want the baby, when she is told he died immediately following birth she is devastated – and she does not really believe it. She thus begins a crusade to find her son – and at the same time to figure out what happened to her brother who died during the fight to end apartheid.
At the same time we learn of two white sisters – Ruth and Delilah, the daughters of a Scottish father and an Afrikaans mother. Their father was abusive and they each escaped the farm they lived on at a young age. Now they have returned to the farm due to different personal crises and through the narrative we learn about their pasts.
Eventually the two stories also collide and we see the relationship between the Zodwa, Ruth and Delilah. In each case they are struggling to figure out their place in the new South Africa, with the threat of civil war and the growing AIDS crisis.
This is a great story – while political, it is also very personal. I found myself invested in all three women. I definitely recommend this one.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I really like this one. Evelyn Hugo was a poor girl living in Hell’s Kitchen in New York in the 1940s. Her mother died when she was young and her father was abusive. She has a dream to make it as an actress in Hollywood, and at 14 marries the first man who can take her away from New York and get her to LA.
Though faced with the tremendous sexism that most female actresses of that era (or even now) suffered, she eventually makes it big. The book tells us how and at the same time gives us a detailed account of the seven husbands she acquires along the way – and eventually tells us who her true love was.
Evelyn’s past is revealed in her old age as she grants an interview to a young magazine writer, Monique. Monique is an unlikely choice to write her biography, but Evelyn is very specific that she must do it. Over time we, and Monique, learn why.
I really enjoyed this book. Evelyn was a fascinating character – strong, inventive, and flawed. She was not always the kindest person – and could be extremely self-centred – but that only added to why I was drawn in. I definitely recommend this one.
Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal
This was a very short book, written entirely in the form of imaginary letters from the author to Moise de Camondo. Through the letters we learn about Camondo, a banker and art collector from a wealthy Jewish family in Paris. His ancestors arrived in Paris from Constantinople and built a large mansion which is now a museum. On his death Camondo willed the property to the city with the proviso that nothing change. I didn’t actually find this book all that interesting. It was mostly a rundown of names and dates, with a lot of name dropping by the author whose family was another one of the Paris elite. If you’re going to read something by this author, your time would be better spent on The Hare with the Amber Eyes which tells the story of the author’s ancestors
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