B. Morrison's Blog, page 29

Grace Notes, by Brian Doyle

These days Im turning to books not so much for escape as for courage and comfort. I welcome anything that might help replenish my stores of both. For me, that often means returning to one of my favorite authors. In addition to writing unforgettable stories and essays, Brian Doyle, who died much too young in 2017, was a teacher, magazine editor, husband, father.

In this collection of short essaysa form he excelled inDoyle reminds us of what is good in the world. At the same time, he doesnt...

The Hunting Party, by Lisa Foley

For their annual New Years reunion, nine friends travel to a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands. It becomes even more remote when cut off by a massive blizzard on New Years Day, just as Heather and Dougthe two staff who live at the lodgediscover the body of the missing guest.

The bruises on the neck indicate murder, which means the murderer must be one of the people at the lodge, though there is a serial killer on the loose and the possibility of local poachers. The lodge sits on a loch...

Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout

A book by Strout is a balm just now, when we are so traumatised by grief and fear and anger. Yes, she takes us into the terrible crimes human beings, even those in quiet Midwestern towns, visit upon one another, yet she also shows us the complicated people that we are. Without dwelling on the ugliness in the almost pornographic way of many modern novels, Strout evokes in us the emotions of these characters, their trials, their loneliness, and sometimes their quiet redemption.

These nine...

The Famous Five, by Enid Blyton

Just what the doctor ordered: three adventure stories of children in rural England. The five are siblings Julian, Dick and Anne along with their cousin George (aka Georgina) and her dog Timmy. They actually think they are just going to explore or hike or perhaps camp out, armed with torches, lashings of sandwiches, and ginger beer, but inevitably stumble upon a mystery to be solved.

Five Go to Mystery Moor, the first story in this fifth FF collection, has Anne and George, and Timmy too,...

Daughter of the Daughter of a Queen, by Sarah Bird

What an absorbing read! Bird takes the bare bones of a forgotten slave, Cathy Williams, who posed as a man to join Sheridans army near the end of the U.S. Civil War and was the only woman to serve with the Buffalo Soldiers. Then she fleshes those bones out in this captivating novel and clothes them, not just with uniforms but with fully imagined bindings.

When Sheridan on his quest to starve out the Confederate army raids the already-depleted Missouri tobacco farm, he finds little left to...

Jordan County, by Shelby Foote

It was the authors name that caught my eye. Shelby Foote is of course the author of The Civil War. I didnt know he wrote fiction, but this is only one of several novels. Well, it is subtitled A Novel. In reality, it is that always fascinating hybrid: a novel in stories.

Here it is in a novella and six other stories, all set in the fictional town of Bristol in Jordan County, Mississippi. They are the opposite of a traditional historical narrative because they start in 1950 and go backwards in...

Wild Chamber, by Christopher Fowler

What a comfort reading is during this dark time! There is much to be afraid of and loved ones to be afraid for, but its important to take a break sometimes, be somewhere else for a while.

Ive been reading Fowlers Bryant and May detective series in order. The two head up the Peculiar Crimes Unit, a division of the London police formed during WWII to handle cases that could cause public unrest. Persisting into the present, it operates like no police department youve ever encountered and is...

The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This first novel from Coates, known for his nonfiction such as Between the World and Me, is the story of Hiram Walker, a young slave in Virginia whose been assigned to be the personal servant for his half-brother: the white, legitimate son of the plantation owner. Hirams mother was sold when he was nine, and curiously he has no memory of her. This is odd because otherwise he has perfect recall, a photographic memory.

Then one day when he is driving his feckless half-brother home, he has a...

View with a Grain of Sand, by Wisława Szymborska

I’ve had this edition of Szymborska’s Selected Poems for some time but hadn’t gotten around to reading it. Luckily, my poetry discussion group chose her to be the poet we read this month. Unlike a book club where people read the book ahead of time, we meet and read the poems together and discuss. Here, though, I took advantage of the opportunity to read this collection by this Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

I’m so glad I did! I love Szymborska’s understated wit...

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Reading again this powerful book, I was deeply moved. It opens with Sethe and her 18-year-old daughter Denver in a house haunted by a spiteful spirit. After sexual assault and a brutal beating that left her back hideously scarred, a pregnant Sethe had escaped from slavery, making her way to Ohio outside Cincinnati where her mother-in-law lived. Denver was born just before Sethe arrived at Baby Suggs’s home, where she’d previously sent her other three children, two boys and a barely crawling...