Such a creative structure to this Pulitzer Prize-winning literary historical fiction novel! The form and some striking prose made this a 5 star read for me.
The four parts of the book are presented as a novel, the rough draft of a memoir, a complete memoir, and the entries in of private journal. You may be confused as to the point at first, but as you read along you will begin to realize what the different sections have to do with one another, and just what it is that they represent.
The story at the center revolves around the lives of a New York City power couple in the early twentieth century, a husband and wife whose social standing was gained through great successes on Wall Street. But taken together, the four parts of the book make the point that those in positions of relative power (due to wealth, status, sex, influence/reach) get to decide which voices are heard, thereby controlling the narrative and effectively “bending and realigning reality”.
And if the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction isn’t enough to tickle your discerning reader’s fancy, Trust was also one of The New York Times top ten books of 2022, longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, AND one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022. BOOM!
After witnessing her teenage son kill a man she has never seen before, Jen finds herself further and further in the past each time she wakes up, and tries to understand what happened and why.
This time loop mystery not only keeps you guessing (well, I figured out the twists somewhere between pages 200 and 250, but it was still fun reading on to learn the “why” of things), it’s also a rather touching portrayal of how wonderful and difficult parenthood is.
Everything in parenthood feels so endless until it ceases.
They, mother and son, are a zipper, slowly separating as the years rush by.
The maternal habit of a lifetime, feeling guilty no matter which she chose.
Re-examining her relationships as she relives certain days from her past is just part of the investigating Jen performs while trying to understand what led to a stranger dead and her son in cuffs.
I do admit that several inconsistencies and oddities in the writing really got to me at times. Todd is described as pale in one scene, but then two days in the past he was tanned; he is said to have his father’s eyes and otherwise his features are all from his mother, but then later we read that he looks just like his father; a photograph of man with a shaved head is later described as a photograph of a man with light hair; the last time a certain day played out, we’re told both that Jen said something different to another character, but also that the last time it played out they never even saw each other. Jen’s husband has a tattoo of an inscribed date, the day he knew he loved her: “spring 2003” (that is a season, not a day); and a “quick, clean stab” resulted in three stab wounds. She assumed her son’s moodiness, secrecy, and weight loss were all just due to being a teenager; what could explain his recent bahavior: teenage rage, knife crime, gangs, or Antifa? I’m sorry, knife crime? That being included in that list just made me outright laugh.
Although it’s possible that some things I just misinterpreted due to differences in vernacular between British and American English (just as there was a lot of slang I wasn’t familiar with). They keep the office at 65 degrees, and whether that’s Celsius or Fahrenheit, either way seems too cold or much too hot. And she has a sofa in her kitchen at home, which Google tells me apparently is a thing, but just not a thing I can get on board with.
But despite these things, this was still a really engaging story, and I can recommend it without qualms to fans of thrillers and mysteries with a dash of sci-fi for flavor.
And for one last extremely relatable quote:
It’s useless to clean, she acknowledges, as she scrubs at the kitchen countertops and stacks the dishwasher. When she wakes up, yesterday, none of this will have been done, but isn’t that kind of always the way housework feels?
“What happens when the walls we raise outlive the dangers they were built to keep out? At what point does a fort become a cage?”
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott is a colorful adventure steeped in Eastern European folklore. It takes place in the current day U.S., and some magical elements borne of momentous events from long ago have left marks so profound they have been passed down through generations of the Yaga family.
“Lies? Of course, lies. But what is a lie if not a story? And ah, what power a story has when whispered into the ear of a man with a gun.”
A family of puppeteers and their newly inherited house on chicken legs are running from the Longshadow Man. But who/what/when is the Longshadow Man?
“We know plenty about what he isn’t,” Rummy offered with forced optimism.
“He’s not a jelly doughnut,” Sparrow contributed.
In essence the story is about bearing witness to past injustices that have taken on a life of their own and haunt the world still.
“A mob has no ears to call to, only a single mouth, yelling. A mob has no hands to hold, only a single finger, pointing. A mob has no head, only a single body, guideless, acting as it will.”
There a several interesting characters filling this tale, with nice LGBTIA+ representation, and a story as fun as it is meaningful. The prose is rather gorgeous. Thistlefoot was born to run, but catching hold of it will be well worth your while!
I’ve recently taken to listening to podcasts about books and reading, and a couple of them mentioned this gem. The problem with this situation is that the podcasts get me excited for new releases, and I have to either take my place on a long holds list through the library, or fork over the money to buy it—the takeaway being that my wallet has become MUCH lighter lately! But in this instance, I was good and waited for my turn with a library copy. Then promptly devoured it in next to no time at all!
The description of this mystery as a combination of Clue and The Great British Bake Off is an apt one! A popular baking competition reality TV show is filmed at the host, Betsy Martin’s, estate. Over the course of a week, contestants vie for the coveted Golden Spoon through a series of baking contests. But things are not going great for Season Ten, as an unwanted cohost has been foisted upon America’s Grandmother, and someone seems to be sabotaging the competition. First a contestant’s salt gets swapped with their sugar, but we know things are going to escalate quickly, as the prologue shows us Betsy discovering a dead body on set.
There was another family saga-type historical mystery with a Gothic vibe going on that I really dug. Many of the characters were a joy, even if I wasn’t 100% buying the characterization for some of them (looking at you, Hannah). There were some plot points I found a bit questionable, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of this read, and consuming almost all of it in a single sitting (much like I do with baked goods). Brava!
It’s official: T. Kingfisher is now an autobuy author for me!
I adored the novella retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” that was What Moves the Dead, in all of its parasitic fungal glory; I greatly enjoyed Nettle & Bone, the rather original fantasy about a woman who aims to save her sister, relying on nothing more than sheer determination and her ability to gather a colorful fellowship to help her along the way. Now this Southern Gothic horror has clinched it for me. Take my money, Ms. Kingfisher!
A House with Good Bones follows Sam, an archaeoentomologist from Arizona, who goes to visit her mother in North Carolina in the house inherited from her real character of a grandmother. She is concerned because her mother has made some inexplicable changes to the house and is acting paranoid, as if someone is always listening. Plus there’s the committee of vultures (yes, that is the real term for it!) perched outside the house, watching. The handyman who takes care of her mother’s yardwork is a bit of a snack, but there’s something not quite right with the roses in the garden…
This book was so perfectly spooky with really wonderful characters (both the good and the bad), and it doesn’t hurt that the author and I clearly share some of the same social values. Not to mention I have a degree in anthropology, and so all of the archaeology bits were totally my jam. And the narration is very amusing! What’s not to love?
You have to drink a lot of coffee to cross Texas, but there are not rest stops nearly as often as there should be. Somewhere in West Texas, at the bottom of an off-ramp, a coyote is probably still wondering who left the strange mark in his territory.
Also, psychopomp is officially the word of the month, and the 1994 movie The Crow is the movie of the month, because both have come up in my reading/listening multiple times over the past few weeks (although it did hurt me when the 32 year old main character had never heard of The Crow…).
Jessica Crawford 