On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

In the fleet The Flight Attendant (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley), Chris Bohjalian  puts some polish on that old chestnut of waking up next to a dead body. Flight attendant and binge drinker Cassie Bowden has only vague memories of her one-night stand with first-class passenger and American hedge fund manager Alex Sokoloff.  She recalls a business associate of Alex’s called Miranda showing up in his Dubai hotel room with more vodka. Then Miranda left and Cassie was going to leave, too, only now Cassie’s awake, and Alex is dead beside her with his throat cut. She clears out quickly, not at all sure she didn’t kill him with the broken glass she takes with her to discard, and makes her flight to New York, hangover and all. What she doesn’t know is that a Russian assassin is already regretting her decision not to kill Cassie and that the hotel security cameras were working. Cue the FBI. It’s a great set-up, although Cassie tries to drown her childhood memories and her present predicament with more regret drinking, and her addiction threatens the thrills of the espionage plot. But then Bohjalian pilots the book out of a dive with a couple of quick stunts. Fasten your seatbelts, please.

First-time author Clarissa Goenawan explores love and loss in Rainbirds (Soho Press, purchased hardcover), which mingles mystery with a touch of magical realism. When Japanese grad student Ren Ishida’s older sister Keiko is murdered, he travels to the small town where she had been living to collect her ashes. But Ren realizes that most of what he knew of Keiko has to do with his childhood, when she mothered him, and he has little idea of who she became after leaving home. He ends up taking over her teaching job at a prep school and even moves into the room she rented from a wealthy politician and his invalid wife. After he learns details of her stabbing death on a rainy night, he finds the street where it happened and lies down to reimagine her last lonely hours. He has recurring dreams of a pig-tailed girl, tries to help a shoplifting student and can’t find the knife he gave to Keiko. He does find her birth control pills. As Ren tries to discover Keiko’s secrets and come to terms with his own guilt and grief, he connects with  other people — fellow teacher Honda, the politician’s silent wife, the troubled student, a former lover. Rainbirds, with its images of goldfish, its memories and dreams, is quiet and disquieting, reminiscent of Haruki Murakami. Haunting.

New Yorker Nora Nolan has what you might call first world problems, although her college-age daughter is quick to note that no one says that anymore. Still, in Anna Quindlen’s thoughtful new novel, Alternate Side (Random House, digital galley) Nora, a museum director, and her investment banker husband Chip enjoy the privileges of life in an Upper West Side townhouse on a rare dead-end street. She really doesn’t want to live anywhere else. Sure, neighbor George is an officious busybody, and Jack next-door has a terrible temper, but it’s a real community with holiday parties, dogs on  leashes, a small parking lot for residents of long-standing, and shared handyman Ricky. Then Jack takes a golf club to Ricky’s van — and Ricky — in a parking dispute, and the incident winds up in the tabloids with neighbors split as to the rights and wrongs of the situation. Even Nora and Chip disagree, which prompts Nora to take a long look at her marriage and what she wants for the rest of her life. I suppose Alternate Side is a comedy of manners, but only if you think of the human comedy and not the laugh-aloud kind. There’s wit and satire, of course, but also probing questions of race and class, privilege and empathy. In her memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Quindlen writes of how we come to understand our lives retrospectively. “The life lessons came not from what we had but from whom we loved, and from the failures perhaps more  than the successes.”