On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Hi. Remember me? Constant reader, infrequent blogger. When I took a break the end of August to pack up and move house, I didn’t think I’d be gone so long. But, y’know, this year. Days are slow motion, but weeks fast forward. All of a sudden — or so it seems — literary prizes are being awarded, lists of the years’ best books are being announced. Charles Yu won the National Book Award for Interior Chinatown. Haven’t read it yet. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart won the Booker Award. It broke my heart, which was already cracked from reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, winner of the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Both belong on my year-end list of favorites; I don’t do “bests” because I haven’t read that widely. Still, it’s nice to see books I liked show up on others’ lists: James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic and, especially, Lily King’s Writers and Lovers.

King’s Writers and Lovers is my favorite of favorites, but I can’t give a lot of copies away for Christmas because I gave away many for birthdays. My go-to gift for the holidays is Fannie Flagg’s The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop (Random House, digital galley), the literary equivalent of a warm hug. A follow-up to Flagg’s beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, it returns to that Alabama sweet spot in a series of loosely connected vignettes interspersed with chatty missives from former resident Dot Weems. The title character is the one-armed Buddy Theadgoode, whose mother Ruth ran the cafe with her partner Idgie. Buddy always thought he had a lucky childhood, and when he closes his veterinarian practice and moves to Atlanta to be near his grown daughter Ruthie, he revisits the past in memory. But when he actually seeks out Whistle Stop, he finds the old railroad town is abandoned and falling apart. Flagg’s finely honed comic set pieces jump around in time, much like talking to an old friend whose backtracking is an essential part of the conversation. The novel made me hungry for home — and for fried green tomatoes.

KJ Dell’Antonia’s fun first novel The Chicken Sisters (Putnam/Penguin, digital galley) made me hungry for fried chicken. In small-town Kansas, residents are loyal to either Chicken Mimi’s or Chicken Frannie’s, competing restaurants founded by feuding sisters a century ago. The feud heats up when two contemporary sisters — Mae and Amanda Moore — enter a reality TV show competition with a $100,000 first prize. But proving who has the best fried chicken exposes family secrets that threaten to permanently divide the sisters. I’m giving this excellent takeaway on sibling rivalry and family dynamics to my cousins, sisters Meg and Gail, along with Rachel Joyce’s captivating Miss Benson’s Beetle (Dial Press, purchased paperback). In dreary 1950 London, eccentric spinster teacher Margery Brown decides to fulfill a lifelong ambition by searching for the elusive golden beetle of New Caledonia. She needs an assistant, but Enid Pretty isn’t what she had in mind — a flirtatious young bottle-blonde with a secret or two. Still, the unlikely pair set off an ocean voyage that turns into an extraordinary adventure half-way around the globe. Joyce’s witty story of their unexpected friendship is itself full of unexpected turns. Put on your pith helmet and follow along.

I was delighted to find out that the equine protagonist of Jane Smiley’s engaging Perestroika in Paris: A Novel (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley) is based on one of Smiley’s own horses, also named Perestroika, aka Paras. The novel’s Paras is a curious racehorse who wanders away from her stable and ends up in central Paris, where she meets a street-smart German shorthair pointer Frida.  But it’s not easy being a runaway horse in the city, and Paras  will need the help of not only Frida, but also a wise raven, a pair of mallards and a lonely 8-year-old boy.  Smiley’s sophisticated fable offers plenty of whimsy and just the right amount of commentary on the human (and animal) condition. So it’s been awhile since you read a story with talking animals that wasn’t a kid’s book. This one will lift your spirits.

Nora, the main character in Matt Haig’s fanciful The Midnight Library (Viking, digital galley), is so depressed she’s ready to check out. Instead, the 35-year-old Englishwoman finds herself in a library where every book offers an alternative world, a road not taken. Nora samples a number of lives she might have lived if she had made other choices: rock star, wife and mother, professor, Arctic researcher. Still, something’s not quite right, and Nora keeps returning to the Midnight Library. Most of us had those “what might have been” daydreams, and it’s no surprise that Haig’s tale is a best-seller, scooping up several readers’ choice awards. It’s got all the feels.

That’s a wrap for now. May the holidays bring you comfort and joy and many good books.