On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

So many books. So many good books. While some of us were frittering away the first days of the pandemic trying to figure out Zoom, writers were writing. 

Not that writers weren’t affected by the pandemic. Ann Patchett found she couldn’t get into writing a new novel, but essays came more easily. The result, These Precious Days (HarperCollins, digital galley), is one of my favorite books of the year. It’s like having a conversation with a good friend, one who is smart and witty and shares your interests: the challenges of clearing out possessions,  the wonders of Kate DiCamillo’s books for children of all ages, the tangled ties of families. The title essay, which went viral when first published in Harper’s Magazine, chronicles the unlikely friendship between Patchett and Tom Hank’s personal assistant Sookie. There’s also a bittersweet epilogue. Before that, though, Patchett writes of the pleasures of co-owning a bookstore. “As every reader knows, the social contract between you and a book you love is not complete until you can hand that book to a friend and say, Here, you’re going to love this.”

I’ve shared my love for quite a few books this year. Here are some not previously mentioned that I’m wrapping up for friends this holiday season.

Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (Grove Atlantic, digital galley): In the title story, a bookseller’s daughter plays matchmaker for her reclusive, awkward father. Other stories sparkle as King illuminates  transformative and unexpected moments. She’s especially good at capturing young teens on the cusp of adulthood  (“Creature,” “When in the Dordogne”), while ‘Timeline” reads like an excerpt from her splendid novel Writers & Lovers. “On the way back to Vermont, I thought about words and how, if you put a few of them in the right order, a three-minute story about a girl and her dog can get people to forget all the ways you’ve disappointed them.”

Still Life by Sarah Winman (Putnam/Penguin, digital galley): Sarah Winman is the most generous of storytellers in her expansive novel of love and friendship, art and war. British private Ulysses Temper meets aging art historian Evelyn Skinner in the wine cellar of a Tuscan villa in 1944, and she suggests he visit Florence before he leaves Italy. That visit marks Ulysses as he returns to post-war London, his old pub and friends, including free-spirited Peg, whom he married before the war and who now has a daughter Alys. An unexpected inheritance takes Ulysses and his family of friends back to Italy in the 1950s, but he doesn’t meet Evelyn again until 1966, the year of the great Arno flood and the race to rescue Florence’s great art treasures. Don’t miss the parrot and a cameo by E.M. Forster. 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins, digital galley): In the turbulent first year of the pandemic, a small, independent bookstore in Minneapolis becomes a touchstone and refuge for assorted booksellers and booklovers. Outside, the George Floyd protests roil a city haunted by its racist past. Inside the store, bookseller Tookie, an irreverent ex-con and avid reader, is trying to exorcise the ghost of annoying customer Flora. A white woman who wanted to be Native American, Flora died on All Souls Day but is still hanging around the shelves. Erdrich mixes humor and heartbreak like a literary alchemist. Readers won’t be able to resist.

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz (HarperCollins, digital galley): Anthony Horowitz the author has a great time again playing sidekick to fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne in a third clever mystery.  This time, the two are at a literary festival in the Channel Islands to promote the books Horowitz writes about Hawthorne. When the inevitable murder occurs, the other authors, with their quirks and pretensions, all fall under suspicion. It’s a tricky case, but Horowitz thinks they’ve got it all figured out — until the ever enigmatic Hawthorne turns the tables. More, please.

London Bridge is Falling Down by Christopher Fowler (Bantam/Random House. digital galley): The Home Office is again shutting down the Peculiar Crimes Unit, but this time it’s for real. Still, ancient detectives Arthur Bryant and John May discover an open case in the death of a 91-year-old woman, a former security expert. Her demise, though, is soon linked to that of several other peculiar deaths by way of a toy replica of London Bridge. If this is, indeed, the end of the PCU, it’s a doozy of a finale for Bryant and May. I’m going to miss them. Thanks for the mysteries. 

Wyman and the Florida Knights by Larry Baker (Ice Cube Press, ARC): Call it Florida Gothic. In the first half of his entertaining novel, Larry Baker recounts the fabled history of the Knights, who settle in the Florida wilds north of Orlando in 1866. In the second half, famous portrait painter Peter Wyman tries to escape his past by disappearing in Knightville in 2016, but his presence leads to the unraveling of Knight family secrets. There’s passion, betrayal, corruption, murder, an unmarked grave and a mythic black panther.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, hardcover): More like Conversations with Friends than Normal People, Rooney’s smart comedy of manners finds best friends Alice and Eileen worried about turning 30 and the sorry state of the world, but also about finding love and connection. Successful novelist Alice begins seeing factory worker Felix, while literary editor Eileen turns to her old childhood friend Simon. Rooney’s writing is addictive in its clarity and precision. 

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash (William Morrow, digital galley): A low-flying plane and a body on a rural runway kick off Cash’s Southern-noir tinged tale. But the murder mystery is just the frame for a layered portrait of a small-town sheriff dealing with racial tensions and personal problems in Reagan-era North Carolina. The ending may come as a surprise, but, in hindsight, it’s inevitable.