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Why You Shouldn't Ask "What's It About?"
Seven new non-genre novels that can't be explained in a phrase.
Posted April 14, 2016
When you ask of a novel, 'What's it about?" you risk missing the chance to be surprised. With the best books, how they're written counts more than merely what happens.
The following recent books surprised and pleased me, each for different reasons. Perhaps one or more will bring you reading delight too, even when they don't leave you laughing.
SEVEN BOOKS TO SAVOR
The Railwayman's Wife by Ashley Hay is a compelling story based on a couple of incidents from her own grandparents' lives and set in the same small town in which they lived on the east coast of Australia. If I'd known the plot of this remarkable novel centered on the death of a beloved young husband, I might have passed it by. Author Hay did such a superlative job of drawing me in, that no matter how much heartbreak her words described, there was no way I would stop reading. The setting is just after World War II. There is a lot of scenery-related description, but Hay does it beautifully, and it added to making the people and events intensely real. Such as these early paragraphs:
Across the rooftops, across the backyards, across the grass and the sand and the shoreline, the sound of the ocean is rolling and turning; for the first time in as long as she can remember—as long as she's been on the coast—Ani can't think whether the tide is coming in or going out. She feels a saltiness in her mouth, like a great gulp of the sea, and realizes she's crying. Quiet and awful crying in the dark, as regular as breathing.
This is how it will be, she thinks.
This is a literary and literate gem of a book that leaves you with a set of emotions that I suspect last for a long long time.
The Blue Guitar by Man Booker-Prize-winning novelist John Banville may not be his very best, but it does showcase his gorgeous writing, his psychological insight, and his willingness to experiment. In The Blue Guitar, Banville has created a hard-to-love character, a burned-out painter and lifelong petty thief. A very unreliable narrator, Oliver tells us about his infidelities and his stealing using a similarly erotic vocabulary. And to get what he wants, mainly to avoid getting caught being bad, he commits some incredibly horrible acts. All of this in a most literary manner, with allusions and flights of gorgeous prose. Definitely for Banville fans and anyone seeking novelistic insight into mental disturbance.
And Again by Jessica Chiarella provides an imaginative look at the possibilities and consequences of cloning. Who, given a terminal diagnosis, wouldn't love a chance to be reborn as a younger-looking and far healthier version of themselves? Chiarella allows her creativity full expression while telling the stories of four such individuals. The events of the plot seem realistic and perhaps inevitable. The consequences of such a major transformation are not what we, or the characters, might expect. They have to relearn a lot (memories missing). They also have to make hard decisions about what to do with their second chances at life.
Black Rabbit Hall is Eve Chase's first novel. When I saw the words "gothic fiction" in one review, I almost tossed the book aside. I'm so glad I didn't. It was the perfect breezily engaging read for me when a bad cold brought me low for a few days. The book merely hinted at extra dimensions and the paranormal and ghostly. The plot came close to being believable and seductive, romantic but not so much as to lose its mind. The setting, an old estate in Cornwall, lived on the page, its descriptions never overtaking story but adding to it. Sure, this book promises the revealing of family secrets, like so very many other genre and literary books do. But it does. I kept reading to find out who did what to whom and when, as well as how events across decades connected. Finally, I'd call this an atmospheric twisty mystery told in a modern voice. Especially happy-making for this reader is that Chase manages to tie up loose ends to complete the novel most satisfyingly.
The Letter Bearer by Robert Allison is a war story, a guy-type adventure, a novel in which plot--lots of action--is in fact crucial, yet doesn't tell the whole story. The Letter Bearer shines due to the elegance of the writing and the clarity of the scene-making, as well as the fact that so much psychological insight is brought to bear on the character and behavior of the letter bearer. The action takes place in North Africa in 1942. "The rider," as the protagonist is referred to throughout, awakes in the desert, unable to remember exactly what happened and who he is, but aware that he must deliver a pouch of letters from his most likely now-dead fellows. I didn't want the story to end.
Arcadia by Iain Pears is a sumptuously conceived and complex time travel tale, told at great length without ever losing its narrative force. Pears wrote the bestselling historical mystery An Instance of the Fingerpost, which I loved. And in Arcadia, he brings the same mastery to world-making. Boy briefly meets girl from another time or place. Scientist succeeds in travelling to another time (or place or both), a place in which Storytellers are revered and so are stories. Other characters spend greater or lesser periods in other than their home time/place. This is one where such plot points tell you little about how compelling a read this narrative is. It's a story about stories, a meta-story, an absorbing mixture of carefully detailed stark modern details, imaginative leaps, and fully-realized (and amusingly self-aware) characters.
Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves surprised me. Often I'm sent a review copy of a book whose subject I don't find appealing in the abstract, but which turns out to be riveting. Work Like Any Other is a debut novel set in rural 1920s Alabama. From the start my attention was fully captured. Not a word is wasted. The plot isn't complicated. A man performs an illegal act: bringing electricity to his farm with the goal of providing for his family. Nothing so terrible except that it causes a death, and that changes everything. Prison, loss of family, an effort at reconnection: all shown with compassionate insight into our deepest longings. Reeves is an author to watch. I couldn't recommend this novel more highly.
These reviews are by Susan K. Perry, not by Psychology Today Staff.
Copyright (c) 2016 by Susan K. Perry, author of Kylie’s Heel
