Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Review: After the End by Clare Mackintosh

Title: After the End by Clare Mackintosh
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Genre: Contemporary, Literary Fiction
Length: 400 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Edelweiss

Summary:

Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. They’re best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can’t agree. They each want a different future for their son.

What if they could have both?

A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.

Review:

After the End by Clare Mackintosh is a captivating, poignant novel.

Pip and Max Adams have been happily married for several years when an unimaginable diagnosis turns their world upside side. Their 2 year old son Dylan has a brain tumor and he has recently undergone surgery and chemotherapy. Unfortunately an unexpected side effect of chemo lands him pediatric intensive care and his doctor Leila Khalili presents them with a grim prognosis for recovery.

At first both Pip and Max are in agreement that they will do anything to prolong Dylan’s life. Max feverishly researches treatments for his son while Pip is more concerned with Dylan’s quality of life. While informing Leila of their decision, no one is more stunned than Pip when she disagrees with Max’s choice to seek further treatment. Max then embarks on a public campaign to raise money for his legal expenses and to help offset medical costs if he wins the case. Pip is quietly shattered as she spends as much time as possible with Dylan. With their son’s future in a judge’s hands, what will happen to their family in the aftermath?

Pip is a flight attendant who re-adjusted her career in order to be at home with Dylan as much as possible. She suffers a fair amount of guilt that she did not seek medical attention for her son sooner. Never imagining the outcome of Dylan’s treatment, she has been given compassionate leave from work  so she can be with him as much as possible now he is in hospital. Pip never wavers from her heartbreaking decision to not prolong Dylan’s life and she is stunned by her husband’s vitriol.

Max relocated to the UK from the US after marrying Pip. His job requires quite a bit of travel and when home, he works long hours so he has not spent as much time with Dylan as he would like. Despite the family’s dire situation, he has no choice but to return to work after his son is transferred to intensive care. Never once thinking  that he and Pip would be on opposite sides of Dylan’s care, Max thrusts the family into the spotlight as he pursues his case to get his son further treatment.

After the End is an emotionally compelling novel with a clever storyline and sympathetic characters who must make an heartrending choice about their young son. After the courtroom scene,  Clare Mackintosh  chooses an innovative storytelling device that is initially disconcerting.  However, it does not take long to become completely absorbed in the gripping story that is unfolding. Despite the somber subject matter, this deeply affecting novel comes to a hopeful and bittersweet conclusion.  A very unique novel that is utterly fascinating and impossible to put down. Highly recommend.

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Filed under After the End, Clare Mackintosh, Contemporary, GP Putnams Sons, Literary Fiction, Rated B+, Review

Review: Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera

Title: Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Historical (1920s), Literary Fiction
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

A stunning tour de force following three fierce, unforgettable Southern women in the years leading up to the Great Depression

It’s 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family. Annie is the matriarch of the Coles family and must come to terms with the terrible truth that has ripped her family apart.

These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to the terrible injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together. Told in the pitch-perfect voices of Gertrude, Retta and Annie, Call Your Daughter Home is an audacious, timeless story about the power of family, deep-buried secrets and the ferocity of motherhood.

Review:

Set in South Carolina in 1924, Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera is a captivating novel about three disparate women whose lives are about to intersect.

Gertrude Pardee is poverty stricken and stuck in an abusive marriage with an alcoholic, violent man. She is worried about their four daughters, two of whom she left in care of her beloved brother, Berns and his wife Marie. The younger two live with Gertrude and her husband Alvin deep in the Carolina swamp where they live side by side with alligators and other predators. When the opportunity to work in wealthy plantation owner Annie Coles’ Sewing  Circle presents itself, Gertrude makes sure nothing impedes her upcoming employment and reunion with all of her daughters.

Annie and her son, Lonnie, are partners in their Sewing Circle business which has managed to thrive despite the devastating boll weevil infestation.  Their business currently produces flour sacks but Lonnie’s hard work is about to pay dividends when a Charleston department store agrees to carry the men’s shirts he has designed.  But not all is right in Annie’s world due to her fifteen year estrangement with her daughters, Sarah and Molly. Realizing time is growing short to make peace with them, Annie makes an overture she hopes will bring them back into her life. But it is not until she makes a shocking and horrifying discovery that Annie fully understand the reasons for her family’s tragedies.

Oretta “Retta” Bottles is a first generation freed slave who works for the Coles’ family. Retta is married to Odell, who remains the love of her life in spite of their misfortune and heartbreaking losses. Retta’s path crosses the Pardee family when Gertrude leaves her youngest daughter in her care while she wrenches free of her husband. They are also unlikely neighbors after Gertrude begins working at the Sewing Circle.  Retta is a wise and gentle woman who is privy to the Coles’ family secrets.

Told through alternating voices,  Call Your Daughter Home is an insightful novel that whisks readers back to a dark and troubling time in American history. Each of the women is vibrantly developed and despite their flaws, their strength is what defines them.  Deb Spera vividly brings the time period and the women’s strife and struggles vividly to life in this thought-provoking novel. An absolutely riveting debut that I found impossible to put down and highly recommend.

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Filed under Call Your Daughter Home, Historical, Historical (20s), Literary Fiction, Park Row Books, Rated B+, Review

Review: A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

Title: A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Genre: Conemprary, Literary Fiction
Length: 384 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things returns with a powerful and provocative new novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis.

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic—its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order to save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester, disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.

Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.

Jodi Picoult—one of the most fearless writers of our time—tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation . . . and, hopefully, understanding.

Review:

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult is a fast-paced, thought-provoking novel which features a topical storyline.

Detective Lieutenant Hugh McElroy is a veteran hostage negotiator who is in the midst of a harrowing negotiation with a  gunman holding hostages at a local woman’s health center which also performs abortions. George Goddard burst into the Center hours earlier and after killing and wounding several of the people inside, the situation remains tense as Hugh attempts to convince him to free the hostages. The first victim Goddard releases is Hugh’s older sister, Bex, who is seriously wounded. The remaining hostages include Hugh’s fifteen year old daughter Wren, Dr. Louie Ward who is also gravely wounded, anti-abortion protestor Janine Deuerre, nurse Izzy Walsh, client Joy Perry and patient Olive Lemay.

With the narrative moving back in time, the chapters provide compelling insight to each of the hostages as they undergo this horrifying ordeal.  Dr. Ward is a gentle man who feels called to provide this service although he is deeply religious. Wren is wracked with guilt for keeping the appointment from Hugh.  Janine remains true to her pro-life stance but she is somewhat taken aback by what she learns during her time at the Center. Izzy goes into professional mode as she treats the wounded and calms the hostages. Despite never having children, Olive is extremely protective of Wren.  Joy knows she made the right choice for herself but she also harbors regret for what might have been. Bex is contemplative as she reflects back on her life as she lies wounded. Goddard’s motive for his actions at the Clinic are gradually revealed over the course of the novel.

With the novel set in Mississippi, there are restrictive abortion laws which are somewhat unfairly slanted to protect the developing fetus. This unfortunate circumstance is spotlighted in  a parallel story arc in which a teenager finds herself in unexpected legal trouble after she is rushed to the hospital for emergency care. Despite her age, the Assistant District Attorney intends to prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law and he plans to use the case to further his political career.

A Spark of Light by is a powerful novel that presents both sides of an extremely controversial, emotional and politically charged topic. Jodi Picoult’s extensive research adds incredible depth to the plot but some of the subject matter is described in graphic detail. Both sides of the abortion issue are presented and while personal opinions might not be changed, hopefully readers will glean a greater understanding of opposing viewpoints. I highly recommend this outstanding novel to readers of the genre.

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Filed under A Spark of Light, Ballantine Books, Contemporary, Jodi Picoult, Literary Fiction, Rated B+, Review

Review: Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Title: Tin Man by Sarah Winman
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Genre: Historical, Literary Fiction
Length: 224 pages
Book Rating: B

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Penguin’s First to Read Program

Summary:

From internationally bestselling author Sarah Winman comes an unforgettable and heartbreaking novel celebrating love in all its forms, and the little moments that make up the life of one man.

This is almost a love story. But it’s not as simple as that.

Ellis and Michael are twelve-year-old boys when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.

But then we fast-forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question: What happened in the years between?

With beautiful prose and characters that are so real they jump off the page, Tin Man is a love letter to human kindness and friendship, and to loss and living.

Review:

Spanning several decades from the 1960s to the mid 1990s, Tin Man by Sarah Winman is a bittersweet novel of friendship and love.

The first part of this engaging, yet short novel, is from Ellis Judd’s point of view. Ellis is still mourning the loss of his beloved wife Annie whom he deeply loved. His  mother’s death when he was a teen altered his life’s path when his domineering and abusive father stifled Ellis’s artistic endeavors. The only bright spot in his life until Ellis met Annie is his close friendship with Michael Wright. If the young men had grown up during a more enlightened time period, would their friendship have gone down a different road?

The second part of the novel is from Michael’s perspective and it is much more emotionally compelling. Michael is a sensitive man who drifted away from Ellis after his marriage to Annie.  He moved to London for his writing career where he never quite found anyone who meant as much to him as Ellis. His life takes somewhat tragic turn as he nurses a former lover through a fatal illness. Afterwards, Michael travels to the French countryside where he slowly heals and after his return to London, he reconnects with Annie and Ellis.

Tin Man by Sarah Winman is a beautifully written novel that is deeply affecting. Michael’s part of the story is much more meaningful and heartrending than Ellis’s since it takes readers through the harrowing early years of a disease that for far too long was a death sentence. Ellis is a sympathetic protagonist and it is quite gratifying to watch him grow and make some much needed changes to his life. An incredibly heartfelt yet poignant story that packs a powerful emotional punch.

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Filed under GP Putnams Sons, Historical, Literary Fiction, Rated B, Review, Sarah Winman, Tin Man

Review: The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak

Title: The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak
Publisher: A John Scognamiglio Book
Genre: Historical, Literary Fiction
Length: 304 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Edelweiss

Summary:

Set in 1950s Louisiana, Mandy Mikulencak’s beautifully written and emotionally moving novel evokes both The Help and Dead Man Walking with the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past.

Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them—sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff—left the place as soon as they could. Yet Ginny Polk chose to come back to work as a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls—the cries of men being beaten, the lines of shuffling inmates chained together. Yet she has never seen them as monsters, not even the ones sentenced to execution. That’s why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing their last meals.

Pot roast or red beans and rice, coconut cake with seven-minute frosting or pork neck stew . . . whatever the men ask for Ginny prepares, even meeting with their heartbroken relatives to get each recipe just right. It’s her way of honoring their humanity, showing some compassion in their final hours. The prison board frowns upon the ritual, as does Roscoe Simms, Greenmount’s Warden. Her daddy’s best friend before he was murdered, Roscoe has always watched out for Ginny, and their friendship has evolved into something deep and unexpected. But when Ginny stumbles upon information about the man executed for killing her father, it leads to a series of dark and painful revelations.

Truth, justice, mercy—none of these are as simple as Ginny once believed. And the most shocking crimes may not be the ones committed out of anger or greed, but the sacrifices we make for love.

Review:

Set during the 1950s,The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak is an absolutely riveting novel about a young woman who is a cook at a Louisiana prison.

Ginny Polk works in the kitchen of the same prison her murdered father once worked as a guard. She is also romantically involved with her father’s best friend, Roscoe Simmons, who is now the prison warden. Very much ahead of her time, Ginny is uninterested in marrying her much older lover since it would mean giving up her job in the prison kitchen.  In another divergence from a typical white woman in the deep South, she considers her much older African American co-worker, Dot, to be her best friend and surrogate mother. While Ginny loves her job, her vocation lies in the meals she prepares for prisoners who are about to be put to death for their crimes. Although she never loses sight the horrific crimes these men have been convicted of committing, Ginny also feels they deserve one last act of compassion before they go to the electric chair.

Ginny is quite contemplative as she tries to understand what motivates her to take such care with the death row inmates’ last meal. She is well aware that her traumatic childhood experiences  are a factor in her devotion to ensuring their prisoners last supper has meaning. This curiosity is the catalyst that begins her quest to find answers to questions that have long troubled her, but it is a shocking discovery about her beloved father that jeopardizes everything she holds dear.

As she reminisces about her larger than life, garrulous father, Ginny slowly starts to understand that he had also had a dark side.  Roscoe has tried to protect her from the truth about the man she idolizes but she has no choice but face the fact that her father also had a cruel streak. After she stumbles onto proof that shatters her illusions about him, Ginny sets out to right a horrific wrong, but she inadvertently uncovers the stunning truth about what happened the night of her father’s murder.

The Last Suppers is starkly compelling novel that accurately depicts many of the issues of the time period including race relations and the deplorable conditions at the prison. Ginny is an empathetic young woman who is sometimes a little naive and impulsive, but her heart is always in the right place. With a multi-layered, richly developed and meticulously researched storyline, Mandy Mikulencak’s debut is poignant, through-provoking and ultimately, redemptive.

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Filed under A John Scognamiglio Book, Contemporary, Historical, Historical (50s), Literary Fiction, Mandy Mikulencak, Rated B+, Review, The Last Suppers

Review: The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

Title: The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Historical, Literary Fiction
Length: 384 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Edelweiss

Summary:

The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood.

Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find.

When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town—indeed all that she loves.

Seventy-five years later, Ella May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929.

Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early twentieth-century America—and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash’s place among our nation’s finest writers.

Review:

Rich with historical details and based on real life events, The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash shines a much needed light on the  National Textile Workers Union attempt to secure better wages and working conditions for textile workers in the south.

In 1929, single mother Ella May Wiggins works twelve hours a day, six days a week at American Mill No. 2. Although she relies on the kindness of her neighbors in Stumpton to help watch over her four children while she is working, her $9 a week paycheck barely covers rent and food for her and her family. After attending a union rally in nearby Gastonia where workers at the Loray Mill are being evicted from their homes after going on strike, Ella becomes an unlikely spokeswoman for the union when she wins over the crowd with her moving life story and recently penned ballad, The Mill Mother’s Lament.  Over the next several months, Ella and union organizer Sophia Blevin continue their efforts to integrate Ella’s African-American neighbors and co-workers into the National Textile Workers Union. In the deeply segregated South where minorities and women have no voice or rights, Ella’s work with the union is dangerous and her attempts to include African-Americans in the fight for better wages culminates in heartbreak.

Growing up in poverty in the NC mountains,  Ella marries young and follows her husband, John, from one mill town to another. After the death of their young son, John abandons her and their children and Ella cannot find work anywhere except American Mill No. 2 where whites and African Americans work alongside one another. After coming close to losing her job when she stays home to care for her sick baby, Ella is drawn to the union rally in hopes of improving pay and working conditions for herself and her fellow workers. She is pragmatic and deals with every hardship that comes her way with stoicism yet Ella’s love for her children is fierce.

While Ella is the central figure in the unfolding story, the chapters alternate between various points of view.  Daughter Lilly’s perspective takes place in the present as she shares memories of those long ago days with her nephew, Edwin.  Verchel Park’s acquaintance with Ella’s former husband John has unintended consequences that he only realizes long after their occurrence. The wife of a wealthy mill owner from a neighboring town, Katherine McAdam is drawn to Ella through a shared loss and their unlikely friendship proves to be life saving. African-American train porter Hampton Haywood’s family fled Mississippi in fear for their lives and although he now lives in New York, he cannot resist the call to help the union organizers in the South.  Disgraced police officer Albert Roach is instrumental in setting in motion the final confrontation that ends with a devastating loss.

The Last Ballad is a meticulously researched novel with a thought-provoking and poignant storyline. Based on factual events,  Wiley Cash brings the characters, setting and time period in this compelling story vibrantly to life.  Ella May Wiggins’ struggles to provide for her family are positively gut wrenching and her impressive efforts to improve working conditions and higher wages are captivating.  I absolutely loved and highly recommend this extraordinary novel that highlights a mostly forgotten yet vastly important time in the history of the labor movement.

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Filed under Historical, Historical (20s), Literary Fiction, Rated B+, Review, The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash, William Morrow