Edithsbookpicks: SigridNunez: The Friend, Riverhead Books (Penguin ...

Edithsbookpicks: SigridNunez: The Friend, Riverhead Books (Penguin ...: Sigrid Nunez: The Friend, Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House US) paperback, 9780735219458, (No German edition announced yet) J...

Sigrid Nunez: The Friend, Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House US) paperback, 9780735219458,

(No German edition announced yet)

Just finished reading Sigrid Nunez: The Friend, the National Book Award Winner 2018, and what a very unusual book it is.  Her prose is exquisite, a very clear and direct style that really appealed to me.   One of the peculiarities of the narration is that some characters remain unnamed, like wife No. 1, wife No. 3, the friend who is most sympathetic about the situation etc.  This gives the novel an almost analytical, observing touch.

The narration is about an unnamed woman losing her best male friend and mentor to suicide. Finding herself absolutely grief stricken and taking in his unwanted sad dog, a Great Dane no less, she is not sure about her motive for this act particularly since her New York flat is tiny and her apartment house does not allow pets. What follows feels less like a story but more like stringing pearl after pearl into a necklace: a sequence of thoughts,  contemplations, memories, insights, meditations about life, on loss, friendship, love, loneliness,  death, grief, solitude, literature, art, writing, teaching, solitude, serendipity and the unexpected happiness of  sharing life with a dog.

The parts of the novel dealing with the dog are the most touching and intimate; I thought these the best.  Another masterful, playful section in the novel is when she switches directions for a while towards the end.  

Highly recommend this 200 page long very worthwhile, uplifting literary read.

 

Lou Berney: November Road, Harper Collins, 9780008309336, paperback, April publication

German edition: Destination Dallas, Harper Collins

Lou Berney’s “November Road” was nominated as one of the best books of 2018 by the media, among them the Washington Post and Newsweek. I really loved this gripping, atmospheric 1960ties story, set right after JFK’s assassination with a cast of very likable, shady and intriguing characters.   Lou Berney is a new discovery for me; I will definitely check out other novels by this Edgar Award winning author. He is a terrific writer reminding me in parts of Chandler but he has his own distinct voice with short, clipped sentences.  

Frank Guidry works for the mob in New Orleans and is one of the most trusted, smartest men in the employ of big boss Carlos Marcello.  Frank’s luck runs dry when Kennedy is killed in Dallas and he realizes everyone connected to Carlos and Dallas turns up dead within hours. Frank knows too much himself and decides to hit the road heading for Vegas before ending up a corpse himself.  

Charlotte, smart and witty, made a bad choice by marrying too early leaving all her ambitions behind. Ending up with an alcoholic as a husband, two young girls and a dog, she is bored stiff as a housewife pretending contentment in small town Oklahoma. After a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner she packs up the car while her husband is sleeping off yet another hangover, taking her girls and the dog hoping her courage will not desert her.  As she drives off, California comes to her mind.  

Barone, the hit man sent out to kill Frank, is sniffing out Frank’s well covered tracks second guessing where he might be heading. Eventually luck sends him into the right direction.

These three characters and story lines give the novel their color, voice and tempo. When Charlotte gets stranded after an accident, her and Frank’s paths cross, as destined by fate. The suspense becomes even more gripping when the unthinkable happens, they fall in love.   

I will not reveal any more as it would spoil a major part of the book  but I rushed back to this Tarrantino like plot as fast as I could, loved every page of it. 

The title of the German edition is terribly misleading , Dallas only triggers Frank's escape and is never a destination.  

 

Bart van Es: The Cut out Girl – A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found, 9780241978726, paperback, Penguin, Non-fiction, Costa Book of the Year 2018

German edition: Das Mädchen mit dem Poesiealbum, Dumont Verlag, gebunden & E-Books

When the prestigious „Costa Book of  the Year 2018“ was awarded this year,  I learned through an Instagram posting of the publisher at Penguin whose publishing I highly value that it had gone to  Bart van Es’ „The Cut out Girl“ .

This is one of these books you keep thinking about long after you finished reading, a deeply touching combination of history book and family memoir. How very brave of Bart to investigate a family secret and how courageous of Lien to open her heart and grant him access to her life story.  I knew some historical facts about the fate of Jews in Holland during Nazi occupation but Lien’s memoir provides a much deeper insight. I had absolutely no idea so many Jews went into hiding in the Netherlands, most of them were unfortunately betrayed and sent to their death. 

Lien’s parents decide to give her away to Dutch foster parents in 1940 hoping that she would survive the war in hiding. Bart van Es’s socialist grandparents were her foster parents, Lien soon learns to trust and love them and becomes close to her foster siblings. During a Nazi raid she can barely escape with the help of an underground network who move her around until she is finally placed with a Calvinist family in the Dutch countryside for the duration of the war.  Learning of her own parent’s death in a concentration camp after the war is over; the van Es’ family takes her in again and eventually adopts her.  So why it is that after returning to the family she loved Lien’s name has almost disappeared from being mentioned in the van Es family?  Bart’s curiosity as an Oxford scholar leads him to a painstaking research of Lien’s life evolving into a deep friendship and understanding between them.

Bart van Es's writing weaves back and force between his conversations with Lien, his own investigation visiting the places where Lien lived during the war narrating her life as a child, both their joint family history and finally her adult life and relationships. 

I still think of the trauma Lien experienced, the painful incidents which lead to several dramatic misunderstandings, the hurt and loss finally affecting her adult life. But this is also the story of many people's kindness, love and courageous efforts that went into saving Lien.  This book went under my skin and has a happy ending.

R.J. Gadney: Albert Einstein Speaking, Canongate UK, 9781786890474, hardback available, paperback 9781786890498 available March 14, 2019

I was seduced into reading “Albert Einstein Speaking” by the publisher’s blurb:  “Princeton New Jersey. 14^th March 1954. “Albert Einstein speaking.” “What?” says the girl on the telephone”? “I am sorry, she says, I have the wrong number.” From a wrong number to a friendship that would impact both their lives, the novel begins with a meeting of two very different minds – the world most respected scientist and a schoolgirl from New Jersey……”  So much for the blurb which did the trick in winning me as a reader and I don't regret these reading hours at all.

It is true that Mimi Beaufort, the girl on the phone and Isabella, her sister, played a very important role

in making Albert Einstein’s life a much happier one during his last years. But while reading I started to get a bit miffed and felt lead on as the blurb made me believe the book would be predominately about this relationship but in fact only 25 % of the book are about their relationship. 

The remaining 75 % of the book is a fictionalized biography staying close to the facts of Albert Einstein’s incredible life.  Putting my being miffed aside, I began to enjoy this very informative, charming, well composed and engrossing read about Albert Einstein. I did not know very much about his life apart from the more well-known facts. Reading “Albert Einstein speaking” gave me a great insight into this Nobel Prize Winner’s biography, a Jew and pacifist who supported the founding of the state of Israel hating the Nazi’s, a man who loved music and the ladies, who had a tumultuous private life during equally tumultuous political times and is still considered the most influential physicist of the 20^th century.  

For me the most charming part of the book was of course the part dealing with the tender, fatherly relationship he had with Mimi and Isabella in US exile where he taught at Princeton leaving the political mess of Europe behind but taking some trusted family members and friends with him.

Edithsbookpicks: Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind, A ChiefInspect...

Edithsbookpicks: Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind, A ChiefInspect...: Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind, A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, 9780751566611, Little Brown UK/Sphere, (hardback) (Kindle edition a...

Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind, A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, 9780751566611, Little Brown UK/Sphere, (hardback) (Kindle edition available), paperback: 9780751575644, coming May 2019, 

no German pub date yet

A few years ago, I boarded a plane, 11 hrs. of flying from Texas ahead of me, with my first Louise Penny mystery as a present from my friends to keep me company on this long flight.  My friends had told me how much they enjoyed Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, all set in the town of Three Pines near Montreal/Canada.   Having just finished the latest, “Kingdom of the Blind”, I think this is the best one of the series by far.  416 pages just flew by; the plot never felt tired but held me firmly in its grip with its two parallel story lines.  

Amande Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Surete du Quebec, together with his neighbor Myrna Landers, a retired psychologist and owner of a bookstore and a man called Benedict are summoned to an abandoned farm house by Maître Mercier to be informed that they have been named executors of a will by an elderly woman, a stranger they never met. The “Baroness” as she was called, was once a cleaning lady to one of their friends as it turns out but how Benedict came into the picture remains a mystery.  The will seems completely delusional and becomes even more bizarre when they learn of three adult children she could have easily named executors.  After the will has been read the first impression of delusion seems confirmed when she bequests millions, a title to one of her sons and some real estate in Europe to all of her children, none of which seems to have been in her ownership.  When a body is found in her badly decrepit former house, the case becomes stranger yet bringing Amande’s son in law as chief investigator into the picture. As is usually the case, several friends of Gamache and his wife in Three Pine, an ailing colleague and family members become crucial in resolving this complex puzzle around the Baroness.   

Parallel Gamache has to face the firing of one his most difficult agents, Amelia, who in connection with his own current suspension was involved with deadly drugs disappearing into the streets to catch the cartel behind it.

The mystery behind “The Baroness” and her heirs, the surprising twist and turns of the investigation held me completely captive until the very last page, as Amande Gamache and his team face several dead ends until they finally solve the crime. 
 

Louise Penny’s novels are published in Germany but no publication date for my favorite one so far.