Reviews

I've fallen behind on reviewing the books that I've read recently so here is me trying to catch up.

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White Noise

by Don DeLillo

This was a satire about modern life in America. The main characters are Jack Gladney and his fourth wife, Babette. Jack is a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in mid-America. They have four children who are deeply into all aspects of brand-name consumerism. Their lives are engulfed by the white noise of television, microwaves, radio transmissions, and sirens, the music of life in the city. None of the characters are particularly lovable or even likable which made it difficult to "connect" with any of them and I think that was probably deliberate. 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Swan Song

by Elin Hilderbrand

This is the fourth and final entry in Hilderbrand's "Nantucket" novels. Chief of Police Ed Kapenash, after serving for thirty-five years in that capacity, is ready to retire, but when a summer home worth millions of dollars burns to the ground and the owners' personal assistant cannot be found, Ed's retirement plans have to be put on hold. The chief's daughter is best friends with the missing girl. He feels obligated to solve the mystery of the fire and find the missing girl before he can move on to the next phase of his life.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars 

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White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

This is the fifth in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series featuring detectives Arthur Bryant and John May. In this instance, Bryant and May must solve the murder of one of their own. A member of the PCU was killed inside a locked autopsy room whose only other occupants were dead. Moreover, only four members of the unit have keys to the room. Meanwhile, Bryant and May are stuck in a van miles away in the Dartmoor countryside as a freak snowstorm rages. They had been on their way to a convention of psychics. It will take all of their skill to solve the murder remotely.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Trace Elements

by Donna Leon

When a man who was responsible for working in the field collecting samples of Venice's water supply dies in a mysterious motorcycle accident, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague Claudia Griffoni investigate. Once again they are supported by the remarkable research skills of Vice Questore Patta's secretary, Signora Elletra Zorzi. With her help, they are able to piece together the tangled threads that lead them to the discovery that the health of the entire region is endangered by "trace elements" in the water and that discovery may very well have been the reason for the motorcycle "accident."

My rating: 2 of 5 stars 

Reviews

I've been quite negligent about posting reviews of the books that I've read recently, so here's my effort to begin to catch up.

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I find that Elin Hilderbrand's books are generally good for a light summer read and this one certainly falls into that category.

The setting is Nantucket (of course!) and the main character is Hollis Shaw. Hollis has recently lost her husband and as a grieving widow, she is lonely and searching for a focus and purpose for her life. 

Hollis has a summer home on Nantucket and she comes up with the idea of inviting a friend from each decade of her life to spend a weekend with her at that home. Accordingly, she invites Tatum, who was her childhood best friend; Dru-Ann, her best friend from college; Brooke, a friend from when their children were growing up together; and Gigi, who is her favorite internet friend. (Hollis is a blogger and Gigi follows her blog.) Little does Hollis know that she and Gigi share another connection and grief at a loss.

Hollis asks her daughter, Caroline, to interview and film each of the women as they discuss how they know Hollis. Of course, they each have their own problems and concerns and these are revealed through the interviews. The weekend becomes something of a therapy session for each of them.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable, non-taxing read. I've read Hilderbrand books before so I knew what to expect and I was not disappointed. If you are looking for a good beach read, here it is!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars  

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Long, long ago in another hot summer not unlike this one, I read the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None.  If I wasn't hooked on reading murder mysteries before, that book sealed my fate. I searched out more books like that and especially more Christie books. I think, over time, I finally read all of her books, and some of them, like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I read more than once. Apparently, Alice Feeney is a Christie fan as well.

In Daisy Darker, Feeney has written a kind of homage to Christie's And Then There Were None. Feeney's story takes place on a tidal island that is cut off from the rest of the world once the tide rolls in.  At that point, it will be eight long hours until the island reconnects with the mainland.

The title character, Daisy Darker, is the granddaughter of the woman who lives on that tidal island. Nana is turning eighty years old and the family is gathering on the island to help her celebrate. Naturally, all of those family members have their own secrets and concerns, so it is a prickly assembly. 

It's made a bit more prickly by the fact that a storm is gathering which threatens to isolate the island even more. As the storm rages at midnight, Nana's body is discovered. It was not a natural death. In an hour, another family member is found dead. Someone is killing them off, one by one. But who? Is there anyone on the island besides family members?

So, what we have here is the classic locked-room mystery, and kudos to Feeney; she handles it quite well. She's no Christie but then nobody is but hers is a creditable effort.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars 

The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand: A review

If it is summer, it must be time for another Elin Hilderbrand Nantucket novel, and sure enough, here it is. The Hotel Nantucket is her latest exploration of the culture of that unique little island off Cape Cod.

The history of the Hotel Nantucket began in the gilded age and was interrupted by a tragic fire in 1922. A young chambermaid named Grace Hadley was killed in the fire, but her death was not the accident that it was believed to be. 

But death was not an end for Grace. She is still hanging around the hotel, haunting it until the truth about her death is finally revealed. In the meantime, she amuses herself by performing mostly harmless "haunting" shenanigans. She is considered by many to be one of the attractions of the hotel. 

Since that 1922 fire, the hotel had fallen on hard times and had become nothing more than an abandoned eyesore, but all of that changes when London billionaire Xavier Darling buys the hotel and renovates it to its former glory. To complete the project, Xavier hires Lizbet Keaton of Nantucket as the hotel's manager and she makes it her goal to pull together a staff worthy of her vision for the hotel. 

Lizbet aims to make the hotel the unique and desirable destination for visitors to the island. As the new staff learn to get along and work with each other and to keep the guests satisfied, the Hotel Nantucket begins to live up to Lizbet's hopes for it.

As always in a Hilderbrand novel, we get the story from many points of view which deepens our understanding of events and gives us more choices of characters with whom to identify. That strategy can sometimes be confusing but in this case, it seemed quite effective. The main point of view that we get is from the ghostly presence of Grace who sees all and knows all. Moreover, she does everything she can to make sure that others become aware of the truth that she knows. 

The author is particularly good at setting up her story and getting the reader involved in the narrative. It makes the book hard to put down because we are always wanting to learn how each particular sidebar plays out and how it all fits together in the whole. 

It's all about the relationships and how those relationships affect events and the hotel itself. Hilderbrand knows Cape Cod very well and The Hotel Nantucket reveals its laid-back summer ambiance as well as the importance of those relationships. The author is on top of her game with this one, so chalk it up as another entertaining Hilderbrand summer read. 

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand: A review

Elin Hilderbrand really does represent the gold standard when it comes to beach novels. Last summer I read her Summer of '69 and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to reading her 2020 entry to her beach oeuvre. She did not disappoint. 

28 Summers begins in 1993. No, actually that's wrong. It begins with the ending and so we know up front that Mallory Blessing will die much too young from cancer in 2020. But after introducing us to Mallory on her deathbed, she takes us back to 1993 where it all began.

Mallory, a Baltimore girl, had been living quite unhappily in New York with her best childhood friend. Her life was going nowhere and she was looking for a way out. That way out came from a most unexpected direction. An aunt dies and bequeaths to Mallory her summer cottage on Nantucket, a cottage where Mallory had spent many happy summers growing up. She takes possession but knows right away that this will not be a summer cottage for her; this will be her permanent home.

She sets about finding a job, getting to know her neighbors, and generally making herself at home on the island. Then her brother asks her to host a bachelor party for him on Labor Day weekend. She happily assents and her brother and two of his friends, Fray his childhood buddy and Jake McCloud his fraternity big brother at Johns Hopkins, show up for the weekend. But then Fate intervenes and, the first thing we know, both her brother Cooper and friend Fray have absconded for different reasons leaving only Jake. 

Now, Mallory had long had a bit of a crush on Jake but had never spent time alone with him. They decide to go ahead with the weekend that she had planned and before the weekend is over, the two of them are in love. Unfortunately, Jake is already committed to his childhood sweetheart Ursula and he feels unable to give her up and Mallory doesn't make any demands. Instead, the two make a pact to have a "same time next year" affair. And so, every Labor Day weekend for 28 years, whatever has happened in their lives in the intervening year, Jake returns to the island and the two resume their relationship. They have no contact of any kind for the rest of the year.

Eventually, Jake does marry Ursula and they have a daughter. Mallory never marries but she has serial affairs and has a one-night stand with Fray which produces a son, Lincoln (Link).

At the start of each chapter (each chapter delineates another year's Labor Day weekend), Hilderbrand gives us a brief rundown of pop culture and the topics that were absorbing our attention in that year. This was actually one of the most interesting things about the narrative for me and it helped to anchor me in time as each year came along. 

Hilderbrand writes of thoroughly nice people. Yes, there are some minor hiccups in behavior, but at heart, her characters are people who care about others and who want to do what's right. They don't want to hurt anyone. In other words, this is escapist literature, but when were we ever more in need of an escape?

My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand: A review

I actually remember the summer of '69. I remember the excitement of watching on a black and white television screen as Neil Armstrong took his "one small step" into history, fulfilling President Kennedy's promise that we would go to the moon in that decade. I remember it and so it's hard for me to think of a novel about that time as "historical fiction" and yet I suppose that is what we must call Elin Hilderbrand's Summer of '69. It was, in fact, fifty years ago this summer.

In addition to being historical fiction, this is what I would call a great summer read, a great beach book even. After all, much of its action takes place on the beaches of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, places about which Hilderbrand seems to write instinctively. One feels that she knows them well.

Kate Levin, the wife of Boston lawyer David, takes her family to her mother's Nantucket beach house every summer for three months, but in '69 some members of that family are missing. Her busy husband is only able to join the family on weekends. Her beloved only son, Tiger, has been drafted and recently sent to Vietnam. Her oldest daughter, Blair, is heavily pregnant and unable to travel. Her second daughter, Kirby, has taken a job on Martha's Vineyard at a hotel frequented by people like Ted Kennedy. This leaves Jessie, her youngest, as the only child to absorb all of Kate's anxieties and worry. It promises to be a very unpleasant summer for Jessie.

Jessie is a marvelous character. The story really belongs to her and we see it primarily through her eyes. She turns thirteen during this summer and her body, her perspectives, and priorities are changing. Much too fast it seems at times.

Hilderbrand shifts her perspective from one character to another, but always it comes back to Jessie. The Levin family relationships prove fractious. Kate's mother, David's mother-in-law is tyrannical and dictatorial. And over all of the relationships spreads Kate's dread of receiving notification from the Army and knowing that she will never see her son alive again and her desperate attempts to find someone with influence who can get her boy home.

And so we spend this momentous summer with this somewhat dysfunctional but ultimately loving family and we watch as they navigate what is for them a very stressful season but one in which Jessie grows and learns about life. The most important things that she learns are facts about her family. She learns that her adored father and her mother are also human beings in addition to being her parents. Even her autocratic grandmother is a human being with her own needs and desires. One has reason to hope that Jessie will herself be a very wise human being.

This is a thoroughly undemanding read about an ordinary family with whom I could easily identify and about a time in our country's history that I can look back on almost fondly today, although at the time it was fraught with anxiety and hard to see the way forward. Hilderbrand is a very talented writer and the plotting of her novel was skillful and it kept the action moving, making it hard for the reader to put the book down. Her adeptness as a writer was also borne out in the development of her characters. I have nothing negative to say about the book. It was, in my estimation, the perfect summer read!

My rating: 5 of 5 stars