Fair question. For me, it was:
Sisters can be creepy
Long-lost cousins who show up for an extended stay are probably up to no good
Try to get along with the village folk
An acquittal doesn’t make all your problems go away
Living in a mostly-burned-down house is not an ideal lifestyle
Someone who murders four people just might try it again, so watch out!
Finished The Reckoning, by John Grisham. In Ford County, Mississippi on an early-October morning in 1946, Pete Banning – decorated war hero, patriarch of a prominent family – walks into his Methodist church and cold-bloodedly shoots to death the minister. Quietly turning himself in, Pete’s only statement ever about it – to the sheriff, his lawyers, the judge, the jury, his family – is: “I have nothing to say.” I have not read all of Grisham’s works, but I’ve read almost all of them, and this is by far his best novel to date. It stands head and shoulders above all the rest. He went through a preachy period for a long while that quickly grew tedious. He seems to have abandoned that in recent years, and there’s nothing of that here. It’s almost like two novels, what with the entire back story of Pete’s endurance of the Bataan Death March and life in a Japanese POW camp, his subsequent escape and then years as a guerrilla jungle fighter. Nice twist at the end – you think he’s left too many hints right off the bat as to why, but that’s not quite so. Highly recommended.
Next Up, it’s back to Sharon Kay Penman’s medieval historical fiction with the second installment of her Welsh Princes trilogy, Falls the Shadow.
Finished The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower. It was one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.
Now I’m reading The Humans by Matt Haig.
Siam Sam – I really liked The Reckoning, too, and agree it’s probably Grisham’s best.
Elendil’s Heir–You’re completely right about Shirley Jackson. There’s a lot to like about her novels, but I think the issue with them is that they are not well paced–leading to long bursts of tedium in and among the good stuff. FWIW, my son loves loves loves her, and I’ve tried to appreciate Jackson more, but–no go. (Fortunately my son is tolerant of differences of opinion.)
I just finished a novel called The Lager Queen of Minnesota by a writer named J. Ryan Stradal. Much more information about beer and the brewing of beer than I needed, though given the title of the book I can’t complain–I was, after all, duly warned. Two sisters, Edith and Helen, and Edith’s granddaughter Diana, and their adventures over the years in beer brewing. The characters are well drawn and their relationships are at the heart of the story, along with the beer. I enjoyed it.
Finished The Humans by Matt Haig. Meh.
Now I’m reading Pure Drivel, by Steve Martin.
In Praise of Modesty, by Wendy Shalit. Should be required reading in grade school.
INew thread: Is that the sound of crunching leaves, I hear?
Thanks, Ulf.