This was fun, but somebody shoot me if I ever embark on a another theme week. For the wrap-up, random favorites:
Ian McEwan writes fascinating novels that focus on a turning point, an otherwise innocent moment, and the disturbing and tragic consequences that spin out from there. Enduring Love turns a chance encounter into a dangerous obsession. (It’s just been turned into a movie that’s gotten excellent reviews.) In Amsterdam, a woman’s death leads to tense games of revenge and scandal. Atonement is the longest of McEwan’s novels I’ve read; the other two are practically novellas in length, but this story has more scope and sweep. In it, a young girl oversees something, misinterprets it, and sends the lives of her family spinning into some very dark places. Briony, the girl in question, is an amazing character, both sympathetic and disturbing.
Living in a state that gets the brunt of Appalachian stereotypes, I’m happy to see the region and its culture treated with delicacy and heart in Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballad Novels. McCrumb tells overlapping stories of contemporary Appalachia (in and around a small town in the mountains of eastern Tennessee) juxtaposed with thematically resonant stories from history and folklore. The Ballad of Frankie Silver is probably my favorite. As present-day Sheriff Spencer Arrowood waits for the execution of a criminal he’d caught early in his career, he looks into the story of Frankie Silver, the first woman to be executed in North Carolina. The past informs the present in lovely, unexpected ways. Other highlights of this series include She Walks These Hills and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, which is just unbearably sad and hopeful at the same time. (McCrumb has also written a series of conventional mysteries, which aren’t bad. My favorite of her non-Ballad books is probably Bimbos of the Death Sun, an affectionately scathing tale of murder at a sci-fi/fantasy con.)
Two of the funniest books I’ve ever read come from Joe Keenan, creator of Frasier. In Blue Heaven, two gays run afoul of the most conniving woman alive, who uses them to try and scam money from the mob with a sham wedding. It’s filled with terrific characters, sparkling dialogue, and wonderfully constructed screwball comedy. With the popularity of The Apprentice, I’m surprised there hasn’t been a re-release of Putting on the Ritz. It spins from the not-at-all-implausible premise that an Ivana Trump-ish social climber wants a singing career. Only her lack of talent, philandering husband, bitter business rivals, and hapless lyricist and composer can keep her from triumph, surely. These books fall squarely into the “laughing out loud” category, and I can read them again and again.
So, that’s it for Book Week. Not to worry. I’ve got prose out of my system for a while.