Amy and Isabelle

After seeing Elizabeth Strout at a reading of Olive Kitteridge this fall, I bought a copy of her earlier novel Amy and Isabelle.

The novel is about Isabelle and her daughter Amy, who is in high school. Strout explores the relationship between mother and daughter and the secrets between them.

It was an interesting book and Strout plays with the timeline, shifting from the oppressing heat of summer to the chill of the winter before, but Amy and Isabelle isn't as strong a work as Olive Kitteridge.

What Was Lost

I started reading What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn at the beginning of November but put it aside while I was doing NaNoWriMo. Side bar: I ended with ~22,000 words, so less than half way, but it was fun to write again - and I need to find closure for my characters. I worry that they are hanging out there lost.

But back to What Was Lost. It is the story of 10 year-old Kate Meaney who goes missing in 1984. Kate is a loner who pretends she is a private detective with her partner a stuffed monkey dressed in spats. With her vivid imagination and attention to detail, you often wonder how such a girl could go missing. Adrian, the 22 year old clerk at a newsstand and Kate's friend, is the last person to see her when he drops her off for a entrance exam for boarding school and becomes a prime suspect.

Fast forward twenty years later to Green Oaks Shopping Center, site of many of Kate's stake outs. There we meet Kurt, the security guard who thinks he sees Kate on surveillance video and Lisa, Adrian's sister, who has always believed in her brother's innocence, but has struggled since he left after the pressure of being a suspect. Together, they heal many wounds and solve the mystery of Kate's disappearance.

O'Flynn's story is part mystery and part exploration of loss and it leaves you saddened but hopeful.

Juliet, Naked

Nick Hornby's newest novel, Juliet, Naked, keeps with Hornby's style, but I just didn't love it. None of the characters were the least bit sympathetic and I really didn't care what happened to the aging rocker who quit performing 20 years ago and whose one positive attribute is fathering his youngest son after ignoring all his other children with various women nor did I care about the go-nowhere couple in a remote seaside town in England who spend much of their lives trying to find an answer to why the rocker quit.

The most interesting character was Jackson, the aging rockers son, who is sensitive and fears that his father will die and leave him - a valid concern considering his age and the way he has treated his other children.

I was happy when the book ended so I could send these cast of characters back to their sad, pathetic lives and out of mine.

The Believers

I was excited to find a discounted hardcover of Zoe Heller's latest novel, The Believers. Her previous novel, What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal was a smart, suprising story and I expected great things from her latest effort.

While The Believers had an interesting premise it just didn't go far enough for me. The story centers on the Litvinoff family. Joel, a radical New York Lawyer has a stroke and sends his children and wife into a reexamination of everything they thought was true.

Rosa explores Orthodox Judiasm which Heller handles beautifully, but in the end Rosa's reasons and faith never seem strong enough. Karla is in a dead end marriage and begins to explore a relationship with the man that runs the newspaper stand in the hospital where she works. And Lenny, the hard case adopted son struggles with various addictions.

Of course, it wouldn't be a family drama without the discovery of an illegitimate child from an affair which sends Joel's wife Audrey into a tailspin trying first to ignore it and then make it go away.

Are their lives better after the illness and eventual loss of Joel? It's hard to know but they are all changed including what they believe.