book-review

Book Four for 2025: “The Shell Collector”, Anthony Doerr

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

After reading his other collection of short stories, I ordered this one which is an earlier collection. Once again, he does not disappoint. One of the stories, “The Hunter’s Wife” won the O’Henry Award and has to be one of those most touching and unusual stories I have ever read. One main character, the man who makes his living guiding hunting parties in Montana, becomes obsessed with a young woman he sees in a magic show and follows her everywhere. When he first meets her, she is underage and he does nothing. Later when she is older he relentlessly pursues and marries her. After years of enduring the hardships of living in a remote cabin in the mountains, she leaves. She has always possessed the ability to feel the emotions of both other humans and animals and begins to make her living using this ability to help people. After never seeing her for twenty years, the hunter comes to one of her events. The story details the years between their first meeting and what happens when the hunter attends this event.

The title story, “The Shell Collector”, details the life of a blind expert on certain kinds of sea shells and the marine life that inhabit them, some of which are poisonous. He moves to a remote Pacific island, becomes familiar to those who live there. After a local child becomes ill and her father thinks the shell collector saves her, his peaceful life as he has known it becomes totally upended.


All the stories are notable but another one I found fascinating is “Mkondo”. The main character, Ward Beach, works for a natural history museum and goes to Tanzania to study and collect specimens. While there, he becomes fascinated with a young woman he sees rapidly running through the forest. The rest of the story details his pursuit, their life together, their separate lives, and questions the meaning of what is considered success in life.

I generally am not a short story reader but Doerr’s stories are unique, insightful, touching, and carry a sort of magic not found in many novels or stories.

Book Three for 2025: “”A Psalm for the Wild-Built”, Becky Chambers

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This book is part of a group read at the church where I sing. Classified as science fiction because it occurs in a society on the moon of a different planet far into the future, it is the cheeriest science fiction I have ever read. One of the main characters, Sibling Dex, is a tea monk who travels from town to town, village to village, dispensing the right herbal tea and “advice” to the people who come to see him. He becomes frustrated and bored with this life and decides to head out into the countryside, out into the untouched nature where all the old roads are overgrown or now non-existent.

Due to past experiences, these humans have freed all the robots after they became sentient, and they have an agreement as to where each lives. In addition, humans have decided to live very differently, leave a lot of nature to nature and so live only in certain areas, in bigger towns and small villages with some nature here and there, but most of nature is now untouched and left to do whatever nature does.

Dex heads out in his tea house wagon which he pedals to generate electricity. It is self containing and he has everything he needs for at least two weeks. At one campsite not too far into the wilderness, a robot named Mosscap appears. Mosscap has volunteered to go into human territory per the ancient agreement between humans and robots and learn about humans. Dex finds this a mixture of frightening, intriguing, and confusing. Yet he agrees to allow Mosscap to accompany him on his adventure. The rest of the book is about what they discover, what they learn from each other, and the future they plan.

Book Two for 2025: “Memory Wall Stories”, Anthony Doerr

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

While wandering around in the library, I found this book. His two more recent novels, ” All the Light We Cannot See” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land” remain two of the most touching and fascinating novels I have ever read so decided to try what he started with, short stories. These stories do not disappoint.

The title of the book comes from the first of the stories. It is a combination of science fiction and paleontology. Via an operation to his head a young boy in South Africa possesses the memories of an old woman. Through her memories he learns of a her deceased husband’s interest in rocks and fossils. This allows him to make a discovery that changes lives. In the next story, due to the death of her parents, a young girl in Kansas has to move to Lithuania to live with her grandfather and makes a myth come true. The following story, “Village 113”, won the O. Henry Prize. It details what happens to one woman, a keeper of seeds for an entire village, when the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. Another story tells what happens to a couple in Wyoming when they desperately want a child but cannot conceive. The shortest of the stories, “The Demilitarized Zone”, is well about that–sort of. The final story, like several others, is about memory, in this case the memories of a Holocaust survivor, who like many who survive horrible events when others they know do not, wonders why her.

I liked these stories so much that I ordered his earlier collection of short stories, “The Shell Collector.” He has won the O. Henry Prize for short stories five times and the Pulitzer for “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2015. I keep wondering how he knows so much about so many places. His short stories and novels are set in countries all over the world. The research must never end.

Book One of 2025: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store”, James McBride

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This is another great novel by one of my favorite authors. The book begins with the finding of a skeleton in a well in 1972. Since it is located near the site of an old synagogue, the police start to question a local, elderly Jewish man, Malachi, but get nowhere. Before they can come back to ask him more questions, Hurricane Agnes washes away the skeleton and many houses in the lower, wealthier part of town. When they do finally get around to hunting for him again, he has disappeared.

Then the novel goes back 47 years in this nondescript Pennsylvania town where the white people live in the lower, nicer part of town, and the Jews and black people live in or near an area called Chicken Hill, a poor area with little water and no plumbing. It is the story of a Jewish couple, Chona and Moshe. She runs the grocery store in the title, and he runs a dance theatre where he hosts dances, sometimes showcasing very famous musicians, mostly Jewish or black or Latino. It is also the story of some of their black neighbors, one of whom was Chona’s best friend in school, Jewish immigrants from Europe like Malachi, and a deaf black child, Dodo. When the state comes for Dodo because his mother has died and they think he should be institutionalized, Chona’s kindness and the courage of a local black worker, Nate Timblin, bring the black and Jewish people together to save him. While all this can be sad and serious, I also found myself frequently laughing. This novel reveals the quirks of all sorts of people, how they relate to one another, the dangers of racism, and ultimately the meaning of community, courage, and friendship and how much these things matter.

Book 46 for 2024: “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez”, Claire Jiménez

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The Puerto Rican Ramirez family lives on Staten Island. The book begins years after one of the three daughters, Ruthy, disappears at the age of 13 while on her way home after her school track practice. Twelve years later while watching TV, Jessica, the oldest daughter, sees someone on a reality show who looks like Ruthy. The woman on the TV has red hair like Ruthy and the same birthmark mole. Jessica tells her younger sister, Nina. They concoct a plot to go to the reality show site and bring Ruthy (if she is really Ruthy) home. They avoid telling their mother, Delores, who has never ceased struggling over Ruthy’s disappearance. Delores discovers their plot and insists on not only joining them, but also bringing her older Pentecostal friend who frequently falls into spiritual spells on the floor at church. Eventually, they all head to Boston where the show is located and all kinds of turmoil occurs.

The novel is told from the viewpoint of each sister and their mother, providing endless details about their Puerto Rican culture, their jobs, their views, and how they feel about each other, all done with dialogue. Sometimes it is loving, sometimes snarky as it deals with their experiences with racism, sexism, family secrets, and violence. As a reader, I, too, wanted to know what happened to Ruthy. Definitely worth the read.

Book 44 for 2024: “Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions,” John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Without doubt this ranks among the most horrifying books I have ever read. Every life story (there are ten) discussed in detail illustrates failures in the US justice system:

–inept police, sheriff departments, and judges

–judicial corruption

-criminals paid to give false testimony in return for lower sentences or pay

-sheriff departments, police, and judges unwilling to admit they made a mistake when evidence clearly indicates they are in error

-racism

In one case ten years ago, an innocent person in Texas was actually put to death. The governor refused to acknowledge the evidence given to him that proved the person was innocent. The majority of the cases discussed in this book occurred in Texas although this sort of thing occurs throughout the country.

Note: One of the authors, Jim McCloskey, founded Centurion Ministries, the first organization in the world focused on freeing those wrongfully convicted. The state with the most exonerated individuals is Texas.

Book 42 for 2024: “These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This fictional work is based on the life of the author’s great grandmother. Written as a diary with specific dates, the narrator is not yet a teen when the novel starts. Her parents are wanderers, always looking for a better, new place. Sarah’s character is that of a tough, pioneer girl and then a woman. She can ride horses, shoot to kill, manage a ranch, do whatever it takes to survive. Much of it includes a rather accurate portrayal of life in Arizonan territories as well as Texas at the time including the prejudices of many of the white inhabitants toward the Spanish speaking people already there, fights with Apaches, and the hunt for Geronimo. It is not just the story of her own life, including her relationship with the Army Captain whose job initially is to protect a wagon train, but also portrays other people living in the Southwest during that time period.

I read this as part of a book club. Reactions to the book varied widely from those of us who thoroughly enjoyed the book to at least one person who insisted it is poorly written and viewed it as a romance novel. The rest of us did not. She used an audio book edition. After her descriptions, it appears the audio book does not correctly follow the book itself and is poorly done which may have contributed to her view of this work. I borrowed this novel from the public library and it was obviously well read because it was not in the best condition.

Book 39 for 2024: “The Return”, Hisham Matar

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. The subtitle, “Fathers, Sons, And The Land In Between” indicates a bit of the subject matter–how sons and fathers relate, but in this case it is a tale of horrible grief and suffering when Matar’s father is arrested and imprisoned in the notorious prison of Qaddafi in Libya. For decades Matar tried to find out what happened to his father. There is no record of his death and no one knows what happened to his body. The book details the lives of his family and their search for news of, hopes he might be alive, and what happened to Matar’s father. To this day no one knows. In 2012, 22 years after his father’s kidnapping when Matar was 19, he returned to Libya to try to learn more, met with uncles who had also been imprisoned, some for 20 years. This is the tale of his family’s suffering and hope. It also relates in detail the horrors of Qaddafi’s reign, what happened to many in his most notorious prison, and the resilience of so many who managed to survive, including close relatives of the author.

Note: After Qaddafi fell, there was hope for a new, unified government. However, as of the present, Libya is ruled by two rival administrations and is a divided country.

Book 38 for 2024: “James”, Percival Everett

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

If you ever read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, then you already know the characters in this new novel. If you have not read about Huck, then I suggest you might want to read Cliff Notes or some other synopsis of Twain’s novel. “James” takes its title from the name of one of the main characters, a slave who lives in Hannibal, Missouri. He is generally called Jim, but in reality prefers the more formal James. Basically, Everett’s novel is written from the viewpoint of James, e.g Jim. Most of the major events in Twain’s original novel are followed in this novel, but from James’ viewpoint. Huck, a poor kid, runs away to avoid his violent father and finds James hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Together they live off the land, float in their handmade raft down the Mississippi River, mostly at night to avoid anyone seeing them, and meet all sorts of folks, including two men, who are criminals pretending to be European royalty. It is hard to imagine how a novel about the horrors of slavery could possess any humor, but this one does. It is a quick, enlightening, and entertaining read filled with “lessons” that do not seem to be lessons because they are so intertwined with the James’ story.

Book 29 for 2024: “The Covenant of Water”, Abraham Verghese

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

I waited for more than a year to get this book via the library. It stayed on the best seller lists for months and months and has been translated into more than twenty languages. It is the saga of one family from 1900 to 1977. The setting is the Kerala area of India (I have been to India but not this area). It is unique compared to much of India in that Christians, Muslims, and Hindus live in relative peace with each other. Unlike the more arid parts of India, this is a place dominated by water which is a major theme in the book. Several of the main characters in the book suffer from an inherited Condition, as they refer to it. In every generation, at least one person dies from drowning.

The book begins with a 12 year old girl being married off to a 40 some year old widower. She has to travel far from her family via water. He is kind and patient but unlike her, who loves the water, he will travel many extra miles to avoid even traveling by water. He is terrified of water because he has the Condition. Eventually, she becomes the family matriarch, Big Ammachi. This is her story and the story of her descendants, the Christian community in Kerala, and the fate of one British man who remained in India after independence. It is also the story of the progress of medicine (Big Ammachi’s granddaughter is determined to become a doctor and find what causes the Condition) and how one family experiences many hardships to further future generations.

The author, Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford, details this fictional family’s history for several generations in 715 pages. It sounds daunting but I kept reading because I wanted to know what happens to all the people. At the same time, I found this to be one of the saddest books I have ever read. Due to the Condition and leprosy, for which there was no cure at the time, many people’s lives are horrendously affected. I did learn a lot about medicine and medical advances, how leprosy destroyed lives, Kerala and, much to my amazement, that many Christians in Kerala continued to follow the Hindu caste system.