A Good Family by Erik Fassnacht

I really enjoyed this book.  It took me longer to read than my average book, I think because I read so many mystery books that are written for plot development and in which characterization and psychological insight is often sacrificed.  I think I had to slow down for these carefully etched portraits of ordinary people.  But I found myself sneaking glances at the book at times when I was doing other things, thinking:  gee, do I have to do this right now?  I wonder what's happening in the story.. It wouldn't hurt anything if I read it right now, would it?

Fassnacht is not shy about dropping brand names:  NPR, Chicago magazine, 7-Up, New Balance, TrendStar.  I haven't read so many brand names since I read Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie.

When Barkley, the main protagonist of the novel, arrives at a school for his first day of work as a teacher, he looks down at his New Balance shoes.  I found myself wondering, "Is this significant?  Is this cool?  (Or does it just mean that real teachers wear real comfortable shoes?)"  I looked down at my own New Balance shoes and wondered, very briefly, if they made me cool.  I decided that any shoe with a velcro fastener can't be considered cool.

Many places in Chicagoland are mentioned in this novel, like Diversey Harbor.  I found myself thinking, if you don't know Diversey Harbor, how will you picture this place?

Fassnacht's portrait of Barkley's transition into a professional as he takes his first teaching job and deals with students, both the challenging and the troubled kind, bosses, and office politics generally, is really quite stirring. He experiments, responds to changing conditions and finds his footing. Teaching is a kind of performance, after all.

Nevertheless, the combination of familiar situations and locations, and yes, brand names, lends the novel a wonderful, intimate air of immediacy. I think that this is one of the many ways to tell a story that will resonate with readers.


 

A Question of Honor by Charles Todd (A Bess Crawford mystery)

I have to admit that I was interested in reading this novel both because of its plot, which seemed intriguing, but even more because I loved the cover, which shows The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India.  The Golden Temple doesn't really figure in the story, however.

Charles Todd is a mother-son writing team and they write historical fiction mysteries.  They write two series, the Bess Crawford series and the Ian Rutledge series.  I had already read the Ian Rutledge novel A Fine Summer's Day.  (I can hardly believe it, but this novel is the 17th in the series, and there's a new Ian Rutledge novel out now, No Shred of Evidence.)

Bess Crawford is a nurse serving in the First World War.  She grew up in India, where her father was a regimental colonel.  The early part of the novel recounts events from her childhood in India and I found that part very interesting and enjoyable.

As an adult, she is serving at a field hospital when a stuck truck is pushed out of the mud one night by a group of men, one of whom she thinks she recognizes as a man who served under her father and who disappeared the same day police came to arrest him for murders in both England and India, forever conferring an air of scandal on the regiment Bess's father commands.

The back story of the murders in England, as Bess uncovers the mystery, is fascinating.  I found myself feeling dissatisfied with the motive for the murder and wondered if other readers would feel disappointed as well.

City of Women by David R. Gillham

City of Women is set in Berlin; it opens in 1943, in a movie theater.  Berliners are facing food and other shortages, their men at away at war, neighbors turn in each other to the authorities and an atmosphere of distrust prevails. Sigrid is lonely, harried by her mother-in-law, and meets a strange man at the cinema with whom she starts an affair.  She also meets a young woman who comes to her for aid when the police come into the cinema looking for people with false papers.  These chance encounters change her life irrevocably.

City of Women has elements that remind me of other novels. Like the Paris Architect, the first 100 pages are incredibly suspenseful, and as in both The Nightingale and Paris Architect, apolitical and war-weary individuals nevertheless become engaged in the resistance. Essentially, these individuals come to the point where they say, no more, and their concern for friends, lovers, and strangers overwhelms their sense of self-preservation.

It's partly a novel about female friendship and how that is tested by extreme situations like war.  Over the course of the novel, everything deteriorates.  Danger comes closer for everyone.

Charles Finch, the Chicago-based author of a the Charles Lenox series (an amateur detective in Victorian London), wrote a lovely and thoughtful review of this novel for USA Today.  Here's the link:  http://usat.ly/1Qcy8WL

I think most readers who enjoyed The Nightingale and the Paris Architect will enjoy City of Women as well.  I do think that the sex here is portrayed in a less delicate way that in those other novels, in part because here it's a really important mover in the plot and the changes that Sigrid undergoes.

Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

I've struggled to figure out what to say about this novel.  It's interesting to me because it is about old age and "end of life" issues.  That's not a super popular topic for novels.

I enjoyed the novel because I found that Jill McCorkle used details and voices for her characters that made them seem authentic and alive to me.  I liked her writing style.

Finally, I greatly admired the fact that McCorkle portrayed real drama in the lives of nursing home residents and showed that in this stage of life the inner life continues to be passionate and interesting.

There is a murder in this novel, but this novel is not a mystery and the murder is not solved.  To me, the brutality and tragedy of this murder seemed like an alarming departure in tone from the rest of the novel.

I read this book with a book group and some (not all) were offended by its portrait of aging.