Curiously Consistent

Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone: A Novel by Phaedra Patrick (Park Row Books, $24.99, 368 pages)

Fans of Phaedra Patrick’s debut novel, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, will be delighted with her next heartfelt novel, Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone.  Ms. Patrick has created a signature theme that permeates the tales.  The main character is a man adrift in life, not connecting with reality.  The setting is a small village in Yorkshire, England.

Benedict Stone is a jeweler, as was his father before him.  Stone’s wife, Estelle, has decamped from their home, ostensibly to look after the apartment of a friend who is working in New York.  Benedict knows that Estelle has tired of his obsession with having children.  So far that hasn’t happened for them.  He’s proposed adoption and Estelle has rebuffed this alternative.  The emotional distance between them is growing, much to Benedict’s horror.  He relies on food to calm his nerves and we all know where that leads.

Stone’s jewelry store is fading into oblivion, due in no small part to Benedict’s insistence on making simple pieces that aren’t on trend with popular styles.  He is stubborn and resists change, especially when it comes to his trade.  Cecil, his salesman, offers advice on how to win back Estelle and Benedict considers it.

One dark and stormy night, there is a knock at the front door.  Benedict imagines it is Estelle returned home.  But, no, instead there’s a teenage girl on the front porch and she is dripping wet.  She introduces herself – Gemma Stone, his estranged brother Charlie’s daughter.  Gemma has traveled alone from the United State and invites herself in for a stay.  She may or may not have her father’s permission to make the journey!

And that is the beginning of a wonderful tale of redemption and awakening for everyone.  Ms. Patrick infuses her chapters with fascinating information about the gemstones contained in a bag that Gemma has brought on her trip.  Each has historically associated attributes.  Together, Benedict and Gemma make these gemstones part of their strategy for creating a better life for both of them.

Ms. Patrick enlivens her characters with foibles and quirks.  Her scenes are full of color and details that will delight the reader.  It’s not often that an equally engaging novel follows a marvelous debut.  Happily, this author has succeeded with Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone.  Look for Benedict Stone in mid-May.

Highly recommended.

Ruta Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.  Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone will be released on May 16, 2017.

“Phaedra Patrick understands the soul.”  Nina George, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop.

 

 

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A Bridge Over Troubled Water

Finding solace in a record album.

Like most individuals, I was extremely troubled by the events that transpired at the Boston Marathon. I found myself searching for something that would make me feel better, something that would be soothing. Nothing seemed to help until I listened to the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Though released in 1970, it seems to provide relevant messages for these times. All of the lyrics, with the exception of the cover of an Everly Brothers song, were written by Paul Simon. Here is a track-by-track look at the album, starting with lyrical excerpts.

When you’re down and out. When you’re on the street. When evening falls so hard, I will comfort you. I’ll take your part. Oh, when darkness comes. And pain is all around…

Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way.

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” This is a song about human beings facing crisis. In times of crisis, we need the better humans among us, or guardian angels, to rise and protect us. We saw both the best and worst of humanity in Boston. The song reminds us that a better day is on the way.

I’d rather feel the earth beneath my feet. Yes I would.

“El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” Paul Simon added lyrics to a Peruvian/Andean song. In its way, it celebrates multiculturalism, like the national flags that lined the end of the Boston Marathon course near the finish line. We will find strength in diversity.

Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart. You’re shaking my confidence daily.

“Cecilia” The protagonist of the song comes face-to-face with life’s imperfections. He loves a girl who is unfaithful to him, she shakes his confidence daily. While our own sense of confidence was shaken and bruised by recent events, the music’s energy reminds us of the simple joy of life and living. The sun rises tomorrow over Boston.

Home is where I want to be.

“Keep the Customer Satisfied” The traveling performer want to return home. Boston has served as a second home to many college graduates, for whom the bombings — as President Obama expressed — felt quite personal. The senselessness of events made us feel exhausted like the traveling troubadour.

I can’t believe your song is gone so soon.

“So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” This is a song that feels both like a dream and its conclusion. It signals the end of something, perhaps the end of the days that we take safety at sporting events for granted.

He carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down…

“The Boxer” The people of Boston may get knocked down, but they get back up.

I wonder how your engines feel?

“Baby Driver” This is Simon’s song about his family in which he pays tribute to sports, in the form of auto racing. Life and athletic competition will go on.

Half of the time we’re gone and we don’t know where.

“The Only Living Boy in New York” The song is about isolation. No doubt some Bostonians, in virtual lock-down for days, felt like the only living man or woman in the city.

Something is wrong and I need to be there.

“Why Don’t You Write Me” We all feel apprehension over events we cannot control.

Hello loneliness, I think I’m going to cry… Hello emptiness.

“Bye Bye, Love” Tears and hollow feelings ruled the day. The loss expressed in this song was echoed in the pain felt by those mourning the three persons killed in the bombings.

Ask me and I will play all the love that I hold inside.

“Song for the Asking” The nation displayed its love for the city and people of Boston during this fateful week.

Sail on by. Your time has come to shine. Your dreams are on their way. (Title track)

Sail on, Boston.

Joseph Arellano

This article originally appeared on the Blogcritics Music site:

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/bridge-over-troubled-water-finding-solace/

Waitin’ On A Sunny Day

Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin (Touchstone, $28.00, 494 pages)

I was living in Los Angeles in the winter of 1975 when a live concert by a then-unknown East Coast band was stereo-cast late one evening by a Metromedia FM radio station.   The group, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, was playing at the Roxy Theatre and for all of Southern California.   The performance began with a song called “Thunder Road,” and the band proceeded to play all of the songs that we would soon come to know as the Born to Run album.   (I saw Springsteen and the E Street Band when they hit San Francisco the following year.)

Fans of Springsteen know that despite all of their digging, not much is known about his personal life.   Peter Ames Carlin, author of the well recommended Paul McCartney: A Life, and of Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson, attempts to remedy this in Bruce.   Carlin draws upon numerous interviews to flesh out a picture of a real human being behind the rock legend.

Some will be surprised to see how vulnerable Springsteen is.   He’s a man who often worries about what others think of him, one who has been unsuccessful in numerous personal relationships, one who has experienced a high level of depression and relied upon years of professional counseling, and one who has often sought a geographical solution to his problems (moving from East Coast to West Coast and back, to the South and back to the West before settling back down in New Jersey).   The mature Springsteen is now a family man, with a wife, son and daughter, who has repeatedly stuck his neck out for social causes and for political candidates – notably supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races.

Carlin has an insider’s ear for music and provides a quite satisfying amount of information about Springsteen’s recording sessions over several decades; some of the insights may cause readers to purchase albums or revisit the ones they already own.   Carlin’s best, detailed work comes in reviewing how The Rising album – a work of healing and redemption if there ever was one – was recorded after 9/11.   His analysis is excellent except for the fact that it fails to mention the very best song on the album, “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day.”   (How did that happen?)

“(Springsteen is) an artist fixated on the intimate stories of ordinary folks whose labors make wealthier mens’ dreams come true…”

Bruce provides the insight that Springsteen has crafted his albums in the same manner in which a movie producer crafts a film.   Each album is intended to represent a story, generally about the people left behind in an otherwise prosperous society.   It’s no wonder that Springsteen’s most recent release pleaded for us to take care of our own.

This story of a performer and his unique band of brothers is more satisfying than most musician bios and it makes for a fast read despite its length.   It is, however, likely to have a short shelf life as the “definitive” biography – to quote Publishers Weekly – of The Boss.   As with bios of Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Mick Jagger and other rock notables, there’s certainly more to come

Well recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.  

“There are many things I could and should be doing right now, but I am not…  I am reading and rereading this book.   Why did you do this to me?”   Jon Stewart to Peter Ames Carlin  

(A) Kiss from a Rose

The Weird Sisters: A Novel by Eleanor Brown (Berkley Trade, $15.00, 368 pages)

“See, we love each other.   We just don’t happen to like each other very much.”

This is the story of three sisters, and of their retired Shakespeare-spouting professor father and a mother stricken with cancer.   They are three very different sisters, which is what creates the tension in this family novel.

Firstly, there is Rose (Rosalind), the oldest and smartest one, born six years before the second child and twelve years before the youngest.   She has found a perfect man to marry but with one small problem:  He’s teaching at Oxford and wants to stay there, thank you very much.   Secondly, there’s Bean (Bianca), the glamorous middle daughter fired from her job in New York City due to a crazy little thing called embezzlement.   She’s a beauty but not quite perfect.   And, thirdly, there’s Cordy (Cordelia), the baby, the wild one pregnant with the baby of an unknown father.   Cordy’s always been a wanderer.   Is she finally ready to settle down?

It’s their mother’s cancer that brings them back together under the same roof in a small town in Ohio.   There’s not much oxygen to spare…  You are likely thinking that this is going to be one very predictable read; if so, you would be wrong.   This is a novel that surprises and delights.   Author Eleanor Brown seems to tell the story in flawless fashion – I kept looking in vain for the seams in the tale.   They’re there somewhere, but they seem to be woven with invisible thread.

Brown’s journalistic voice contains a beautiful tone which is never too strong nor too weak.   It simply feels like one is listening to someone accurately describing and detailing the events of three sisters’ lives.   And there’s likely more than a trace of real life in The Weird Sisters, as the author just happens to be the youngest of three sisters.

“There’s no problem a library card cannot solve.”

Anyone who loves literature and the greatest writer in the English language will treasure Brown’s educated and clever references to the writings of William Shakespeare.   Each of the daughters is, naturally, named after a character in one of the Bard’s plays, and their lives sometimes feel as if they’re characters in a play.

As the story unfolds, the three sisters must deal with their mother’s mortality and with their own coming to grips with what it is they actually want out of life.   In one sense, each of them must decide between an external (public) or internal (private) version of achievement.

Boomers and those of a younger generation will identify with the struggles of these late-maturing sisters:  “When had our mother gotten so old?   Was it just because she was sick?   Or was this happening to us all without our noticing?…  There was no one wondering about it – we were all getting old.”

“We were all failures,” thinks Bean at one point about herself and her siblings.   But they all wind up successes in a story that is wrapped up so beautifully well.   Contentment is the reward for the reading.

Highly recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.   The Weird Sisters was released in trade paperback form on February 7, 2012.   “Hilarious, thought-provoking and poignant.”   J. Courtney Sullivan, author of the novels Maine and Commencement.

Wild Horses

Rescue: A Novel by Anita Shreve (Back Bay Books; $14.99; 320 pages)

“He wants to go to her.   He’s used to caring for a person who’s sobbing.   It happens to him at least once a week.   But he can’t go to this particular person.”

When Anita Shreve writes, everything is set forth in perfect human scale – neither too large nor too small.   This is why she can take a tale, that in the words of another writer might seem pedestrian and predictable, and turn it into something cinematic.   While reading the novel Rescue, I often felt as if I were watching a movie on a DVD.

At first it seems like there will be few surprises in this family novel.   A young paramedic, Peter Webster, comes across a car accident in which a drunken young woman has nearly killed herself.   The woman, Sheila, is clearly troubled and promises to darken the life of anyone who comes close to her.   Peter falls in love with her even before she’s removed from the wreckage.   In a matter of weeks, they’re shacking up before getting married and having a child – a little girl named Rowan.

As we expect from the very beginning of this story, Peter has let an accident come in the front door and his life is nearly turned into wreckage by Sheila.   When Sheila has a second DUI accident, and seriously injures a man, Peter knows he needs to protect himself and his daughter.   He banishes Sheila from their lives.

Fast forward 18 years and Rowan suddenly appears to be the second coming of her mother, drinking too much and endangering herself.   And then the completely unexpected happens… the ever-responsible Peter elects to do something that seems almost mad.   He invites Sheila back into their lives.   And this is where Shreve the writer hooks the reader, putting you in a position where you cannot put the novel down.

Peter let Sheila nearly ruin his life once, and now he’s giving her a second chance?   It’s a disorienting twist on what seemed to be a plot that was traveling down a straight road – now it’s gone sideways.   But this is Anita Shreve and in her cinematic style, this is where the cameras begin to zoom-in, to focus on the major players as events escalate.

“Sheila turns her head.   ‘Go slowly and be careful,’ she says.”

No spoiler alert here, but Shreve will surprise you in the way life itself constantly surprises us.   One never knows exactly what’s coming next; the fact that the telling of this tale reflects this is a reason Shreve is one of our best story tellers.   This story is taut, engaging, realistic and fulfilling.   At its conclusion it teaches us that life’s next lesson is not in the here and now, it’s up ahead, just down the road apiece.   You’ll know it when you get there.

Well recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

After the Goldrush

The Language of Trees by Ilie Ruby (Avon; $14.99; 339 pages)

“I was thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie…”   Neil Young

“I could always heal the birds,” he admits…  Echo takes his hand, “Joseph says that birds are the only creatures that have blind faith.   This is why they are able to fly.”

Ilie Ruby has crafted a magically moving novel composed of disparate elements: a tragic childhood death, a kidnapped woman, American Indian (Seneca) ghosts and spirits, wolves that interact with humans, unrequited love, and a parent’s illness.   The book is also replete with dysfunctional families who, sadly, may represent normality in American life.   Dysfunctional families are fueled by shame and secrets, and the secrets are kept until they must be divulged in order to save lives.

Two of the key characters in The Language of Trees are Grant Shongo and Echo O’Connell.   Grant is a half-blooded Seneca with the power to cure sick and wounded birds and animals.   He is also a person who cannot cure himself.   Then there’s Echo, who feels that she is lost in her life in spite of the fact that she’s true to herself.   Echo is the one person in the story who is free, except that she’s not aware of it.   And, except for Echo, the book is populated with characters that are haunted by the past – literally and figuratively – as they search for peace and redemption.

“Happiness is just as hard to get used to as anything else.”

The Language of Trees is written in a cinematic style.   It begins slowly and it takes the reader some time to absorb all of the many characters and to understand the personal issues affecting them all.   There’s also more than a touch of mysticism and magic to the story.   There are unique and spiritual events that will seem almost commonplace to those with even a touch of Native American blood.   (The author demonstrates a great deal of respect for Indian folklore and beliefs.)

What is initially calm builds to a highly dramatic and satisfying conclusion.   Coming to the final pages, I was reminded of the style of Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides, which found this reader both excited and sad that the journey was about to end.   As with Conroy’s novels, Ruby leaves us with a life’s lesson, which is that one must let go of the demons of the past in order to “not (be) afraid of the future anymore.”   Once the nightmares of the past have been left behind, we are free to soar like birds.

At its conclusion, this novel has the power to transport the reader to a better place.

“Well, I dreamed I saw the silver space ships flying in the yellow haze of the sun.”   (N. Young)

The Language of Trees is nothing less than masterful and transformational.   Let’s hope that we will not have to wait too long for Ms. Ruby’s next novel.   Highly recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was received from the publisher.

Love and Marriage

A Reliable Wife: A Novel by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books)

I just finished a marathon reading of A Reliable Wife.   It was one of those books that I literally couldn’t put down.

A Reliable Wife is a beautifully written novel set in the harsh winter of Northern Wisconsin in 1907 (location: Fictional town of Truitt somewhere on the shores of Lake Superior).   Ralph Tuitt has lived a lonely past twenty years after a very tragic and mysterious married life.   He advertises for a mail-ordered “reliable wife.”   Catherine Land answers his advertisement and upon arrival is not the Plain Jane in the picture that she sent to Ralph.   She is beautiful, and has many secrets of her own to hide.   There is a roller coaster of events that I will leave off so as to not spoil the book.

The lyrical prose of this book was wonderful, starting with the first line, “It was a bitter cold, the air electric with all that had not happened yet.”   The setting of the novel in the cold, bitter winter in a land of depressed people was stark and perfect for the novel.   Ralph and Catherine are both troubled souls seeking redemption.   As the book progresses, it is interesting to see how two people who start off seeming so unalike are actually quite similar.   I enjoyed their characters and learning more about them.

The story was unpredictable and twisted and turned to an ending I certainly did not predict.   It kept me riveted.   I really wanted to read this book after seeing it compared to my favorite authors, Daphne Du Maurier and the Bronte sisters.   While it did have a gothic sinister darkness to the plot that was also driven with despair, it is really its own novel.   I did love it, but I wouldn’t rank it above Jane Eyre or Rebecca.    

With the setting of the novel in 1907, one would expect it to be staid and sexless, it is anything but.   At first I was put off by Ralph’s constant thoughts about sex as it just wasn’t something I was interested in reading.   But sex and the way different characters handle it or have issues with it is definitely a main part of this book and I grew accepting of that.  

One small complaint I had is that sometimes the setting did not seem accurate.   I lived for six years in Houghton, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, which is isolated and routinely receives 300 plus inches of snow in a year.   I now currently live in Northeast Wisconsin.   It seemed strange to me that the world would be so winter locked in the fall.   I could see that happening around Thanksgiving and especially in January or February, but not before.   I also wondered about the trips to Chicago without mention of Milwaukee or Minneapolis, both of which would be closer to Wisconsin or the Lake Superior shore.   Like I said, though, these were small items that seemed only out-of-place to me as I’ve lived in the area.   It just showed to me that the author had not, but he still wove a fantastic story.

Overall, it was a great riveting tale that will keep you guessing until the end.

This review was written by Laura Gerold of Laura’s Reviews.   You can read more of her fine reviews by going to:  http://lauragerold.blogspot.com/ .   A Reliable Wife was checked out of the Kewaunee Public Library.

 

True Colors

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman (Spiegel & Grau)

“Cancel my subscription to the resurrection/ Send my credentials to the house of detention/ I got some friends inside.”   The Doors (“When the Music’s Over”)

“This was the penitence that sometimes happens in the penitentiary.”   Piper Kerman

Orange is the New Black is the primarily angry, but eventually calming memoir from Piper Kerman, a young woman who was locked up for more than a year in the Danbury federal correctional facility.   Her case is somewhat unique not only because she is white and raised middle-class (a graduate of Smith College) but because she had a decade-long wait between her arrest on drug charges and her incarceration.   Kerman had ten years to wonder whether she was going to be behind the bars in a so-called Club Fed or a type of nightmarish facility where her personal safety would be at risk among hardcore offenders.

When Kernan is sentenced to serve her relatively short 15 months term in Danbury, she has found a boyfriend/prospective husband in New York City, and is leading a stable life.   Being forced to leave this behind results in this true story that begins with a lot of hostility expressed in words that begin with “f” and “s”; they appear on about every other page.   This reviewer was surprised that an editor had not elected to remove the terms which became repetitive and annoying.

Early on, Kerman also expresses anger at the federal prosecutors who tried one of her fellow inmates:  “I wondered what U.S. attorney was enjoying that particular notch in his or her belt.”   This appears to be the opposite of blaming the victim.   Instead of blaming herself or her fellow inmates for their crimes, Kerman attempts to label the criminal justice system’s officials as evil.   It just does not work.   As they say, if you can’t do the time then don’t do the crime.

After some months are spent at Danbury, Kerman comes to find that she has a second family among the group of women she encounters and resides with.   This results in her continuing her memoir in a calmer voice…   We can literally feel the calmness and acceptance that attaches to her story.   This is when she talks of penitence and accepting the harm she has caused to her future husband and family members and friends.   It is also when she sees that she has true friends who stick by her when the going gets tough.

Kerman begins to so highly value her fellow inmates that when any one of them is released, it becomes more a time of sorrow and regret than elation.   This reminds the reviewer of another flaw with the editing of Orange.   Each time that Kerman writes of the departure of another inmate, the reader is told that the departing inmate’s prison affects will be distributed to those left behind.   This point is raised too many times, although we understand that Kerman looks forward to giving away her own prison garbs and possessions when she leaves.

In the end, a painful tale of incarceration winds up as a positive story of self-acceptance.   Kerman cannot change what she did as a reckless youth – one without the best of judgement – seeking excitement.   But in prison she comes to see that she can and will value her life from this point forward.   Upon her release, she runs toward the future, “No one can stop me.”

The journey that Piper Kerman takes the reader on in this memoir is at times a rocky one on a winding road, but the destination makes the journey worthwhile.   Well done.

Recommended.

A pre-release review copy was provided by the publisher.

The Unnamed

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris: A Novel (Back Bay Books, $15.00, 320 pages)

The heart asks pleasure first, and then excuse from pain.   Emily Dickinson

God, if He was anything, was the answer to the mystery of why you got sick…   Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End) has written a second novel.  The Unnamed, is a dark and mystical tale that brings the pain before it delivers the pleasure.   This is about Tim Farnsworth who is blessed with status and a fine career.   Good luck and good fate lead him to take two things for granted: his health and his family.

Tim’s a successful lawyer in a private New York City firm until he’s hit with a mysterious condition that causes him to walk.   When the condition strikes, he’s forced to abandon whatever he’s doing and walk for miles and hours until he drops and falls asleep from exhaustion.   The condition – which the medical establishment does not want to label a disease (Tim being the only person on record affected by it) – goes into remission twice enabling Tim to resume his work.   But Tim’s already lost 17 months to this condition when, as the story opens, “it’s back.”

Initially, Tim places his faith in medicine, doctors and mental health practitioners until he comes to see that “there was never anything anyone could do” for him.   He’s first affected physically, then mentally and becomes “removed from the person who knew how to form ideas.”   He becomes a man without hope, which to him seems worse than death.   Tim comes to envy cancer patients who have the “power of a familiar and fatal disease.”

It’s not difficult to see that this is pretty dark and dangerous territory for a novel but Ferris is skilled enough to turn the ship around.   A tale of illness and disease is transformed into one about marriage and family and the strength – physical and emotional – that these can provide.   Tim loses everything – career, family, wife, daughter – before he becomes stronger (in a strange sense) than the world around him.   His suffering has a pay-off and he sees and experiences hope before the end of his days.

This is a story about redemption.   Tim literally walks away from everything, including spouse Jane, until he has to decide whether to return to her – no matter what the cost.   Eventually, Jane and others come to be amazed that he “could suffer like that.”   In the end Tim, like every one of us, comes to experience joy in life’s small things: seeing children play, observing birds, having a couple of beers with an old friend, feeling the love of a daughter.

Ferris’ work is close to breathtaking here, although the second half of the work feels much longer than the first half.   Maybe that’s because the reader is meant to experience Tim’s disease states – pain, fever, disorientation, hallucinations – before he returns to normalcy.   We wonder if he’s gone insane in his battle with “The Other” – a condition, a disease, a devil, a fear, his mortality – until he accepts that it’s his inalienable right to have a life, a normal life.

She didn’t need a prescription, she needed a life.

Taut, engaging, emotional…   Tinged in genius and yet troubling.   The Unnamed is a stunner and one of the few novels most readers will come across in which each and every chapter closes brilliantly.   Highly recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by Reagan Arthur Books (Hachette Book Group, U.S.A.).  

A Not So Fine Labor Day

Raise the name Joyce Maynard in a crowd of readers and you’ll likely hear both strongly positive and strongly negative feedback.   The novella Labor Day appears to be Maynard’s shot at redemption as she produces a Joan Didion-like tale told in slow motion and factual tones.   Because there’s not a lot to the basic story, the slow storytelling lacks the grace of Audrey Niffenegger and the “just the facts” style lacks the icy precision we generally get from Didion.

The story is told from the perspective of Henry, a 13-year-old male who lives with his post-divorce loner mother Adele.   One day they make a trip to the local shopping mall together to buy clothes for the new school year.   In the hardware department of Priceline, Henry is approached by a tall man who says he needs help.   He’s an escaped state prison inmate named Frank, and he’s picked out Henry and Adele as the perfect people to hide him.   We follow the three characters for the next six days and nights, and there’s not much more to the story.

Because Maynard writes in Henry’s voice, Labor Day often sounds either juvenile or like a young adult (YA) story, depending on your tastes.   I would not be surprised to hear that some young people pick up this novella and enjoy it, but many adult readers may find it tiring as the telling never leaves first gear.   And, of course, not much happens.   It would be logical to think – and the typical reader will – that Frank will try to persuade Adele and Henry to leave the state or country with him; not a difficult prediction.   Is such an escape likely to be successful?   I’ll leave it to you to figure out the odds.

Maynard ends the story then provides an addendum wherein we move forward 18 years to see what happened to Henry, Adele and Frank.   It’s a touch that would work well in a film, but seems a bit forced and pointless here.   Most readers would prefer to use their imagination.

In the end, there are simply not a lot of life’s lessons to be learned in the tale of a mother and son who hide an escaped fugitive for less than a week.   This reader hopes that Maynard’s next novel is bigger and bolder, and more universal in appeal.

Note:   A review copy was provided by the publisher.