Dear Friends—As 2024 rushes forward, I’ve been trying to slow it down by reading. With all the brilliant writers working today, I think we might be in a new age of the novel. Here are some recent ones I’ve enjoyed:
Leaving: A Novel
By Roxana Robinson
A page-turner with a moral core, reminiscent of Tolstoy or Wharton. Maybe because the two main characters are of a certain age, this book has the weight of learned wisdom. The two lovers caught in a moral dilemma are old enough to be grandparents and they know themselves in a way that younger protagonists often don’t. Should their happiness prevail or should honor and commitment win out?
The Road from Belhaven
By Margot Livesey
A smart, charming story of a Scottish girl who has the gift of second sight. Her ability to see the future in brief pictures adds a magical quality to a beautifully told tale. The setting alone would be enough to delight, but the characters are memorable, too. When Lizzie leaves the farm where she was raised and faces challenges in the city, we see that even with her preternatural gift, she cannot control her future.
Absolution
By Alice McDermott
Set in Vietnam in the early 1960s and told from the perspective of a young, naive American wife, this story subtly reveals the ways colonialism corrupted even those sent to Southeast Asia with the best intentions. I couldn’t help comparing this novel to Tan Twan Eng’s House of Doors, which I recommended in an earlier newsletter. That novel is set in Malaysia in an earlier time but it, too, shows the contrast between understandings held by westerners and those of native people. Both novels are brilliant contributions to post-colonial literature.
The Bee Sting
By Paul Murray
I was enthralled by this novel when I listened to it. It’s the story of an Irish family struggling after the crash of 2008. Told in intricate detail from the perspectives of each family member—parents, older daughter, and younger son—the characters come vividly to life as the story unfolds. The dangerous tangles they get themselves into make for surprises and a rising sense of impending disaster. The ending is one of the most stunning, even shocking, final pages I’ve ever read.
Prophet Song
By Paul Lynch
I didn’t think another Irish writer in the same year could outdo Murray, but Lynch may have done it in his 2023 Booker Prize winning novel. This, too, is the story of an Irish family, but living in an authoritarian state that, over the course of the novel, becomes more and more violent and inescapable. Lynch’s gritty, realistic world resembles our own but swiftly becomes a dystopian nightmare with a desolate, frightening future that recalls The Handmaid’s Tale. I tend to avoid movies and books with this level of dread, but this story riveted me. Cataclysm has never been so beautifully wrought.
I can also recommend two other stylistically sparkling novels:
Martyr!
By Kaveh Akbar
Day
By Michael Cunningham
Will You Kindly Review My Novel?
The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann now has more than 50 reviews on Amazon and 4.6 stars out of 5 stars! It was also just named a Finalist for the Foreward Reviews Historical Fiction Award.
If you’ve read and enjoyed my novel, I hope you’ll go to my page on Amazon and Goodreads and leave many stars and a kind word or two. I can’t stress enough how much of a difference it makes to the life of a book. I do hope you’ll help me out. And if you haven’t yet read my novel, I hope you’ll pick up a copy here!
Invite Me to Your Book Club
I love visiting book clubs and have developed an informative slide show with historic photos of women writers of an earlier time and images of the dime novels that young women of the late 1800s loved to read. Please consider me for your book club, library, or other book-loving venue to share the story behind The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann!
Enjoy an Essay or Two
And finally, I’m happy to share my two most recent essays:
Seizing the Day in Life and on the Page on Read Her Like an Open Book, a Substack newsletter that features books by women.
Time for Feedback? How to Get the Most out of It, which appeared on a terrific site for writers called Writer Unboxed, where I’m now a contributing columnist.
Many thanks and happy reading!
Love,
Ginny