This is a sequel to My Name is Lucy Burton, which I read as part of my 2017 reading challenge. That was a year when I had categories of books that I was reading from and I can't remember which category this fulfilled.  I had trouble finding books to fill those lists the few years that I did that and started asking for recommendations, which is how I ended up ditching that list and just taking recommendations for my yearly booklist. 
In any event, I did not write reviews back then, so I decided to reread My Name Is Lucy Barton after reading the first chapter of this book in order to remember the backstory.  In retrospect, this wasn't necessary to appreciate this story, but it did help connect many of the relationships in the book.
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And there are a lot of relationships in this book.  There are a ton of characters and the history between them is complicated. I often felt like I do when I visit friends in a close-knit community or try to join a new group of people who have been tight for a long time.  There are all these backstories that touch on each other and it is hard to keep up with how they all touch on each other.  This makes the details of the book hard to keep track of and sometimes I would be well into a new storyline before I realized these were the same people from another storyline. In many ways, this is the magic of this series. It really makes you feel what Lucy Barton's small town life with judgy, hurtful people was like--and not just for her.  Those who bullied her, those who were indifferent to her, and those who saw and helped her in big and small ways are all portrayed sometimes in sympathetic ways, sometimes not, and most often in both ways at the same time. 

There is so much depth here, so much hurt. Child sex abuse and sexual assault play prominent roles as they play out in families and relationships in ways that fill in the backstory for many characters. It is the story of kids who were bullied and kids who did the bullying and kids who were both bullied and did the bullying and how this plays out in their adult lives.  The emotion of childhood trauma, indeed sometimes of torture, is on painful display here--told with a perspective that conveys deep empathy for the damage done and the damage done to the people caused the damage.  It is heart-wrenching the whole way.

Recommend.

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This has been an eclectic year of recommendations, with more horror than I have ever read, but also more really sweet novels that are just heart warming, lovely, light reads.  This is one of the latter. Even the book cover reflect the soft care that I felt when reading it.

A group of intertwining stories set in Japan in which people unhappy with their lives find themselves at the library getting lists of books from the quirk, eccentric librarian, who also felts small knickknacks that she gives away.  The book lists always include a recommendation that seems unrelated to the inquiry, but ends up being part of the recipe people need to transform their lives. 

It is a fun and delightful concept book. I found it to be slightly longer than was necessary to make and develop the project, such that I finished the book a little bit bored in a way that I wasn't through most of it. Like binge watching a good show that has a simplistic formula, if I had read it more slowly, I might have found this to be an endearing and comforting quality.

Not not recommended.

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Louise Erdrich does not disappoint in this sweet novel about a book lover with complex relationships, searching for family, while being haunted by her past and the past of others. It is complex, but I was easily drawn into the layers of stories.

And what booklover does love a book that talks about books and drops the names of titles like they are celebrities? Set in a bookstore to a large extend, I particularly loved that this was perhaps the first novel to incorporate the pandemic into its storyline and it was done exquisitely, with such emotional detail. 
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I just really loved this story.

Highly recommend.

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Set mostly in Edinburgh, this is a layered book with a multi-generational story that unfolds when the mental health facility where Esme has been living for decades is being closed.  Her great-niece, who was oblivious to her existence, is the next-of-kin contacted and the story to understand Esme's -- and by extension the whole family's--life history unfolds.  With themes addressing intergenerational family dysfunction and the control of rebellious women, I found the book engaging and charming.

Recommend.
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Written in 2015, I couldn't remember if I had read this years ago when it was released or if I had just heard about it and read excerpts, so I dug in and read it in its entirety and it holds up.  In fact, almost all of the main topics covered in this book about living beyond the gender binary and heteronormativity to which our systemic structures are beholden could have been written today.  These topics were not new in 2015, but this book was written at a time when the emerging, radical ideas from the era that preceded it had been academicalized and solidified with enduring language and a coherent world view that has stuck. 

This memoir is steeped in Queer theory and is well worth a read.

Recommend.

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I have to say that I love a good story about friendship and this is a good story about friendships.  Two women at a point in life where they are each struggling with academic careers and family, grief and loneliness, their unlikely meeting becomes the backdrop for this sweet novel.  For me, the added bonus of being set in Oregon and Seattle adds a fun local flavor to the story. There are several subplots, including addiction and recovery and parenting a child with autism in the 1990's. 

The entire book is told in the context of bird facts. One of the women is an ornithologist, so her love of and connection to birds provide metaphors for human relationships, which I initially found gimmicky, but it grew on me as the plot of the story unfolded to be more complex than it initially seemed. Ultimately, I think it worked, particularly as birds were generally woven into the storyline in multiple ways.  It reminded me a bit of The Overstory in this way, but unlike that book where I felt like I just didn't like and appreciate trees enough to love the book, I didn't feel like my lack of love and appreciation for birds mattered.

I thought the writing here was well done and the story was well plotted, with lots of backstory overfolding in ways that did not distract from the current timeline.  I particularly loved how the flawed characters were presented with so much compassion, particularly around the topic of alcoholism.  

Recommend.

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Yet another story about Americans traveling to Scotland for a vacation read in Virtual Voice.  I need a setting that excludes these from view, although having now read three of these, I have definitely learned my lesson.  The Voice here isn't as horrendous as Valentine's Day In Venice, but it still takes away from the story, which is saying a lot since the story was nothing compelling to start with.  Retired, disgruntled cop and his wife housesit in Scotland for a change of scene and get asked to help solve a blackmailing mystery for a neighbor.  Predictable and bland.
Not recommended

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Mindless romance between American ex-lovers traveling to Scotland.  Nothing offensive.  Not not cute.  But, the point of reading stories about a place I am going to visit is to learn something about the people or place and although these two journalists purport to be there to write a story about locals, that part of the story was never developed and really could have taken place in any one of hundreds of places around the world.  Overall a disappointment.
Do not recommend.

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I did not even know there was a genre of literature called "feminist horror."  I am not a horror fan, despite there being quire a number of horror books recommended to me this year, so I came into this read more than a bit skeptical and a little worried about how it would impact me.  This book was nothing like what I was expecting.  It was actually just kind of awesome.  A murder mystery within a murder mystery, I found the supernatural twists to be fun in a dark kind of way and its fast pace, quirky characters, and unusual fantasy world where the "normal" rules for ghosts/monsters don't apply to be captivating.  Add in the pay-back for intimate violence themes that resonates with many survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, and I was hooked. 

This recommendation might be the epitome of why I really enjoy this project because I absolutely never would have read this book but for the fact that I read every book on this list every year.  I was sure this would fall into the category of "I love to hate a book almost as much as I love to love to book," ultimately the best part of this project is when I love a book I was sure I was going to hate. And that is what happened here.

Recommend.

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​Following The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, I was not expecting to find myself in love with another sweet read.  A more traditional coming of age story about a teenager leaving home and finding his way in the world during the Great Depression, I found this story about a boy trying to survive anyway he can and to outrun his demons (and his criminal background) entrancing. 

I have been hating on these imagined historical fiction books lately (like The Frozen River, The Postmistress of Paris, The Pull of The Stars, Take My Hand), but this one feels different.  Perhaps because it is based on a little known historical event that I know absolutely nothing about… Perhaps because it was an historical event that wasn't filled with the weight of sexual assault, war, the Holocaust, or forced sterilization… Or perhaps because it was just better written… For whatever reason, I found it was easier for me to suspend disbelief here and to just really appreciate the story of man and a boy driving a pair of giraffes from a port in New Jersey to the San Diego Zoo in 1938. 

I appreciated how their backstories were unfolded over time, without it feeling like the author was holding back critical information and how there was no secret agenda to the tale.  It was just good storytelling, well written, about what turned out to be an interesting adventure.
Recommend.

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