Three Average Books and One Stunning One

Happy Valentine's Day! Reading is one of the things I love and I know that you do, too. I finished four books this week so I thought they needed their own post. They range from three to five stars, so I'll start with the three star books. 

Anne Lamott has been writing pieces on aging for the Washington Post recently and I've enjoyed reading them. Her writing is simple, succinct, and honest. I've only read two other books of hers (Stitches and Almost Everything) but I wasn't overly impressed by either one of them. I felt a little more kindly towards Somehow or maybe I desperately wanted to read something positive. Listening to the audiobook that Lamott narrates once again made me notice her stream-of-consciousness style, with all its positives and negatives. She is much more faith-focused than I'm comfortable with, but she's lived and learned and knows what works for her. This small volume doesn't contain anything new or even say anything old in a unique way, but she does say simple things that are honest. That is often a rare commodity and it was worth reading.

 

 

Blob has to be one of the weirdest books I've ever read, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have something of value to offer the reader. Vi, daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, has dropped out of college and works at the front desk of a local motel with an impossibly perky co-worker. The boyfriend who gave her a “taste of what it felt like to be normal" has broken up with her and she has hit rock bottom, just trying to get through each day. After a night out at a gay bar with her co-worker, Vi notices a pair of beady eyes staring at her from a literal blob in the alley. She takes it home, leaves bowls of Fruity Pebbles for it while she works, and eventually discovers that she can command it to grow. She tries to make the Blob (named Bob) into her perfect boyfriend, but he starts to feel trapped (because he is).

This book features Bob the Blob but it's really a coming-of-age story about Vi. She is her early 20s but always felt awkward, unlikable, and friendless while growing up. She hasn't learned much and is still mostly friendless and temperamental. While Bob becomes more human, Vi does also. Vi is mostly an unlikable character, but by adding Bob to this novel, Su has written something more than a 20-something finding herself.This was another three-star book for me.

"For a while, he seemed happy enough to eat and breathe and exist--the perfect companion. I should've anticipated that molding him into a man would trigger something deeper, some sort of existential awakening. Now he's just like everyone else. He has needs and desires beyond me.... He could leave without me ever knowing why."

Colum McCann’s Twist is an exploration of connectivity—both technological and human—written with his signature poetic prose. Anthony Fennel is an Irish journalist tasked with covering the vast network of underwater cables that carry the world’s information. Fennell’s assignment leads him to the South African coast were he encounters John Conway, a skilled engineer and freediver, and Zanele, a South African actress on the brink of her own artistic and personal transformation. A Congo River flood causes breeches in the underground cables off the African coast, and the ship Georges Lecointe sets out for repairs with Fennell, Conway and crew on board.

Twist delves into the fragile infrastructure—both physical and personal—that keeps lives intact. The novel’s strength lies in its ability to merge the vast and the intimate: the unknowable depths of the ocean, the invisible threads of global communication, and the deeply personal struggles of its characters. McCann’s prose is fluid, his descriptions evocative and immersive. The novel thrives in its moments of quiet revelation, where themes of exile, love, and the weight of modern existence come to the surface. If there’s a drawback, it’s that Twist can sometimes feel elusive, its fragmented storytelling requiring patience. Because Fennell and Conway both wrestle with things internally, I felt a distance from these main characters and that made it difficult to get to know them. McCann's writing is lovely but I wanted more from the characters than their brokenness. Three and a half stars rounded up because of all I learned about undersea cables, how reliant we all are on them, and how they get repaired.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on March 25, 2025.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a stunning, wonderful work of epistolary fiction. Sybil Van Antwerp has built a career as a lawyer, later clerking for her law partner when he becomes a judge. She has also made a life as a wife and mother but lost one of her sons at the age of eight in a swimming accident. This tragic event had a ripple effect in her life, with those ripples still reflected in her relationships with her adult children years later. At age 78 and losing her eyesight, we learn about her life and the people in it through her letters to them, along with their responses. In writing about the challenges, sadness, and triumphs she encountered, we learn about Sybil as a flawed and realistic human being, but one who is also able to undergo changes and adapt even while she ages. There are literary references to Joan Didion and Ann Patchett, along with book titles that Sybil mentions in her letters. Olive Kitteridge is one of my favorite fictional characters, and I can now add Sybil Van Antwerp to that list. I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates kindness, honesty, letters, books, and rich lives lived even by older characters. This one gets five big, gold stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on May 6, 2025. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I hope it includes reading a good book!