The River Midnight, by Lilian Nattel. Scribner, 1999 Set in a shtetl in Russian occupied Poland during the late 1800s, this is a story told multiple times. The action takes place over a year’s time (with both flashbacks and glimpses of the future, too); first it’s told from the viewpoint of the women of the village, then again from the men’s POV, ( Read more... )

Wind/Pinball, by Haruki Murakami. Borzoi, 2015 “Hear the Wind Sing” is the first thing Murakami wrote, back in 1979. He just got the idea he should write a novel, then sat down and did it. The book is short and fairly undeveloped; hardly a novel at all. I’m really surprised it got published. He wrote “Pinball, 1973” directly after “Wind”, and the ( Read more... )

Viper Wine, by Hermione Eyre. Hogarth, 2014 Venetia Stanley and her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, were real people. She really did die mysteriously. Wealthy ladies of the time really did buy and apply and ingest all sorts of potions guaranteed to make them youthful again- or, at the very least, arrest aging. Digby really did have Anthony Van Dyck ( Read more... )

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton. Candlewick Press, 2014Ava Lavender’s family had a history of heartbreaking love. Men who ran away, men who died, a father who married another and left her mother pregnant, an aunt who turned into a bird; it’s just not a cheerful family. To add to it, the dead haunt the living. So ( Read more... )

The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac, by Sharma Shields. Holt Paperback, 2015
In 1943, when Eli Roebuck was nine years old, his mother invited a large, non-vocal, hairy, man named Mr. Krantz to their house for tea. Afterwards, she walked off into the forest of north Idaho with the hairy man and didn’t come back. This set Eli off on a lifetime search for ( Read more... )

Season of the Dragonflies, by Sarah Creech. HarperCollins 2014 If you took Patrick Suskind’s ‘Perfume’ and mixed it with Alice Hoffman’s, well, any of her books, you might come up with ‘Season of the Dragonflies’. In the 1920s, on a tropical island, Serena Lenore discovers a magical variety of gardenia, which not only smells divine but also ( Read more... )

The Color Master, by Aimee Bender. Doubleday, 2013 Aimee Bender writes stories of magical realism that have an edge of darkness to them- and sometimes more than an edge. While some are quite lovely- her writing has a bit of a bejeweled quality- they all have something ‘off’ even when there is no actual magic involved. The people don’t seem to make ( Read more... )

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, by Andrew Sean Greer. HarperCollins, 2013 After her twin brother dies and her lover of many years abruptly leaves her, Greta Wells sinks into an unrelenting depression. Nothing she tries for it works. As a last ditch effort, she tries a series of shock treatments that have unexpected side effects: she finds ( Read more... )

Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell. Thorndike Press 2013 ‘Vampires in the Lemon Grove’ is a collection of eight stories of magical realism. As with all story collections, some work better than others. The title story was nice but didn’t do much for me; the one I liked least was the very odd- but not in a good, creepy way- ‘Dougbert ( Read more... )

The Ghost Bride, by Yangsze Choo. William Morrow, 2013 In Malaya in the 1890s, 19 year old Li Lan lives with her opium addicted, widowed father. Formerly a wealthy man, opium use has caused her father to trust the business to partners who took all his money, leaving them alone in a big house with only a cook, a maid, and Li Lan’s Amah- the nurse/ ( Read more... )