STATION ELEVEN, by Emily St. John Mandel

 I have reviewed a few "COVID" novels, novels written during the pandemic or at least thematically related to the pandemic, for example, Orhan Pamuk's Nights of Plague and Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest. What sets Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven apart is that it was written in 2014 several years before the actual COVID outbreak. The novel is set in the dystopian aftermath of a pandemic that suddenly arose and wiped out 99% of the world's population in a very short time. Although somewhat familiar now in its depiction of a wasteland of decayed civilization populated by a ragtag set of survivors, the novel is saved from cliche in the way it intertwines the past (pre-pandemic) and present (pandemic aftermath) in an interesting narrative structure. Several characters, in particular, Arthur Leander, a professional actor who died on the eve of the start of the pandemic, and his daughter Kirsten, who was 8 years old at the time. Set in "year 20" of the new "order", the most poignant aspect of the book is the complex role of memory of "how things were" which makes the idealized past so sweet and the present both depressing but in a way bearable. The novel was serialized in a TV mini-series in 2021 in an obviously changed world from that of the book's publication in 2014. 

For a review of the book, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/25/station-eleven-review-emily-st-john-mandel

OH, WILLIAM, by Elizabeth Strout

 Having picked up the novel Oh, William cold, I didn't realize that it is a kind of sequel to two earlier novels by Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton (2016), in which Lucy is the narrator, and also a character in her novel Anything is Possible (2017). Despite reading some reviews that suggested that my lack of context might be a problem reading Oh, William without having read the other two novels, I feel that the book is quite readable without the prior context and if anything, it made for a subtler read in which I had to surmise a lot of context and history from brief allusions. At any rate, Oh, William is a beautifully written book about Lucy's complex emotional landscape and her complicated feelings toward her ex-first husband William Gerhardt.  There's also a lot in the novel about Lucy's own attempts to create a safe identity for herself, overcoming a difficult childhood and various emotional attachments over her life. It's a quiet book, full of contemplation but with moments of intensity and even occasional humor. 

Click here for a review of the book from NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/books/review/oh-william-elizabeth-strout.html

  

CASE STUDY, by Graeme Macrae Burnet

 Case Study is a novel that is centered on the concept of deceit (definitely including self-deceit) of the main characters. The story is centered on a fictional '60s-era wunderkind spokesman for the anti-psychology movement in Britain, a certain Dr. Braithwaite. The main story line is about a women (with, as we discover)  psychological problems who is the sister of one of his ex-patients who had committed suicide.   This sister initiates a contact with Braithwaite in an attempt to discover whether he is to blame for his sister's tragic end. She does to by pretending to be  "Rebecca Smith", a troubled women who is seeking therapy from Braithwaite. It's basically detective work. She becomes his patient and the book walks us through their "relationship" as patient/ therapist. It's clear that "Rebecca" doesn't have a real plan to discover the truth and finds herself caught up in the roleplay she initiates. Turns out she has her  own share of issues herself and there is some back-and-forth between "Rebecca" and the actual sister. Central to the story is the truly unlikeable character of Braithwaite, who is, basically, an arrogant ass with a despicable moral standard. But the big question is, is he a "fake"? So the theme of authenticity reverberates throughout the novel. It does have very funny and ironic moments and is quite enjoyable.

For a review of the book by Kirkus, click here: CASE STUDY | Kirkus Reviews

A SYSTEM SO MAGNIFICENT IT IS BLINDING, by Amanda Svensson

 Long-listed for the Booker Prize, "A System So Magnificent it is Blinding" is a meandering, sometimes incoherent journey into the family dynamics of triplets who have a major skeleton in the family closet that has skewed their personal and familial identity. The book presents an impossibly complicated, twisted plot as the struggles and personalities of the 3 siblings create odd situations and intra-family conflicts. Ultimately, by means of a big revelation of the truth that comes about in a convoluted and bizarre turn of events, the family reconciles itself to the truth and reconstitutes itself. Although often tiring to make sense of, the writing is clever and even beautiful at times, and worth the effort overall. To be honest, though, I did sometimes find my self pondering, "Is this really Booker Prize material?"

Click here for a review of the book from NY Times: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/books/review/amanda-svensson-system-so-magnificent-it-is-blinding.html

MY REVOLUTONS, by Hari Kunzru

 My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru's third novel, is the story of a "failed" revolutionary, a member of a radical left-wing group (think, Weather Underground) set in Britain in the late 1960s. The protagonist, Chris Carver, AKA Michael Frame, has gone "underground" for several decades as the story starts - in 1998. "Hiding in plain sight" would be a more accurate description of his situation. He is living a manufactured identity as a middle-class househusband in London. His affiliation with a radical group of revolutionaries decades earlier resulted in his having dropped out of sight as things got too hot, doing a stint in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand to detox from a heroin addiction among other adventures, before taking on a new identity. His new status quo is shaken when, on a holiday in France, he sees a women he thinks is his old companion, lover, fellow revolutionary in the old days who he presumed had been killed in the violent takeover of the West German embassy in Copenhagen years earlier. This incident, along with the unexpected and "unfortunate' meeting of someone tangentially connected with his revolutionary days precipitates a crisis. The narrative jumps back and forward in time and paints a clear picture of Chris/Michael and his current mental state as well as what he has been through. Considering the fact that the writer was actually born in 1969 and certainly had no first-hand experience in the milieu he describes so vividly, it is a believable and compelling story of a turbulent time and the reflection about it in the mind of one of its participants.

For a review of the book from the NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Blythe-t.html

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, by Anthony Doerr

 

Cloud Cuckoo Land is an enjoyable and profound reflection on preserving what is valuable and the unlikely combination of chance events that might make that possible. It also focuses on the way love preserves that value. The novel has a complex intertwining set of narratives of the stories of 5 main characters spread over wide historical and geographical settings, such as around the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in the mid 15th century, 20th and 21st century Idaho, the fields of the Korean War,  aboard an inter-generational space ship enroute to a "second earth" in mid-21st century. All of these at first seemingly disconnected narratives gradually converge to tell a story of preservation that is centered on a "lost" ancient Greek comedy entitled "Cloud Cuckoo Land". The novel itself is much more interesting than what my above comments suggest, not in the least because of the often beautiful writing that situates us as readers at each of these narrative spaces and connects us to the memorable characters.  

For a review of the novel by The Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/24/cloud-cuckoo-land-by-anthony-doerr-review-a-joyous-epic-of-love-and-survival

Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk

 Like several other writers, Orhan Pamuk took time during the recent COVID-19 pandemic to write a "COVID book" (Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest also comes to mind). Pamuk's book, the nearly 700-page long Nights of Plague is an epic story set at the start of the 20th century in the fictional backwater island in the Aegean Sea "Mingheria", that was part of the disintegrating Ottoman empire. The island territory, at the start of the story, is in the early stages of a plague epidemic that ultimately gets much worse and ravages its people and precipitates an independence movement away from Ottoman control.  The long and convoluted story, embedded in a self-reflexive narrative structure, is detailed and vivid. There is also a murder mystery at the start of the story that regularly comes back into focus.  The book is a pleasure to read if you are a Pamuk fan and don't mind getting dragged through a convoluted story that eventually comes together in interesting ways. 

For a review of the book by NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/books/review/nights-of-plague-orhan-pamuk.html