Quick Lit August 2023 Archives

An Astronomer In Love

by Antoine Laurain

From the publisher: "In 1760, Guillaume le Gentil, real-life astronomer to King Louis XV, sets out for the oceans of India to document the transit of Venus. The weather is turbulent, the seas are rough and his quest may be more complicated than initially thought. 250 years later, estate agent Xavier Lemercier chances upon Guillaume’s telescope in a property he's sold. As he looks out across the rooftops of Paris, he discovers an intriguing woman with a zebra in her apartment. Then the woman walks through the doors of his office, and his life changes forever."

Joan Is Okay

by Weike Wang

In this first person, character-driven narrative, we meet thirtysomething ICU doctor Joan. Her relationships with her Chinese and Chinese American family members are fraught, and her inability to read cues makes friendship and neighborliness tricky, but her great love for her work is utterly uncomplicated—that is, until her father dies. Her workaholism has always been seen as an attribute in her NYC hospital, but when she takes just 48 hours off to fly to Shanghai and back for his funeral, HR steps in and makes her take some extended time off. Without the distraction of work, Joan is forced to reckon with the things she's been avoiding, in all their complexity and ambiguity. But then COVID-19 enters the story, with devastating effects in her personal and professional life. I so appreciated being let into Joan's interior world: her cool assessments of the people around her, her dry (and sometimes unintentional) humor, and her frank reckoning with individual and societal struggles. Catherine Ho's excellent audiobook narration was a wonderful way to experience this story.

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

From the publisher: "One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman 'who's spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church'—is having an affair with a family friend. What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back? Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. How to Stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim's Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy."

Skyward

by Brandon Sanderson

From the publisher: "Spensa's world has been under attack for decades. Now pilots are the heroes of what's left of the human race, and becoming one has always been Spensa's dream. Since she was a little girl, she has imagined soaring skyward and proving her bravery. But her fate is intertwined with her father's—a pilot himself who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team, leaving Spensa's chances of attending flight school at slim to none. No one will let Spensa forget what her father did, yet fate works in mysterious ways. Flight school might be a long shot, but she is determined to fly. And an accidental discovery in a long-forgotten cavern might just provide her with a way to claim the stars."

The Connellys of County Down

by Tracey Lange

Lange's debut We Are the Brennans is one of my favorite juicy, big-hearted family novels and I'd so been looking forward to her next family drama, which I read months ago but can't miss the opportunity to tell you about it now that it's finally out in the world. (I nearly included it in the Summer Reading Guide but the way the categories shook out, there just wasn't room.) This story is about the three adult children in the Connolly family. In the opening pages, Tara is released from prison after serving 18 months on a drug charge and goes home to see her siblings: her brother, a single dad who is still struggling with lingering symptoms from a brain injury sustained many moons ago, and sister, the Type A firstborn who always has things under control but who is struggling at the moment, not that she’ll admit that to her siblings. I love stories of complicated families, and was also pleasantly surprised to discover this novel features a book within a book: the title references the ongoing story the mother of the now-grown Connolly children once told them at bedtime.

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

This is the novel I didn't know I was longing to read, with its tender familial relationships, Michigan cherry orchard setting, and insider look at summer stock theater. When Lara is nearing sixty and the pandemic is just beginning, her three adult daughters return home for the summer. The girls have long romanticized their mother’s once-upon-a-time romance with a megastar actor, and now, all together again, the girls direct Lara to tell them the whole story from the beginning. She unspools her story slowly, over three long weeks harvesting cherries on the family property. I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending, but this story? Absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to read it again. For fans of Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer and Anne Enright’s Actress.

This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

by Elizabeth Crane

From the publisher: "Rachel Cusk meets Nora Ephron in this intimate and evolving portrait about the end of a marriage and how life can fall apart and be rebuilt in wonderful and surprising ways. One minute Elizabeth Crane and her husband of fifteen years are fixing up their old house in Upstate New York, finally setting down roots after stints in Chicago, Texas, and Brooklyn, when his unexpected admission—I'm not happy—changes everything. Suddenly she finds herself separated and in couples therapy, living in an apartment in the city with an old friend and his kid. It’s understood that the apartment and bonus family are temporary, but the situation brings unexpected comfort and much-needed healing for wounds even older than her marriage. Crafting the story as the very events chronicled are unfolding, Crane writes from a place of guarded possibility, capturing through vignettes and collected moments a semblance of the real-time practice of healing."

Just Another Missing Person

by Gillian McAllister

From the publisher: "22-year-old Olivia has been missing for one day…and counting. She was last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Julia, the detective heading up the search for Olivia, thinks she knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter. But she has no idea just how close to home this case is going to get. Because the criminal at the heart of the disappearance has something she never expected. His weapon isn’t a gun, or a knife: it’s a secret. Her worst one. And her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must NOT find out what happened to Olivia - and must frame somebody else for her murder. If you find her, you will lose everything. What would you do? This clever and endlessly surprising thriller is laced with a clever look at family and motherhood, and cements Gillian McAllister as a major talent in the world of suspense and a master of creating ethical dilemmas that show just how murky the distinction between right and wrong can be."

Quick Lit August 2023