Vendela Vida : We Run the Tides

San Francisco is the setting for this story of four girls coming into adulthood in the 1980’s. Eulabee and her school friends Maria Fabiola, Faith, and Julia live in Sea Cliff, a foggy beach side suburb. San Francisco then is not as it is now. Vendela Vida has described it thus,

Growing up in San Francisco in the eighties you felt like you were arriving at a party that had just ended. Wherever you went in the city, you were reminded of more romantic days. North beach had the beats; the Haight had the summer of love. You had nothing but the yellow Tower bag you filled with records hoping to capture another time and place. That’s the San Francisco I knew growing up-it was cold and foggy and gray, and kids had to make their own drama.

Siri Hustvedt : The Summer Without Men

Mia and Boris have been married for thirty years.  When he says he wants to have a ‘pause’ she has a complete mental collapse and lands in hospital.

He did not say, ‘I don’t ever want to see you again’ or ‘It’s over’, but after thirty years of marriage ‘pause’ was enough to turn me into a lunatic whose thoughts burst, ricocheted and careened into on another…

Colum McCann : Thirteen Ways of Looking

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is a thirteen-stanza poem written in the 1920’s by Wallace Stevens and published in his first book of poetry Harmonium. In thirteen haiku-like stanzas he offers glimpses of the blackbird as observer and observed. Does it represent death? Or the fleeting nature of life? Or perhaps the beauty of the natural world? Or a thousand other things?

Carl Hiaasen : Squeeze Me

When Kiki Pew Fitzsimons disappears from her Diamond Patrons table at the fundraiser for the Gold Coast Chapter of the IBS Wellness Foundation, (a group globally committed to defeating irritable bowel syndrome) her fellow Potussies (loyal Palm Beach women who support the new POTUS) are convinced she has been murdered by an illegal immigrant.

A Man Named Doll : Jonathan Ames

I am very fond of the writing of Jonathan Ames. I loved Very Good, Sir his riff on P G Wodehouse with a Jewish alcoholic protagonist and The Extra Man about an unlikely friendship between a ‘walker’ and a young man drawn to the drag scene. Then there was his wonderful 2009 T V series, Bored to Death.

In 2021 he began a new series of books about a detective called Happy Doll. A Man named Doll is the first in the series and The Wheel of Doll has come out this year.

Mary Karr: The Liars’ Club

Year of the Monkey : Patti Smith

Chinese New Year in 2016 brought in the Year of the Monkey and for Patti Smith it was a hard year. She turned seventy, her close friend Sandy Pearlman (music producer, professor and songwriter) had a stroke and lay unconscious for six months before dying of pneumonia, and her close friend Sam Shephard,  (actor, playwright, and director) suffering from ALS (a degenerative disease) had only a little time to live. And then there was the election result!

Olive, Again : Elizabeth Strout

I only read Olive Kitteridge earlier this year and had to allow a little time to pass before I read the next book where she is the protagonist, Olive, Again; for Olive is strong meat, and here she is tackling old age head on.

Hernan Diaz: Trust

Ann Patchett : These Precious Days

Ann Patchett is often described as a ‘beloved writer’ having ‘wit charm and grace’ and being one of ‘the most celebrated writers of our time.’ And it’s true she has won the Orange Prize for Bel Canto. But, but, but…. Doesn’t her work sometimes verge on the saccharine? Doesn’t she often tend to let know you what a wonderful person she is? Doesn’t she use the lives of her friends in her own work? It all makes me rather uneasy.