NewPages Blog :: Book Reviews

Guest Post by Kathryn Sadakierski

Little Women is a timeless classic and remains relevant during unprecedented days. On the surface, the endearing stories of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March may seem to recount simpler times, but greater complexity underlies what appears to be sentimental. At its heart, Little Women is about family, growing stronger despite distance.

While their father serves as a chaplain in the Civil War, the March daughters, with the loving guidance of their mother, adapt, soldiering on together, each making their own destinies. They support each other through adversities, sharing in triumphs. When Beth falls ill, Amy stays with Aunt March, avoiding catching scarlet fever, but while distanced, she learns about herself, ultimately maturing. Their “castles in the air,” innermost dreams of places far-removed from their Concord home, sustain them, until the Marches realize that the lives they lead are better than anything they could have dreamed, finding beauty even in the bittersweet, as they come of age, surmounting the burdens they once lamented. It is not tangible walls that make up their home, but the love of their family.

Reading Little Women at home during the quarantine came not to be an escape from reality, so much as a telling reflection of it; the novel captures the ebbs and flows of life and time, which, as the Marches saw, are to be cherished. Being at home, away from their father and the promising reaches of the world they had yet to see was difficult for the spirited March girls, but in time, they turned what were once limits into opportunities, each contributing her own gift to the world, from Jo with her imaginative writing, to Beth with her music and compassionate heart. Challenges they overcame shaped them, becoming a source of empowerment. This message of resiliency continues to inspire.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 1868.

Kathryn Sadakierski is a 20-year-old writer whose work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Dime Show Review, Nine Muses Poetry, iō Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Aimee Liu’s Glorious Boy opens in 1942 but begins in 1936 New York when Claire, aspiring anthropologist, meets Shep, a young British doctor being punished by exile.

They soon marry and depart to his duty station, Port Blair on the Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal. The island serves as a penal colony for political prisoners. Once there, they hire eight-year-old Nalia to care for their mute son, Ty, the “glorious boy” of the title. Nalia possesses “an uncanny ability to intuit whatever Ty wanted or needed—as if the children had their own spiritual language.”

As British hold over the island falters, they hear more of Japan’s rallying cry of “Asia for Asians.” When Rangoon, a neighboring Burmese city, falls, civilians are ordered out of Port Blair with a single standing order: “No local borns or natives.” Because of the connection between Nalia and young Ty, Claire promises to find a means of getting Nalia off-island as soon as she can.

During the departure, however, an earthquake separates Claire from the rest of her family along with Nalia. Not long after, the island falls to the Japanese army as Nalia hides Ty among the tribes Claire began studying. Claire dedicates herself to retrieving her son. Meanwhile Ty becomes more a creature of the jungle than a child of the empire, seeming to straddle the “primitive” and “civilized.”

Glorious Boy documents the awakening of Claire as nations dive into World War II. She learns “that ambition is worthless unless it’s rooted in human understanding” and is astute enough to understand that “prosperity” is often aligned with, almost synonymous with “slavery,” that those who are politically powerful and connected find deference to their desires, and that “colonial rules [prove to be] a tyranny of injustice, not to mention ineptitude.”

Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu. Red Hen Press, May 2020.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

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Guest Post by Christy O’Callaghan

My happy place in life is also my happy place in words—with nature. The book could be the history of a plant or tree or the natural world herself playing a character. That old conflict of man vs. nature is such a large part of our world, even when we’re under stay at home orders during a pandemic. I have a hardy appreciation for those who approach this subject well.  Anthony Doerr is one of them.

If I admire an author, I’ll read all their works. All the Light We Cannot See was terrific and deserves the praise it receives. Last summer, someone recommended The Shell Collector, and that was what hooked me to Doerr’s work. Most recently, I have been escaping into the frozen winters of Alaska and the tropical island days of the Caribbean in About Grace. In each location of the book, nature is not only an element setting a mood outside of the window. She’s a mighty character.

We follow David Winkler, who studies water, especially snow, and the younger Naaliyah, who studies insects and crustaceans. Our third main character has her own agenda. “The wind assumed its voice: moaning against the window, humming around the roof corners; hissing through drafts. It whispered about darkness, about the coming shadows. Let go, it said, let go.”

Doerr evokes the power and cyclical rhythm of nature, seasons, and time. Even with characters who live in reverence of the natural world, they can’t compare with her. She exists not in the service of people but has her own story to tell.

About Grace by Anthony Doerr. Simon & Schuster, October 2015

Reviewer bio: Christy O’Callaghan lives in Upstate, New York.  Her favorite pastimes include anything in the fresh air.  For her blog and writing, go to christyflutterby.com.

Guest Post by Liz Bertsch

My pleasure reading is typically done at night, in bed with my Kindle. Mid-pandemic, however, reading has become less a pleasure and more an exercise in mindfulness as my mind drifts towards panic about my family, the world, and my zany and delightful middle-school students. I begin and then abandon many a book, just like my students, because who has time to waste on a book that doesn’t hold you?  And then James McBride’s Deacon King Kong stumbles into view, and any book bold enough for that title is something I’ll consider.

McBride’s novel centers on a crime that takes place in and around a Brooklyn housing project in 1969 when a drunken and elderly character named Sportcoat pulls out a gun and shoots a 19-year-old drug dealer.  The crime occurs early afternoon, and although the audience for the shooting in the housing project is young drug dealers, older churchgoers, janitors, and undercover police, the crime reverberates in the surrounding quiet Brooklyn neighborhood of mob bosses and organized criminals. McBride’s novel is part Greek tragedy, police procedural, crime thriller, and there is a bit of ghosty stuff thrown in for good luck.

The nicknames of McBride’s characters are hilarious, and while reading, I think of my students who would delight in encountering the character of Sister T.J. Billings affectionally known as Bum Bum, and Hot Sausage, a friend of Sportcoats.  And in a vignette when church folk tell stories of Sportcoat’s many near-death experiences, and describe the time, “He went “fatty boom bang!” I laugh and keep on reading because I care about Sportcoat, and I’m happy.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride. Penguin Random House, March 2020.

Reviewer bio: Liz Bertsch teaches in an independent school on the East End of Long Island.  Her essays have appeared in a variety of arts and literary journals.

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Guest Post by Bill Cushing

Although best known for his Dune series, Frank Herbert’s 1982 book The White Plague may be just what the doctor ordered these days.

In a nutshell, Dr. John Roe O’Neill, an American biophysicist visiting Ireland on a research grant, witnesses his wife and twin sons killed from an IRA bombing. To say he “loses it” would be a serious understatement. The first chapter opens with an ancient Irish curse—“May the hearthstone of hell be his bed rest forever”—and Herbert delivers fully on this hex from there.

O’Neill returns to the states, isolated and vengeful, and decides that since a political cause took his wife and children from him, he would reciprocate. Designing a genetic virus that does not affect men but kills females, he adopts the name “The Madman,” releasing his biological scourge on the world by infecting low denomination bills.

Once released, the plague destroys the world in short order, causing whole nations to collapse, even forcing the Vatican to relocate to Philadelphia. As the world descends further into self-isolated tribes killing anyone approaching, Scotland Yard conducts its hunt for “The Madman.”

However, this is not simply the story of investigators trying to locate and capture The Madman. That is there, of course, but there is much more.

Like Thomas Mann’s allegorical Magic Mountain—where he uses a tuberculosis sanitarium as a vehicle for examining European nations on the edge of World War I, Herbert uses this book as a means to study nations and their peculiarities. It also offers the author an opportunity to study people’s reactions to the direst of situations as well as their use and pursuit of power.

At fewer than 500 pages, The White Plague offers a much more restrained analysis of such behavior as is seen in the massive Dune series.

The White Plague by Frank Herbert. 1982.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

Guest Post by Doug Mathewson

I watched a TED Talk by Luis Alberto Urrea, and like most TED talks I agreed with every word, but five minutes later I couldn’t remember a one of them. What did stay with me was how smart and well-spoken Urrea was. He has better than a dozen books to his credit, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize nomination on 2005.

House of Broken Angels is a wonderful book of laughter, family, and heartbreak. Elderly and beloved Mamá has died and grand funeral is planned. The funeral coincides with patriarch Big Angel’s birthday, and he is terminally ill. Big Angel can’t last much longer; his condition worsens daily. The very extended de La Cruz family on both sides of the California – Mexico border comes together for a large farewell party to honor Mamá and Big Angel.

More and more family arrives, and there is food, and there is laughter, but old grievances too. Some to be resolved and forgiven, others as fresh and venomous as ever. New feuds emerge as well. Obscure relatives and friends materialize. Estranged relatives hold back, unsure how they will be received, the pros and cons of reestablishing family contact an ever shuffling deck of emotions. A successor must be chosen for Big Angel, and the logical choice refuses the role.

I loved the world of this book and the de La Cruz family in all of its engaging glory: the romances, the shifts in power, the unresolved mysteries, stories of benevolence, stories of grief and need. The quirky details will make you smile, and the big ideas of the book are very moving and real.

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. Little, Brown and Company, March 2018.

Reviewer bio: Doug Mathewson is the Founding Editor of Blink-Ink. His own writing can be found at: www.little2say.org.

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Guest Post by Dawn Corrigan

I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books from childhood, a form of comfort food. I recently reread The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Here are my observations.

I was both annoyed by and somewhat seduced by the Christian Scientist / Science of Mind content in the final chapters, which I don’t remember from my many childhood readings of the book, probably because I didn’t understand the context back then.

I liked Dickon much better this time around—he was a little pious for my taste when I was 10. In fact this time he was my favorite character, though Mary was a close second.

When the focus shifted to Dickon in the middle of the book, I was convinced Mary had a crush on him, and was annoyed when I went to Goodreads and learned that in the 1987 made-for-TV movie, Dickon is killed in WWI and Mary marries Colin. But then I got to the Colin part and realized those movie makers were on to something. Mary’s crush shifts to Colin pretty quickly, signaled by her description of each boy in turn as “beautiful.” After she calls Colin beautiful, Dickon starts to fade into the background. I approve of Mary’s boy craziness but disapprove of her choice, which shows she’s still locked into the caste system. Colin is okay, and I’m glad he gets better, but the better he gets the more of a pompous mansplainer he turns out to be. Dickon only provides information when it is asked for. And it’s always on target, and never overly verbose. Plus: Animal Charmer!

At the end of the book, Dickon disappears altogether, and even Mary fades into the background. As Colin gets well, he looms over everything. The ending is not as good as the beginning because we get more Science of Mind and mansplaining and less plot and garden and fewer delicious secrets.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 1911.

Reviewer bio: Dawn Corrigan‘s poetry and prose have appeared widely in print and online. She works in the affordable housing industry and lives in Myrtle Grove, FL.

Guest Post by M.C. LeBrun

The Foundling is Stacey Halls’s much-anticipated second novel. Like her debut The Familiars, we are placed in a world where patriarchal powers dictate the mores of the day and women must use their wits to regain their autonomy. This is a tale of two mothers situated on either side of the class divide in 18^th century Georgian London but connected by a child, born to one and raised by the other.

Bess Bright, newly delivered of her illegitimate little girl, is passing through the gates of a Foundling home, ushered along in a line of destitute mothers in various states of despair. There is little time for recovery from trauma, heartbreak, and physical pain when a lack of coin means a life on the streets. For the next six years, Bess does all she can to muster together the money she needs to bring her daughter home for good. However, when the time comes, she discovers her child missing, claimed by another who has stolen Bess’s identity.

From the vivid descriptions of Bess’s life on the streets hawking shrimp and sideswiping lecherous hands, we are introduced to Alexandra Callard, an orphan and widow whose vulnerability is more easily disguised by her wealth and power. Agoraphobic and distrustful of the world, Alexandra tightly controls every aspect of her existence and that of her child, Charlotte. Compulsively repressive and lacking in maternal instinct, Alexandra struggles to understand the needs and desires of Charlotte as separate from her own. When Alexandra is finally coerced to permit the presence of a nursemaid in her child’s life, it is then these women’s worlds collide.

An entangled story of juxtaposed dichotomies unfolds: wealth and poverty, power and deprivation, the expressed and suppressed. We the readers are moved from one subjective reality to the other, playing judge to their choices and witnessing the powerlessness of the child at the center of it all. What makes a good mother? Stacey Halls’s finely tuned and richly evocative historical narrative transports us to another era to explore this very modern question.

The Foundling by Stacey Halls. Manilla Press, February 2020

Guest Post by Olga Zilberbourg

I’ve just finished The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It took me about six weeks to read it—it’s a big book, and I’ve had snippets of time. What I loved about it is the way it moved from being a historical narrative into science fictional territory, creating something of an alternative reality for Zambia’s near future. I don’t really know any other novel that does this movement in quite this way. The story is told by a chorus of voices, each of whom is engaging in their own way, and another fascinating way about this book is the unexpected way they come together at the end. I still need to mull it over.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. Hogarth, May 2020.

Reviewer bio: Olga Zilberbourg’s fiction has appeared in Confrontation, World Literature Today, Narrative, Outpost 19’s Golden State 2017 anthology, and others. She co-hosts the weekly San Francisco Writers Workshop.

Guest Post by Christopher Chambers

I discovered Eduardo Halfon in a used bookstore, not so long ago but long enough ago that used bookstores were open and one was able yet to indulge in the decadent past-time of browsing. Halfon’s novel The Polish Boxer caught my eye. I bought it and read it, and then purchased the other two books of his that have been translated into English (all handsomely published by Bellevue Literary Press).

I began Monastery in solitude amid the pandemic. Upon completing it, I experienced the uncanny feeling of when the lights come up after the end of good film and you walk out of the theater into the world, now dark, perhaps raining, and it seems like a strange and different world as you emerge from the world of the film (another of those experiences no longer available to us). We still have books though, and reading as a strategy for survival. I’m slowly emerging from the world of Monastery and I’m in no particular hurry to leave it behind. I’m resisting for the moment reaching for Mourning, the next of his books which awaits on the shelf alongside a selection from the lovely NYRB reprint series, some of which also await reading, some re-reading.

Halfon has said that he’s only writing one book, and everything he publishes is just part of it, as if each book he writes is another chapter. Mourning awaits me, the next chapter of this ongoing book. And I await Mourning, which I suspect will become necessary in the coming weeks and months as we proceed further into this century and all it has in store. Robert Bolaño once said: “The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to (Andrés) Neuman and to a handful of his blood brothers.” Eduardo Halfon is among that number.

Monastery by Eduardo Halfon. Bellevue Literary Press, February 2014.

Reviewer bio: Christopher Chambers is editor of Midwest Review, and author of Delta 88, a small book of very short fiction. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Guest Post by Doug Mathewson

I am a confirmed fan of Kevin Barry I enjoy his telling of a tale, his settings and plots, but it is his lovely and amazing use of language that wins me over. He is not for every reader, I’ll grant you that, but for those of us who enjoy the journey as much or more than the destination he is a delight.

The story of Night Boat to Tangier has our boys, two aging Irish gents Charlie Redmond and Maurice Hearne, in the old Spanish port of Algeciras. They are haunting the boat reception terminal in hopes of intersecting a specific passenger. She is Dilly Hearne, and intricately related to them both.

Through Maurice and Charlie’s charming recollections and reminiscences we learn of their shared history of violence, drug smuggling, betrayal, addiction, and madness. But here we are, on the other side of all that, as they wait for 23-year-old Dilly who they both truly love, and who may have done them wrong.

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. Penguin Random House, September 2019.

Reviewer bio: Doug Mathewson regards himself as quite grand but actually is a most modest fellow who spends his days writing short fiction and working as Senior Editor for Blink-Ink which publishes the finest in contemporary 50-word fiction. More of his work can be found at www.little2say.org

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Guest Post by Ashanté J. Ford

The rawness and compassion of “White Oleander” by Janet Fitch had me turning pages so fast that I was surprised when it was finished. This book read like a favorite album that I can’t stop listening to on repeat. It carried me into the deep despair and depression that comes with being an orphan child, and raised me like I was its own. White Oleander is a book I will never forget.

Fitch captures the bond of a mother and daughter like a photograph, while simultaneously weaving the implications of imperfection into their relationship. This renowned fictional story follows a young girl by the name of Astrid Magnussen into adulthood while she navigates how to grow up and deems her religion as “survival.” This novel captivated me in the same way poetry does. I wanted to listen to the brute advice Astrid’s mother gave and I wanted to fall into lust with every person that gave Astrid hope. Hope was a loose character in this book. It left as soon as it was near and pulled away every single time.

This novel has gained praise from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, and was even adapted into a film after it became a national bestseller in the early 2000s. I applaud this book for its versatility and creativeness. The themes of motherhood were depicted in such a poignant manner—they made me grovel and thank God for the woman that birthed me.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Hachette, September 2006.

Reviewer bio: Ashanté J. Ford is 21 years old. She is in college pursuing her bachelor’s degree in International Relations.

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Guest Post by Bill Cushing

Where have you been all my life, Giovanni?

You’d think that, studying lit, I’d have read Boccaccio’s Decameron during my studies, but somehow, that was not the case. Feeling guilty about that, I bought a copy last year, and the timing couldn’t have been better than the present to actually read it.

Full disclosure: mine isn’t the complete text but 25 stories chosen for this edition, but I’m still glad to have gotten around to it at some point in my lifetime because—even with what appears to be a somewhat “clunky” translation—I regret the years of never having visited this work. I’ve long known how Boccaccio inspired Chaucer, after translating it into English, to write The Canterbury Tales, but readers can also see the influence that this has had on many future writers.

In the first story of day one, Boccaccio recounts tale of a conman wrangling near-sainthood from the Church, a character reminding me of Moliere’s Tartuffe with a trace of Nikolai Gogol’s Chichikov in Dead Souls.

And so it goes.

By the way, that plagiarism of Vonnegut is not accidental since his view of human behavior and character are here as well. One even sees traces of Shakespeare in these ribald, often downright dirty tales that are occasionally a dark but always fascinating peek into the human condition—something that hasn’t changed much despite all our other advances. Written in a style very much in the oral tradition of storytelling, Boccaccio’s narrators regale each other during a time of plague, proving how important “stories” are to our spiritual, cultural, moral as well as mental health.

Anyone willing to take a deep dive about 700 years back will find a worthwhile literary journey in these pages. Plus it’s easily found it online!

The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

Guest Post by David Armand

My kids’ last day of school was on Friday, March 13, four weeks ago today. They left class that afternoon not knowing that they wouldn’t be seeing their friends or teachers again for who knows how long. They seem worried sometimes, confused. So am I. But we’ve finally been able to settle into somewhat of a routine here at home: we made a vegetable garden in the backyard last week, bought some baby chickens and built a brooder for them. It gives everyone something to do.

And I like to spend the first hour or so of each morning—when it’s still dark outside and quiet—reading before everyone else wakes up. I’ve always done this, but now the act seems more meditative, more important than it ever has before.

You see, the day after the schools closed and I went to working remotely from home, I picked up Stephen King’s The Stand from my bookshelf. It’s an old copy and the dust jacket is torn off, tucked between the yellowed pages as a bookmark, but still I’ve been reading it every day since all this started.

It’s a long novel, just over eight-hundred pages, and I’ve spent this last month reading it for what is now the third time (I read the unabridged version, which is over a thousand pages long, in 1998; then I read it again about fifteen years later).

But now, on this third read, it seems more poignant than ever: not necessarily because it’s about a plague that wipes out most of the human population, but more because it’s a novel about the inherent sense of hope that people tend to have, about the faith we place in the goodness of others—even in the darkest of times. Which is something to remember now more than ever.

The Stand by Stephen King. Anchor, 1978.

Reviewer bio: David Armand’s latest novel, The Lord’s Acre, is forthcoming this fall from Texas Review Press.

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Guest Post by Bill Cushing

Retiring in mid-February, I foresaw a sedentary future. However, this virus has taken even that to unexpected heights. With my time in isolation (so to speak; I have a family), I’ve been able to read Moses, a fictional narrative based on the biblical figure’s life by Anthony Burgess.

While most know Burgess for Clockwork Orange, that’s hardly his best. He is the primary reason I pursued an MFA after a 15-year absence from school.

Now I recall why I love (and envy) his writing so much. Moses is a bit closer to two of his earlier works: Napoleon Symphony, where he presents his interpretation of the diminutive conqueror’s life while dividing the book into four sections attempting to replicate the pacing of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, and Man of Nazareth, a look at the life of Jesus as narrated by a Greek merchant returning from business in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion.

Moses strikes out on its own in several ways, beginning with its structure. A narrative in verse. it reminds the reader of the Greek epic poems. It humanizes its characters—even Ramses. Moses himself suffers from a speech impediment. This is not unexpected for readers familiar with Burgess; most of his characters with outward defects tend to be the only complete person: recall the grotesque minister defending Alex in Clockwork Orange or the narrator’s disfigured sister in Earthly Powers.

But, like all things coming from Burgess, there are lessons to derive from this one. Issues such as free will, individual responsibility, and respect for simply stated (not grandiose and intricate) law are chief among those. This may be one of the easiest books from Burgess to read although I’d still recommend having a dictionary handy since the linguistic “tricks” found in his diction are always entertaining.

Moses: a narrative by Anthony Burgess. Dempsey & Squires, 1976.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

Guest Post by Katy Scrogin

Sheltering in place has provided the perfect opportunity to dive into Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School, a thorough exploration of the author’s coming of age in a particular Roman neighborhood in the 1970s. More than simple description or reminiscence, the book is propelled by a comprehensive search for explanations—specifically, regarding a gruesome crime committed by a few of the quarter’s well-heeled young inhabitants. The story is itself an unsparing quest to understand the conditions and sentiments and reigning assumptions that made such a thing even conceivable.

This is no straightforward mystery or crime novel, and indeed, readers not fond of philosophical or sociocultural speculation will probably not enjoy what for this reader amounts to delicious intellectual revelry. But if the lengthy and incisive discourses on bourgeois morality and hypocrisy, the nature of violence, the troubling and troubled realities of masculinity, the strange arena that is the family, or religion and politics in Italy, aren’t your bag, all is not lost! The 1200-plus-page behemoth can most certainly be incorporated into that weight-training routine you have time to take up now that we’re all stuck inside.

The Catholic School by Edoardo Albinati. Macmillan, August 2019.

Reviewer bio: Katy Scrogin’s most recent online work is featured at The Book Smuggler’s Den and The Bookends Review. She can also be found at katyscrogin.wordpress.com.

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Guest Post by Eliza Mimski

When I go through troubling times, I often reread certain chapters in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It’s the part starting in Chapter 27 where Jane knows that she can’t morally stay at Thornfield Hall any longer and that in order to be true to herself she must leave Mr. Rochester. On her sad voyage away from him, she loses her money and is homeless and starving and yet her connection to nature and to her God is at its strongest. She carries on, not knowing that she will soon happen upon her long-lost relatives and will later reconnect with Mr. Rochester.

What Jane, or Charlotte Brontë, does for me here is to remind me that when I’m in the middle of a crisis I need to remember to connect to my spirituality in a big way, and also to remember that no matter how bad the situation seems, the future can bring change and that I won’t stay stuck forever. To place this in the present situation, it is necessary for me to remember that the suffering brought about by the pandemic will end.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. October 1847.

Reviewer bio: I live in San Francisco, California, and am doing my best, like the rest of you, to stay healthy during the pandemic. Find my website here.

Guest Post by M.C. LeBrun 

In C.J. Sansom’s seventh addition to the marvellous Shardlake series, we find ourselves in 1549 and once more at the whims of the Lady Elizabeth, a self-possessed and impassioned fifteen-year-old with little hint of teenage naivety. A missing woman reappears and is then savagely murdered. Her estranged husband, a distantly related Boleyn, stands accused of the crime. Matthew Shardlake is sent to Norfolk to investigate and uncovers intrigue at the highest echelons of elite society. While there, he is captured and caught up in a Kett’s Rebellion, a revolt of the peasant classes against greedy land grabs of the local gentry.

Born with a curvature of the spine and an astute and clear-sighted intellect, Matthew navigates the unsanitary conditions and unjust realities of 16^th century England in the years after Henry VIII’s demise, leaving an eleven year old boy on the throne and in the midst of a lion’s den of power players. He is a man of his time but the disability which has marks him as an outsider has also engendered an empathetic awareness of the plight of others. His own critical reckoning and that of those around him, crosses the centuries, offering more relevance to modern thinking while remaining plausibly within the realms of 16^th century reality and experience.

The intimacy of Matthew’s asides along with the minutiae of his daily tasks enhances the sense we are shadowing this man through each hour of his life, adding to the immersive experience of the reader into his medieval reality. And what an existence it is: political intrigue, civic unrest, religious discord, intensely unequal economic disparity, ruptured innocence, and war crimes. Add to that Matthew’s own reluctant investigations into gruesome murders, the duplicitous doings of the social elite, and the undue suffering of the poor and powerless and we have a meticulously researched novel of such scope and depth that, by god’s wounds, it is often hard to pull oneself back from it into modern life.

Tombland by C.J. Sansom. Pan MacMillan, October 2018.

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Book Review by  Jacqueline Sheehan

I’ve been a fan of Ellen Meeropol’s novels for ten years. Her three previous books merged personal drama with social justice. But not until Her Sister’s Tattoo has Meeropol so masterfully grasped the political strife in our country since the 1960’s. And as a true novelist can do, she allows us to experience the turmoil through the intimate lives of two characters whom we come to know and understand.

Rosa and Esther Levin are caught up in the passion and violence of the anti-war protests of 1968 in Detroit. When protest marchers are bloodied by the mounted police, the sisters spontaneously take an action to distract the police that would seem innocuous, even childlike. They hurl apples at the police. But a horse is spooked and a police officer is horribly injured. In that one moment, their lives change in unimaginable ways, driving a brutal wedge between the two sisters that will endure for decades. The dynamics of loyalty to family and one’s conscience become the battleground for a truly American novel.

Late in the book, (I’m not giving anything away here) a character says, “The Levin sisters taught me it’s not your family that determines who you become. It’s not even your abilities. Your choices define you.”

We all make choices every day that define us, but some of us make choices with more lethal consequences. Will our loyalties reside first with our loved ones, or should we sacrifice even our freedom to a larger belief in what is right? Meeropol pulls back the curtain on the lives of two sisters in the midst of this and by doing so, pulls back the curtain on a history of political activism that reverberates through time. For those with an eye for politics and fiction, Ellen Meeropol’s novel will not disappoint.

Her Sister’s Tattoo by Ellen Meeropol. Red Hen Press, April 2020.

About the reviewer: Jacqueline Sheehan, is a New York Times Bestselling author and a psychologist. Her novels include, The Comet’s Tale a novel about Sojourner Truth, Lost & Found, Now & Then, Picture This, The Center of the World, and The Tiger in the House. She also writes essays including the New York Times column, Modern Love. She is one of the founders and former president of The Straw Dog Writers Guild in Western Massachusetts. She teaches workshops at Writers in Progress in Northampton.