Three Great Books #30

The consequences of oversharing, the forever war, and murder on a moving train.

Kids Run the Show, by Delphine de Vigan (translated by Alison Anderson)

I often wonder if the practice of putting photos of our kids on social media feeds will one day be looked upon as stupefyingly, obviously wrong-headed. This French novel looks at the extremes of the image-sharing economy. Former reality show contestant Mélanie Claux Diore, with the passive acceptance of her husband Bruno, runs a wildly popular, money-minting “family” YouTube channel with little regard for the effect on their young children, Kimmy and Sammy. The kids are the stars, and in their videos, they unbox more clothes and toys than they could wear in a lifetime and participate in carefully orchestrated games, even as their reluctance is sometimes apparent. One day Kimmy disappears while playing outside, and Clara Roussel, a member of the Paris Crime Squad with very different views of what constitutes T.M.I., becomes part of the investigative team. Then a kidnapper reaches out with unusual demands. The main storyline takes place in 2019; the novel fast-forwards to 2031 to show the long-term consequences of thrusting children into the public eye. This may make you set your Instagram account to private.

Ilium, by Lea Carpenter

This book opens with a man wearing dark glasses and an ill-fitting Manchester United sweater observing a young woman on a bus in London. He concludes that the woman, whose name we never learn and who becomes the narrator of the story, is “a romantic, a dreamer, an optimist….interested in love…open to experience.” She’s about to be recruited for a long-gestating, off-the-books mission of revenge planned from a distance by the CIA and Mossad. The hook the operatives use to draw her in is Marcus, a wealthy businessman three decades her senior, who sweeps her off her feet and marries her. Soon after, she learns that his real job is something quite different, and she agrees to help him and his colleagues by traveling to Cap Ferret, posing as an art adviser, and insinuating herself into the lives of the target, “Edouard” (actually a former Russian assassin), and his family. Her job is to observe what goes on in the family compound and report back, as her colleagues prepare for a mission. Carpenter says that in writing “Ilium,” she wanted “to say something about war’s essential subjectivity, how a hero to one side is an assassin to another.” Literary, morally complex, and compelling.

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, by Benjamin Stevenson

Due to the mundane indignities of middle-aged life, by the first week of February I was absolutely desperate for an escapist page-turner. I previously recommended Stevenson’s first mystery, “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone,” and this is even better. (No need to have read the first one to enjoy the sequel.) Once again, the narrator is Ernie Cunningham, now a published author thanks to the unpleasant events he chronicled in his first book. He’s even been invited to the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival, which is taking place on the Ghan, a train that runs from the northern coast of Australia to the southern coast. Ernie is accompanied by his girlfriend, five other (and more prominent) authors representing different mystery sub-genres, his agent, and all the civilian festival attendees. And of course, there’s a murder, then another one. Ernie tries to identify the culprit while also dealing with girlfriend troubles and the self-doubt that accompanies his failure to follow up his debut. If you’re a fan of mysteries, especially meta ones like Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz series, this is a hoot.