Three Great Books #44

Family, fantasy, and the Troubles to kick off a new reading year.

Like Mother, Like Mother, by Susan Rieger

If your 2025 TBR list needs a “sprawling family saga” entry, I suggest this novel, which reminds me a bit of the Claire Lombardo books I ate up last year. It’s about three generation of women: Lila Pereira, who was the hard-driving executive editor of a Washington Post-like newspaper in D.C.; her mother Zelda, who was sent to an asylum when Lila was young and died eight years later, according to her abusive father; and Lila’s three daughters, Stella, Ava and Grace. When the book opens, Lila has just died, and the shadow of Grace’s semi-autographical novel, which departs from real life in some important and hurtful ways, hangs over the funeral. There are a lot of characters and plot strands, but the author gives them all the time and space to breathe — all in less than 350 pages, for those who like your sprawling sagas a tad less sprawling. As the title indicates, the central questions concern family: what makes one, and what we owe to ours.

The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

I love crime novels and dip into fantasy pretty regularly, so this genre mashup was in my sweet spot. Our detectives are Ana Dolabra, a crazy genius type who wears a blindfold and is generally a shut-in, and her new assistant Dinios Kol, a young man who has a photographic memory, thanks to some magical alterations, as well as a secret. The crime they’re sent to investigate is certainly original: a high-status officer of the Empire of Khanum dies when a tree grows out of his body (ouch). As with many mysteries, he won’t be the first to die. Political machinations are also afoot. And the empire, which relies heavily on bioengineering, is unpredictably under attack from leviathans, giant sea monsters that threaten to escape the water and breach a series of protective walls. The sequel comes out in April and I can’t wait to see what the duo does next.

Trespasses, by Louise Kennedy

I’ve been on an Irish fiction binge, and this debut, published in 2022, was a major highlight. It’s set in 1975 in a small town outside Belfast, where the politics and violence of the Troubles seep into every part of life. The protagonist, 24-year-old Cushla Lavery, is Catholic, as is most of her community. But her brother’s bar — where Cushla picks up some shifts when she’s not teaching at a Catholic school — serves many British soldiers, forcing her family to walk a tightrope between the need for customers and potentially negative attention from the IRA. It’s at the bar where Cushla meets Michael Agnew, a fifty-something married, Protestant barrister who defends IRA members. They flirt, he invites her to a gathering of friends who meet to practice their Irish language skills, and they begin an affair. This is an age-old tale of falling for someone completely inappropriate, but set in a tinderbox where even a small event can lead to an escalating string of tragedies.