Three Great Books #48
It's time to start building your summer reading stack!
The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean
Edward and Isabel are a young professional couple living in South London in 2001 when they’re violently assaulted in their home by an intruder who’s committed similar crimes in the area. They’re lucky to survive — subsequent victims don’t. But the attack affects them differently: Edward won’t talk about it, while Isabel desperately needs to, and disintegrates when she doesn’t. Their marriage eventually falls apart. Isabel lives alone and befriends the investigator who is desperate to catch the killer, while Edward marries again. More than two decades later, the killer, a retired police officer named Nigel Wood, is caught, and Isabel and Edward both prepare to address him at his court sentencing. This is a smart, chilling, and tense thriller with a surprisingly hopeful ending.
Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano
After reading (and loving) Napolitano’s latest, “Hello Beautiful,” I picked up “Dear Edward”. But every time I turned to it, I would get 20 pages in, realize I had a flight planned, and put it aside. “Dear Edward” is a beautiful book about twists of fate and how we’re shaped by the people we love. It also features a plane crash, eventually described in harrowing detail, that kills everyone aboard except 12-year-old Edward, who was flying to Los Angeles with his family. The narrative alternates between the time-stamped story of the passengers on the flight — sections I read with a knot in my stomach because I knew that their plans and hopes weren’t going to be realized — and Edward’s recovery and new life with his aunt, uncle, and a next-door neighbor, Shay, to whom he becomes close. He has to handle not only his own personal tragedy, but those of relatives and friends who also lost someone in the crash, and who reach out to him in search of some connection with their loved one. Highly recommended for everyone except very nervous flyers.
The Heart in Winter, by Kevin Barry
I raved about Barry’s “City of Bohane,” earlier this year, and now I’m making my way through the rest of his books. This one is set in Butte, Montana, in 1891, a setting that gives off serious “Deadwood” vibes. The town is full of Irish immigrant men working in the area’s mines; women are few and far between, which is why our dope-addicted protagonist, Tom Rourke, earns some extra cash by ghostwriting letters to women back east to convince them to come and marry local men, sight unseen. By day he works as a photographer’s assistant, which is how he meets the recipient of one of those letters, Polly Gillespie, newly wed to the religious zealot Long Anthony Harrington. Sparks fly, and Tom and Polly end up on the run, hoping to get to San Francisco and begin a new life with the money Tom stole on his way out of town. Chasing them down are three Cornish bounty hunters. This is a really fun story about seriously crazy young love, with singular writing.