Book roundup: Fiction, in brief
Who's The Ghost at the Table in Suzanne Berne's new novel?
The Ghost at the Table
By Suzanne Berne
Algonquin, 304 pp., $23.95
Suzanne Berne's novel is perfect reading as you head off to your family's
Thanksgiving celebration. Perfect if you like compelling characters,
acerbic
insights
and a gimlet-eyed look at the intense bonds between siblings. Berne
explores
how memory shapes family members in very different ways. The novel focuses
on three sisters. Single Cynthia lives in San Francisco, where she writes
a
historical fiction series aimed at girls. She is in the midst of
researching
Mark Twain's three daughters with parallels to her own family. Older
sister
Frances has persuaded Cynthia to come East for Thanksgiving, where Frances
has created a seemingly perfect family and home. But ghosts from the past
show up.
— Deirdre Donahue
Spring and Fall
By Nicholas Delbanco
Warner Books, 286 pp., $24.99
After more than 40 years apart, former college sweethearts Lawrence and
Hermia reconnect across a crowded cruise ship. As they retest the
relationship waters
adrift in the Mediterranean, Nicholas Delbanco yanks the reader back to
see
how their loved bloomed briefly at Harvard and Radcliffe and how their
life
paths diverged — and proved largely disappointing — in the intervening
decades. With a plot patterned after Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale,
Spring
and
Fall wisely avoids any ambition or attempt to mimic the Bard's inimitable
voice. Even with its sentimental story line, the novel is tightly crafted
and
written in mostly spare prose (a couple of cringe-inducing sex scenes
notwithstanding).
— Olivia Barker
Farewell Summer
By Ray Bradbury
William Morrow, 211 pp., $24.95
Ray Bradbury is best known for Fahrenheit 451, his 1953 classic about book
burning. But a more personal novel, inspired by his childhood in Waukegan,
Ill.,
was 1957's Dandelion Wine. At 86, Bradbury has published a sequel.
Farewell
Summer is a nostalgic fantasy about a battle between a town's ruling
elders
and its rebellious, mischievous boys. It's magic realism with a Midwestern
accent, best for readers who would appreciate Grandpa's library in the
novel:
"A fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and
always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it
and
suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore."
— Bob Minzesheimer
The Light of Evening
By Edna O'Brien
Houghton Mifflin, 294 pages, $25
Few writers have brought the Irish to life as passionately as Edna
O'Brien.
With its autobiographical underpinnings, The Light of Evening is clearly
close
to her heart, and at its best the novel hums with intensity. Evening tells
two stories: The first belongs to Dilly, an Irish woman whose brief foray
to
America leaves her longing for a love lost. As an elderly and ill Dilly
awaits the return of her estranged daughter, the writer Eleanora, O'Brien
alternates
their tales, with mixed results. The portrait of Eleanora's cruel marriage
to a fellow writer is enigmatically sketched but so compelling you want to
read
an entire novel on that subject alone. Instead, this touching but
disjointed
narrative never wholly satisfies.
— Jocelyn McClurg
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