The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh

In a novel that’s sweetness served up with a side of realism, Walsh explores a small town’s inhabitants desire to live the best version of themselves. When a simple plywood cubicle with the word DNAMIX shows up at Johnson’s grocery story, it causes the good people of Deerfield to behave in outlandish ways.

The machine, which does a quick DNA scan, determines if an individual has lived up to his or her potential. Ordinary townspeople suddenly decide they are meant to be puppeteers, Olympic champions, magicians, or members of royalty.

The townspeople’s gullibility infuriates Douglas Hubbard who feels the machine spits out random occupations. He is flabbergasted and irked to learn that his readout is spot-on. Even though Douglas wants a more exciting life, that of trombone player, the machine tells Douglas his life station is “teacher.”

Douglas has been a teacher for years and it leaves him depleted and exhausted. Every day that he teaches feels like eight days instead of one. Naturally, he is irked to find he is the only person in town given such a prosaic life station.

Most of the characters are humorous and endearing. Pat, Deerfield High’s principal, refuses to swear yet she uses nonsense words that sound suspiciously like swear words. Tipsy is the town’s only cab driver. He drives constantly, taking no money for fares, because it helps him keep a promise he has made to himself.

Father Pete is a good man even if he takes a drink now and then. The mayor nearly abandons his mayoral duties after getting his DNAMIX readout of “cowboy.”

Mixed in with the humor, however, is an unfolding mystery. What happened to the mayor’s son, Toby? Did he die from a DUI accident or was it something even more sinister? Beneath the amusing stories about Deerfield eccentrics, there is a darker story of the mistreatment of a young woman and the unquenched desire for revenge.

In March 2023, The Big Door Prize became an Apple+ television series.

Though I haven’t watched the television series, the novel certainly has comedic moments.

The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay

The Secret of Lost Things is a captivating literary who-done-it. After her mother dies, an eighteen-year-old from Tasmania makes a transformative journey to New York. Rosemary takes a job at the Arcade, a bookstore that sells everything from paperbacks to valuable rare books. At the Arcade she begins her unique education.

The Arcade’s employees are each eccentric in their own way. Mr. Pike is extremely parsimonious, Mr. Weiss is an albino, Mr. Mitchell looks like a large Australian bird, Pearl is a opera-singing transvestite, and Oscar is an emotionally-distant man who keeps Rosemary under a Svengali-like thrall. Rosemary, however, feels they each have something to teach her.

Like Ahab in Moby-Dick, each of the characters is obsessed with something. Instead of a whale, all seem to be obsessed with finding a lost Herman Melville manuscript, The Isle of the Cross.

 Each of the characters in the Arcade are objects in a Wunderkammen; in fact, Hays has Rosemary visit Peabody’s Wunderkammen. Mr. Weiss views Rosemary as a “curiousity” because she comes from Tasmania and because of her wild, red hair.

In Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Pike, Rosemary tries to imagine a benevolent and stern father. She is herself, like Ishmael of Moby Dick, an orphan searching for her identity.

In a subplot, Hays introduces Lilian and her son Sergio, one of the “lost” from Argentina’s dirty war.

At his request, Rosemary begins a strange collusion with Oscar Jarno. She also becomes, against her will, an assistant to Mr. Weiss. In a sense, she is their object to do with what they will; that is, until she breaks free from their spell.

Repressed desire, madness, revenge, embezzlement, betrayal, and the lost manuscript by Herman Melville all play a part in this auspicious literary debut.

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

“You have to take a chance don’t you? Its like crossing the road with your eyes shut…you don’t know what’s going to happen next.” –Kitty Finch.

Nina decides that standing near Kitty “was like being near a cork that had just popped out of a bottle.” Nina thinks Kitty is a wild, adventurous spirit.

Jurgen wants to marry Kitty; Madeleine Sheridan is afraid of Kitty and thinks she is “mad.” Joe thinks she’s depressed and a dangerous groupie.

Kitty, a botanist, is unlike any house guest he’s ever met. She has stopped taking her medication and sees people walking through walls. 

Kitty is also beautiful with a habit of walking around sans clothes.

Kitty’s poem, which she calls a conversation, is called “Swimming Home.” In it, she calls the pool a “coffin” so its easy to surmise her intentions. 

Joe who pretends he hasn’t read her poem does not want to accept consequences. He warns his daughter not to get in a car with her, but then, surprisingly, he takes Kitty out for drinks at the Negresco.

Maybe its her madness that make her vision clearer, like the fool in King Lear. She gives a spooky foreshadowing of events:

“I know what you’re thinking. Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better  and we’ll all get home safely. But you tried and you did not get home safely. You did not get home at all. That is why I’m here…I have come to France to save you from your thoughts.”

Nothing is as it appears in this novel about two couples vacationing in France. Everything rings true, however. The characters are well-developed and the scenes are well crafted.

This startling novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.  

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Like most of St. James’s novels, The Sun Down Motel invokes the supernatural. Strange events have been occurring at the Sun Down Motel since the eighties

Carly, who just lost her mother to cancer, decides to find answers to questions her family have been dodging for years–what really happened to her Aunt Viv.

The Sun Down Motel looks identical to photographs from the time Carly’s Aunt Viv worked the night shift there in the eighties.

The rumors prove true; Carly realizes the motel is haunted by several spirits. In the middle of the night, the lights go off and the locked doors open. While working at Sun Down she hears odd things and receives strange phone calls.

Fortunately, she has Callum and Nick, two locals who help her decipher Fell’s strange history. Less helpful are Alma Trent, a retired police officer, and Marnie, a freelance photographer. Both know what happened to Viv yet each refuses to disclose it.

In the novel’s alternate eighties timeline, Viv’s story unfolds. Like Carly, Viv has an intense drive and curiosity about murder. Viv solves the murder cases yet she naively puts herself in the murderer’s path.

What’s best about the novel is the way the two women (Viv and Carly) mirror each other. Both are courageous and fiercely determined to solve crimes. The surprising twist at the end will enthrall most readers. The closure Carly receives is well-deserved and earned.

Station Eleven

Station Eleven is about the Georgia virus, one that is even more disrupting than COVID-19. In this prescient novel, Mandel writes about a virus that ends civilization, eliminating people quickly and with them the knowledge of technology. After it hits, there’s no electricity, phone, internet, cars, law enforcement, hospitals, or government. Bands of survivors that set up settlements in abandoned restaurant, hotels, and airports.

The principal characters are all connected in some way to a King Lear production that took place shortly before the collapse in Toronto. An aging actor, Arthur, dies on stage; the actor’s childhood friend, Clark, and a child actress in the production, Kirsten, survive. 

While this is a grim scenario, Mandel cleverly knits the factions together. Jeevan, for instance, is an aspiring paramedic that rises out of the audience to try to rescue Arthur. His story interconnects with Kirsten’s and the roaming Symphony that band together for art’s sake after the collapse. 

Kirsten believes that “survival is insufficient.” In addition to survival, there must be beauty and art; thus, she continues to perform Shakespeare with the Symphony in spite of the hazards. The Symphony sometimes wander through dangerous territory and encounter sinister people such as the mysterious Prophet.

The Symphony are all armed and trained, even if they aspire to preserve beauty. Kirsten is an expert knife-thrower who can defend herself in necessary. The Prophet, in contrast, is an armed aggressor who takes what he wants, including children, as his wives. He kills without regard and proclaims himself the “Light.””

The Prophet is also connected, Clark soon learns, to his old friend Arthur. Miranda is linked to Arthur and it is her graphic novel, Station Eleven, that provides a clue to the Prophet’s origins. Everything is wonderfully knotted together, its up to the reader to unravel the connections. 

Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress

In Yesterday’s Kin members of the scientific community try to stop an airborne virus from harming earth’s population. A ship full of aliens from World have warned Earth ten months before Earth will make contact with a virus-filled cloud.

Notably, Kress wrote Yesterday’s Kin in 2014 well before the current Covid crisis. While the panic and the desperate quest for a vaccine are eerily familiar, this story focuses upon genetics and family connections.

This story revolves around Marianne Jenner and her three children, Ryan, Elizabeth, and Noah. Noah, the youngest, has always felt like an outcast–the black sheep of the Jenner family. These feelings of alienation grow worst after he learns that his family has been hiding a secret from him.

In Kress’ story, the country is divided by politics which make the crisis worst. Few trust the aliens and the joint scientific venture taking place in the Embassy. A terrorism situation creates additional heartbreak and tragedy.

Kress skillfully interweaves scientific facts about DNA and the genetic bottleneck, that occurred 70,000 years ago, with fiction.

All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher

Quirky and off-beat, yet heart-felt, this novel will astound you. At times, its laugh-out-loud funny and other times profoundly moving. At the heart of this idiosyncratic novel are the Rockwells who lives in Ocean City, N.J. They love to tell people they bear no relation to the illustrator, Norman Rockwell.

In fact, nothing about the Rockwells is typical. They come from a long line of profiteers and though they are rich, they are not sociable. They never go to the boardwalk and mingle with others who are not like them. The girls live with their eccentric Mom who claims their absent Dad is a U.S. spy.

Hurricane Sandy, one of the worst storms in history, brings upheaval and upends their world. After the storm badly damages a house, a man arrives at their door with a box of letters reportedly belonging to their absent Dad.

All of Augusta’s secrets start coming to the surface resulting ultimately in the girl confronting the old spy. Though he has been absent, he has critically interfered in their lives which infuriates the girls. The storm brings all the sisters in to confront their Dad on this while also brings past slights and recriminations to the surface.

Liv accused Ru, who is a writer, of stealing her life for the plot of her book. Liv and Esme are at odds. Liv has always considered herself the prettiest Rockwell girl. When Esme brings her own daughter, a wise-cracking, live-tweeting adolescent into the mix, things get further out of hand.

While Nick, the absent Dad, tries to make up for lost years, the girls realize several important truths. This novel about the bonds of sisterhood and the depth of parental love would make for a great book discussion.

All The Light We Cannot See

Two young people’s live  intersect when American bombers head for St. Malo, the last German stronghold.

Only a rare writer can develop such nuanced characters or create such beautiful moral complexities.

Wherever he goes, Werner hears his sister Jutta’s sad question reverberating in his head: Is it right to do something only because everyone else is doing it?

Marie-Laure who is involved in the resistance with her Uncle Etienne wonders if they are the “good guys.”

Neither knows the meaning of the numbers Etienne recites into the clandestine radio transmitter.

Tension builds as both Marie-Laure and Werner become trapped. Werner is trapped under a hotel, L’Abeille, when it is hit by Allied bombs. Marie-Laure is trapped in her great Uncle Etienne’s secret room in the attic.

Sergeant Major Von Rumpel frantically searches the house for the gem, The Sea of Flames, the one Marie-Laure’s father has sworn to protect. 

Tired of hiding, Marie-Laure nearly gives herself away. Werner, who has managed to escape from his own ruin, decides to make things right in the only way he has left.

All the Light We Cannot See is a contemplative, well-researched novel.  All The Light You Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Recently, it was adapted to film for Netflix.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

One by one Kya’s family leaves her–her mother, her siblings, her beloved Jodie, and lastly her alcoholic and abusive father. Kya, whom the town  calls “the marsh girl,” learns to rely on herself and turns to the marsh for comfort. 

While its difficult to fathom how she can do this, Kya learns to provide food for herself by bartering with a local bait shop owner, Jumpin’. She hides from anyone wanting to send her to the local school but eagerly learns to read from a local boy, Tate.

Shunned by the inhabitants of Barkley Cove, Kya learns to hide as skillfully as a deer. Part of Kya, however, still yearns to connect with the townspeople. Maybe that’s why she falls for Chase, the confident local rich kid who motors a flashy boat. By this point, Tate has also abandoned her–he has gone off to college. 

Kya believes Chase’s lies–that he loves her and intends to marry her. Only later will Kya comprehend the depth of his deception and it nearly destroys her.

This is an incredible story with many plot twists that keep readers guessing.  Mired with Kya’s story is the story of the town itself and its prejudice towards her. When Chase turns up dead, the sheriff automatically accuses Kya.

Since childhood Kya has collected feathers, shells, and other marsh specimens. Just as Kya uses her intelligence to scientifically catalog her marsh specimens, Kya will use her intelligence to safeguard what she believes rightly belongs to her.  

One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

After her mother dies, Katy goes on a trip to Positano to grieve. She has tickets for two because originally Katy and her mother planned on taking the trip together. Positano had always been a place Carole treasured.

In Positano, Katy unexpectedly comes across the woman her mother used to be–the woman Carol was before she married her Dad and had a baby. That Carol was wild and carefree, utterly different from the woman she became–the perfect wife and mother.

In Positano, Katy runs into a version of Carol who was single and unencumbered–when all her dreams lay before her. At first Katy does not think much about this unusual occurrence. She is in Italy, after all, which is well-known for being timeless and magical.

Soon though Katy meets a man which makes her rethink her own marriage and life as well as Carol’s.

This is a playful novel that also makes readers ponder about free will and fate.