The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

 

I am not sure where I heard about this book, but I am glad that I did!  Really interesting and compelling read! By the way, it's a COVID novel, but a very different one. Description:

A diverse group of New Yorkers are brought together by the search for a missing woman--in this electric novel of secrets, connection, and community.

And from Amazon:

Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant.

During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect. As Darla’s and Theo’s families and friends come together to search for her, with Ruby and Katsumi stepping in to broker peace, past and present collide with startling consequences.

Set against the pulse of an ever-changing city,

The Rich People Have Gone Away connects the lives of ordinary New Yorkers to tell a powerful story of hope, love, and inequity in our times—while reminding us that no one leaves the past behind completely. 

The characters were so diverse and so deep.  I just loved them all and loved the way the author put the story together while giving all the different characters lots of printtime! Sometimes I would feel like Porter was diverging from the main storyline, but I enjoyed that!

The Washington Post wrote an excellent review of this book.  I agree with everything they say and she's now an author I will be watching!

Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey

This was a very enjoyable book and I learned so much in reading it.  I didn't know much about Peggy Guggenheim except that she was part of that family and that she has an art museum in Venice that was closed the day we were there. :-( 

She was quite an interesting person who lived during a very interesting time! I didn't know her father died on the Titanic, that she was quite a siren who had affairs with many men, and that the love of her life seems to have been Samuel Beckett. Oh, there was so much to learn!

The sad thing about the book is the fate of the author, who died of cancer before she finished it. The book was completed by another author who spoke so highly of Godfrey.

This book made me want to read and learn more about this era.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

From NY Times:

"The book follows a retired English woman who has lost her husband and, many years before, her young son. Her small, closed-fist of a life could easily have petered out quietly in her living room. Instead, she goes to Ibiza on an adventure that we will not spoil here, except to say that it involves telepathy."

I enjoyed this book and found the ideas thought-provoking and compelling. I did not, however, enjoy this as much as The Midnight Library. It's not fair to compare, really, but that book captured my attention more than this one.

Mainly, I listened on my walks, and it is an excellent audiobook. The reader sounds like Maggie Smith.  Very British with perfect diction. 

Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

 

This was just the book I needed now.  I can't say exactly why, but it was so satisfying after all I have been through over the past 6-8 weeks. A good story, heartwarming, well-written, touching. I agree with this summary found on Amazon:

In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Don't Be a Stranger by Susan Minot

 

From Amazon: 

Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his presence: On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.

Don't Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.

I enjoyed this book very much.  It's been compared to "All Fours" by Miranda July (which I have not read, but want to.)

Behold the Dreamers

I read this book with my book club and then never got to the meeting. :-(  They had a great discussion about it!

The story involves two very different families and how the financial crisis of 2008 impacted them...in very different ways.

One is an immigrant family with no papers allowing Jende (the father) to stay in the U.S. The other is a wealthy family whose father, Clark, is a Lehman employee. 

The book delves into many different issues and presents sympathetic characters on "both sides of the fence."

I really enjoyed reading it and it was quite a relevant book for today, even though it was written in 2016. The issues still exist - even more so today!

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

A good friend recommended this book and I truly enjoyed it. It's about two long-lost lovers who meet later in life and reconnect.  She is divorced; he is not.  Families come into play and complicate the romance, obviously, and they struggle to figure things out.  The ending is quite a shocker!

The major obstacle to the two being able to stay together (he is married but not satisfied), is his daughter.  The demands she places seem unreasonable, and very selfish. As the daughter of divorced parents, I could not relate to her feelings and concerns.  I wanted my parents to be happy and although I was unhappy that they split up, I did not fight it one bit. I would never have done what this daughter did.  But I came to accept that given in this story and it did make the ending make much more sense. 

Very beautifully written. I had never read anything by this author before but I will seek out more of her work.