👍Circe by Madeline Miller – DEVOURED 

What has drawn me in is the page-turning quality of Miller’s writing. Yes, she knows the classics (her BA and MA are in classics), but she also knows hatred, love, fear, loneliness, passion, hunger, and the strength it takes to marshal the forces to manage them all, whether goddess or mortal. The truths that come to Circe as she learns what it means to be mortal—and eventually chooses it—put every self-help book on every library and bookstore shelf to shame. These lessons don’t come as quotable aphorisms that might caption a poster of a soaring eagle or erupting volcano, but as slow revelations about how humans connect with each other, for good and for evil, for now and for eternity, because of their mortality.

Many of the ancient stories retold in this novel are familiar to us, if only vaguely, but the author infuses them with living humans/gods that we can understand and relate to in a way that I never could with Homer’s hero/villain Odysseus, for one. By stepping away from the epic battles and monsters that dominate the ancient mythology, and entering the mind and body and garden of Circe, Miller has made the stories relevant to those of us whose battles aren’t fought with magic and swords, but with daily compromises and small emotional losses and victories. Further, the natural rhythm of the author’s voice (what? complete sentences?) make this novel more accessible than many that purport to describe the real world we live in. A reader can settle into this story from the first page as the quotidian detail of Circe tending her gardens, mixing her potions, and walking around her island with her lion and wolves are rendered without literary artifice.

I highly recommend Circe, regardless of your interest in mythology. If you’re interested in what makes humans tick, this book is for you.

👍Little Faith by Nickolas Butler – DEVOURED 

Reading that wise lesson, written with all the humility and good sense we hope our husbands possess after “decades of marriage,” reminded me how powerful it is when a great writer creates a character so human, flawed and loving that it gives us a new perspective on very old realities—in this case a decades-long marriage and the heartbreaking work of being a grandparent.

Butler’s story is about Lyle, a grandfather who tries to protect his precious, precocious grandson, Isaac, from a holy-roller preacher whom his mother has fallen in love with, at the same time that he is struggling with his own loss of faith. A classic clash between a high-dollar evangelical religious cult run by a charismatic and narcissistic pastor, and the quiet, pragmatic religion of rural America forms the central tension of the novel. Lyle’s life-long friends—a pastor, a similarly retired co-worker, and a couple who owns an apple orchard that soaks up some of Lyle’s post-retirement excess time—provide sounding boards for Lyle’s concerns about Isaac’s health, the bizarre behavior of his hyper-religious daughter, and the scary power of the handsome, well-spoken preacher who has won over a congregation by the power of his personality. Lyle’s interactions with his friends are quotidian, yet infused with empathy, reason, and sincerity; devoid of cynicism, rancor and pretension. Yet despite its calm delivery, both Lyle’s pain and his benevolence will haunt you long after you’ve finished its tear-inducing last pages.

The impetus for his novel, Butler tells us in an author’s note at the end, was the death of an 11-year-old girl in Wisconsin (the author’s home state) from complications of undiagnosed juvenile diabetes that went untreated as her family prayed for her recovery instead of seeking modern medical care. Like hers, Isaac’s story will break your heart at the same time that the love that radiates from this beautiful novel will help it mend.

👍Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens– DEVOURED 

Yet, I waited many weeks to read it because so many synopses I had read didn’t captivate me, which just proves that some books thrive in spite of their marketing, rather than because of it. The short descriptions stressed the “strangeness” of the “Marsh Girl,” as Kya is known to the townsfolk in nearby, tiny, backwater Barkley Cove, and the conservative community’s view of this remarkable woman, even though the book is written from the perspective of Kya’s beautiful world, looking inward and out, not the town, looking in. Also, many critics glossed over the beauty of this story or its writing, some even comparing this book with Barbara Kingsolver’s novels, which frankly is an insult to Delia Owens. Both her action and scene-setting passages have much more momentum than Kingsolver’s often laborious, tedious and pretentious writing.

Kya grows up alone in the marsh of the Carolina coast, abandoned by her dysfunctional family, and teaches herself how to survive. Tate, a sensitive, less-isolated young man, is drawn to her and befriends her in spite of the town’s disapproval. They share a love of nature and the way it accommodates the joys of solitude, learning and reflection. He teaches her to read, and from there, she blossoms, but after Tate leaves her for an academic career, she is charged with and tried for the murder of the town bully.

This is Ms. Owens’ debut as a novelist, which is surprising, given how beautifully she has mastered the elements of character, plot, tension, setting and arc of the form. How does anyone write such a beautiful masterpiece right out of the box? Her previous books—"three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa,” as the book jacket relates—obviously indicate how she mastered nature writing, however.

In spite of the joy with which I consumed this book, I had three little reservations. First, the amount of head-hopping—switches in viewpoint from one person to another—within scenes indicated perhaps too little attention form her editor. Second, I am not a fan of courtroom drama, and the one here just seems to prolong the denouement without adding anything to our knowledge of what happened. Third, the very last few sentences of the book seemed unnecessary. We really don’t need—or maybe even want—to know who really killed the town bully to enjoy this novel.

All that said, the two days I spent in a lodge in the Black Hills, waiting for the rain to stop, reading this novel were among the most pleasant I can remember for a long time. This book was engrossing in the way nothing has been for me since A Gentleman in Moscow, the last novel I can say I found impossible to put down until I had blown through its last pages.

👍Commander in Cheat by Rick Reilly – DEVOURED 

But I say “very few” instead of “none” because Commander in Cheat may be one book that could change a Trump supporter’s mind about Trump—if they can get past the title and the unflattering (but frequently published) photo of him on the front. Because golf is largely a rich (yes, some poor people play golf, including me) man’s (yes, 6 million women play golf, including me) sport, country clubs around the world are largely Republican bastions (except for mine, again). But Republican or not, if a person plays golf, and if she loves it, she can’t help but hate what Donald Trump has done to the sport.

I would never have guessed this book would be written by Rick Reilly, a veteran golf reporter whose own novels about golf are so sexist they compelled me to write my own two golf novels with strong female (not the bar-cart girl) protagonists. But he won me over with this book, which reads more like a cri-de-coeur of a man trying to save golf for the world than one obsessed with politics. “We were just getting past the stereotype of golf being a game for fat, blowhard, rich white guys playing on fenced-off courses while people of color push lawnmowers behind them—and along comes Trump,” he writes in his sum-it-all up final chapter titled “The Stain.”

Commander in Cheat covers a lot of territory, from the way Trump cheats on the course to the way he cheats in business; from the way he bullies caddies and playing partners to the way he bullies countries and governments; from the way he lies about his golf courses to the way he lies about his affairs with porn stars; from the way he ignores the rules and etiquettes most golfers hold sacred to the way he ignored Puerto Rico’s hurricane devastation. I’m certain that the book won’t change the minds of his staunchest political supporters—who include his “inside caddy”—his social media manager—and his “outside caddy”—the guy who carries his golf clubs to and from his cart (Donald never walks). But it might reach across the aisle to some of those who hate cheating in golf enough to start to question the man who’s made cheating great again.  

👍A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles – DEVOURED 

👍Brass by Xhenet Aliu – DEVOURED 

👍Mama's Last Hug by Frans de Waal – DEVOURED 

     I read Frans de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist when it was published in 2013. I found its central argument compelling: that morality and moral behavior don’t rise from religion, but are inherent in humans and in many of our vertebrate relatives. And in reading it, I discovered a primatologist who can make his science accessible to non-scientists and wears his heart on his sleeve while doing so. His is not dry, unaffected prose!

     Mama’s Last Hug is even more evocative and convincing as it argues for better treatment of all animals (even if we continue to eat them) on the basis of our shared emotions, sentience, and mental states. He describes in detail and in storytelling fashion (both) how research has shown that animals—in particular our closest relatives, the great apes—share our experiences of humor, empathy, sympathy, disgust, shame, and guilt; our reasons for and tendencies for murder and war; and our sense of fairness and illusion of free will. In chapters that explore each of these shared emotions, he is careful to not step over the line and propose we know what animals are “feeling,” while making a convincing argument that we can tell they have emotions because they react to them in the very physiological and behavioral ways humans do. He’s clearly frustrated and impatient with those psychologists and ethologists who continue to opine that animals only react to stimuli from instinct and don’t experience true emotion. Anyone who has ever had a pet—whether parrot, rat, dog, cat, chimpanzee, or duck—knows better, but often without proffering any evidence, many animal researchers refuse to acknowledge the obvious and provable.

     In a world where we are assaulted daily by declarations of American exceptionalism—proven or not—de Waal’s exploration of the fallacy of “human exceptionalism” is fascinating and enlightening and perhaps allegorical. While some readers may reject the notion of a book of science that lends some insight into our poisoned politics, I found his willingness to extend some of his analysis of emotion into the political realm a relief. The more we understand where hate, jealousy and tribalism come from, the better we can fix things. 

👍Educated by Tara Westover – DEVOURED 

👍Maid by Stephanie Land – READ