For Readers: Gina

McBride has such a talent for character writing; he writes about so many different characters in one town and makes them each shine. This novel follows a lot of characters but mainly Moshe and Chona (who own the Heaven and Earth Grocery store in a place called Chicken Hill) and Addie and Nate (who work for Moshe and Chona in the store and the local theater), as well as a deaf boy named Dodo. It primarily examines what it means to be Jewish and Black in America. McBride does an excellent job of keeping all the separate plots elevating to a point where you are eager to get back to each character’s story.

A very well-paced novel that gives the reader points of view from each member of the Barnes family as they lose both their fortune and social standing; we first hear from the children Cass and PJ as they deal with bullies and school issues and wonder about their parents. Things start to unravel fast. It was very satisfying to learn about the hidden family secrets when we got to mother Imelda and father Dickie's point of view and how things are not always as they appear. It felt very much like one of Jonathan Franzen's family focused novels, in a good way. The ending implications left me reeling.

A small girl is sent to live with a foster family in rural Ireland while her parents are caring for another newborn child. This story is only 88 pages but I was so blown away by it that I immediately read it again to catch all of the little details I missed the first time. There are so many beautiful details in this story and the meat of the story is truly in what is left unsaid.

I am never one for historical fiction where there are multiple interwoven stories but with this book I was actually interested in all three stories. We follow three women in different time periods. In the modern day Kate is escaping a very manipulative and abusive partner as she hides in her family’s cottage. In the 1940s, Violet is being brought up to be a proper lady but wants to learn more about her mysterious deceased mother and buried family secrets. In the 1600s, Altha and her mother use their knowledge of plants and herbs to help sick neighbors but Altha is soon convicted of witchcraft. I knew the stories would obviously be connected in some way but, even before finding out the connections, I really just enjoyed each narrative on its own along with the great descriptions of the natural world and sense of magic.

I think this might be my favorite Lauren Groff novel yet: once again Groff uses an isolated female narrator but, unlike previous books, plot threads come full circle in the end, tying together. This is very much a survival story while also examining the wild American landscape. This follows a young servant girl who runs away from a colonial settlement to survive in the wild alone. We are with her as she builds fires and catches fish to warm and feed herself. She experiences some dangers and occasionally, while wracked with fever, thinks about her past as a servant who was forced by her mistress to come to America from England (which provides an interesting story to break up the survival narrative a bit). Like Groff's other works, it's not overly plot-heavy but very slow, repetitive, and character-focused.

I truly raced through this layered novel that is an homage to Edith Wharton. It has 4 parts/perspectives and each perspective pulls back more layers until the truth is revealed, similar to Rashomon or more recent books like Trust Exercise. The first part is a fictional novel about a wealthy couple Ben and Helen Rask. We get both of their childhood stories as they both grew up in solitude with intellectual gifts. We follow them through the stock market crash. I was so hooked by the characters and the well-paced plot. It's a juicy little fiction novel within a novel. The sections that follow provide viewpoints that attempt to illustrate the real-life people the book is based on with some surprising reveals throughout.