Atmosphere 🌩️, Presence🎁, Tricks🐇
April picks ranked according to my criteria for a suspenseful read
Hello internet pals. Before I get into some reviews in response to April’s challenge, I’ve got to make one last plug for my conversation with Sarah Tomlinson TONIGHT, Tuesday, April 30 at 5:30 PT/7:30 CT. Please register to join us. If you’ve ever wondered about ghost writing or what it’s like to work the music beat, you won’t want to miss it. For more details:
Rating Suspense Reads
Most months I suggest four or five books in response to a reading provocation. Usually, I’ve already read at least one of them and I use something I loved about it as a guide to choosing new-to-me books from different genres to combine with the spirit of it. I often already have some sense of the themes and questions I’ll want to write about in response to the monthly stack, and the fun for me comes with discovering synchronicities and associations among the differences.
In April, I picked six books I hadn’t read, roughly in the vein of literary suspense. The four I finished, and two I started, have reminded me about the things thrillers I love have in common. For me, in the best of these someone’s absence becomes a presence onto which the both main character and the reader project their unique sense of justice and loyalty. How convincingly the author handles the dilemmas an absence/presence creates within the main character’s psychology—and how well the author anticipates my response to the deceptive ploys that stretch the main character’s resolve— often determines my loyalty to the story.
In other words: trick me in ways that I like. Pump up the atmosphere but just enough to match the payoff. Hit me with something I didn’t see coming, and make me believe it.
With these criteria in mind, and no spoilers, here are my ratings of this month’s picks according to my personalized system.
Jo Piazza
Atmosphere: 🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️/5
Can’t afford a trip to Sicily right now? This book could push you either way: the vivid descriptions of the sights, scents, tastes and expressive (if clichéd) hand gestures of Sicily might take its place— or you might find yourself pricing tickets. You’ve been warned. The extra 🌩️ is for a the third time something delicious dribbled down someone’s chin. Enough, I say!
Absence/Presence: 🎁🎁🎁/5
Sara Marsalla follows her great-aunt Rosie’s last wishes, conveyed in a letter delivered upon her demise: Sara is to travel to Sicily to try to claim a plot of land believed to have belonged to Rosie’s mother, Serafina, who according to family lore died of natural causes before she could join her husband and family, including infant Rosie, in America. Good thing, because Sara’s reached a point in her career and failing marriage where she could really use both the money and an adventure. But posthumous Rosie also drops a bomb: she believes her mother was murdered and wants Sara to discover what happened to her.
The book alternates chapters between Sara’s present day perspective and that of her great-grandmother Serafina, set between 1915 and 1925. Both are told in the first person. There are nice echoes between them, smoothing the transitions. Serafina’s point of view oscillates between in-the-moment and a knowingness that implies she’s telling this story after the fact. Are we hearing her voice beyond the grave? A diary? Something else? A sentence at the end of Chapter 8 characterized this POV confusion and led me to believe there was only one way this could turn out—but I was curious enough about whether I was right to decide to spend a bonus credit on Libro.fm to switch to the audiobook. The narration of Serafina’s part was superb, so this turned out to be a good option.
Tricks: 🐇🐇🐇🐇/5
Sara’s a bad ass who gets her appropriate ending. Some sinister-ish red herrings 🐟 didn’t quite pay off, and the main plot twist (yes, I had basically guessed it on page 119) left some emotional truths at loose ends for me.
Verdict: You’ll be seeing this one everywhere this summer. Perfect audiobook for low concentration situations, maybe while drinking a negroni by the pool?
Anita De Monte Laughs Last
Xochitl Gonzalez
Atmosphere: 🌩️🌩️🌩️/5
If you attended Brown University in the 1990s or studied art history in college, you’ll probably rate it higher. Raquel, the Brown University student who anchors the story, and Anita, the deceased artist narrating her chapters from beyond the grave, are both outsiders trying to find a way to belong among people who have no capacity or intention to accept them. So in a way, a feeling of detachment and not quite settling into the milieu suits the story. The loving descriptions of Cuba add more color, but like Anita’s visits there, they prove fleeting.
Absence/Presence: 🎁🎁🎁/5
The point of view travels between Raquel, the ghost of Anita (modeled after artist Anita Mendieta, who died in similar fashion), and her husband Jack Martin as he and his friends are haunted by Anita’s ghost.
I loved the way discovering Anita’s story gave Raquel new ideas about how to handle the microaggressions and exclusion she faced at her college. But the campy supernatural elements, and especially the scenes told from Jack’s unredeemable and delusional point of view, really didn’t work for me. Not mysterious or scary enough to feel like a true ghost story.
Tricks: 🐇🐇.5/5
In fairness, I’m not sure Gonzalez intended to write a suspenseful book, as Anita reveals exactly what happened to her near the beginning. There’s a scene where something dramatic and surprising happens at a showing of Anita’s work while she’s still alive, and I really loved how it was left a bit open-ended and mysterious. Raquel pulls off a triumphant hat trick finale. But leaving a bit more to the imagination for longer and keeping Jack’s cookie-cutter villain POV out of it could have helped the book live up to its “propulsive” jacket claim.
Verdict: I wanted to love it. But will I ever learn? Anything labeled with Reese’s sunnyside up logo is likely to leave me with egg on my face.
The Extinction of Irena Rey
Jennifer Croft
Atmosphere: 🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️/5
Poland’s dense, fertile Białowieża forest becomes a character itself in this wild and moody novel. Eight translators gather there in the ecclectic home of Their Author Irena Rey, a possible contender for the Nobel Prize, to begin the series of elaborate rituals she requires of them as they approach her latest work. She quickly disappears, leaving them to search in their feral yet half-assed way for clues among the (bizarre, prolific) flora, fungi and objects of questionable provenance.
Absence/Presence: 🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁/5
Glimpses of strange and sinister figures, missing talismans, the adoption of the author’s clothing by certain translators, and mysterious emails and social media posts hint at Irena Rey’s presence. Then there’s her latest masterpiece, too. The absence of the author though, and how the translators grapple with it, has something to say about the act of translation and world literature itself. Extinction, like Irena Rey’s home and the forest too and any work of translation, is structured as a palimpsest— one presence removed and layered over with another. Heavy metaphor, but eerie, mysterious and yes, significant, at the same time.
Tricks: 🐇🐇🐇🐇/5
Plenty of plot twists build intensity even as the characters stew in their own (largely ineffective, demented) juices. The ending lets the group off easy given this build up, so that’s the reason it only gets four rabbits.
Verdict: I meant to step away from my strong preference for literary fiction into a world of thrillers this month, but it seems I just can’t part from heady, weird books by writers writing about the world of writing. I’ll be reading everything Jennifer Croft for awhile.
I didn’t finish The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen yet so I can’t rate it.
I thought it would be interesting to read it alongside the HBO Original series on Max which started April 14. Friends, I cried so hard at the end of the first episode not only because I’m invested in these characters and the show nailed the atmosphere of the fall of Saigon, but also because of the messed up realization that I’ve never before seen film depicting the war from the perspective of the Vietnamese people.
I watched the third episode last night. The ghost was a perfect example of effective absence/presence. But I just COULD NOT with the Robert Downey Jr. costume parade schtick. It’s ruined for me. Have you been watching it? How’s it going for you?
I’m on Chapter 5 of this one. So far, it’s a light and speedy read, pairing well as an alternate read with The Sympathizer which, while funny at times is also heavy. So far, Harper Ellett’s characters are playing dumb—at least I think they’re playing? I’m hog tied.
Last call! Come talk atmosphere, absence/presence and tricks for nailing suspense with me and Sarah. Register please!
In case you missed it
I’ve sent an extra email already this week, so I spared this one from your inbox. If you’re interested, here’s a link to Part 1 of a BookStack Directory I’ve been crowdsourcing in case you’re looking for more great book talk to follow on Substack. Part II coming soon-ish.
Cheers,
Abra
I have a copy of Anita but like you, I struggle with Reese’s book club selections.
Right with you re: weird literary fiction following artists or writers. My husband just got Irena Rey so he will be reading it first but after your review, I am next in line.