~All The Ugly And Wonderful Things Bryn Greenwood A provocative story of the love that develops between Wavy and Kellen. When the two first meet Kellen is twenty-four and Wavy just eight but there is an instant connection between the two. Wavy, who speaks very little and refuses to be touched or eat in front of anyone, so deeply scarred is she by years of abuse, immediately attaches herself to Kellen like a leach, clinging on for dear life. And Kellen feels the need to protect and care for this fragile and delicate child who hides a fierce intelligence and resilience behind her silence. Kellen is a drug runner who works for Wavy’s meth dealing father, Liam, who wants very little to do with his daughter. Val, Wavy’s mother, spends most of her days in bed in a drug induced stupor. This leaves the neglected Wavy to struggle to raise her baby brother, feeding and clothing him when her parents do not, and generally trying to provide some stability in his life. Kellen, in turn, begins to do the same for Wavy, cleaning the house, buying her food and necessities and taking her to school. He is a giant brute of a man with a history of reducing men to mincemeat during bar room fights. But for Wavy he becomes the only tender thing in an otherwise cruel world. A few years pass and Wavy’s love for Kellen goes uncomfortably where you hoped it wouldn’t — it turns sexual when Kellen is 29 and Wavy is not quite 13. As the book progresses a couple of things take place that turn several worlds upside down. Things are traumatic and sometimes sordid but everything is written with such a raw and open honesty that you can’t help hoping that Wavy gets what she wants in the end. It’s an unnerving tale for sure, but in a whole world of ugly, at its core is a love that is light and pure and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. And to top it off, it was yet another book with an ending that just felt right.
~A Gentleman In Moscow Amor Towles Now this, is my kind of book. A big pillowy novel that folds up around you and envelops you in its exquisite prose. Witty, philosophical and nostalgic with long meandering musings on life — or nothing at all. In 1922 Bolshevik Russia, Count Alex Rostov, thirty years old, is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s luxury Metropol hotel. Infinitely better than the firing squad for sure, yet still terribly confining for a sophisticated man of the world. Things get less accommodating when the Count is banished from his lavish third floor suite to an attic room comprising of just one hundred square feet into which he can squeeze virtually none of his possessions. Despite this, the charming and elegant Count Rostov manages to live life large within the confines of his four walls, forging new beauty and meaning within his world. As the decades pass he becomes a working part of the hotel, establishing deep friendships with the hotel’s chef and maitre d’ as well as nine year old Nina, and later her daughter Sophia, whom the Count adopts as his own when her mother leaves one day and doesn’t return. Meanwhile, Russian history whispers gently in the distance and is, on occasion, brought into the hotel through various characters and their experience. This story is written with all the elegance of the Count himself. It is neither lofty nor high-minded, but rich and warm with overtones of whimsy. A book about grace and dignity and the enduring power of friendship with an ending that I found deeply and profoundly satisfying.
~The Nest Cynthia D’Aprix Four adult siblings are set to inherit money from a fund they have nicknamed “The Nest.” Set up by their father, it was never intended to be a lot of money, just a nice little mid-life boost — but as luck would have it the account blossomed into a cool two million. The siblings cannot inherit the money until the youngest, Melody, turns forty, a mere few months away. But as the book opens, Leo the oldest and most charismatic but reckless of the group, gets into an accident with tragic consequences, and at the behest of their mother, a most unlikable person, the nest money is used to sweep everything under the rug. Suddenly the money that they have built their lives around and their relationships upon, the money that they so desperately needed to pay college tuition, mortgages and overextended loans — is gone. In its place is left the uncomfortable task of dealing with some ugly truths. What ensues is how the siblings deal with all of this. Or don’t. Leo, Melody, Jack and Bea aren’t terribly likable a lot of the time. They are shallow and self-absorbed and frequently say or do things which make you squirm uncomfortably. But that’s part of their charm. These are real people who can be kind of shitty. But then aren’t . And then are, once again. The author has given them enough humanity and insight to make all their shitty parts work and has written the book with warmth and a charming, deeply ironic humour. It also has a lovely ending which doesn’t tie everything up with a neat bow.
