We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.—Jorge Luis Borges

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This was a book club selection, and the discussion about this novel didn’t disappoint. Jenkins gets what makes people tick, which makes her characters multi-layered even without the benefit of a ton of backstory. The plot is a handhold narrative with the characters' ultimate wants explored—and she does a great job at capturing both on the page.  

The novel takes us on the journey of an actress's life from her humble beginnings to international stardom in the 1950s. Through her seven husbands, we learn how Evelyn Hugo reinvented herself for each one and thus reinvented herself for the world at large. Narrated through a series of interviews late in Evelyn’s life with a young writer given access to write a book about the actress, we learn why this writer was singled out late in the book. It’s a surprise ending. Every person has a story. Those stories have connections, and Jenkins weaves a lot of drama through it all. I liked Daisy Jones and the Six better, but this didn’t disappoint.

Favorite line(s): It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while servicing themselves ruthlessly.

THE PLOT by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jacob Finch Bonner is a once golden boy debut author now teaching creative writing at a mediocre college in Vermont, suffering from a lack of imagination and writer’s block. One of his students informs Bonner of his surefire bestseller story idea. Fast forward a few years later, and the teacher learns of the student’s death. Bonner “borrows” elements of the plot and writes his version of the story. The novel becomes a bestseller, and Steven Spielberg is ready to make it into a movie when Bonner receives an email: “You are a thief.” So begins the meat of The Plot as Bonner investigates who is trying to ruin his life by exposing his secret. The novel asks who owns a story and is there a “statute of limitations on ownership of unused ideas?” I guessed who the “Talented Tom” behind the emails was about halfway through but still couldn’t wait to see it through to the end. 

Favorite line(s): Did it even matter anymore that Crib was his—every word of it? That the book’s success was inextricably entwined with his own skill in presenting the story Evan Parker had told him that night in Richard Peng Hall? It had been an exceptional story, of course it had, but could Parker himself really have done justice to it? Yes, he’d had some moderate talent at making sentences, that much Jake had recognized back at Ripley. But creating narrative tension? Understanding what made a story track and grab and hold? Forging characters a reader felt inclined to care about and invest their time in? Jake hadn’t seen enough of Evan’s work to judge whether his former student was capable of doing that, but Parker had been the one telling the story that night, and that came with certain rights of possession; Jake had been the one it was told to, and that came with certain moral responsibilities.

At least while the teller was. . . alive.

Was Jake really supposed to throw a plot like that into some other writer’s grave? Any novelist would understand what he’d done. Any novelist would have done exactly the same!

ANIMAL by Lisa Taddeo

Holy moly. This book. It had me from the opening line(s): “I drove myself out of New York City, where a man shot himself in front of me. He was a gluttonous man, and when his blood came out, it looked like the blood of a pig. That’s a cruel thing to think, I know. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man. Do you see how this is going? But I wasn’t always that way.” Taddeo, the author of the memoir Three Women, writes with the authority of a master surgeon of the female psyche in turmoil. The part of the brain that yearns, desires, hates, plots, and schemes. “If someone asked me to describe myself in a single word, depraved is the one I would use.” Why does the narrator, Joan, seek out the adoration of unavailable love? An emotional wound, of course, inflicted in childhood and still deep and ugly and oozing with hypersexuality and rage well into Joan’s thirties. I recommended this novel to friends and family with one caveat: you might not thank me for this read, but you won’t forget it.    

Favorite line(s): I wanted to tell her that it was to see her. I wanted to know what only she could tell me. The thing I didn’t expect was that telling her about me would force me to look at myself, at the way I craved the love of men who would never love me. At the way I could not abide women who needed me. At the way I destroyed some while allowing others to destroy me. I felt sick with myself and, at the same time, unburdened. I thought I’d been honest with myself. But I hadn’t. I’d been telling myself ghost stories my whole life.

SECRETS OF HAPPINESS by Joan Silber

You’ll need to read this linked novel-in stories over a weekend (or a day) to get the full-on richness of these characters (six narrators) and their shared connection. The story begins when one of the characters, Ethan, learns that his father has led a double life married to a Thai woman with whom he’s fathered two boys. One of the boys, Joe, narrates the next chapter. Silber introduces us to four other characters, all with some thread running through one another’s lives. Beautifully written, Secrets of Happiness poses the question what does make one happy? Money? Love? Loyalty? Forgiveness? 

Favorite line(s): Sally’s mother, who didn’t know me from Adam, liked me because I had such a short haircut, and she brought us Cokes and salted peanuts. I knew I am turning a corner, chomping down the snacks, slurping from a straw, tapping the rhythms on my knee, in this alien house, and I even thought for a second that I might slyly bring them over to better thinking about the world. I hardly spoke at that age, so how could I have done this? Sally had lots more to play for me, if I didn’t need to go home yet. My father said then and later that females were my undoing.