GOOD MATERIAL by Dolly Alderton
Andy’s been dumped by his girlfriend Jen and he spends a good chunk of the novel trying to figure out why. The struggling comedian at thirty-five moves back in with his mom and tries, and tries again to get his life back on track—but everything points to Jen (in Andy’s world) as why his jokes are a flop, and his prospects for moving forward are thwarted. At least that’s what Andy tells himself. The reader roots for him until we hear Jen’s side of the story in the last third of the novel. Good Material is about as authentic as it comes at depicting contemporary heterosexual relationships when the wants of the characters are so different. Andy wants a family and the stability of marriage. But Jen knows if she agrees, she’d be taking care of two children—Andy being one of them—for the foreseeable future. A hard no from a woman who has the guts to say she wants something more.
Favorite line(s): My godchildren multiplied. My social life was scheduled by the nap times and feeding schedules of babies. I held newborns on L-shaped sofas and pushed prams in the park, and entertained toddlers in the pub while trying to have a conversation with their exhausted parents about anything other than babies and children. I waited for the moment when I would realize this was something I wanted and it never arrived. Andy kept telling me that no one is ever ready to have a baby and that it will always feel terrifying. The more he said this, the more resentful I became. The risk felt so much higher for me and it wasn’t something he would ever truly acknowledge. This baby’s life would rely on my maternity leave, my savings, my body, my career. I would have to make all the sacrifice while Andy’s life could continue mostly as normal. He disingenuously offered to give up comedy and be a stay-at-home dad. We both knew that would never happen.
And then I began to get this feeling. A worry that I could sometimes block out but never fully shake off. I started to feel doubt. Doubt that extended far beyond the question of whether I wanted to be a mother. Did I want any of it? Did I want to be someone’s girlfriend? Was it something I could do? In my years of being single, I had said as much to friends, which was always taken as an expression of insecurity or fear. ‘You just haven’t met the right person,’ they’d assure me. But, there I was, with the right person. He wasn’t perfect, but I was in love with him and he was in love with me. And yet, I could never really understand whether I was in a good relationship or not. I couldn’t measure what the reality of long-term love was; what was settling for something when I should be asking for more.
THE FROZEN RIVER by Ariel Lawhon
Winter in Maine in the late 1700s. The Kennebec River freezes trapping a dead body in the ice. Midwife and local healer, Martha Ballard is asked to examine the body and come up with the cause of death. So begins the mystery of how and why the dead man, with rope burns around his neck, has ended up dead in the river. We learn of the man’s involvement in rape allegations with another respected resident of the community. Martha’s daily diary is invaluable in testimony against the men during court proceedings. Secrets come to light, but not before Martha must take a stand when women weren’t encouraged to do so. A compelling read about a real woman who took on the town’s elders even to the detriment of her own family.
Favorite line(s): Of everything that I have suffered in my fifty-four years, these three scars are etched deepest in my soul. It does not matter that I had two more daughters after burying those three. The loss is still as fresh and painful as though it happened yesterday. When they died, generations died with them. For twenty-three years, my primary work was to grow a family. Work I considered both honor and duty. Joy and trial. The fact that I am only fifty-four and have buried one third of that family is a sorrow for which there are no words. I was eight months pregnant with Hannah that awful summer and—in my darkest moments—was convinced that the ache of it would put me and the child I carried in the ground as well. Rarely does a day go by that I do not look at Hannah and think her a miracle.
It hurts. Every year it hurts when I do this, but to forget would be the greater injury. Now that it is done, however, I push my book away and breathe long and deep through my nose. I listen to my daughters rattling around the kitchen. Smell the hiss of bacon and the sizzle of potatoes. I put away my journal and my Bible and go to be with the children I still have left.
THE ART THIEF: A TRUE STORY OF LOVE, CRIME, AND A DANGEROUS OBSESSION by Michael Finkel
Twenty-five-year-old Stephane Breitwiser and his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus stole $2 billion worth of art over eight years. It’s hard to imagine how this is possible, but Finkel’s book takes us through a play-by-play of a handful of thefts. Breitwiser would choose the pieces he would steal out of a need to possess them so he and Kleinklaus could stare at the works from the comfort of his four-poster bed in the attic of his mother’s home in Alsace, France. They travelled all over Europe visiting remote museums with little security removing pieces with just a Swiss Army knife while Kleinklaus stood lookout. Why? Breitwiser didn’t sell the artwork for money the way most art thieves do. He claims he “removed” the pieces to free them from “prisons for art.”
Favorite line(s): The grandfather, from the maternal side, had a beachcomber’s eye, and when he poked his cane in the soil, Breitwieser knew to dig with his hands. Unearthed remnants, such as glazed tiles and crossbow pieces, felt to Breitwieser like private messages that had waited centuries specifically for him to receive. He sensed, even then, that it might have been forbidden to keep them, but his grandfather said that he could, so he stashed them in a blue plastic box in the basement of his family’s home. Sneaking to the cellar and opening the blue box could make him tremble and cry. “Objects that held my heart,” is how Breitwieser described his cherished finds.