THE WILDERNESS by Angela Flournoy

“The wilderness of adult life” is the thematic oomph of Flournoy’s novel of decades-long friendships between Desiree, Nakia, January, and Monique. They toggle coastlines, careers, family dynamics, motherhood, marriage, politics, hookups, caregiving, and financial issues from 2008 to 2027. Each character is rendered through their own chapters, giving the reader insight into their take on relationships, the joys, and the failures. There is no shallow emotion in this shortish novel that covers so much territory. The genius of Flournoy is how she integrates the characters' interactions within the backdrop of a country lacking a moral compass, an empathetic arrow, a conscious bone in its nationalistic body of people.

Favorite line(s): Maybe it had to do with how old she was when Sherelle died, already a teenager with opinions and keen observations, not easily impressed by Nolan’s stingy displays of affection but hungering for them all the same. She was a teenager! Hadn’t she deserved grace? Her entire life, every day of it, no matter how easy or hard, she’d had her back propped up against their mother’s bedroom door, bearing the unbearable while Desiree banged on the other side, too stupid to know that inside with her, seeing what she saw, was nowhere anyone wanted to be. She was only now beginning to understand how much Sherelle’s death had left her feeling exposed. She had been thrust into the wilderness of adult life, frog-marched into a deep, hard-to-navigate forest of decisions and failure and hurt, sheltered by Nolan in name only. Even now, with her job, with her girls, with Warren and the church to bolster her, there were nights she felt like every edifice she’d propped up to separate her from the elements, the wind-blasted outside of aloneness, could crumble, and she’d have nothing but her own uncovered self to brace against it. It might not take much for her to end up in the wilderness once again.

THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai

How did I root for these characters? Through every outdated but cultural tradition that someone felt burdened by. Every gender specific role expected. Every slight against the naïve. Every identity uncomfortably settled in their “other.” The caste system in India. The underlying caste system in the U.S. The artist's importance at work as an excuse for moral decrepitude. Desai leaves no character’s choices or motives (including secondary characters) unanswered. A sweeping saga of familial obligations versus individual self-actualization, changing cultural values, and the racism of “the other.” The underlying loneliness of never feeling you truly belong anywhere.

Favorite line(s): My friend! It made Satya emotional. “I wanted to run away from my problems—like you,” said Satya, at this moment seeing a parallel.

Said Sunny, “In movement and solitude are safety. But also a lack of safety—a solitary wanderer, even a poor one, might be murdered for just his shoes.”

Satya said, “One day, I got into such a mental state that I called in sick, and then I got into my car and drove away.”

Satya had finally pulled up at a mall where there was a Barnes & Noble, in which he could spend time like many homeless people did. In the evening there had been a reading by a psychic who claimed to have solved the Son of Sam murders, attended by an unusual group of people. A lady in a large hat wreathed in feathers put up her hand and said in a strong voice as if declaiming in court: “I! Too! Have! Been! Psychic! Witness! To a Murder!” For some reason this had given Satya a moment of relief. An immigrant story is also a ghost story and a murder story. You become a ghost, the people left behind become ghostly, sometimes you kill them by the heartlessness of leaving, sometimes you psychically kill yourself. Another audience member, whose skin looked as if it had never been touched by sun, said he listened to an alien broadcast at two a.m. Again Satya felt better. An immigrant story is a story about becoming an alien, to others and to yourself.

GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL LIFE by Emily Henry

Alice and Hayden are vying for the same job: writing the biography of Margaret Ives, a former tabloid princess and tragic heiress of the scandalous Ives family. The great-great grandfather making his money on silver mining and subsequent generations on newspapers and media. There are a lot of secrets and plot twists, and Henry’s signature romance dynamic, this one between Alice, the entertainment journalist, and the Pulitzer Prize winning biographist. How do all the familial generational relationships, the secrets Margaret is keeping, and the two writers intersect? No spoiler alerts here.

Favorite line(s): “Life is so complicated. And I think it’s human nature to try to untangle those complications. We want everything to make sense. And that’s okay. It’s a worthy pursuit. But back when my sister wasn’t well, when every day felt uncertain…” I search for the words.

His forehead creases, his tone so hopeful it nearly breaks my heart. “You understood how much each one was worth?”

“I understood what really mattered,” I offer. “I understood my priorities. I understood what, in this life, was nonnegotiable for me. A lot of people don’t find that out until it’s too late. They wait to say things, and they don’t get the chance. So collecting other people’s stories, learning from their mistakes, it is a fit too. You are who you are right now in part because of what you did for Len and his family. You can’t control any of that other stuff you worry about, but you can control what you do.”