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lucian_childs's reviews
239 reviews
Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page
5.0
I was recommended this book as a possible model for my novella-in-progress. I’m doing something similar—using a series of short stories to tell a long tale that covers many decades. I love the short form for its unitary narrative arc, but chafe at its limitations. Alice Munro can pull off leaps in time in her stories, but in most others the characters are confined within their small worlds.
That’s why I found “Dear Evelyn” so appealing. Each chapter has that unitary narrative arc I love, but it’s at the service of a story of long, interconnected lives. Here, we get Harry Miles, from birth to death, who is deemed by the midwife who delivered him “a male, unremarkable.” When the bookish Harry, an educated young man of limited means, meets the irascible Evelyn Hill, the story begins in earnest. In measured prose, Page traces sixty years of their lives—their marriage just before Harry departs for WWI, their lives during their wartime separation, told in a series of letters from which the book derives its title.
At the close of the war, Harry and Evelyn are reunited and the tales ensue of parents and siblings, of the couple’s growing family. It’s all decidedly undramatic, no peak moments or epiphanies. What tension there is comes from Evelyn’s demanding nature. This Harry meets with agreeableness and compliance, traits for which he is chided by his bevy of grown daughters.
Underneath Harry’s unflappability lies a sense of loss. In order to provide his wife and daughters a solidly middle-class life, he has given up his boyhood dream of becoming a poet. He longs “to find his way back to the lovely slipperiness of words.” Though he never does, this aspiration grounds him throughout his long life.
In this the reader is a participant, of sorts. These are lives told through the compressive form of the short story. The interludes between stories, the reader must fill in. It is a task worth the effort. When we come to the ending are hearts are full. For me, this is one of the tasks of storytelling, one Kathy Page admirably accomplishes. { Cross-posted at my website. }
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That’s why I found “Dear Evelyn” so appealing. Each chapter has that unitary narrative arc I love, but it’s at the service of a story of long, interconnected lives. Here, we get Harry Miles, from birth to death, who is deemed by the midwife who delivered him “a male, unremarkable.” When the bookish Harry, an educated young man of limited means, meets the irascible Evelyn Hill, the story begins in earnest. In measured prose, Page traces sixty years of their lives—their marriage just before Harry departs for WWI, their lives during their wartime separation, told in a series of letters from which the book derives its title.
At the close of the war, Harry and Evelyn are reunited and the tales ensue of parents and siblings, of the couple’s growing family. It’s all decidedly undramatic, no peak moments or epiphanies. What tension there is comes from Evelyn’s demanding nature. This Harry meets with agreeableness and compliance, traits for which he is chided by his bevy of grown daughters.
Underneath Harry’s unflappability lies a sense of loss. In order to provide his wife and daughters a solidly middle-class life, he has given up his boyhood dream of becoming a poet. He longs “to find his way back to the lovely slipperiness of words.” Though he never does, this aspiration grounds him throughout his long life.
In this the reader is a participant, of sorts. These are lives told through the compressive form of the short story. The interludes between stories, the reader must fill in. It is a task worth the effort. When we come to the ending are hearts are full. For me, this is one of the tasks of storytelling, one Kathy Page admirably accomplishes. { Cross-posted at my website. }
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A Memory of Murder: A Novel of Psychological Suspense by Nichelle Seely
5.0
If we think of a machine as anything whose purpose it is to do work, then a book is such a thing. An engine to produce meaning, emotion, sometimes delight. We literary fiction types go to great lengths to hide the engine’s inner workings, but the appeal of genre writing, to me at least, is the joy the reader takes in the movement of its parts.
Not usually my kind of thing, as the author of “Memory of a Murder” would be the first to tell you. (Disclaimer: Nichelle Seely is a friend.) Even so, I found myself absorbed by this debut novel, a murder mystery set in Astoria, Washington. It is a misty place, evocatively drawn—perfect for the concealment of secrets built on the legacy of trauma.
As is pretty much standard in police procedurals these days, the protagonist/narrator is damaged goods, but her particular flaw gives the novel its special crime-solving twist, one that will no doubt fuel future titles in the series.
In these pages, we step deeply into the mind of this disgraced police detective turned private investigator, the shrewd particulars of her problem-solving, the unfortunate recent incidents that continue to plague her.
“Memory of a Murder” is an excellent read, a thoughtful, well-written entry in the murder mystery genre. I look forward to future titles in the series. { Cross-posted at my website. }
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Not usually my kind of thing, as the author of “Memory of a Murder” would be the first to tell you. (Disclaimer: Nichelle Seely is a friend.) Even so, I found myself absorbed by this debut novel, a murder mystery set in Astoria, Washington. It is a misty place, evocatively drawn—perfect for the concealment of secrets built on the legacy of trauma.
As is pretty much standard in police procedurals these days, the protagonist/narrator is damaged goods, but her particular flaw gives the novel its special crime-solving twist, one that will no doubt fuel future titles in the series.
In these pages, we step deeply into the mind of this disgraced police detective turned private investigator, the shrewd particulars of her problem-solving, the unfortunate recent incidents that continue to plague her.
“Memory of a Murder” is an excellent read, a thoughtful, well-written entry in the murder mystery genre. I look forward to future titles in the series. { Cross-posted at my website. }
View all my reviews