This
week, Nevermore started their gathering with An Elderly Lady is up to No Good by Helene Tursten, translated by
Marlene Delargy. Thanks to a clause in a
hastily negotiated contract, 88-year-old Maud has been living rent-free in her
family’s apartment in Gothenburg and she spends her days traveling the world,
surfing the net, and enjoying her solitary existence. She likes living alone and, when problems
arise, she doesn’t let a little thing like murder get in her way. Our reader absolutely adored reading
Tursten’s story collection. She joked
that she wanted to be like Maud. “I
don’t necessarily want to kill people,” she explained, “but, if I see a
problem, I want to be able to solve it.”
She highly recommended An Elderly
Lady is up to No Good, saying it was a treat to read.
Next,
Nevermore checked out The Ice Swimmer,
the sixth book in the Oslo Detective series by Kjell Ola Dahl. When a dead man is found in the freezing
waters of Oslo Harbor, Detective Lena Stigersand isn’t happy to add another
weight to her already complicated life.
But, as she investigates what happened to the man discovered beneath the
ice, she finds the murder may be linked to a conspiracy—that reaches deep into
the heart of the Norwegian government.
Our reader enjoyed Dahl’s novel.
She told her fellow Nevermore members that she’s a very big fan of
Nordic noir and The Ice Swimmer
really fits the bill. Well written but
not especially gruesome, Dahl’s novel seemed to hit all the right notes.
Switching
to nonfiction, Nevermore explored Never
Cry Wolf: Amazing True Story of Life
Among Arctic Wolves by Farley Mowat.
When Farley Mowat was sent by the Canadian Wildlife Service to
investigate why arctic wolves were killing caribou, he spends months living
alongside these creatures, developing a deep affection for the wolves and a
local tribe of Inuit people known as the Ihalmiut (or “People of the
Deer”). Our reader said Mowat’s book was
absolutely wonderful. She loved that the
author personalized the wolves—that is, he let their personalities shine
through. She really liked his writing
and she enjoyed learning more about wolves, the Inuit, and conservation efforts. She highly recommended it to her fellow
readers, especially those who are fans of Jane Goodall.
Nevermore
returned to the realm of fiction with a look at Someone, a novel by Alice McDermott, which tells the story of
Marie, an ordinary woman with an ordinary life—and takes a glimpse at how the
ordinary can be truly beautiful. Our
reader, who absolutely loves Alice McDermott’s work, said she enjoyed Someone immensely. Although it was only a look at the life of
one ordinary woman, it felt like an epic story with its twists and turns going
from Marie’s childhood to her marriage to the disruption of World War II. “It was fascinating,” our reader gushed, to
see how McDermott could take an average story and make it so beautiful, so
vibrant and lovely.
Next,
Nevermore shared The Eternal Wonder,
a final novel by Pearl S. Buck published nearly forty years after her
death. Randolph Colfax (also known as
Rann) is an extraordinarily gifted young man, a man with an eternal sense of
wonder that leads him from his small town in Ohio to New York, England, Paris,
and beyond. When he meets the beautiful
and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, he finds himself falling for her, even as
they both struggle to reconcile their identities within the world and find a
sense of meaning. Our reader, who has
explored Buck’s novels in the past, said this latest story was
interesting. It felt like a bit of a
departure from the author’s usual style; however, our reader said she liked The Eternal Wonder and definitely found
it worth reading.
Last,
Nevermore wrapped their meeting up with An
American Marriage by Tayari Jones.
Celestial and Roy are young, newly married, and incredibly happy. He is a young executive, while she is an
artist on the brink of an exciting career; however, when Roy is charged with a
crime he didn’t commit, they find themselves growing distant as they learn to
lead very different lives. Our reader
said she loved reading An American
Marriage. The novel, she noted, felt
intimate and moving, combining heartbreak and hope and insight into human
foibles to create a story that was singularly extraordinary. She loved it, and she highly recommended it
to her fellow readers.
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