Nevermore: B.A. Paris, Lisabeth Salander, Graveyard Book, Never Let Me Go, Astrophysics, and October Sky

Reported by Jeanne

B.A. Paris’ debut novel Behind Closed Doors was recommended again by a Nevermore member.  The story revolves around a husband and wife who seem to have the perfect marriage, but astute readers will see dark undercurrents early on in the book.  Our reader said she had to take a sneak peek at the ending but still enjoyed the book.

Many of those in Nevermore have been fans of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander books, so there was great interest the new books in the series written by David Lagercrantz.  The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye was praised by our reader for catching the essence of the original characters.  However, the plot was deemed a bit thin and more than a bit implausible. 

The Newbery Award-winning The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is keeping another reader entertained.  The story revolves around Bod, an orphan boy who is being raised by the inhabitants of a graveyard after the murder of his parents.  She said it was the perfect book for this time of year, and she was enjoying the relationship between Bod and the various spirits.

Our next reader was impressed with Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro but said that it was a difficult book to talk about without revealing spoilers.  She did say that it was set in the 1990s but sort of an alternate time. The story takes place in Hailsham, which is an English boarding school for special students, and follows three students in particular as they grow up and learn their purpose in life. She picked up the book because she wanted to read something by the winner of the  2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Astrophysics for People  in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson might as well have been titled “Brain Surgery for People in a Hurry,” according to our reader.  He felt the title indicated the book could be read and understood quickly while there is a lot of information packed inside 224 pages.  That’s not to say that the book isn’t good, just that it takes a while to absorb it all.  

Finally, one member praised October Sky by Homer Hickam, which was first published under the title Rocket Boys.   The details Hickam’s youth in Coalwood, WV, a mining town in the Appalachian Mountains.  Homer was in high school when the Russians launched Sputnik, and that event captured the young man’s imagination.  He and some classmates set out to build their own rockets for the state science fair in hopes of earning a way out of a fading coal town.  Our reader found it to be a wonderful book and is looking forward to seeing the movie—which she had actually seen some years ago and hadn’t liked, but after reading the book she’s now anxious to see it again.

Nevermore: Midnight Sun, Behind Closed Doors, The Smear, Mortuary Technician, Brothers of the Sea, Eaters of the Dead

Reported by Jeanne 

Nevermore started the week with a review of Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo, an award-winning Norwegian author best known for his Harry Hole mystery series.  This standalone novel features Jon, a hitman who is fleeing a vindictive employer known as the Fisherman. He finds a sanctuary of sorts in a small village where he also finds himself becoming emotionally attached to a widow and her son.  But Jon—known to the villagers as Ulf—knows that it’s just a matter of time before someone will come looking for him. Our reviewer enjoyed it, and gave it four out of five stars.  He especially praised Nesbo for his ability to create complex characters.

Behind Closed Doors, a debut novel by B.A. Paris, also won praise from its reader.  Grace and Jack appear to the be the perfect couple, but appearances are deceiving in this domestic thriller.  Our reader said it featured a psychopath with amazing nasal abilities—this person could smell fear—and that it’s a good page-turner.

The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson takes a behind the scenes look at how political campaigns, spin doctors, and special interest groups all try to shape the news to influence the public, especially voters.  Our reviewer said that while it was not fast reading, it was interesting.

More engaging was the next nonfiction selection, Down Among the Dead Men:  A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician by Michelle Williams. While the book could be a bit graphic at times, it’s a fascinating look at what goes on behind the scenes at a hospital mortuary.  Learning the causes of death, dealing with funeral homes, and some of the more unusual –um—clients make for engrossing reading.  Our reviewer did say that since the author was English a number of British expressions appear in the book but that didn’t detract from her enjoyment.

The 1966 novel Brothers of the Sea by D.R. Sherman is set in Seychelles when a boy and his father struggle to survive. Fifteen year old Paul is saved by a dolphin and the two form a deep friendship. The reader said this was a great book, and it was one of the saddest stories he’d ever read.

Finally, Michael Crichton’s early novel The Eaters of the Dead made quite an impression on one member.  Based on the writings of an Arab traveler around 921 A.D. and drawing from Beowulf, the story revolves around a band of Vikings who have to fight a mysterious monster. Our reader was most taken with the descriptions of Viking life and found the book to be “fascinating.”

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

Reviewed by Ambrea

“Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace.  He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance.  He’s a dedicated attorney who has never lost a case; she’s a flawless homemaker and a masterful gardener and cook, and she dotes on her disabled younger sister.  […]  You might not want to like them, but you do,” reads the cover.  Jack and Grace Angel sound like the perfect couple:  beautiful, sophisticated, enchanting, gracious.  It’s hard not to like them with their perfect house, their perfect dinner parties, their perfect marriage—except looks can be deceiving.

Jack isn’t the affable gentleman he claims to be, neither is he the doting husband nor the charming romantic who whisked Grace away to Thailand for their honeymoon; in fact, Grace knows better.  She knows what Jack is like when the shades are pulled and the doors are locked.  She knows what he’s after, like she knows he’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if it means destroying her in the process.  Left with no alternative, Grace knows she has to get out.

In Behind Closed Doors, B.A. Paris conjures a breathlessly thrilling and terrifyingly chilling novel.  I found it purely by accident when I glanced through a stack of newly cataloged books—and I was hooked by the first page.  Honestly, I was probably caught a little earlier than that when I skimmed the jacket cover and discovered an absolute gem of a review on the back from Publishers Weekly, which reads:

“Appearances can be deceiving[.]  Terror is contagious…and impending peril creates a ticking clock that propels this claustrophobic cat-and-mouse tale toward is grisly, gratifying conclusion.”

It made the novel sound slightly scandalous, and more than a little terrifying.  I couldn’t wait to dive in.

The plot is a simple, straightforward affair.  At its core, Behind Closed Doors is a survival story; however, it hinges upon the suspense which the author carefully builds as she peels back the layers of Grace’s story and reveals the monster behind Jack’s angelic façade.  (See what I did there, huh?)  It’s a psychological thriller, and it’s a wonderful book.

Personally, I enjoyed reading Grace’s narrative.  She’s an eloquent narrator who evokes quick emotional responses, because it feels like she could be anyone—a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a coworker you only have the opportunity to talk with at lunch.  Literally, anyone—and it’s so easy to get wrapped up in her story, to feel her gut-wrenching desperation and her dwindling feelings of hope.  She’s a sympathetic character, a victim of terror and abuse, but she’s not helpless.  I liked that Grace can think for herself, that she can plot and plan, and, more to the point, that she poised to rescue herself.

Despite my affection for Grace, I have to say that Behind Closed Doors made me feel a lot of emotions—and very few of them were good.  If it isn’t obvious from the novel summary, Grace’s husband, Jack, is not a good person; in fact, he is, as she characterizes, a monster and I utterly despised him.  Even in the first chapter, in which Grace seems intentionally vague about her relationship with Jack, I had the feeling that all was not well.  There were red flags that made me perk up, that made me wonder, and I couldn’t help think, “Something isn’t right here.”

Well, something definitely isn’t right.

As the story progressed, things went from bad to worse.  Listening to Grace’s story, watching with appalled fascination as her terrible ordeal unfolded, I couldn’t help feeling very strongly that Jack needed to die.  Honestly, Behind Closed Doors made me feel very violent, like abnormally violent.  I couldn’t stand Jack—and it’s all because of an incident with a dog.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I felt so bad for Grace and her sister, Millie, and the psychological terror they must have endured; however, I was absolutely heartbroken for the dog.

I realize something of this nature had to happen to sell the book, so to speak.  It was just one more way of convincing the reader that Jack is horrible, heartless, depraved and, in a word, evil.  But I just couldn’t handle it.  I can’t stand when animals are hurt or killed in books.  My little heart just can’t take it.  Besides which, I have quickly realized I am not a nice person when something bad happens to a dog.

I wished all manner of terrible things on Jack.  I even had to skip to the end of the book and find out the conclusion, so I could reassure myself that I wasn’t setting myself up for complete and utter devastation.  I don’t want to ruin the ending, so I won’t go into detail, but I will say that the book blurb was right:  Behind Closed Doors has a grisly but oh, so satisfying ending.  Truthfully, I don’t believe I’ve ever been so relieved by the conclusion of a novel.  That final chapter was so very, very gratifying—one might even call it cathartic.

Nevermore: Deadly Company, Poor People, In Country, Behind Closed Doors and I Used to Believe I Had Forever

Reported by Ambrea

Nevermore kicked things off with a curiously grisly book, sharing In Deadly Company:  Fifty Murderous Men and Women by Don Lasseter.  In Deadly Company profiles “fifty of the most heinous killers in modern history,” as the book jacket attests, and offers detailed insight into their past, their crimes, and, ultimately, their fate.  Detailed and full of interesting information, our reader found she liked reading Lasseter’s book.  It was a dark, gruesome read; however, she said she didn’t think it was all bad.  There was a silver lining beneath all the terrible stories:  All the killers listed were ones who were captured and convicted for their crimes.

Next, Nevermore looked at Poor People by William T. Vollmann.  Like In Deadly Company, Poor People proved to be rather grim reading about poverty.  For his book, Vollmann traveled the world to interview the impoverished.  He offers glimpses into the poorest cities in the poorest countries in the world, taking his readers from the slums of Klong Toey to the streets of Petersburg, Russia, to the homeless camps in Miami, Florida.  More than offering a portrait of the lives of the homeless and the destitute, Poor People allows the impoverished to tell their stories as they have lived them.  Our reader said Vollman’s book was heart-breaking, enlightening, and intriguing all at once.  She also noted that Vollmann provides a better picture of poverty in the United States that the rest of the world.  Although he does a wonderful job of painting an image of the rest of the world, he simply has a sparser gathering of information about foreign nations versus the United States.

From poverty, Nevemore went back in time to the Vietnam War with In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason.  Summer, 1984:  Sam Hughes has struggled to reconcile her father’s picture with the vague history she knows of him for her entire life.  She knows he lived in Kentucky, she knows he joined the military, and she knows he went to Vietnam—and she knows he never came back.  Sam, desperate to know more about her father and the war that claimed him, sets off on an incredible personal journey that leads her to answer she never expected to find.  Our reader raved about In Country.  She called Mason’s novel a poignant picture of loss and war and memory—and she loved every minute of the story.  She compared Bobbie Ann Mason to Flannery O’Connor for her ability to work beautiful prose and, moreover, her ability to paint an intimate portrait of rural areas.

Next, Nevermore continued with a curiously humorous collection of stories, poems, essays, and plays by William Saroyan.  Saroyan—a poet, playwright, novelist, script writer, and short story writer.  A jack-of-all-trades in the writing world—compiled I Used to Believe I Had Forever, Now I’m Not So Sure in 1968, an eclectic collection that, according to our reader, feels “very down home, simple” but without compromising the integrity of the work.  Our reader said he enjoyed reading Saroyan’s work.  Although he hadn’t read more than a few articles in Saroyan’s collection, he said he’d enjoyed many of the short stories and he’d appreciated the author’s ability to communicate easily with his audience.  Overall, he gave I Used to Believe I Had Forever very high marks.

Last, Nevermore showed off a brand new psychological thriller:  Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris.  Grace Angel seems to have the perfect life:  a beautiful house, a wonderful husband, a fantastic marriage—except looks can be deceiving.  Jack isn’t the affable gentleman he claims to be, neither is he the doting husband nor the charming romantic who took her to Thailand for their honeymoon; in fact, Grace knows better.  And she knows she has to get out.  Behind Closed Doors was a chilling, breathlessly thrilling novel that had our reader sitting on the edge of her seat.  She noted she enjoyed Grace’s narrative, she enjoyed the pace of the novel and the straightforward direction of the plot; moreover, she said she was invested in the story shortly after she began.  While she admitted that some of the story was hard to stomach—“If you’re an animal lover,” she warned, “don’t read it.”—she wanted to find out what happened to Grace and, ultimately, she was satisfied with the way it ended.  She highly recommended it to her fellow readers.