Nevermore: After the Cataclysm, Force of Nature, Family Lore, When I'm Dead, To Conjure a Killer, This Time Tomorrow

 Reported by Kristin 

 

We had a small group on this very cold day, but it was nice to Zoom in and talk books!

 

First up, one reader discussed After the Cataclysm: Volume II: The Political Economy of Human Rights by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. Covering Western influenced political movements in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, Chomsky and Herman come together again to look at how the United States is involved in the political regimes of many other world countries. Our reader expressed her fraught emotions that so many lives have been lost, decades past and continuing to the present day.

 

Another more life affirming book was mentioned by the same reader: Force of Nature by Joan M. Griffin. The non-fiction work tells the tale of three women friends, all 50-somethings, who set off to walk the beautiful John Muir trail in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Our reader noted that alongside the description of the beauty and difficulty of the trail, the author included nitty-gritty details such as the relief of receiving food and clothing packages, including the delight of being able to put on clean underclothing after days of hiking. This comes highly recommended!

 

Another reader is just getting into another new book, Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo. Dominican American Flor has a special gift--she can predict when someone will die. When Flor announces to her family that she wants to have a living wake, their responses are generally along the line of "Oh no, is Flor going to die soon??"

 

When I'm Dead by Hannah Morrissey interested one of our book club members, with the main characters being a husband and wife team, a police detective and a medical examiner, respectively. When bodies of their teenage daughter's friends start showing up, and then their daughter goes missing, these parents must race against the clock as they investigate the murders of the young women.

 

Clea Simon's Witch Cats of Salem series returned to Nevermore with the fourth in series To Conjure a Killer. Main character Becca is part of a young coven based in Cambridge, all members working earnestly to cast spells. Little does she know that her mystical feline friends may be the ones who have more substantial power. When Becca's ex-boyfriend shows up (dead), guess who is a prime suspect? 

 

Another recent book read was This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. Our reader said this was another time travel or time slipping book which she keeps finding in her reading pile. Alice goes out to celebrate her 40th birthday with her lifelong best friend. Her life is okay, but somewhat mundane, and she is dealing with anticipatory grief for her hospitalized father. But when she wakes up the next morning in her childhood home with her father at the table, she realizes she has returned to her 16th birthday, and perhaps a chance to live her life a little differently. Again, and again, and again.

 

Also mentioned:

 

Sigrid Rides: The Story of an Extraordinary Friendship and an Adventure on Two Wheels by Travis Nelson

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

The Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand

The Fireman by Joe Hill

Weyward by Emilia Hart

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

 

Reviewed by Kristin

 

Alice is pretty much satisfied with her life. She works in admissions at the private school she herself attended. She has her own affordable apartment in New York. She has romantic prospects, but is deciding that she may be better off unattached. She is still close with her childhood best friend, even if Sam is married and seemingly eternally pregnant. Her father Leonard is aging though, and currently in the hospital in a coma.

 

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice finds herself in the exact right place at the exact right time to find out what might have been.

 

Yes, Emma Straub has taken the familiar trope of discovering all the what-ifs, if only one could travel back in time and live life differently. But this author takes an atypical angle, and does it very well.

 

Alice finds herself back in her childhood home on the morning of her 16th birthday. Leonard is there, looking much younger than Alice remembers he was. It's not some lost boyfriend who Alice is most motivated to bring into her 40 year old life; it's the healthy version of her father who she misses.

 

I won't go into too much detail to avoid spoilers. I will say only that the characters resonated in a way that most don't, and the reason may be because the author was going through losing her own father, horror author Peter Straub, while she was writing this novel. In the acknowledgements, she talks about her father encouraging her to write a fictionalized version of her own story. I can imagine that writing about time travel to an earlier time to be with a missing family member must have been at once wrenching and cathartic.

 

I'm now off to find even more Emma Straub books. This Time Tomorrow may have been the first I have read, but it won't be the last.