Nevermore: Death Becomes Them, People of the Abyss, And the Mountains Echoed, The Outsider

 

Reported by Garry

 

Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious by Alix Strauss is an in-depth look at the deaths of several well-known figures. Subjects in this book include Kurt Cobain, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Dorothy Dandridge, and many more. Our reader thought the book was a fun look at a terrible subject, and recommends it for anyone looking for more information about how and why these people took their own lives—and their deaths—into their own hands.

 

The People of the Abyss by Jack London is the American author’s personal account of his experiences in the East End of London. London (the author,that is) went undercover for several weeks in 1902—sleeping on the street, in workhouses, and boarding with a poor family to research the deplorable conditions of the London slums. For generations, the East End had been notorious for deep poverty, overcrowding, and associated social problems. Pointing out that half of the children born in the East End at the turn of the century died before their 5^th birthday, our reviewer said that this book was at once the best book of social commentary that she had read, and also the worst, in that it was the most depressing. This book is now considered a classic piece of investigative journalism, and is highly recommended by our reader.

 

And The Mountains Echoed, first published in 2013, is the third novel by the bestselling author of the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. Nine interwoven stories revolve around the relationship between Afghani brother and sister Abdullah and Pari, and the lives of those around them. Spanning three continents and stretching from the early 1950s into the 2010s, this deeply personal story explores the interconnectedness of family and what we do for and to those we love. Our reader very highly recommends this multi-award winning, bestselling book.

 

Our next Nevermore member says that The Outsider by Stephen King is guaranteed to make your skin crawl. In Flint City, Ohio, an eleven-year-old boy has been sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. Eyewitness testimony, fingerprints, and DNA all shockingly point to Terry Maitland, one of the town’s most outstanding citizens. However, Maitland also has an iron-clad alibi placing him at a distant location at the time of the murder. How could both those things be true? Who actually committed the murder? Our reader liked the way that this book personifies evil as a real, tangible person, not simply “a thing that goes bump in the night,” finding this book to be an excellent and extremely creepy read.

 

Also Mentioned:

 

Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler as told to Joseph B. Egan

Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 2^nd Edition edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Falling by T.J. Newman

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Secret Sisters by Joy Callaway

That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay

Fatal Intent by Tammy Euliano

Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth by Tony Hiss

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

1984 (Graphic Novel Version) by George Orwell

The Best Of Me by David Sedaris

Martita, I Remember You by Sandra Cisneros

I Couldn’t Love You More by Esther Freud

Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Cady Archer arrives at Harvard with mild trepidation, but optimistic that the prestigious university is where she is supposed to be. Her mother definitely disagrees, having lost Cady’s older brother Eric to suicide on the revered campus just a year earlier. Eric had a history of mental illness threaded through his brilliance, and something just pushed him over the edge, perhaps literally as well as figuratively.

As Cady deals with the pressure of being a freshman at such a challenging university, she struggles with the idea that she could have done something to help Eric. Surely there were clues pointing to his desperation, or other indications that his family should have noticed. As she begins to cross paths with his classmates, his competitors for the Bauer award, and his professors, Cady begins to question whether something much more sinister than stress or schizophrenia drove her brother to take his own life.

Cue the “ghosts of Harvard” as Cady begins to hear voices in her head. Decades or centuries have passed since Whit, Robert, and Bilhah walked the paths now occupied by Cady and her fellow students. But Cady can hear them as clearly as if they were beside her in the present day. They become as real to her as the living, breathing humans around her, but are they really speaking to her from the past or is Cady slipping into mental illness just like Eric?

This highly anticipated debut novel from Francesca Serritella did meet my expectations. I have read Serritella’s non-fiction compilations with her mother Lisa Scottoline and found them funny, insightful, and a bit poignant as they cover topics of family, growing up Italian, men, friendship, and animals, among many, many other things. This work of fiction definitely did feel like a first as the author found her narrative voice, but she accomplished this well. As a graduate of Harvard, she obviously knows her setting well and utilizes her experiences there to paint the background vividly.

I will admit that this took me some time to read, but I blame that more on the COVID-19 pandemic and my own scattered-ness in 2020, rather than on any faults with the writing. I look forward to more from this promising young author in the future.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

Reviewed by Jeanne

The Bright Ideas Bookstore draws people from all walks of life.  There are the intellectuals, parents browsing picture books, students looking for research, teens seeking the newest dystopian saga, and the displaced:  people with nowhere else to go.  The latter are called the Book Frogs.  Clerk Lydia Smith feels sorry for them, especially Joey, a troubled young man with a prison record and a deep love for books.  At last call before closing, Lydia goes looking for Joey and finds that he has hanged himself.

And she discovers Joey had a picture of her. . . a photo she has never seen before, taken at a party when she was ten.

Shocked on many levels, she pockets the picture before the police arrive.  They reach the obvious conclusion of suicide, especially since Joey left a note.  He also indicates that he leaves all his possessions to Lydia.

So begins a quest to learn the truth about Joey, and why a young man who seemed to be holding his own suddenly turns to suicide.  To unravel his story, Lydia must also look to her own past, and to long suppressed memories of a traumatic episode.

I do know better than to judge a book by its cover or even by its title, but even so I approached this one with the false impression that there would be a fantasy element. There isn’t.  Instead, this is a straight-forward account of a desperate young man and a woman with a hidden past.  It’s an interesting puzzle with well-defined characters and twists and turns, including some coded messages which may or may not hold the key to Joey’s suicide.  It’s a character driven story with an intriguing premise and a satisfying conclusion. I was drawn into the story from the start.  While there were a good many flashbacks to Lydia’s childhood, the telling made it seem immediate and not disjointed, as sometimes happens. 

This is an enjoyable debut novel which should please fans of both general fiction and mysteries.