Today I’m trying something new: sharing a list of books I’ve borrowed, bought, or otherwise received this week. I’m calling it Friday Bookbag and I plan to make it a weekly feature. I love spreading the book love around and it’s a nice way to give attention to some books I might not get the chance to review.
And so, without further ado, here are this week’s new books!
Pretend We Are Lovely by Noley Reid
It’s the summer of 1982 in Blacksburg, Virginia–seven years after the suspicious death of a son and sibling–and the Sobel family is hungry.
Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband Tate prefers a packed fridge and hidden donuts. Daughters Enid, ten, and Vivvy, almost thirteen, are subtler versions of their parents, measuring their summer vacation by meals had or meals skipped. But at summer’s end, secrets both old and new emerge and Francie disappears, leaving the family teetering on the brink.
Told from alternating points of view by the four living Sobels, Pretend We Are Lovely is a sharp and darkly funny story of forgiveness, family secrets, and the losses we inherit. At its core is the ever-complicated and deeply-devoted bond of sisterhood as the girls, left mostly to their own devices, must navigate their way through school, find comfort in each other, and learn the difference between food and nourishment.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Source: the library
Why I’m excited: I love stories about family secrets and I especially love compassionate and funny stories about mental illness. I hope this book fits the bill for both.
There Your Heart Lies by Mary Gordon
From the award-winning novelist Mary Gordon, here is a book whose twentieth-century wisdom can help us understand the difficulties we face in the twenty-first: There Your Heart Lies is a deeply moving novel about an American woman’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she learned, and how her story will shape her granddaughter’s path.
Marian cut herself off from her wealthy, conservative Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War–an experience she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter, Amelia, a young woman of good heart but with only a vague notion of life’s purpose. Their daily existence is intertwined with Marian’s secret past: the blow to her youthful idealism when she witnessed the brutalities on both sides of Franco’s war and the romance that left her trapped in Spain in perilous circumstances for nearly a decade. When Marian is diagnosed with cancer, she finally speaks about what happened to her during those years–personal and ethical challenges nearly unthinkable to Amelia’s millennial generation, as well as the unexpected gifts of true love and true friendship.
Marian’s story compels Amelia to make her own journey to Spain, to reconcile her grandmother’s past with her own uncertain future. With their exquisite female bond at its core, this novel, which explores how character is forged in a particular moment in history and passed down through the generations, is especially relevant in our own time. It is a call to arms–a call to speak honestly about evil when it is before us, and to speak equally about goodness.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Source: the library
Why I’m excited: I’ll admit that I saw the mention of the Spanish Civil War and got tunnel vision–I’m really interested in that period in history and I’m curious as to how the novel will handle it. I find the blurb wordy and heavy-handed (especially with the weird reference to the “millennial generation”) but I’m willing to take a chance on this one since sometimes blurbs are misleading. I have a good feeling!
The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo
What happens to the girl left behind?
When a masked gunman enters a local sandwich shop in broad daylight, Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself on the filthy floor, cowering face-to-face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow–the most popular girl in her eighth-grade class. Lying there, Meredith is utterly convinced she is going to die. Then the gunman orders Lisa Bellow to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith behind.
As the community stages vigils and searches, Meredith’s mother, Claire, toggles between jubilation that her daughter is alive and the grievous knowledge that she is irreparably changed. Her daughter is here, but not–and Claire grows desperate to reach Meredith. But Meredith is in a place where Claire can’t go, following Lisa Bellow where no one else can.
The Fall of Lisa Bellow is gripping and original, a hair-raising exploration of the ripple effects of an unthinkable crime and a dark, beautifully rendered illustration of how one family, broken by tragedy, searches for healing.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Source: the library
Why I’m excited: I like literary fiction that has a thriller tinge (as well as full-on literary thrillers in the vein of Gillian Flynn), and this book seems to have that suspenseful edge to it. I’m not sure how big a role gun violence will play in this book (other than the reference to the masked gunman), but that element also seems timely.
See books here that you’ve already read or that are on your to-read list? Let me know in the comments and feel free to link to your own book reviews and blog posts!
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