Review 470: Between Before and After

Between Before and After by Maureen Doyle McQuerry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A dual time-line story from the early 1900’s in Brooklyn and the modern time in San Jose, California in 1955. The point of view is of the mother Elaine, with Molly the daughter in the other. This is billed as young adult, which made me a little more forgiving for the book.

Molly is curious about her mother’s past, as she doesn’t speak about it. Some snooping found some things such as old photos, but her dad’s words to his wife when he left sparked her imagination: “Bury your past before it buries you.”

Molly figures one best way to find out about her mom is through her Uncle Stephen, but then he gets distracted by a mystery of a miracle.

It sounds like a mystery, also set up like that, but it was so obvious what was going to happen, or discovered, that I can hardly call it a mystery.

Elaine’s timeline is hard, her mother and baby sister die from the Spanish flu. Her father in mourning turned to drinking heavily and being more absent than at home. So, Elaine had to quit school to keep the house together and get a job, she becomes the missing mother to her brother Stephen. Luck landed her a job reading to a blind elderly man in a fancy house. The job barely covers their rent, at least Pop still provided a little money as well, but most of Elaine’s and Stephen’s meals come from the Gossleys.

I found the book okay, not really a page turner and maybe a little slow. Perhaps a young person wouldn’t see the obvious “mystery”. The author’s note at the end mentions her grandmother died from the 1918-1919 pandemic, leaving three children behind, her father being ten years old. They lived in Brooklyn, and this setting became the spark for the book.

Review 469: Dayswork

Dayswork by Chris Bachelder
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

When I started this book, I was a skeptic, this is an usual style of book. There isn’t a plot really, the sentences on the page are mostly not grouped together into paragraphs, there is a lot of white space.

Many of the sentences are seemingly random bits of information, mainly about Herman Melville’s life, but then can go on tangents.

Also mixed in is the narrator with her family. They are under lock down during the early days, months, of the pandemic. She and her husband, along with their two daughters, are remotely working and going to school. Her husband is a creative writing professor, her job is not mentioned, but seems also to be a writer. She is the one obsessed with researching Melville, sharing much of what she finds with her husband, as he would enjoy it too.

So the book feels like non-fiction, the two writers of Dayswork are married and work in the same fields. They have a child, or children, I don’t know, only that they are parents. The few things I’ve looked up about Melville are true, so it makes me wonder why this is fiction. Perhaps it is easier to invent that pandemic life, the family quirks. But it makes me suspect validity for these interesting facts about these writers: Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Marilynne Robinson, along with all the others, such as The Biographer.

I did enjoy the book, I would call it an unusual biography of Herman Melville. I have read scantily little of his work, and now feel like attempting Moby Dick. His life was not a happy one, and his family suffered as well. Do I now want to read a real biography of Melville? Yes, a little, perhaps someday.

Review 468: Copper Falcon

Copper Falcon by W. Michael Gear
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A short novel – in 1050 a father and son from a small town, several days down the river, go to the big city in the hopes of getting more warriors. Their town has constant border skirmishes and they need more people to fight the enemy back. Now at the canoe landing the son, Flint Knife Mankiller, finds out from his father, Red Mask, that he was banished from Cahokia and told if he ever returned he would be killed. Can they accomplish their mission and return back to the river before Morning Star or the Keeper realizes he is here? Can he escape his punishment?

The novella is short enough it could easily be read in a day, but it took me several weeks. The problem was not only that I wasn’t reading the book, but I had the eBook on my phone. This is definitely not my preferred reading format.

Review 467: Fever

Fever by Deon Meyer
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars


Good, but a bit too much with the violence aspect.

As the name of this book implies, there was a vast fever, a pandemic that has an such a fast rate of spread and death that nearly 95% of the world’s population did not survive. It was a coronavirus from bats. (The book was published in 2017, before the real coronavirus pandemic.)

The novel follows a teenage boy and his father, Nico and Willem Storm, just after the worst part, when seemingly no one is left alive. They are traveling around their country, South Africa. After a while Willem tells Nico about his plans to establish a new settlement. They met a few people, a woman who has sixteen orphans with her, a man flying a Cessna airplane.

The first people who arrived form a committee, the house they first live in becomes known as the orphanage where the leaders meet. There are always decisions to be made. One of the first people to join was Domingo, a tough man who Nico was relieved his father let him stay. Domingo becomes Nico’s hero to his 13-year-old-self, and as he grows older. Domingo knows how to defend their community, Amanzi.

From the beginning Amanzi comes against people who live by plundering and taking whatever they can find, or by violence against those who have anything. They group together in gangs, steal and brutalize women. Thus, the KTM becomes the enemy.

The focus in the book becomes of this potential violence, then going on patrols, instead of the community building. Perhaps it does make for a more exciting and fast-paced book.

The ending of the book seemed a bit off to me, considering how many pages are in the book, it actually felt rushed. Then part of what was going on in the world was left undone, so it’s left open for a sequel.

After reading this book I looked into the author’s other books, and most are series. Not sure this one will become one as over six years or more have passed and there is no sign of a sequel yet.

Review 466: American Spirits

American Spirits by Russell Banks
My rating: 3.75 of 5 stars


Russell Banks is a good storyteller. These are three stories that are located around the same area, a small town in Northern New York state. They are dark, full of troubled people. Banks certainly knows how to quickly draw a character.

There are three stories: Nowhere man, Homeschooling and Kidnapped. My preference is for the middle story, Homeschooling.

Can't say I fully enjoyed these stories. All were bleak and did not come to happy conclusions. The first the main character is unhappy about how he sold off the land that had been in his family for generations and gets into a feud with the man who had purchased it.

Homeschooling concerns itself with a family that just moved into the town, well more about the neighbors, a lesbian married couple who adopted four siblings who are of a different race. The new neighbors are concerned about how the children are being treated.

The last Kidnapped are descendants of the town's founder, Sam Dent. The elderly couple are kidnapped by some Canadian drug lords and their grandson who they raised is their hope for being released. Their grandson Stevie perhaps is autistic, not sure, but he is different and never had any friends while growing up.

Somehow a MAGA hat made its way into each story as well. Not clear why except to point out the political position for some characters, although politics really didn't play into these stories. There is an undertone of poverty, but really everyone is getting by okay with some doing better than others.


Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. And to Penguin Random House Audio for an advance audio copy.