Just one post for July’s paperbacks and a thin one at that. I blame summer reading which tends not to appeal to me. The good news is that four out of the six titles are tried and tested beginning with Amor Towles The Lincoln Highway, a 1950s American odyssey. Released early from Salina, the youth detention centre where he was sentenced to spend eighteen months, Emmett has a plan to begin a new life with his eight-year-old brother, Billy, who’s obsessed with the newly opened Lincoln Highway, but Duchess and Woolly turn up newly escaped from Salina with other ideas in mind. Towles’ novel is a gripping, hugely entertaining take on Homer’s Odyssey with a cast of engaging characters of which Billy is the undoubted star. Well worth packing in your suitcase if you’re off on holiday.
I was a wee bit wary of reading Nickolas Butler’s Godspeed. I loved his first novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, but found his second, The Hearts of Men, a bit disappointing. Set in Wyoming, this new one sees three men, friends and colleagues for twenty years, offered the job of a lifetime: the construction of a gorgeous, palatial house in the mountains. The catch is a seemingly impossible deadline, one that leads to a tragedy and a spectacular unravelling. An engrossing piece of storytelling with a reverence for nature and landscape expressed in lovingly evocative language
Despite the fact that I rarely read poetry, I’m a sucker for novels by poets hence the attraction of Daisy Lafarge’s Paul. Spanning four hot summer weeks, Lafarge’s debut follows Frances, a medieval historian who has volunteered to work on a sustainable farm in the Pyrenees having left Paris under a cloud. Paul turns out to be a Gaugin-obsessed, self-proclaimed anthropologist who leads her into an unwanted intimacy she seems unable to resist. It’s a powerful, discomfiting story but the most enjoyable aspect for me was Lafarge’s gorgeous descriptions of the French countryside.
I’m in two minds about J R Thorp’s Learwife which plucks King Lear’s queen 
out of obscurity and puts her in a nunnery where she’s been sent after her broken husband and their daughters have been killed or vanquished. Furious and grief-stricken, she’s desperate to understand what’s happened and why she’s been exiled. ‘Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalising mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present’ according to the blurb. Several readers whose opinions I trust have convinced me to give it a try.
I’m finishing off with two short story collections, one of which I’ve already read. Anthony Veasna So’s 
Afterparties is about young Cambodian-Americans whose parents and grandparents fled genocide and war. The nine stories which make up this collection crackle with energy and humour despite the sober themes they explore. Most are set in the California Valley neighbourhood where extended families engage in rivalries but loyalty is strong; where genocide is never far from the older generation’s minds throwing a long shadow over their descendants; where the wealth earnt through parents’ hard work leaves their children burdened by high expectations and sometimes self-destructive. So’s writing is heartfelt, capturing an authenticity of experience, marked by flashes of tenderness. Impossible to read this collection
without sadness at the knowledge of So’s death at the age of twenty-eight.
Clare Sestanovich’s Objects of Desire explores the lives of young women from early adulthood, when all seems possible, to the narrowing options of middle age. ‘Objects of Desire is a book pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes and alive with moments of recognition, each more startling than the last – a spellbinding, brilliant debut’ say the publishers which sounds very promising to me. Like William Maxwell, Sestanovich is an editor at the New Yorker although I may have set the bar a tad high there.
That’s it for July’s paperbacks fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you either to my review or to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with new fiction, it’s here and here.
I have read Godspeed (my first book by Nickolas Butler) and really enjoyed it – it also had a lot to say about precarious work and the real estate bubble, I thought! Funnily enough, Paul sounds very similar to Nightingale by Marina Kemp, which was on the shortlist for the Young Writer of the Year award in 2020.
Glad to hear you enjoyed Godspeed and, you’re right about his exploration of work insecurity. There are certainly parallels between Nightingale and Paul, not least in their gorgeous descriptions of the French countryside in summer.
I gave up on Learwife partway through. Lovely prose but not much pace.
I’ll probably give it a try but I’m not keen on literary ‘tributes’.
I’d forgotten about Paul – thank you for the reminder!
A William Maxwell comparison is definitely a high bar but very tempting…
I fear I’m setting myself up for disappointment with that comparison! I hope you enjoy Paul if you get to it.
You’ve reminded me that I still have a proof copy of the Amor Towles from last year – must read a little bit of it soon.
It’s an enjoyable slice of escapism, Jacqui. I hope you like it.
Oh that terrible egg on that last cover! Why did they do that!?!
It’s a wee bit squirmy, isn’t it.
A really interesting selection again. Lincoln Highway is definitely the one which appeals the most.
A great one to sink into and forget about the world!
I’m afraid I didn’t get along with Learwife at all – too much grief and the language felt self-indulgent – but I enjoyed The Lincoln Highway! I like the sound of Godspeed – shall investigate…
Hmm… Your the second reader to have given Learwife the thumbs down. Beginning to waiver about it now.
Lear Wife is unusual, but I really enjoyed it.
Pleased to hear you liked it, Davida.
Godspeed and Lear Wife I’ll be looking out for. I tossed Lincoln Highway (I just can’t make his writing “sing” for me–I must be tone deaf since everyone else raves).
I loved Rules of Civility but couldn’t get on with A Gentleman in Moscow at all.
That’s so good to hear! Everyone I know raves about a Gentleman in Moscow and I could not get into it in print or in audio.
Amor Towles is the only one that appeals here. Like you I don’t ‘do’ summer reads or beach reads (the only time I can now be found on a beach is when I’m out walking)
Never been a beach fan partly because I tend to burn at the first glimpse of sun. Hope you enjoy the Towles if you get to it.