REVIEWED BY MICHELLE GREEN
NOVEL
Quiet and evenhanded, the pacing of Strout's deeply felt fiction about the distance between parents and children gives her work an addictive quality. A storyteller who allows protagonists' troubles to unfold organically, Strout (whose first novel, Amy and Isabelle, was a bestseller) also keeps her plots taut enough so that the suspense-intolerant may just skip to the final pages.
In Abide with Me, Strout limns the relationship between Tyler Caskey, a Congregational minister in mourning for his young wife, and his daughter Katherine, a first-grader who has become nearly mute since her mother's death from cancer. Although Katherine's distress is the talk of their small town in Maine, the grieving Caskey is unable to acknowledge how troubled she is. As the locals see it, Katherine's strange behavior is a carryover from her mother—a privileged, free-spirited beauty who had never been a favorite with the church crowd.
Add an emotionally needy housekeeper to the mix, and Caskey is overtaken by a vicious rumor invented by the stunningly small-minded members of his congregation. Will he make the leap from emotionally paralyzed minister to family man? Graceful and moving, Abide with Me is satisfying in every way.
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by Debra Galant
REVIEWED BY NATALIE DANFORD
FICTION
When Heather Peters, almost 35, moves to Galapagos Estates in New Jersey with her lawyer husband and young son, it looks like paradise. But soon a serpent—a rattler—meets an untimely end in their yard, and the development's hellish nature reveals itself. Galant wrote a column on suburban life for The New York Times, and her knowledge shows in this smart, funny debut—not only through descriptions of SUVs and McMansions but in the subtle rivalry among parents. Part of this satire's charm is that it doesn't take sides. Many have made suburban New Jersey the butt of jokes, but few have done so with insight to equal Galant's.
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>Fiction
Frangipani by Célestine Hitiura Vaite This engaging debut—the first in a trilogy—is a winning tale of mothers and daughters in Tahiti.
The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright A captivating novel set during the Civil War chronicles the unlikely adventures of Liberty Fish, the son of a prominent upstate New York family.
The Doctor's Daughter by Hilma Wolitzer In this moving drama about midlife crises, Wolitzer shows a keen eye for the dramas of domestic life—a parent's dementia, the loss of a job, a combative marriage, aimless children.
Lost by Michael Robotham In his second novel, Robotham deftly mixes sentiment and noir to create a complex mystery. Here, London detective Vincent Ruiz overcomes amnesia to chase down a killer.
Intuition by Allegra Goodman A vividly written novel about the race to cure cancer; Goodman's ability to create complex characters raises Intuition above the level of a standard-issue bio-med thriller.
>LIVING LARGE BY MICHAEL BERMAN
Who has it tougher, overweight men or plus-size women? Berman, 66, a lawyer and the head of a D.C. consulting firm, has written a memoir about his lifelong struggle with the scale. Now 239 lbs. (down from a high of 332), he says it took years before he could get on the scale and "understand I'm weighing my body—not my self-worth." Still, he thinks there's no question his sex gets off easier in the weight stakes. Some thoughts on why:
FACE IT—MEN ARE SHALLOWER "How many times do you see a really fat woman with a thin man? It's harder for a fat woman to have a great social life."
THE JOLLY FAT GUY FACTOR "I've been Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny—have you ever seen a woman play those?"
OFFICE POLITICS "Anyone overweight walking into an interview will have a problem, but studies show job discrimination is worse against heavy women."
YOU SAID IT, BIG GUY "People of my volume, especially if they happen to have bald heads and mustaches, tend to be remembered and taken seriously. In my work, I don't have to be pretty."
ON THE OTHER HAND ... "Women talk openly about fat—men make things harder by holding in so much. When I wrote this book, even my wife said she never would have guessed I had all these feelings."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
