"Fiona and Jane," "The Last Bookshop in London, "The Mission House," and "Oh William!"

I have gotten behind with posting here, so today I will briefly describe four of the books I have read lately. The novel “Fiona and Jane” (Viking, 2022 – the first 2022 title of the year mentioned in this blog!), by Jean Chen Ho, is an engaging story of two close friends, both Taiwanese American, growing up together in Los Angeles, and then living disparate but still connected lives in other places. The portrayals of female friendship, of family interactions, and of what it is like to grow up Asian American, are all compelling. “The Last Bookshop in London” (Hanover Square Press, 2021), by Madeline Martin, is an absorbing, very close-up story of what it was like to live in London during World War II. It is also about a young woman who starts working in a bookstore there, and gradually becomes drawn into the world of books and people who love books. You can see why I loved this novel! “The Mission House” (Scribner, 2020), by Carys Davies, was recommended to me by my fellow MK, Mary L., and I am so glad she drew it to my attention. It is the story of a rather emotionally broken-down man who has come to India almost on a whim, after he lost his job as a librarian in England. He ends up at a formerly British hill station in South India, one which is based on a real hill station called Ootacamund, popularly known as “Ooty,” and is very happy there. Indian hill stations are refuges in the cool hills from the intense heat of the plains during the summer months. It happens that when I lived in India as a child, my family spent some time in Ooty, and although I was very young then, I have fond memories of the place. I later went to boarding school in another hill station in India, Kodaikanal, an important and wonderful part of my life. But in addition to that connection, I was bowled over by the writer’s perceptive character portraits, the interactions among the characters, the cultural issues revealed, the descriptions of Ooty, the remnants of British presence still apparent there, and the crisp, precise, and evocative writing. Finally, I am a real fan of Elizabeth Strout’s novels, which include “Olive Kitteridge,” “Olive, Again,” and “My Name is Lucy Barton,” so of course I read her most recent novel, “Oh William!” (Random House, 2021), and I was not disappointed. As in most of Strout’s fiction, the emphasis is on characters rather than plot. The main character and main narrator, Lucy Barton (yes, the same one), tells of her first, now ex-, husband William and her ongoing (platonic, complicated, exasperating but loving) relationship with him. The main events of the book have to do with Lucy’s accompanying William on a trip to find out more about a mysterious family secret. But the book is really about their relationship, and their relationships with other characters, and their history, and the small and large matters of daily life that add up over years of common history. I strongly recommend all four of these varied, terrific novels.