Four Novels Recently Read

As regular visitors to this blog might remember, I do not post on all the books I read. Sometimes I have no strong feelings about a certain book; or it is too forgettable; or maybe I am embarrassed to post about a book that is not very literary but is a “guilty pleasure”; or perhaps I have read so many books at that time that I am too far behind to post about each one, even the ones not in the other categories listed above. Occasionally I do what I am about to do now: instead of trying to post a full entry about each book, I “catch up” by listing several books I have recently read and liked, and a very brief summary of and/or response to each one. I liked each of the following four novels very much. So without further ado, in the order I recently read them: 1. “Strangers and Cousins” (Riverhead, 2019), by Leah Hager Cohen, is a novel revolving around the days leading up to and including a wedding at the rural home of one bride’s parents. The events of those days reveal the history of, and relationships among, the family and friends of the two brides. The author beautifully explores the complexities and the joys of close family networks, with all their quirks, missteps and misunderstandings along the way. 2. “Vintage Contemporaries” (Harper, 2023), by Dan Kois, tells a version of a story we have all read: young friends in New York City (here, Emily and Emily, confusingly enough at first but we readers figure it out) are hopeful as they start off their careers and families, have ups and downs in their friendships, yet always feel the pull of those friendships well into their future lives. In this novel, one is a writer, both (but one more than the other) participate in the political process of “squatting” in empty buildings; each eventually finds her own way, and finds her way back to her friend, years later. 3. The story of a young Chinese American woman who leaves her small town in Illinois, and her very difficult relationship with her strict immigrant mother, for a life in New York City, and then returns to Illinois for a visit eight years later with her new fiancé, “Central Places” (Ballantine, 2023), by Delia Cai, is about family, the tug-of-war between first generation immigrants and their children, and another tug-of-war between one’s roots and one’s new chosen life. Love and friendship are also tested in this story. 4. A powerful, even wrenching recounting of two young people who were sent to a conversion camp to “cure” them of being gay, “Tell the Rest” (Akashic, 2023), by Lucy Jane Bledsoe, moves back and forth between, on the one hand, the terrible experiences at that camp and between the two friends who escaped together, and on the other hand, the lives of these two young people as they are in the present, twenty-five years later.