Country People by Daniel Mason

 

What does the family dog know about the real Vermont than two newly arrived California intellectuals? As it turns out…a lot. Kate Krzelewski has a one-year appointment at a Vermont college teaching the works of Milton and Blake to eager students. Kids in tow, the family decides to move to Bernie-land. Husband and Dad Miles hopes this will be the year he’ll complete his doctoral thesis, which had taken many detours. But, in trying to befriend the real Vermont country people, Miles stumbles on hollow-earth conspiracy theorists. A departure from Mason's earlier work, this is nevertheless a clever and raucously funny romp. 

Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran

 

The goose often attacks because its vision is skewed and misleads it to think the goose is bigger than everyone else. It’s an apt metaphor for nanny Yu Ling, a 30-year-old nanny in Beijing, whose efforts to dare and dream big are repeatedly thwarted by her circumstances and her past. Within 200 pages, the author expertly weaves in commentary about both class and gender, in a tightly knit story. The story takes many fresh turns as Ling has to constantly recalibrate her situation with her seven-year-old charge, Kuan Kuan, but it never loses the plot. Fluid translation is a bonus.

A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee

 

The treasured son of Korean immigrants, Jeon-Gi understandably has a foot in both Korean and American worlds, while also negotiating puberty. In his apartment building in the New York area tenements, he finds his place in the pecking order until that delicate equilibrium is upset and he’s sent away to summer camp. Lee delivers another winner, drawing a brilliant portrait of a boy who doesn’t understand what to make of the embers of cruelty that silently burn within him. That they may or may not have anything to do with a formative experience at camp is almost beside the point. 

Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put – A Memoir of Humor and Hope in a Small-Town Life by Annie B. Jones

 

The idea of setting roots in a new place, of traveling “West,” is as all-American as apple pie. Yet, Jones is content with staying home in Thomasville, a small town in Georgia, where she owns an independent bookstore. In a series of essays, Jones recreates the joys of finding contentment in the everyday and of forming deep connections. Even superficial acquaintances are useful, she argues. A popular book podcaster, Jones is also a devoted Christian, something I couldn’t relate to. I skipped the entire section. But the rest is earnest and appealing in its homage to small-town life lived big. 

Under a Metal Sky by Philip Marsden

 

The book has a neat premise: learn facts about various metals and then tour a related mine. So it is that we combine and travel in one neat package. We travel to a small town in the Czech Republic, to the gold-rich mountains of Georgia (the country). I enjoyed the travels that explore the remnants of a bygone industry. But the facts about each metal got a tad boring. The format would have been better served if the author had narrated a story related to just a fact or two. A small nit to pick in an otherwise delightful book.

Mule Boy by Andrew Krivak

 

Themes of survivor guilt and death loom large in this slender novel set in a coal mining disaster that took the lives of everyday workers in 1929. Ondro Prach, the son of Slovak immigrants, was just 13, in charge of the mule that transports loads of coal from the shafts to the surface. Haunted by what he witnessed during his critical teen years, Ondro can’t shake off the resulting sorrow and guilt. A search to find new meaning leads him to remote New Hampshire. Soulful with not an extra word, a haunting story told in a stream of consciousness narrative.

Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh

 

Ghost eyes are proof that our lives are more fluid than we imagine them to be. They just might also help us avoid climate collapse. Three-year-old Varsha Gupta, born into a strictly vegetarian Hindu family, remembers being a discerning fish eater. The ways her past life weaves in with the narrator’s, make for fascinating reading despite the frequent and clinical digressions into fish species. It’s reassuring to see that psychoanalysis makes room for the vast gamut of human experiences. An intriguing addition to the growing body of climate literature, complete with mesmerizing fables about deeply held nativistic and religious beliefs. 

Moonlight Express: Around the World By Night Train by Monica Rajesh

The COVID-19 pandemic and the growing clamor for slow travel have increased the popularity of night trains and Monisha Rajesh wants in. A jaunty travelogue through routes close to home in England and far, Rajesh captures the charm of train travel that makes the mode a hit. Some of it focuses too inward so it feels almost like a memoir of sorts and after a while each journey feels a little repetitive, with only a few facets distinguishing one from the other. Worth dipping into when a staycation feels confining. The ride to northern regions of Scandinavia is especially noteworthy.

The Old Man by the Sea by Domenico Starnone

 

Days spent by the water watching life pass by might not seem like much, but to Nicola, an 82-year-old Italian man, it’s everything. At that age, when bringing closure to your life’s arc seems like an important task, Nicola plops his chair down and remembers his mother, a beauty whose ego was a mismatch for her husband. In a young retail store associate, Lu, Nicola finds traces of his mother’s personality. The narrative is an eloquent capture of the joy and wonder in every routine, especially in the sunset of one’s life, and richly evokes the whimsy of small-town machinations.

Transcription by Ben Lerner

 

Memory is fleeting. It’s why we have recorded our lives since time immemorial— on stone tablets and today, we connect through digital tablets. At its heart, Lerner’s brilliant novel, tinged with evanescence, is about communication. The narrator’s daughter Emmie, struggling with a lack of interest in food, turns the corner with soothing (to her) videos through a tablet. When his father is quarantined with COVID in the early days of the pandemic, it’s again an inefficient medium that serves as communication vector. Do these methods amplify or dilute our memories? Lerner explores this thesis well in this delightfully cerebral novel.