Description: A beautiful little book designed and published by Pushkin Press. The Beauties contains 13 of the best stories Chekhov ever wrote, perhaps 13 of the best stories ever written. Like Hemingway or Raymond Carver (or even Seinfeld), Chekhov’s genius lies in his observations of human nature and wry sense of humour. The nature of the humour is, of course, Russian so North American readers might scratch the surface and not see beyond the glum circumstances. The short stories are a mix of light-hearted tales to achingly poetic memories of beauty and daydreams of what could have been.

Favourite Moment: The opening story is about a schoolboy accompanying his grandfather as they drive in their carriage along a dusty road on a dreary, sultry August day. They stop for refreshment at the house of an Armenian friend of the grandfather. The boy, the grandfather and their Ukrainian driver are all struck by the beauty of the Armenian’s daughter.

Some years later, now a student, the boy is on a train that stops for some minutes at a country station. He gets out to stretch his legs, and sees a girl on the platform talking to someone in one of the carriages. She is very beautiful. A fellow-traveller, an artillery officer, notices her as well. He also notes that the pale faced telegraphist in the station house has his eye on the girl.

“I bet the telegraphist is in love with that pretty girl. To live out in the wilds under the same roof as that ethereal creature, and to not fall in love — that’s beyond the power of man. But what a misfortune, my friend — what a mockery, to be a round-shouldered, shaggy-haired, insignificant, decent fellow, and no fool, and fall in love with that pretty, silly girl, who won’t take the slightest notice of you! Or even worse — supposing the telegraphist is in love, but he’s already married, and his wife is just as round-shouldered, shaggy and decent as he is … Torture!”

The tale ends full of melancholy as the travellers re-board the train, the third bell rings, the whistle sounds, and the train moves slowly off.

Perfect read for fans of Jane Austen, Russian literature, or even short-story lovers. I would say Chekhov’s short stories are more accessible than his plays so do give this book a try. And this collection by Pushkin is such a beautiful little book!

Publisher:

The Beauties

Description: Ove is a curmudgeon. He’s the kind of old man who  you don’t want to be on the wrong side of.  And yet, he’s totally lovable. This is a man who has a routine, likes the simply things in life, and wants people to simply follow the rules. Ove works every last nerve of his neighbours, and they work his. This is a hilarious story about how we never really know what’s going on in someone else’s life, and how kindness and compassion can go a long way. So too can learning to backup a car and trailer correctly. What starts off as a neighbourly misstep, and subsequent misadventures, leads to a nice heart-warming ending.

Perfect Read: Driving Miss Daisy meets The Rosie Project.

• Funny, quirky, screwball comedy with charm
• Quirky, grumpy, newly retired (forced retirement) man who’s social awkward
• Unexpected relationships that form out of necessity
• A determined cat

Favourite Moment: There are many, many funny moments in this book but one that I like the best is when Ove locks a journalist into his garage. She has been calling and pestering him for an interview and won’t take no for an answer. The neighbour Parvaneh has just heard the knock.

‘Christ … have you locked someone in the garage, Ove!?’ Ove didn’t answer. Parvaneh shook him as if trying to dislodge some coconuts.

‘OVE!’

‘Yes, yes. But I didn’t do it on purpose, fo God’s sake,’ he muttered and wriggled out of her grip.

Parvaneh shook her head.

‘Not on purpose?’

‘No, not on purpose,’ said Ove, as if this should wrap up the discussion.

When he noticed that Parvaneh was obviously expecting some sort of clarification, he scrated his head and sighed.

‘Her. Well. She’s one of those journalist people. It wasn’t bloody me who locked her in. I was going to lock myself and the cat in there. But then she followed us. And, you know. Things took their course.’

Parvaneh started massaging her temples.

‘I can’t deal with this …’

‘Naughty,’ said the three-year-old and shook her finger at Ove.

Published by Sceptre Books in print, ebook and audiobook

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Disclaimer: Thanks to the kind folks at S&S for providing me an advance review copy.

Description: Ellie was the middle child and the apple of her mother’s eye. She was charming, smart, had just started dating, and was excited to finish up exams. But then 15-year-old Ellie disappeared on the way to the library. Normally I avoid these kinds of stories but this was a real page turner. Ellie’s mother Laurel retreats into herself. She goes into robot mode. It destroys her marriage and tests her children. The story is mostly told from Laurel’s point of view 10 years later. Laurel’s husband has remarried. Her adult children are finding their way in the world. And Laurel one day is charmed by a man in a coffee shop. He has a familiar feel but also creates that excitement of new love. The freaky thing is that his 9-year-old daughter Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie. How can that be? Who is this man?

I’m always flummoxed by these types of mysteries where the protagonist takes it upon themselves to investigate vs. going to the police. But I suspect that, if after 10 years the police have failed you, then you might figure things out on your own to a greater extent before involving them and losing the trail.

Perfect Read: If you enjoyed Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train then this story has a similar fast-paced narrative with strong female characters and some emotional twists and turns. I also would compare it to I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers in that there’s a mystery component driving the plot but more so there’s a psychological component about what drives people to do things that are heinous while assuming some moral stance.

Favourite Moment: “The fact that Ellie had been wearing a black T-shirt and jeans had been a problem for the police. The fact that her lovely gold-streaked hair had been pulled back into a scruffy ponytail. The fact that her rucksack was navy blue. That her trainers were bog-standard supermarket trainers in white. It was almost as though she’d deliberately made herself invisible.” I like these passages that created suspense and made your assumptions falter. How audacious‚ the idea that Ellie has gone missing and that, counter to anything she’d done before, she may have purposely run away. This rattles Laurel for a long time.

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell @Amazon.ca
Published by Atria, see it on SimonandSchuster.ca

Or visit https://www.facebook.com/LisaJewellofficial/, or follow her on Twitter @LisaJewellUK.

Description: Oliver Ryan is a deeply unsettling character. The novel opens with him beating is wife and feeling no remorse. Thankfully author Liz Nugent offers several chapters told from the point of view of various characters who “unravel” the mystery of Oliver Ryan, well-loved children’s book author and dotting husband (who has the occasional tryst). Billed as psychological suspense, Unraveling Oliver delivers a fast-paced punchy novel (pun intended). Each chapter unravels another part of Oliver’s history, giving the reader a look at a boy‚ now a man‚ who is unloved and rejected by his father (a priest who brought more than the word of God to his parish). Oliver grows up in a boarding school, is looked after by Father Daniels, sent to university where he meets the lovely, vivacious Laura, does some summer travel, falls out of love with Laura, finds a family, loses a family, marries his mousey illustrator and does not live happily ever after.

• Winner of the Crime Fiction Prize in 2014 Irish Book Awards

Perfect Read for those who like BBC crime dramas. This is an Irish psycho suspense novel. The book jacket is spot on with its comp to Patricia Highsmith’s unforgettable noir classic The Talented Mr. Ripley. If you like sinister yet enjoyable tales this is for you. The domestic abuse is limited to the opening and closing chapters. The main guts of the novel are the relationships different characters have with Oliver, and their take on him. Strongly recommended.

Favourite Moment: Oliver, his girlfriend Laura and Laura’s brother Michael are working on a vineyard in France. Michael also has a crush on Oliver yet isn’t out of the closet. To “straighten him out”, Oliver suggests that Michael seduce Madame Veronique, the proprietress of the vineyard. There are several funny attempts that ultimately result in Michael confessing to Veronique that he is gay. It’s the 60s, and Ireland didn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 1993, so there’s a lot of fear and shame in his confession. Veronique changes his life by helping him be comfortable with himself. If there was a character in the book that I wish had more storytelling space, it is Veronique.

Quote: (edited to avoid spoilers)
Infamy is a lot more interesting than fame, it seems. It is not just the tabloids who think so. An acre of newsprint was used up in documenting the fall from grace of the successful writer who turned out to be a wife beater. Pundits who might previously have described themselves as close personal friends are now granting interviews in which they claim that they always knew there was something strange about me. They speculate that I was in the habit of beating my wife, despite the lack of evidence at the trial to support the theory, and they relate conversations that never happened that imply I was always violent and that Alice was terrified of me.

Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent
Published by Simon and Schuster Canada
Liznugent.ie
Twitter @lizzienugent

Description: Set in Moscow, 1921, Tatiana and Sasha meet as two young intellectuals in a bookstore. The bookstore is bombed that night and as they run away, hand in hand, it’s the start of their romance. This is a witty and tender book about growing up, losing trust in the system, the bureaucracy of adulthood in an ever-changing Communist regime, and all the small betrayals between mentors, friends, and lovers. These are unforgettable characters who alternate between being wise and foolish. I loved it. In particular the story between Tatiana (a scientist) and Sasha (an artist) and how the idealism and contradictions of Russian politics affects where and how they live, what they believe, and how they grapple with those tensions.

• Shortlisted, 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction

Perfect Read for fans of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. If you like the slow unfolding of characters and situations, are interested in cultural revolutions or the formation of ideologies, especially through the lens of young minds, then this is the perfect read for you. It has a love story, some history of post-Revolutionary Russia, a cool look at the early scientific research done in brain science, and politics and art.

Favourite Moment: The whole book. The scene where Tatiana and Sasha meet is tender and quiet, despite the fact that a bomb just went off. The drinking and debauchery scenes in the artist studios are full of youthful spirit and the tensions of jostling for position. The strained quiet of the institute where Tatiana works, slicing and documenting brain structures, is creepily cool. It feels like every emotion is explored in a tentative and revealing way.

Quote: 1921
Before Lenin was dead and before my life had properly begun, I used to spend all my time in a bookstore down on Nikitskaya. I was barely a person then, just a girl, and then just a girl staring down the women I’d meet, wondering if their fate had to be mine. The bookstore had no sign. Either you knew where it was or you didn’t. The entrance was several steps below street level. To find it, you looked for the tobacco place next door because it had a glowing green lamp in its window. When the snow shrouded the entrance on winter afternoons, that blur of green was the only indication that you’d arrived. If you knew to look.

Uncertain Weights & Measures by Jocelyn Parr
Published by Goose Lane

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Description: A General Theory of Oblivion is an absolutely lovely little book about an agoraphobic woman who bricks herself into her Luandan apartment during civil unrest in Angola in the 70s. Ludo has been brought to Angola from Portugal to live with her sister and brother-in-law. On the eve of Angolan independence she bricks up the apartment door in an effort to stay safe from looters and thugs looking for money and jewels. Her sister and brother-in-law have gone out for the evening and never return. She doesn’t know what’s happened to them, only that she’s afraid, can’t speak the language, and hooligans are threatening to return. The crazy twist is that Ludo stays bricked in for 30 years, living off vegetables that she grows on the terrace and pigeons. This is a story that slowly unfolds, with each layer of the intertwining lives of the characters beautifully unwrapped. A lovingly crafted story about love and survival.

• Winner of the 2017 Dublin International Literary Award!
• Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016
• Shortlisted for the Three Percent Best Translated Book Award

Perfect Read for fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a winding family tale with beautiful descriptive prose, and such elegance. Applause to the writer Jose Eduardo Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn.

Favourite Moment: Ludo sacrifices a lot to stay hidden in her apartment, but there is a hilarious moment when the tenants below her house chickens on their balcony. Ludo fashions a noose and nonchalantly nabs the rooster, who doesn’t seem to give a flap and is still happily alive when released. This gives Ludo an idea that this doesn’t need to be a one-off adventure. She can raise chickens too, so she goes after a hen. The hen is far less enthused than the rooster and kicks up a fuss. It’s a funny and triumphant moment for this poor woman.

Although this is fiction, Ludovica Mano died in Luanda, at the Sagrada Esperanca clinic, in the early hours of October 5, 2010. She was eight-five years old. Sabalu Estevao Capitango gave Agualusa copies of ten notebooks in which Ludo had been writing her diary, in the first years of the twenty-eight during which she had shut herself away. In addition, Agualusa had access to the diaries that followed her release and to a huge collection of photographs taken of Ludo’s texts and charcoal pictures on the walls of her apartment. He’s used her diaries, poems, and reflections to reconstruct much of her first-hand account, albeit fictionalized for the novel.

A General Theory of Oblivion
by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
Published by Archipelago Books