May Books: Fiction

 It's so wonderful to pick up a novel and immediately enter a different time and place. I read a fair bot of nonfiction, but I am also never very far away from a novel of one sort or another. May was no exception.

Severance by Ling Ma

I read about this book in an article about authors of dystopian novels published recently, but before COVID was known about. This was one such book, published in 2018. It sounded good, so I clicked over to the e-book section of the library website and did a search. It was there and available, so I borrowed it. Loved the book, except for a few bits that I could have done without. Unlike many dystopian novels, this one takes place in 2011, not at some future time.

The protagonist is Candace Chen, a woman in her 20s who works for a company called Spectra Publishing, in New York City. Candace was born in the Fujian Province of China but arrived in the US when she was 6 years old. Her parents had already been in the US for 3 or 4 years by then, having settled in Utah so her father could attend university on a scholarship. Candace lived with her grandmother until they could send for her. 

The story begins in 2011, with a group of survivors who form a group and decide to go to a place called The Facility in order to try to build a new community. On their way, they come across Candace in a cab, severely dehydrated and in need of food. She joins the group and from then on, the narrative moves between what is going on in the present day, what happened leading up to that point, and Candace’s memories of her childhood. There is also a bit about her parents in Utah before she got there.

The reason the group is trying to make it to The Facility is because a disease called Shen Fever has killed many. Those who do not die right away continue to do things they used to do, but without any awareness of themselves or what they’re doing. Shen Fever is not transmitted between humans, but is breathed in with microscopic fungal spores that move all around the world on the consumer goods that wealthy nations are addicted to. The region where the disease originated, the reader is told, is the world’s biggest electronics manufacturing area. People get into the habit of wearing masks in order to keep the fungal spores out.

Candace has always had a problem getting close to people and being in social situations, so being in this group isn’t easy to begin with. Things get worse when she realizes that maybe being with these people, particularly Bob, the leader, isn’t such a great idea. 

The Big Four by Agatha Christie

After reading a couple books about Hercule Poirot last month, I decided to re-read his books here and there in order of their publication.  I’ve listened to the first two within the past year. I recently read Poirot Investigates when I discovered it on Project Gutenberg. Next would have been The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but I’m pretty familiar with that one, so I moved on to this one. I remembered that it was an outlandish plot involving a group of people who wanted to bring down the current world order, but I’d forgotten most of the details beyond that. One thing I liked about it was how the reader really gets a sense of the deep friendship between Poirot and Captain Hastings. In this book, they’d been apart for some time as Hastings had married and moved to the Argentine to run a ranch. Business required his presence in France, so he went on to London when he was done with that and surprised Poirot. Of course they saved the world together, knowing that, while Hastings extended his stay, eventually, he would be leaving again.

From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell (audiobook read by Terrence Hardiman)

This is the author’s first Inspector Wexford book, published in 1964. I’ve read various books in the series through the years, but not in order. I’ve picked them up here and there as I’ve come across them in libraries and charity shops. This one was available in the e-audiobook section of the library website and I was in the mood for a mystery, so I borrowed it. I liked it. 

When Margaret Parsons is found dead in a wood, Wexford and his sidekick, Mike Burden, investigate. In the attic of the house she shared with her husband, they find a collection of expensive books inscribed to Minna from Doon. The sorts of books on the shelves in the house were of a different sort altogether, so how did Margaret acquire these books, why did she pack them away and keep them in an attic, who was Doon, and what do Doon and the books have to do with Margaret’s death?

Guarding Maggie by Ellen McCarthy

After the library opened for browse and borrow, I did both! I browsed and this ws one of the books I found and borrowed. I loved it!

Maggie is 60 years of age, living on the family farm in rural Donegal with her brother, who is an 80-year-old tyrant. He controls Maggie, who keeps to herself and keeps quiet, finding quiet moments of joy with her cat and books. One day her quiet life is turned upside down when a visitor from the US shows up unannounced. It is her son, born when Maggie was 17 and immediately taken from her by the nuns in the convent laundry where she was sent. He was given to an Irish-American couple and grew up in the Boston area, but his adoptive parents had died and he had tracked Maggie down. Maggie defies her brother and continues to see her son. Shortly thereafter, the brother dies and someone starts harassing Maggie. 

This is one part mystery and one part family saga. As the narrative unfolds, the reader moves from the present day to the past and back again. Maggie remembers episodes from her past and learns about her brother’s past after he dies. She and her son travel around Donegal—that part was fun, because I’ve been in most of the places they went and I could picture them in my mind. As Maggie tries to piece everything together and discover why someone is tormenting her, the tension builds.

The ending was a bit abrupt and I knew who was out to get her way before the end, although the answer to why this person was doing these things did not jump out at me until almost the end. 

The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy

When I went to the library to pick up some requests that had come in, this was displayed on a shelf near the checkout desk. It looked good, so I added it to the pile. It was a really good read, so I’m glad I did!

The story unfolds at an unspecified future time. Many animal species have gone extinct. There are not any fish left in the oceans. There are few birds left. Franny, a troubled woman in her 30s, has always felt a connection to birds. She is a wanderer by nature and when we meet her, she is in Greenland, attaching tracking devices to the legs of three Arctic terns. We soon learn that she plans to try to finagle her way onto one pf the few fishing boats left and convince the captain to follow the birds to Antarctica in what her husband has told her may be the last migration. Since the birds migrate from the arctic to the antarctic and back every year, relying on fish for food, without the fish, such long migrations would no longer be possible. She has a list of captains to contact, but all of them have denied her request, except the last one on the list. She meets him and his crew in unusual circumstances at a bar and he agrees to take her, against his better judgement. She convinces him by insisting that if they follow the birds, the birds will lead them to the fish.

As the journey unfolds, the narrative moves back and forth in time as we follow the birds south and Franny remembers things from her past and considers how she got to where she is. She regularly writes letters to Niall, her husband, telling him what is going on, but throughout the narrative, there is a sense that things are off. What is really going on with Franny? Gradually, secrets are revealed and lives are changed.

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