Category: literary fiction

Nightjar: Stories

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Emily Ruskovich

This collection is made up of five short stories, all connected by the same haunting, quietly devastating voice.

The first story, Victor’s Room, follows Rebecca, a young mother who moves to a remote farmhouse where her husband spent his childhood. The story is told from her perspective as she wonders how she ended up there. She looks back on meeting her husband at university, where he taught and she was a student, and remembers their relationship, marriage, and the birth of their daughters. Over time, Rebecca realizes that many of her life choices were not truly her own, and she starts to see that her husband is not who he claimed to be. He tells her about growing up in the house, his childhood, and the death of his brother Victor, in a room that Rebecca later chooses as a sanctuary for herself. Reading this story made me feel uneasy; the relationship between Rebecca and her husband is very one-sided and manipulative.

The second story, Owl, follows a young man whose wife is shot by some neighbourhood boys who mistake her for an owl. Their relationship is already strained, so when she later disappears, he suspects either the boys are involved or that something from her past has finally caught up with her. I found this story heartbreaking and incredibly sad, with characters who feel like nothing more than victims of circumstance.

The third story, Round Lake, centers on a young woman who, after learning the truth about a key event in her life, starts to question everything, especially the life she has built around her memories. There were moments in this story I found incredibly easy to identify with. As I was reading, I kept thinking, I have totally responded this way, and this is exactly what I would have done.

Petty Creek Road is the one story I couldn’t quite identify with. It follows two older brothers who, because of circumstances in life, move in with each other and become the best of friends. When Butch, the younger brother, is tragically killed, his brother Will has to come to terms with his loneliness, the relationship he has with his son, and a gift he has denied possessing until now.

The final story, Nightjar, is about a young girl, Tess, who has to look after her little brother Rory during summer vacation. While doing so, she experiences something miraculous that gives her a sense of purpose and peace in her otherwise lonely and isolated life. The relationship between the young girl and her brother is incredibly realistic, sometimes funny and very heartbreaking.

Emily Ruskovich is a talented writer. Her stories draw you in with their beauty, and her writing is rich with description and metaphor. She is one of the best writers I have read.

Every story in this book will be suitable for High School study.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the copy.

Stone Yard Devotional

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Charlotte Wood

I’m not entirely sure why I picked up Stone Yard Devotional. I think it had something to do with a book podcast I came across, where the host mentioned it was the kind of book you read slowly, pausing to sit with what the words on the page are really trying to say. Not so much the telling of a story, but the meditation surrounding the narrator’s contemplation.

Our narrator walks away from her life running a “Threatened Species Rescue Center,” feeling it is essentially pointless. The world is going to hell in a handcart (my interpretation), and she retreats to a religious community of nuns. Not out of faith, but because “nothing is asked of [her], nothing expected” (pg. 18). From there, she turns inward, revisiting the events she believes shaped the woman she has become. As she settles into convent life, she begins to reflect on her upbringing, and particularly on her complicated relationship with her mother. Then three life-altering events unfold: a plague of mice, described in genuinely horrifying detail as the narrator and the nuns scramble to contain the infestation; the discovery of the remains of a nun who once belonged to their community, whose death appears to involve criminal circumstances; and the arrival of another nun, someone our narrator has crossed paths with before.

This is a deeply human novel. The examination of our narrator’s inner life is genuine, frustrating, and at times confusing, but through it all, it is rooted entirely in her truth.

Charlotte Wood’s writing is simple yet beautiful. There were several moments where I had to stop and just sit with her prose. For example: “Crossing the grass I made a clean track of footprints, deep green on the white spread of the lawn. It returned me to my childhood, to the sense of secret authority, imprinting one’s presence into a place with those clear, sharp prints. I exist” (pg. 39).

And: “I’m used to it now, the waiting. An incomplete, unhurried emergence of understanding, sitting with questions that are sometimes never answered” (pg. 69). The discussions you could spark from contemplating either of those passages alone would be well worth the read.

Stone Yard Devotional is a novel that can be finished in a relatively short time, yet its complexity and themes run deep. That combination of accessible length with rich, layered content makes it an ideal pick for book clubs and high school independent novel studies alike.

John of John

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Douglas Stuart

John of John is the third book of Stuart’s I’ve read, and it’s just as poignant, just as beautifully written as the first two.

Our protagonist, John Callum (Cal), is a young gay man struggling in life, moving from couch to couch, sneaking food, and having one-night stands. During their weekly phone calls, Cal’s father, John, says that Grandma Ella has taken ill and urges him to return home. Cal hesitates, feeling like a failure and dreading his return to the small Scottish Hebrides town where being a young gay man is far from ideal.

Cal returns home with his long, brightly dyed hair and androgynous appearance, exposing himself to his father’s verbal and physical abuse. We wonder if John’s violence stems from his wife’s departure and remarriage, Grandma Ella’s ownership of the property, or his own struggles as a Presbyterian minister, burdened by church rules and secrets his son’s presence brings to light.

Douglas Stuart’s stories overflow with theme and emotion. He crafts characters whose heartache, confusion, and love resonate universally, and captures the honest, heartbreaking bond of father and son. The novel explores identity, lineage, and the tension between pleasing parents and seeking one’s own path.

A beautiful novel, just as I expected. I will always be a Douglas Stuart fan.

Thank you to Grove Press and Netgalley for the copy.

Angel Down

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Daniel Kraus

I read Daniel Kraus’s Whale Fall years ago and absolutely loved the story, writing style, and themes, so when I learned of Angel Fall, I immediately bought it. Well, I had to order it because no bookstore near me carried it. But it sat on my bookshelf for months, and when I heard it had just won this year’s Pulitzer Prize, I decided it was now the time to read it. And you know what? My copy has a plethora of sticky tabs and annotations throughout. It’s not a quick read, or at least it wasn’t for me. There were so many profound themes, beautiful phrases, and places in the text that I want to revisit in the future.

The novel is set in France during World War I and follows Cyril Bagger, the son of a bishop whose personality is such that he is somewhat of  a con artist, let’s just say he’s not fighting in the war for the sake of freedom. Despite his ideology, or lack thereof, Cyril serves as a Private First Class in the army, with the official duty of a grave digger. Early in the story, Cyril and four other soldiers are sent to investigate mysterious shrieks coming from the trenches because, as they are told, “the army does not leave a man behind” (pg. 41).

When Cyril and Arno, a fourteen-year-old soldier who lied about his age to enlist, attempt to cross No Man’s Land, they discover an angel trapped in barbed wire. They free her and carry her to safety. The angel has a mysterious quality—her radiant appearance is veiled under a cloak, and anyone who sees her perceives their deepest desire: for some, she appears as a missing loved one to others,  a path to fortune. The soldiers who accompanied Cyril want to possess the angel for their own gain, but Cyril does not. The angel tells him, “You are the only one to ask nothing of me” (pg. 189).

The novel is a heavy read. Not that it’s sloggy or difficult, but it is very visceral in its depiction of war and prompts the reader to search their own heart for a personal understanding of humanity, especially during a time of conflict. It is also written as a continuous sentence (although I did find punctuation a very few times). In fact, Kraus writes, “like the carnage won’t ever end, it’s a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can’t ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back in on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later. Will drag each and every person to their grave” (pg 6). And the writing style does, indeed, create a tone of unending dread with the feeling of horrific monotony. The novel is also rich in symbols: the angel, the novel The Count of Monte Cristo, and the Bible, just to name a few. It is a novel worthy of the Pulitzer as it is a sobering story of not only the physical and psychological horrors of war, but also the potential moral ambiguity that comes with killing for an ideal. It is a discussion of theology, philosophy, morality, politics, and history. It is also, in a way, an examination of conscience…so yes, as I said, it is heavy. 

Because of Kraus’s beautiful writing and the thought-provoking themes, Angel Down lingered in my mind for weeks after I finished reading, making it one of my most memorable books of the year thus far.

Gifted and Talented

~ Lisa Helm ~ Leave a comment

by Olivie Blake

I admire Olive Blake’s writing tremendously. In this novel, she convincingly narrates the story from an omniscient point of view; in fact, her name is Death. So is she really dead? That is the question I kept asking myself as I read until….the other characters began to refer to her, then I knew she was actually a flesh and blood character, or is she? This question of mine makes sense once you start reading the book. Gifted and Talented is a novel about siblings. Actually think of the series Succession, but with heirs who are “telepathically and electrokinetically gifted.”

The novel’s plot is simple: the wealthy founder and CEO of a groundbreaking company dies, and each of his three children (two of whom are all but estranged from him) finds their way back home to discover who has inherited the company. And, of course, each of the adult children comes complete with their own massive set of luggage. Meredith, who always thought she would be the next in line, was somewhat shunned by her father and ended up working for a competitor building and marketing her happiness app “Chirp”; however, her ethics have come into question because her ex-boyfriend has discovered she has been using her “gift” to manipulate buyers into a false sense of happiness. Arthur, the only son, is a washed-up politician who is more of a frat boy than a man of the people. Seemingly kind-hearted but leading a life of debauchery, Arthur really doesn’t want to be a politician, especially because his gift, if unharnessed, would be very difficult to explain to the voters. But the guilt his father put upon him made him. And then there is Eilidh, once a promising ballerina, and closest to her father, the only Wren offspring to work with her father, who doesn’t really know what she wants, especially because her gift, when unleashed, is the most dangerous of them all. Then there is Death, and you will learn all about her as you follow the story.

A very well-written book with the most extraordinary character development. In fact, the book is mostly about character development, their discovery of self, their reckoning with their truth and the possibility of redemption and reconciliation. If you like character-driven books rather than plot-driven ones, you will enjoy this book immensely.

Thank you to Tor Publising and Netgalley for the copy,.