The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar

The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar

Published by Algonquin ISBN 9781643753553

Hardcover, $28, 368 pages

I've been a big fan of Thrity Umrigar's novels since I read The World We Found in 2012. (My review is here.) Her last novel, Honor, was powerful and heartbreaking, and her latest novel,  The Museum of Failures,  continues her streak of writing stories that touch our humanity.

Remy is an Indian man who has traveled from his current home in Columbus, Ohio back to his hometown of Bombay (now called Mumbai). He has a successful career in advertising and a loving wife Kathy, a pediatric specialist. The one thing missing is a child.

After trying unsuccessfully to have a baby of their own, Remy's childhood friend tells him that he knows a young Indian college student who is pregnant and wants to give up her baby to Remy and Kathy to adopt. So Remy travels back home to meet the young woman.

While home, Remy discovers that his mother Shirin is not home as he thought, but rather she is in the hospital and very ill. Remy has always had a complicated relationship with his mother, he always found her to be harsh and uncaring towards him. He hasn't seen her since his father passed away three years ago.

He adored his late father Cyrus and while home, he keeps meeting people who share stories of his father's kindness and generosity. Remy misses his father deeply, a man who always treated him as if he were a prince.

Remy resolves to bring his mother out of her illness and back home where she belongs. Seeing her so ill and alone saddens him. 

As Remy attempts to straighten out his mother's financial and health situation and move forward with adopting an Indian baby, he discovers a huge secret that his parents kept from him, one that will change everything he grew up believing. 

 Remy has always thought of India as "a museum of failures, an  exhibit hall filled with thwarted dreams and broken promises." His return home has brought up complications and feelings he did not anticipate.

Once again, Thrity Umrigar has written a magnificent story, bringing the reader into the lives of Remy and his family. Once back home, Remy is torn between his the life he loves in Ohio and the world he grew up in in Mumbai, his future and his past. I give it my highest recommendation.

Thanks to Algonquin for putting me on Thrity Umrigar's tour.

Silver Alert by Lee Smith

Silver Alert by Lee Smith

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781643752419

Hardcover, $27, 224 pages

When I began reading Lee Smith's Silver Alert, I thought it would be a little bit sunnier and lighter (judging from the cover art) than it ended up being.

Herb is 86 and his health is beginning to fail. He cares for his beloved younger third wife Susan, who is suffering from dementia, in their beautiful Key West home with the help of a rotating group of caregivers. Susan is slipping away, and it breaks Herb's heart to see it.

One day, a young woman named Renee comes in to give Susan a manicure and pedicure, and Susan seems to respond to Renee. Renee gets Susan to sing, and brings in an easel and art supplies for Susan. Susan owned an art gallery, and this is seems to reawaken some light in her.

Herb is thrilled with Renee's progress with Susan, but when he tries to give Renee a ride home, Renee demurs saying that the bus is fine. Renee lives with her friend in a rundown trailer in a not-so-nice part of town- and her name isn't Renee, it's Dee Dee.

We slowly get Dee Dee's backstory, which isn't pretty. As a child she is surrounded by a mom who used drugs and lived with a succession of men who victimize and traumatize a young Dee Dee, even through her young adulthood.

Herb's family- including his children, stepchildren, an ex-wife and Susan's children- have decided that it is time for Susan to be in a nursing home and for Herb to sell the house and move into an assisted living facility right near Susan. And they don't trust Renee.

Wanting nothing to do with that, Herb decides to take his Porsche out for a final spin, and when Renee shows up at the house after being ditched by a man she thought she had a future with, he invites her to join him on a tour of Florida. 

This is where the road trip portion of the story comes into play, towards the last section of the book. As Herb and Renee travel the state, they get to know each other better. Eventually they discover a Silver Alert has been put out for them by Herb's family, hence the title of the book.

I found Renee and Herb's stories interesting, although I would have liked to know more about Herb and Susan's story. There are some really triggering aspects to Renee's story, something that may take readers by surprise if they expect this to be more of a lighthearted road trip story between two people of different generations.

Renee is a resilient young woman, and with Herb's encouragement, she makes good decisions that will lead her on a path that would make him proud.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Lee Smith's tour. 

Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry by Sara Read

Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry by Sara Read

Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525899980

Trade paperback, $18.99, 320 pages

In Sara Read's new novel Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry,  Johanna Porter, divorced soccer mom and part-time high school art teacher, receives an invitation to a gallery showing of her former lover and mentor Nestor Pinedo's works,  which she promptly tosses in the trash. She wants nothing to do with Nestor or his business manager/daughter Pilar, who ruined her reputation as an artist years ago. We know things ended badly, but we don't yet know why.

Mel, Johanna's 17 year-old superstar soccer playing daughter, convinces her that she should get all dressed up and go, to show them she is doing great. Reluctantly Johanna goes to the gallery and sees a painting Nestor did of her years ago- and she steals it.

La Rosa Blanca is the famous painting and we later learn why Johanna is so upset to see it hanging in the gallery. She feels like that is a part of her hanging on the wall, when she was "fearless and fierce", and that part belongs to only her, not to Nestor or the world. 

The theft becomes national news, and Johanna leaves town with the painting to hide out in her father's remote cabin. Seeing the painting and Nestor makes her realize everything she gave up twenty years ago, and she decides to stay at the cabin and rededicate herself to her art. 

Pilar is hot on the trail of the stolen painting, and Johanna fears she will be discovered as the thief. Johanna's new neighbor is a handsome surgeon who is recovering from a severe hand injury that has left him unable to work. They slowly circle around each other, working towards a romantic relationship with some steamy scenes.

Johanna throws herself into her work, feeling alive again. Mel helps her mother by posting her works on Instagram and Johanna begins to build a following. But what will happen if she is outed as the thief?

This is the second book I have read that featured addiction as a storyline (the other is Susan Mallery's excellent The Sister Effect) and I found that part interesting. Johanna's story is one that may resonate with many women, and I liked her relationship with her daughter. Mel is a character that I recognize and admire in many young women today- strong, confident and independent. Pilar also turned out to be an intriguing character as well.

Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry is a good book for someone who is looking for a story about following your dreams, no matter how long ago you first had them. 

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on Sara Read's blog tour. 

New in Paperback- Perpetual West by Mesha Maren

Perpetual West by Mesha Maren

Publiblished by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781643753409

Trade paperback, $16.99, 400 pages

With so much happening at the US-Mexico border, Mesha Maren's novel, Perpetual West, brings a fascinating perspective as told through the lens of a young married couple, Alex and Elana, who have moved from West Virginia to El Paso.

Alex was born in Mexico and adopted by a missionary couple from West Virginia. He moved in with Elana and her father and brother, and eventually he married Elana, his best friend. He wanted to go to Mexico to learn more about his heritage, so he and Elana are attending college in El Paso.

They frequently cross the border to Mexico, as Alex wants to study lucha libre, Mexican wrestling, for his thesis. He meets one of the wrestlers, Mateo, and quickly falls in love with him. When Elana goes back to West Virginia to welcome her brother Simon home from drug rehab, Alex and Mateo spend the week together.

Elana doesn't speak Spanish very well, and feels left out when she and Alex go to Juarez. She also has decided to drop out of college and is secretly battling anorexia. Her trip home brings up memories of her mother's death when Elana was just a young child.

When Alex doesn't pick up Elana from the airport, she fears something bad happened to him. The police tell her that Alex probably ran away, and they have so many missing people to look for, he is not a priority.

There is so much in this wonderfully written story. Even though there are many characters in the book, Maren manages to make us care about each of them. Elana, Simon, Mateo, Alex- each one is compassionately portrayed.

Her rendering of the settings- the city of Juarez, the drug cartel head's massive compound, Elana's apartment- are all drawn so you feel like you are right there. You can almost taste the delicious foods from her descriptions as well. 

Maren's comparison of what happened to people who worked in the factories that moved from El Paso to Juarez to the miners of West Virginia- "both placed stretched thin, cadavered for their resources and labor and then abandoned, their people rendered subhuman in the national dialogue"- is eye-opening.

I also found her comparison of the migrants crossing into the United States for better opportunities to the people who moved west in the United States intriguing. One group is looked upon as brave frontiersmen forging a new life by opening up borders, the others are derided as "illegal aliens". 

Perpetual West gives the reader a lot to ponder in this propulsive novel and there is a lot going on- love, art, violence, political issues, trauma, religion- enough to keep the reader engaged and thinking about this book long after it's over. It's easy to see why so many publications chose it as one of the Most-Anticipated Books of 2022. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Mesha Maren's tour.

Silence Is A Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Silence Is A Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781643750262

Hardcover, $25.95, 304 pages

I've never read a book that does a better job of putting the reader inside the mind of the narrator than Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence Is A Sense. 

The unnamed narrator is a 24 year-old Syrian refugee who has resettled in Great Britain. The novel opens with her narrating the sights she sees looking from her apartment into the windows of other tenants in the complex. 

There is Juice Man, a very fit man who has a stringent exercise program and entertains several women and a few men in his apartment. There is an elderly man who also lives alone, a family where the father beats the mother, while their teenage daughter sits in her room with headphones on and their teenage son has anger issues, and Tom and his wife Ruth, who keeps tabs on activities in the complex. We see them so clearly through her eyes.

Our narrator doesn't speak, leaving her neighbors to believe her deaf. She doesn't disabuse them of this notion, it makes it easier to avoid any type of relationship with them. She is too fragile.

We learn that she fled the violence and bombings in Syria, losing contact with her family in the process.

She made her way through Europe, through horrific conditions in refugee settlements, and a young woman on her own in this situation suffers physical, sexual and emotional violence that causes unbearable trauma.

The narrator gives us glimpses of her previous life- her parents and siblings, life at university protesting the brutal Syrian regime of Al-Assad, the daily barrage of bombings that killed so many thousands of innocent people. 

She writes essays under the name The Voiceless, and her editor pressures her to reveal more of her life fleeing Syria, something she is unable to do as she is "cornered by memories, caged in by recollections". Her pieces become more controversial as she is critical of the people who are marching with their posters, willing to speak up but not actually do anything to help the humans fleeing their homeland.

A violent attack on a Muslim forces the people in the neighborhood to face up to the racism and religious intolerance amongst them. The Imam of the mosque said of it:

"No god you believe in will be okay with this. You must do unto others as you want them to do to you. That is it. That is all of it. There is nothing else which matters. That is what all the great religions of the world tell us."

That resonated so much with me. 

I can tell how much I get from a book by how many highlights I make. Silence Is A Sense is covered with highlights, with insights into the plight of refugees, how memories can be deceiving, how dangerous it is for us to blame "the other" because we don't want to face up to our fears that the world is changing, and how "we all want the same things- freedom, happiness, safety". 

The writing is deeply affecting, and looking at the world through our narrator's eyes is enlightening. I will be thinking about her and Silence Is A Sense for a long time to come. I give it my highest recommendation.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Layla AlAmmar's book tour.

Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon

Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon
Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778309550
Trade paperback, $16.99, 368 pages

I've never read a Hannah Mary McKinnon book so I wasn't sure what to expect. Her latest, Sister Dear, is a psychological suspense novel that has a crackerjack ending that shocked me. (And I'm not easily shocked.)

As the story opens, Eleanor is visiting her beloved father at his hospice. When she arrives, she hears her estranged mother, trying to get her ex-husband to leave all his money in his will to their younger daughter Amy because, after all, Eleanor is not his real daughter.

After Eleanor confronts her parents, she runs out of the hospice and ends up getting attacked by a mugger outside her apartment building. Her handsome upstairs neighbor Lewis rescues her, but she is seriously injured enough to end up in the hospital.

While there, her father passes away and Eleanor is bereft. Her mother and sister are allied against her as they have always been, and Eleanor feels like she has no one.

She finds out that her biological father is a highpowered real estate developer, a man her mother worked for years ago. Eleanor confronts him, and he tells her that he never wanted to have anything to do with her and still doesn't. He threatens her if she comes near his family.

But Eleanor's curiosity gets the better of her. She follows Victoria, her father's only child, to a restaurant, and listens in on her conversation with Victoria's mother and cousin.

Victoria is everything Eleanor is not- beautiful, thin, wealthy. She turns heads wherever she goes. Eleanor applies to assist Victoria set up a website for her new company, and the two women become friends, although Victoria has no idea who Eleanor really is. Victoria loves having a new friend, someone she can trust.

As Eleanor insinutates herself into Victoria's life, I wondered where this story would go. Eleanor not only works for Victoria, but also for Victoria's husband. Eleanor's life is getting better- a good job, a boyfriend, she has lost weight, and changed her hairstyle to look more like Victoria. Lewis warns her that the longer this goes on without Victoria knowing who she really is, the harder the fall will be.

Sister Dear kept me interested, but the ending of the story knocked me out of my seat. I literally gasped and nearly screamed out loud. McKinnon takes us on this journey with Eleanor, and where we end up is somewhere we couldn't have guessed. She sprinkles the story with breadcrumbs that lead us to some things we can guess, but the ultimate reveal is a corker.

If you like to be surprised by the ending of a novel, pick up Sister Dear immediately.

Thanks to MIRA for putting me on Hannah Mary McKinnon's tour.