Mary Beth Keane’s new novel, centered around two New York City cops who meet at the police academy in the early 1970s and later wind up as neighbors in suburbia, explores how unanticipated life events can peel back layers of friendship, test family allegiances, and force a reckoning about once taboo subjects like mental illness. Keane has been compared in style and perspective to Ann Patchett, and like Patchett she uses the ordinary aspects of ordinary people’s lives to expose experiences and truths that likely haunt most families. Her treatment of a main character with mental illness is especially brave and compassionate, and very intense.
A delightfully quirky novel about a gardener at a local university who, in her 40s, lives with her father and much prefers the company of plants and trees to being with people. When she suddenly finds herself with an unexpected allotment of time off from work, she decides to reconnect with four long-lost friends in distant locales. The narrative is not only a lovely contemplation on social isolation and the reviving of friendship, but also a testimonial to the place of nature in our lives and communities and the need to be more attentive as humans to stewardship of our surroundings.
A lot of punch is packed into this slender debut novel, one of my favorites of the year. Set in Lagos, it is the story of two sisters, opposites in every way, whose experiences of beauty, love, family, and social responsibility collide ferociously but ultimately keep them bonded together amid questions about their individual ethics and honesty. Brathwaite relies on spare, vivid prose and a deft use of satire to make this novel a gem of comic noir. And yes, it is about a series of boyfriends who meet their deaths at the hands of one of the sisters. I’m not going to say more!
