As the steamy or, depending on where you live, dry heat continues unabated, reading inside in an air-conditioned room—assuming you are lucky enough to have access to such a thing—becomes ever more appealing. And for those who can head to the beach instead, books are a constant source of entertainment during the still-long summer evenings. So here is our usual listing of books we loved: all historical fiction this month, as it turns out. Could we be trying to lose ourselves in times past? Or is the appeal rather the reminder that in so many ways life was harder then?
Eve J. Chung, Daughters of Shandong (William Morrow, 2024)
This riveting novel, the author’s first and based on the life of her grandmother, follows the fortunes of a mother and three daughters abandoned by their wealthy family in soon-to-be Communist China. It is 1948, and Chairman Mao’s forces have moved into Shandong Province, driving the Nationalist Army into retreat. Although the town of Zhucheng is small and rural, the Ang family owns a palatial estate, built by generations of government officials and scholars.
Even before the war turns against them, the family has little use for its eldest daughter-in-law, Chiang-Yue, who has produced three girls but no boys. The family lives by the ancient Chinese proverb “Value men and belittle women,” so even though its second son does have a male heir, that child’s existence cannot redeem Chiang-Yue in her in-laws’ eyes.
When the Communists approach, the other family members, including the girls’ father, flee. The narrator, Li-Hai, stays behind with her mother and sisters—ostensibly to keep either the People’s Army or impoverished local farmers from confiscating the Angs’ palatial home.
Of course, this doesn’t work. Soldiers take over the estate the first day. They haul Li-Hai, only thirteen, before an impromptu tribunal as a stand-in for her missing male relatives. She barely escapes with her life. Only Chiang-Yue’s history of kind treatment toward the villagers saves her and her daughters—first from execution, then from starvation.
Despite the family’s cruelty, Chiang-Yue insists that duty requires her to rejoin her husband. Thus begins their trek across China, from Zhucheng to the local hub of Qingdao, then south to Guangzhou (Hong Kong), and eventually across the strait to Taiwan. Hiding in the bushes, scrounging homeless in the streets, surviving a refugee camp—the Ang women and girls are, in their own stubborn way, relentless. You will root for them every step of the way.
Find out more from my New Books Network interview with the author.—CPL
Kate Parker, The Vanishing Thief (JDP Press, 2022)
This first of five Victorian Bookshop Mysteries introduces Georgia Fenchurch, the owner of an antiquarian bookstore in 1880s London and a member of the Archivist Society, which conducts private investigations on request. Georgia, a single woman in her late twenties, sees maintaining her livelihood and helping those who depend on her as her most important responsibility. As a result, she resists at first when a woman bursts into her store demanding that the Society search for a missing neighbor, whose disappearance the woman blames on the haughty Duke of Blackford.
But soon the hunt is on, sparking a war of wills between Georgia and the duke, who seems intent on thwarting every effort she makes to uncover the truth. When, through the window of an omnibus, Georgia spies the man who murdered her parents twelve years before, the missing neighbor becomes just one of the problems she’s determined to solve without delay.
I’ve read three of the five by now, and—except for some mishandled Russian names in The Royal Assassin, and who but a Russianist would care about that?—I’ve enjoyed them very much. The developing friendship between Georgia and the duke, which pays due respect to conventions of the time while keeping the romantic flame alive, is a particular plus. The mysteries themselves are well handled, the subplot involving the deaths of Georgia’s parents gives the series psychological depth, and both major and minor characters consistently display depth and complexity. All in all, a real find.—CPL
Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel (Random House, 2024)
Ruth Reichl is a former restaurant critic for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, as well as the author of one cookbook and several memoirs. After Gourmet shuttered its doors, she turned for the first time to fiction. Her first novel, an instant bestseller titled Delicious! included in a previous Books We Loved entry, tells the story of a woman who works for a food magazine. It won’t surprise anyone to learn that her second novel, A Paris Novel, takes place in the food world too.
It’s one thing to be able to read one incredible food experience after another, but the setting for this second novel is, of course, Paris, where all food offerings, from rustic baguettes to pretty song birds most of us may never want to see on a plate, are enhanced by presentation and a general agreement among all the Parisian characters that there is no greater way to spell love than FOOD.
Food aside, the story line remains irresistible. Protagonist Stella’s estranged mother dies in the 1980s, leaving her daughter money that she can spend only if she travels to Paris. Stella is not the traveling type. She’s a self-sufficient, nose-to-the-grindstone copy editor in an NYC publishing house. Her idea of escape is sticking to established routines. But she goes to Paris, and while she intends to visit museums and historical sites like any other tourist, she is swept up by people who recognize her hidden talents and want nothing more than to get her to see them for herself. That takes time, many meals prepared by fabulous chefs, a few heartaches, a willingness to follow clues that may reveal the identify of her mystery father, and a bit of magic.
A Paris Novel is a fairytale for adults. There’s a bit of a Cinderella story going on in the plot and a touch of Ann Tyler in the tone. Add in the food, the descriptions of which are consistently mouth-watering, the many mysteries of the art world, the streets of Paris, a colorful cast of wonderful secondary characters, and you have the recipe for reader delight.—JS
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