A Fierce Radiance
by Lauren Belfer

Lauren Belfer does not traffic in small subjects. Her first novel, City of Light, took on the electrification of New York after the power of Niagara Falls was harnessed. In A Fierce Radiance, she captures the period in 1941 when penicillin, having languished for years after its discovery by Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish biologist, is needed at the front to treat those wounded in World War II. Penicillin later became a drug that saved millions of lives, effective against gangrene and even tuberculosis. At the time Belfer writes about, the government and big pharma are all chasing that elusive moment when mass production will be possible.

Belfer uses the same device as in City of Light, centering the story on an appealing heroine. This time it's Claire Shipley, 36-year-old divorced mother of a young son and first-rate photographer for Life magazine. Claire's daughter, Emily, died eight years earlier of septicemia, so she is immediately drawn to the story of any medication that might have saved her child. She is assigned to take pictures at the Rockefeller Institute, recording the nonstop efforts of doctors and scientists to develop life-saving antibiotics. There is the rush to create a stable and plentiful penicillin, and then there are "the cousins," compounds that are related but can be patented. The government has refused to issue any patents for penicillin, stating that it is needed exclusively for use at the front. No one may profit from it. This sets up a race among profiteers, unscrupulous scientists and unwitting accomplices to find the magic formula that will be a cash cow for years to come.

Claire is attracted to one of the research doctors, Jamie Stanton, and he returns her feelings. Then Jamie is sent to the front to conduct penicillin trials on the war wounded. This is where the subplots take over. Jamie's sister, Tia, has died in a strange accident--or was she murdered? One of Jamie's friends, less of an idealist than others at the Institute, might be responsible. Or it might be the Russian who collected sewage to study. And what happened to the promising sample that Tia was working on, the one with the radiant, indescribably blue color? Claire's father, from whom she has been estranged for many years, enters the picture. He is a millionaire who buys a pharmaceutical company to join the race for the valuable drug. Then there is a New York police detective lurking around the edges of the story whose dogged perseverance leads to discoveries that move him front and center at critical moments.

All these story lines are tied up to the reader's satisfaction and in every one of them there is a common thread: there are shades of gray everywhere in judging the morality of human actions. All of Belfer's characters must come to terms with this truth, in themselves and in others. Belfer exempts no one, and in so doing creates a believable story and recreates a forgotten time in our history.

Old Dogs
by Donna Moore
Anyone who's written a book called Go to Helena Handbasket (and won the 2007 Lefty Award for most humorous crime novel) deserves a second look. Here, Moore follows that first success with a caper book. As with all such books or movies, the first order of business is the gathering of the miscreants. In this caper, however, many are working at cross-purposes, not as a team. Letty and Dora, old ex-hookers–cum-con artists, have become La Contessa Letizia di Ponzo and Signora Teodora Grisiola. They've long been been working a grift that has paid good dividends, and are now ensconced in a castle in Glasgow. They are joined by a young woman who acts as seducer, secretary or whatever else is needed. And they've decided to steal a pair of gold, jewel-encrusted Shih-Tzu dog statuettes from a West End museum--worth an estimated £15 million, a tidy nest egg for the old girls' future.

Also in on the act, for one reason or another, are two morons who work in a local crematorium; a very dodgy chauffeur hired by Letty and Dora who's on to them almost immediately; and a naive young man from the island of Creagsaigh who wants to convince the museum to return the dogs to their rightful owners in Tibet. Lurking in the background is Victor Stanislav, newly arrived from Australia, where the old girls took him for a fortune. He is bent on revenge and has the cold assassin's heart necessary to enact it. Just for good measure, the museum director recently dumped his girlfriend and fired her, so she decides to steal the dogs, replace them with fakes and embarrass the boss.

This is a mighty cast of characters and the story jumps from one set to another fast enough to give the reader whiplash. There is a full complement of Glaswegian slang and argot--amusing if obscure. The crematorium idiots use most of the street slang, making them the equivalent of Shakespearean ruffians.

Once all are assembled, the game's afoot. When they are all in the museum hiding and disarming alarms, it is very funny. (Is someone writing the screenplay? The storyboard would need about 10,000 Post-It notes.) There is murder, mayhem and a snapper at the end. It's all hilarious and exhausting; you can't help but love The Old Dogs

The Children’s Book
by A.S. Byatt

  There is a story here, and it is a good one, but the reader must persevere to find it.  In a style that can only be described as uber-rococo, Ms. Byatt has brought to life the Edwardian age, that period named for King Edward VII, preceded by the Victorian era and followed by World War I.  There are generous slices of both those times as well.  Nothing gets by Ms. Byatt.  This novel is as lushly detailed as “Possession: A Romance,” the 1990 Booker Prize winner which tells of two academics studying two Victorian poets.  Byatt created poems, journals and letters to be “discovered” by her protagonists, weaving a story rich in texture.  

In “The Children’s Book” there are disquisitions on German puppetry, the building of Victoria & Albert Museum, the Gloucester Candlestick – that ornate fabrication that falls someplace between Byzantine and Gothic – the Fabian Society, Women’s Suffrage, Midsummer’s Eve celebrations, the art and politics of Germany, France and England, to name just a few, and finally, the end of all frivolity with the beginning of World War I.

Olive Wellwood, the center of the tale, is a children’s author styled somewhat after Edith Nesbit of “The Railway Children” fame.  Writing at the time of “Peter Pan” and Kenneth Grahame, she is the mother of seven children and nearly the sole support of her brood, despite her loving husband Humphry’s financial forays.  They are both free-spirited and free-thinking members of The Fabian Society, a British intellectual socialist movement.  Olive has created a book for each of her children, a special book unique to each child’s temperament and personality; indeed, as their lives unfold, the books become eerily self-fulfilling prophecies. 

The lives of each child, cousins and friends are examined.  One of the tenets of The Fabian Society is that children are people and ought to be taken seriously.  One daughter strives to become a doctor, another a suffragette; Tom, Olive’s favored child, wants only to track foxes through the woods; Phillip is a boy saved by Olive from dire poverty and is now an aspiring potter; cousin Charles/Karl enamored of German revolutionaries flirts with danger.  These lives and others are told in intimate detail, interwoven with events of the day, both large and small, in the world beyond Todefright, the Wellwood home.

Fairy tales abound, parties of grandiose dimension are given, flirtations begin and end – and not just between and among the younger generation.  That fact is the underside of the story.  In the face of this “Edwardian Summer,” a halcyon time, there are family secrets abounding.  Little by little they are unearthed: surprising, sad and painful.  Two deaths punctuate the discoveries, one leaving Olive much diminished.

Byatt has painstakingly recreated a time, not with broad strokes but with each political theory, character, field of flowers and event richly, carefully embroidered and re-embroidered.  Every stitch of this tapestry is connected to the whole, all coming to a head with the devastation of World War I, when all the young men went off to war and the world was forever changed.

This magnum opus has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a signal honor.  Let us hope that this is Ms. Byatt’s magnum opus because if her next opus is any more magnum, gentle reader will not be able to lift it.  

Mudbound
by Hillary Jordan.

Jordan won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Mudbound, her first novel. The prize was founded by Barbara Kingsolver to reward books of conscience, social responsibility, and literary merit. In addition to meeting all of the above qualifications, Jordan has written a story filled with characters as real and compelling as anyone we know.

It is 1946 in the Mississippi Delta, where Memphis-bred Laura McAllan is struggling to adjust to farm life, rear her daughters with a modicum of manners and gentility, and be the wife her land-loving husband, Henry, wants her to be. It is an uphill battle every day. Things started badly when Henry's trusting nature resulted in the family being done out of a nice house in town, thus relegating them to a shack on their property. In addition, Henry's father, Pappy, a sour, mean-spirited devil of a man, moves in with them.

The real heart of the story, however, is the friendship between Jamie, Henry's too-charming brother, and Ronsel Jackson, son of sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm. They have both returned from the war changed men: Jamie has developed a deep love for alcohol and has recurring nightmares; Ronsel, after fighting valiantly for his country and being seen as a man by the world outside the South, is now back to being just another black "boy."

Told in alternating chapters by Laura, Henry, Jamie, Ronsel, and his parents, Florence and Hap, the story unfolds with a chilling inevitability. Jordan's writing and perfect control of the material lift it from being another "ain't-it-awful" tale to a heart-rending story of deep, mindless prejudice and cruelty. This eminently readable and enjoyable story is a worthy recipient of Kingsolver's prize and others as well.

The Reserve
by Russell Banks

Nothing is too daunting to be explored by Russell Banks, whether it is the Abolitionist John Brown in "Cloudsplitter" or the tale of two families' intersection, one from Haiti and one from New Hampshire, in "Continental Drift;" or the four narrators in "The Sweet Hereafter," the poignant story of the aftermath of a school bus accident. In "The Reserve," Banks has taken on madness, class privilege, a famous artist/illustrator loosely based on Rockwell Kent; Hubert St. Germain, an Adirondack guide; the final flight of the Hindenburg, Spanish Fascists and a dark family secret. From these disparate elements he has woven a story that absolutely will not let you go.

The Reserve is an Adirondack redoubt owned and occupied by the affluent and influential; hoi polloi need not apply. Vanessa Cole, beautiful and arrogant, twice married and divorced socialite and adopted daughter of the doctor who perfected the lobotomy, is a calculating seductress, manipulative, spoiled and certifiable. She and her mother and father are at Ridgeview, their piece of The Reserve, on a fateful fourth of July evening when Vanessa meets Jordan Groves, the artist who has just done a Howard Hughes imitation and landed on the lake in his seaplane, which is against all the Rules. He is handsome, dashing, a womanizer - all of these can be forgiven, but he is also, heaven forfend, a Liberal, perhaps even a Communist! That meeting, and her father's death from a heart attack the same night set in train a series of events out of which Banks creates a mesmerizing story of people who have acted without consequences all of their lives suddenly facing responsibility for their actions.

The agent of their comeuppance is Hubert St. Germain, the plain man with the fancy name. He is way over his head when he becomes complicit with Jordan and Vanessa in covering up the accidental death of Vanessa's mother. What precedes her death is no accident, however. His attack of conscience changes the status quo forever. The characters Banks has created are rich, deep and multi-dimensional; their motivations absolutely believable given the context of their lives. The Hindenburg and the Spanish Fascists? That would be telling. This novel is Banks at his best, which is very good indeed.

A Fraction of The Whole
by Steve Toltz

Hold on tight because you are about to ride a juggernaut of words, where things will go by very quickly and you better pay attention. Martin Dean and his son, Jasper, are together in this picaresque adventure, ranging from Australia to Paris to Thailand. "Together" might be putting a too happy face on it. They really don't like each other much, even though they are the mirror image of one another in most respects. Jasper's origins and upbringing are unconventional at best.

Steve Toltz's startling debut novel is a non-stop, politically incorrect diatribe about - for and against - religion, politics, relationships, sex, marriage, work, play, children, sleep, friends, art, labyrinths, schemes and dreams. Jasper, in his twenties and in jail, starts the story by trying to set down his life with his certifiably paranoid father, Martin. He defers to Martin in the telling, so nothing is left out. While Jasper is a teenager, Martin manages a strip club, working for the enigmatic Eddie, enters a mental hospital and finally dupes the doctors into believing that he is sane; develops a scheme which will make everyone in Australia a millionaire, runs for office - and wins.

Two recurring themes are Martin's rebellion against living in the shadow of his deceased master criminal brother, Terry, and the ongoing love triangle among Terry, Martin and Caroline Potts. If people would just stop asking him about his brother, he would be able to get on with his own life. Maybe. If there were another woman in the world he could love besides Caroline...who knows what might have happened?

The real pleasure in reading this book is the pace and the language. While there is a narrative thread, what Toltz has done masterfully is have his way with every aspect of modern life. He racks 'em up and knocks 'em down with a laser wit, a fine turn of phrase and a devastatingly funny outlook on everything human.

The House on Fortune Street
by Margot Livesey

In four ingeniously linked stories, Margot Livesey has created a literary “Rashomon,” where events are seen in retrospect, from different points of view. Added to the multiple persectives, Livesey pays subtle and clever homage to literary figures as well.

Dara McLeod is the centerpiece of the novel, along with her friend, Abigail, who inherits the house where both girls live for a time. They met at University and, despite their vast differences, struck up a lasting friendship, of sorts. Dara is now a therapist, with small capacity for realistic judgment or self-reflection; Abigail, an actress who takes what she wants and never looks back.

In the first segment, Sean Wyman, Abigail’s boyfriend, is an earnest student of Keats who has fallen under Abigail’s spell, leaving his wife, stuck in his work, and finally, the recipient of a disturbing letter which changes his life with Abigail. In the second section, Dara’s childhood is explored. Her father has a smarmy but no-touching attraction to little girls,`a la Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). He takes an inappropriate picture of one of Dara’s friends and is banished from his family when his wife sees it. Dara meets a violinist, Edward, in part three, falls madly in love with him, ignoring the fact that he is still living with his ex girlfriend and that they have a child together. Faint echoes of Jane Eyre here. In fairness to Dara, Edward does keep insisting that he will leave his current arrangement when…, and Dara believes him. The last part, told by Abigail, is filled with references to Great Expectations.

We know Dara’s endgame at the conclusion of part one, and by the end of the novel, everything fits. Subtle and/or startling revelations are made, couched in Livesey’s clever use of stories written long ago, interlaced with the contemporary lives of Dara, Abigail, Sean and Edward. It all comes together once we know what depths of self-deception, disloyalty and disregard for the feelings of others this quartet is capable of. Four people, four stories, adding up to one pithy and elegantly written novel.