The Rejected Writers' Book Club

Finished November 1
The Rejected Writers' Book Club by Suzanne Kelman, performed by Tanya Eby

This light novel is part of a series of books set in Southlea Bay, a small island in Puget Sound. The main character here is Janet Johnson, local librarian. Janet used to live in California, but she and her husband Martin moved to the island fairly recently. Martin is trying to figure out how to deal with the pesky raccoons that keep getting into their garbage when Janet is asked to come to a meeting of a local club. The Rejected Writers' Book Club is a group of women who have all written books, but have never been accepted for publication. They read from their work and celebrate the receipt of rejection letters, planning a large celebration for 500 letters, which is less than 100 letters away as the book opens.
Janet is also worried about her daughter who lives in San Francisco and is encountering some issues with her first pregnancy.
But then tragedy strikes. One of the women gets an acceptance letter, and is crushed. Not only does this mean she will have to leave the club, but the novel she submitted contains a plot that she borrowed from someone else, and now believes may be a true piece of someone's history. Janet is asked for her assistance, and the group plans a road trip to the publisher's office in San Francisco since Janet is already planning to go there to see her daughter.
As with many road trip novels, many interesting meetings take place, introducing other characters, quirky and helpful, and the group has issues that delay them, from car trouble to weather.
Living in close proximity to each other during this trip, they get to know each better, and bond in ways Janet wouldn't have imagined. She returns home with friends, love, and maybe even a solution to the raccoon problem.

Transit

Finished October 30
Transit by Rachel Cusk

This new novel by Cusk has an unnamed woman as its first person narrator. She is divorced from her husband and has recently sold her home in the countryside and moved to London. She has bought a former council house in a good neighbourhood, but in bad shape and part of the book deals with her issues with her renovations and her downstairs neighbours. The neighbours downstairs are an older couple, one of the last of the council housing recipients on the street.
Their intolerance for everything she does mixed with their inability to recognize their own annoying behaviours and the effects of those behaviours on her or others is an interesting plot line through many chapters.
The narrator has two sons, ages eleven and thirteen, and, now that they are in London, they are close enough to the boys' father to spend some time with him. Despite his role in her life, he is almost not even present in the book, and the boys only marginally, as reported conversations and at the other end of a telephone call.
The narrator is a writer, with additional income from teaching and speaking engagements. She is a woman interested in people, watching them, asking them questions about their lives, their thoughts, their motivations. That doesn't mean that she doesn't share information sometimes as well, but less so than many of the people that she interacts with.
The chapters each are a vignette, an episode of her life in detail. Conversations and actions are shown vividly and in a factual way, but also, somehow, with an underlying awareness. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, taking a chapter at a time and thinking about it before picking up the novel and continuing.

Sit! Stay! Speak!

Finished October 26
Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin

This novel begins with Addie Andrews leaving her Chicago home to come to small town Eunice, Arkansas. She comes ostensibly to deal with the house she inherited from her great aunt Tilda, but she is also leaving a place that reminds her too much of her late fiance.
Addie has given herself a few months to do any repairs that are needed to the house, get rid of any of the contents she no longer wants, and sell the house. On a walk near the river as she takes a break from unpacking, she finds a young dog left for dead. She rushes him to the vet, saving his life, and ends up adopting him.
As she meets her neighbours and makes friends, she begins to find a new life for herself. There are, however, undercurrents of crime and secrets, and she doesn't understand why more people aren't standing up for what's right, and why a man she's met blows hot and cold.
This is a story of new beginnings, of caring about others, and of having the strength to speak up against the wrongs one witnesses.

The Couple Next Door

Finished October 24
The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

This suspense novel is another one with unreliable narrators. As you see the situation from the perspective of various people, you're not sure who's telling the truth. And you're not sure you really like any of them.
Anne and Marco Conti are invited to dinner at their next door neighbours, Graham and Cynthia, for Graham's birthday. Anne had arranged their usual babysitter for their six month old daughter Cora, but when she cancelled at the last minute, Marco convinced her that taking the baby monitor and checking every half hour would be adequate. Except it wasn't. When they finally go home, Anne notices that the front door is ajar, and when she runs upstairs, Cora is gone.
As the couple react, and the police attend the scene, we see the immobilizing panic and shock of Anne, the manic panic and distress of Marco, the calm shock of Anne's mother Alice, and the disapproval of Anne's stepfather Richard. As the police try to make sense of the scene, the few clues left behind, and begin to look into the backgrounds of everyone related to the situation, we see how the situations shifts, and shifts, and shifts again.
This is a story of people creating images of themselves to meet other people's expectations, of hidden truths, and of avoidance. It's about people's insecurities and inability to share their weaknesses or failures with even those closest to them.
A say story with a lot of unhappy, lonely characters.

A Great Reckoning

Finished October 23
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, read by Robert Bathurst

Armand Gamache is back, and this time in a new capacity, as commander of the Sûreté Academy. As he agrees to take on this new role, he knows the challenges that come with the role. After cleaning up major corruption in the Sûreté itself, he is aware that many of the officers joining the organization have been shaped by their experience in the Academy and what he has seen of their attitude and behaviour worries him. He knows he must make major changes at the Academy to change those experiences. He first looks at the faculty and makes changes, removing some professors and adding others. But he sees the bigger picture as well. He looks at the relationship with the local community and the divisions that have been created. He looks at the larger policing community and where the professors he is getting rid of might end up. He looks at the still unresolved corruption suspicions around some of the people at the Academy. And so he makes choices.
He also makes choices in the acceptances of new recruits. He reviews all the applications and accepts some that the previous head had marked as rejected and rejects some that they would have accepted. And again, he thinks carefully and makes some decisions for reasons that others don't see. 
He tries to both make massive change and to tread carefully, and he doesn't always succeed. It is not an easy task. But he has his family, his community of Three Pines, and the support of respected Sûreté officers and leaders. 
When one of his biggest adversaries within the Academy is found dead, obviously murdered, the case is a tricky one, and the investigation must not only be thorough, but be seen to be thorough. Again, he tries to do that right by making sure an outside investigator is part of the team, but that also proves difficult.
An interesting twist is the subplot around a map that was discovered in the wall of the bistro when renovations were made, and which provides its only mysteries. When Gamache tasks some of the Academy students into learning about the map, its origins, and its meaning, he ends up bringing those students into village life in a move that takes us to the heart of Three Pines. 
This book, as with previous in the series, blurs the line between professional and personal, and between facts and feelings. 

The Bitch is Back

Finished October 20
The Bitch is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier edited by Cathi Hanauer

A few years back, I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Bitch in the House, a collection of essays about women and their relationships, also edited by Hanauer. This book continues with more personal essays about life, love, getting along, moving along, leaving, and coming together. Ten of the writers from the previous book wrote again for this one, and their essays were introduced with a short paragraph about where they'd left off then. A further sixteen women shared their lives here. All of the writers let us into their personal space and shared their feelings. Many shared deeply intimate feelings and experiences.
The book is separated into 4 sections: Me, Myself and My Midlife Choices; Sex, Lies, and Happy(ish) Endings; To Hell and To Hold; and Starting Over.
Many of the experiences here spoke to me. Many opened empathetic windows into experiences I haven't had and won't have. The openness of the women, like that of the previous book, made a connection. I am so glad to read that I am not alone in my feelings, my experiences, my frustrations, my comforts.

An Officer and a Spy

Finished October 19
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

This historical novel follows the Dreyfus affair from the viewpoint of Colonel Georges Picquart. As the affair begins Picquart is a professor at the school training officers and he is brought in unofficially as a watcher at the court. As he reports that the case looks to be failing, the government introduces a secret dossier of documents that "proves the guilt" of Dreyfuss that the defence has no access to. The case is thus decided without fair hearing. Shortly afterward Picquart is put in charge of intelligence. As he follows leads on possible espionage and tries to find a place with his staff, he never really fits in, and begins to mistrust the integrity of some staff members. As he looks deeper and gains access to the secret dossier of the Dreyfuss case, he finds that there has been a grand miscarriage of justice. At first he tries to work within the system, going to his superiors and laying out the evidence, but as it becomes clear that not only isn't this of interest to them, but that they will go to extreme measures to prevent him reopening the case, he finds he must go outside the army to get justice.
This is a tale of an officer, loyal to the army he has made a career in, and a man of integrity. He risks his own career and life, and when the army gets personal in its attack, he gets serious about digging in his heels to take the case to its final result.
The history is widely known, but Harris takes us inside the organization that made it, the army. He takes us inside the experience of a key player in the story, and he has definitely done his research on the facts, using newly available material to bring the story alive for the reader.
A fantastic read, that got me thinking about how little has changed from then to today in terms of government organizations hiding truths and facts for their own ends. In particular, the Snowden case, still unresolved, has elements in common with this.