Gold by Chris Cleave

How do you walk away from competing in the Olympics you trained almost your entire life to win?  What is more important than winning?  What is the value of gold?

Cleave, the writer of the thought-provoking novel Little Bee, is at it again.  Zoe, Kate and Jack are all champion cyclists.  Their lives are tied together by their sport and in a million other ways, large and small.  As a reader you feel like you are experiencing life as an athlete, you hear the pitch of the tires change on the slopes in the velodrome, feel the breeze as you near your competitor’s back tire, know what it’s like to have your heart rate triple.  If you’re a fan of the Olympics, here’s a great way to vicariously experience what it’s like to be an Olympian.

The Affair by Lee Child

Every hero has a beginning.  An event that sets them on their path.  This is the story of the case that made Jack Reacher the man he is today.  This is when the man purchases his only possession: his travel toothbrush.

Fans of the series will be glad to get some answers, but not nearly as many as we’d hoped to get.  If you aren’t familiar with Jack Reacher now is the time to get to know him.  The first Jack Reacher movie is coming out in February 2013.

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O’Nan

Family togetherness can be trying; especially for a family missing their patriarch.  But they are coming together for one more stay at the cabin on the lake.  Who will take home the collectible gas station glasses?  Who will get dad’s old golf clubs?  How do you say good-bye to the place most tied with your summer memories?

While not a lot actually happens O’Nan is great at creating believable characters and situations.  You continue reading wanting to see how these characters are able to change over the course of a week through their points of view and that of their family members. 

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Told by three different characters – the elderly local midwife and champion of children; the sheriff and Jess, the brother of the dead mute boy – we get a picture of life gone wrong in a small North Carolina mountain town.  When a charismatic preacher comes to town and sets up church Jess’s mom is swept away by her faith.  The local midwife doesn’t trust the new preacher and establishes a Sunday school at her house to keep the kids away from the preacher’s way of worship which includes the handing of poisonous snakes.  Then one day the preacher and Jess’s mom get it in their heads to cure his mute brother.  That’s when everything goes wrong.

This is a well written story, and while I found the book sad, I’ve also found that it is staying with me and I am awaiting the author’s next book.

The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe

It is Boston on the eve of World War I.  Sibyl lost her mother and sister in the sinking of the Titanic and she visits a medium on the anniversary of the disaster attempting to find out what happened.  Why were her mother and sister two of the four female first class passengers not to make it onto a lifeboat?  As Sibyl explores her own talents through the murky glass orb she starts to have strange visions that aren’t anything she expected to see.

I’m surprised that this book hasn’t received as much attention as her debut The Physick Book of Deilverance Dane – especially since it’s so much better!  Spiritualism was huge at the time as was the use of opium in its myriad of forms (including morphine and a large component in cough syrup) both topics not much visited in books today.  Howe takes these two factors, family tragedy and a whole lot of what if? to craft an entertaining and mysterious novel.

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Alice Buckle is stuck in a rut.  She loves her husband, her children and her job, but things just seem less than perfect.  One day she inexplicably decides to check her Spam folder and there is an inquiry from the local university about a marriage survey.  She decides, why not? – it’s something different after all.  She is assigned the anonymous email moniker Wife 22 and her questioner is Researcher 101.  As Alice reminiscences about how she and her husband met and how the past somehow became this humdrum future she starts to feel that Researcher 101 may be the perfect man for her.

This book is best categorized as Chick Lit for the over 40 crowd.  This is Bridget Jones grown up, married, with children and living in California.  It is best compared to the romantic comedy films of the 80s and 90s.  Thoroughly enjoyable summer read.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

This is the story of Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, whom he married as a young man just returned from WWI.  Shortly after marriage the young couple moves to Paris to join the “Lost Generation” and be in the thick of it to help Hemingway thrive as a writer.  Jazz Age Paris comes alive and so do the personalities including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and the Fitzgeralds.

It did take me a while to get into this book.  I was reading it for a book club otherwise I may not have stuck with it.  Apparently that is the reaction of half the people who read the book – the other half are swept away immediately.

If you’ve read The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway you get the whole backstory of that classic fiction tale.  It’s interesting to see how art imitates life.