The Safekeep by Yeal van der Wouden

Friday, Nov. 21, 2025--San Antonio 

The Safekeep by Yeal van der Wouden was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024.  It is a unique and special novel that is essentially a delayed coming-of-age story of a repressed, grouchy woman named Isabel in The Netherlands.  An older neighbor man seems to be pursuing her, but he is too touchy and she tries to avoid him.  She is obsessed with maintaining the family home and all of its possessions.  It is a home that their uncle had gotten a good deal on in 1944--a large mansion in a rural area that was strangely completely furnished (not just with furniture but with everything necessary for living in it--kitchenware, a box of toys, and clothing) so that she, her two brothers, and her mother could leave the chaos in Amsterdam toward the end of WWII to live there.  By the beginning of the story, the mother has died and the two brothers have left home to live in an urban area.  Isabel is alone in the world, grouchy, and suspicious of anyone who comes to the house.  Her uncle has arranged paperwork that will transfer the ownership of the home to her older brother Louis when he marries but it allows Isabel to live in the home until that point in time (with the assumption that she will eventually marry and leave).  Up until now, Louis has only maintained brief relationships, but he has a new girlfriend he wants to bring to the house so she can see it.  And while there he surprises Isabel by saying he has to leave for a special work assignment for a few weeks and he wants the girlfriend to stay at the house in the meantime because they are going to be married when he returns.  Isabel was awkward in school and teased by others, and she is awkward as a woman.  She is not really close to anyone but her younger brother Hendrick who has an unexplained relationship with a Frenchman named Sebastian who is his roommate.   She can converse comfortably with this brother, but he may be about to need to leave for Paris with Sebastian whose mother is ill and needs him there to take care of her.  Neither she nor Hendrick like their older brother Louis.  And Isabel immediately dislikes Louis' girlfriend, doesn't want her to stay in the house, and is rude to her.  But the change in her daily routine caused by this visit changes the rest of Isabel's life.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

 Monday, Feb. 17, 2025--San Antonio

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan was just recently released and has been called his best book in years.  I consider his novel Atonement to be one of the best I have ever read.  I have also read 3 other novels by him.  His books often involve retrospection, secrets, and consequences.  This one is no different.  It's actually two stories set 100 years apart.  One is the story of a British poet considered to be one of the greatest ever and set in today's time--the 2020s.  One of the puzzles of life is that he wrote a poem for his wife's birthday gift that follows a very detailed and difficult-to-write pattern, read it at a dinner party with their closest friends in attendance, and destroyed all the evidence of the poem except for the copy he gave as a gift to his wife that evening which was written out on vellum for her to keep.  Over the years, he and his wife die and the story of that birthday evening and the poem have grown in importance due to his celebrity as a poet and the interest of scholars and lovers of poems wanting to read the great poem and know what has happened to the single copy of it.  The other story takes place in the 2130s.  The discussions of the party and the poem continue to exist because the poet is still considered one of the greatest to have ever lived.  A professor has been researching the donated papers, the emails, the personal journals, the journalism articles, etc., with the hope of finding the missing poem and writing and publishing a book about the poet that, hopefully, would include the poem.  But in 2130, the world is a very different place.  It is hard to do research because of what has happened historically during the years.  There have been multiple wars between China and the USA, global warming has led to seas rising, and one big cataclysmic event occurred that compounded those problems.  In the world of the advanced time period, the population of the earth has decreased greatly, travel of any kind is difficult and is mainly restricted to nearby locations. People who still exist live on "islands" of land that continued to exist above the new higher water level after the effects of those events.  England is now an archipelago.  London and many other places are now totally under water.  But relationships among people continue to be similar to what they have always been--messy with affairs, disagreements, concerns about income and costs, etc.  I found the first part of the book, as the details were being laid out to describe how important the poet in the 2020s was, how he lived his life, how difficult the pattern was that he used for constructing the lost poem to his wife, etc., to be a bit tedious.  But the story had a bit of a snowball-type of growth.  By the middle of the book, I was very involved.  By the last quarter of the book, I didn't want to put it down.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

All the Other Mothers Hate Me

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025--San Antonio

All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harmon has been a popular book this year--listed by Penguin as a top book of the year.  It's not great literature.  And if the main character wasn't so unlikable (the other mothers are not the only ones who dislike her), it would be more enjoyable to read the book.  But the mother thinks it is justifiable to shoplift, justifiable to frame someone who may be innocent for a crime, resents the fact that she made a bad choice early in her life but continues to make bad choices day-by-day, etc.  And all the other mothers who hate her and even almost all the other characters in the story are despicable in their own ways.  So this is a book to read only if you have your own problems and want to read a "downer" in hopes that you will be able to laugh at others who have problems, too.  The beginning was somewhat interesting.  And it is a fast read. I kept reading it to the end, but I don't recommend the book.  I gave it 3 stars out of 5. 

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025--San Antonio

We Do Not Part by Han Kang was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a top book of 2025 by BBC and Penguin, but it wasn't a great read for me.  There's an interesting back story about times on Jeju Island in South Korea during the 1940s and 50s about the Communist uprising--the atrocities committed by the government forces against general citizens assumed to be Communist supporters because of geographic location and association, the arrival of the US troops to assist the government forces, and cover-ups all the way to the 1960s.  There are mass killings, mass graves, sealed government records, etc.  The book emphasizes the story behind one village and one particular family.  But tied with this is a "mystical" story set in current times that involves two long-time female friends.  The woman in the hospital receiving treatments every 3 minutes has sent her friend many miles south to her home with the explanation that her pet bird must be saved from starvation while she is hospitalized.  But after a long, difficult trip to the home due to a heavy, long lasting snow storm the friend is "joined" (spiritually?) by her hospitalized friend who sent her where she continues to reveal the historical story.  Somehow, she is in her home handling, passing, and showing her long-term friend books, papers, and photographs that allow the long-ago story to come to completion.  Tied to it all are plans that the two friends have discussed a project for creating a memorial of undetermined purpose based on a vision in a dream.  For lovers of Creative (purposely with a Capital C), maybe it is a great book.  For me, it was a long slog that became interesting only at times when the backstory was being revealed.  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5.

The Antidote by Karen Russell

Friday, Oct. 31, 2025--San Antonio

The Antidote by Karen Russell is a finalist for the National Book Award this year. It's a mixture of history and fantastical fiction.  The purpose seems to be to expose how much history of the USA has involved bad decisions based on greed, racism, religious persecution, fear of the unknown, etc., and the convenient loss of memory and cover ups that allow these problems to be easily overlooked and/or put behind them.  Set in southwestern Nebraska during the Dust Bowl, topics covered include the treatment of pregnant unmarried women, the story of how Native Americans were treated and their land stolen, how Blacks continued to be marginalized and not even categorized by the government as natural born American citizens, ways in which people try to rid their conscience of things they have done that they know to have been wrong, how natural resources are wasted by the population followed by their moving elsewhere to repeat the same mistakes over and over again rather than trying to maintain renewable practices, etc.  The characters in the story are interesting--a "Vault" which is a female witch who can go into a trance, hear a confession, and leave the person making the confession no longer being conscious of the worry/guilt they confessed; a teenage girl whose mother was an alcoholic and is now living with her uncle whose wife was murdered; a traveling photographer employed by the government to document life in America during the depression; a sheriff who is incompetent, corrupt, and evil; a scarecrow that seems to have some human qualities; a cat that wants revenge on the man who took her kittens to the river in a pillowcase and drowned them; etc.  The story is also about hope during times bad enough and hopeless enough that some are going elsewhere to start anew.  I'm not a big fan of fantastical (magical realism?) fiction, so I kept my rating for the book at 4 stars out of 5.

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott

 Saturday, Oct. 25, 2026--San Antonio

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott has been named a top book of 2025 by NPR.  It is about the strain of time on relationships--particularly about a 25-year friendship between two college buddies (whose friendship seems almost closer to a gay relationship than a normal male/male friendship), between each of them and his wife (because the marriages have lasted long enough to move from lust and excitement to routine and because they have learned more about each other over time including things that are not appealing), and about the relationship between one of the couples and their 16-year-old daughter (when the husband and wife have differences of opinion on how to handle a disturbing event that has happened to her).  The book reminded me of Normal People because both are rather slow-moving stories that share certain topics--class differences and popularity differences, for instance.  Normal People is better written.  I found myself constantly having to figure out what was happening when and between whom because there would be complete changes between paragraphs with no double spacing or the placing of a printed divider to even let me know the change was taking place.  Many times, I had to go back and reread after going through one of these changes to reset my mind once I knew was happening.  But I can see Among Friends being turned into as good a film as Normal People was.  The story deserves a rating of 4 stars or higher, but because of awkward, non-evident transitions in the writing, I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Sunday, Oct. 19. 2025--San Antonio

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai is a long, rambling, and often depressing novel that is a finalist for the Booker Prize.  Most of it takes place in India.  The story is of generations of two particular Indian families and those whose lives are a part of theirs including an American painter of European descent.  As a person who has traveled to India 6 times for months at a time interacting with Indian citizens more than a typical tourist (attending month- and year-after death celebrations, attending weddings, being a guest in homes and on farms, making friends throughout the country), there was so much in the details of this book that I know to be true about India and Indians.  It is a masterpiece in describing life and times in India.  At the same time, however, it zigs and zags (the aforementioned rambling) in a somewhat confusing manner.  It took longer to read because of the details and the largess of the stories.  I recommend the book to anyone who knows India quite well or who will read the book with great attention to the realistic details of life within India--relationships, feelings, resentments, traditions, etc.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.