The Names by Florence Knapp

This review of Florence Knapp’s impressive debut The Names will differ from most of my reviews. While I’ll still describe the novel, one that’s getting enormous buzz and is a Read with Jenna selection, my main intent is to offer a few suggestions for reading the book.

First, some background: The Names is a clever, imaginative debut that will make you and your book club ponder a plethora of questions and issues. When the book opens in 1987, Cora’s husband Gordon has reminded her to register the name of their baby son. She takes her nine-year-old daughter Maia and the baby to the registrar and along the way Maia suggests the name Bear because the baby is soft and cuddly. Gordon expects the baby to be named after him as is tradition in his family. Cora usually acquiesces to Gordon, a highly respected doctor who abuses her, but Cora loves the name Julian and would like to choose it. The first chapter shows Cora making three decisions. First, she names him Bear. After that she registers him as Julian and finally, she calls him Gordon as directed. The following chapters, appearing every seven years, show the impact of the different names. 

When Cora names the baby Gordon, their lives take one trajectory with her cowering and suffering under her husband’s abuse. When she names him Julian, the abuse is still real but has different consequences. When she selects the name Bear, things change yet again. 

This is a powerful look at abuse and resilience and it’s a compelling page-turner. However, you need to carefully juggle the three stories to see the nuances in their lives and to track what’s happening to the characters in each scenario. I suggest making a cheat sheet in the first chapter with three sections—one for each of the chosen names. Under those headings, list what the characters are doing at the time. I didn’t do this until a few chapters in and I ended up returning to the book’s beginning to keep it all straight. Once I had my sheet, I could concentrate on the brilliant plotting, the influence of abuse on others in the family, and the nuances of decision making when in an abusive relationship. I also suggest, that you note the ages of Maia and her brother in each scenario to better understand their actions and that of their parents, their grandmother, and others in the novel. This is not a book I suggest for audio. Keeping the characters straight could be more difficult on audio and hearing the scenes of abuse would have been too much for me. 

Summing it Up: The Names is a caring, cleverly plotted debut that manages to keep from being gimmicky despite the premise. It’s both a devastating read and one that’s deeply satisfying. It’s the perfect vehicle for a deep book discussion as long as you make sure the subject isn’t triggering for any participants. Some of the depictions of domestic abuse are so realistic that they can be difficult to read, so make sure your group knows each other well before selectng it. It offers rewarding insights that make it worth delving into the topic.

Rating: 4 Stars

Publication Date: May 6, 2025

Categories: Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Sweet Bean Paste, Book Club

Author Website: https://www.florenceknapp.com/

Reading Group Guide: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/768706/the-names-a-read-with-jenna-pick-by-florence-knapp/ 

What Others Are Saying:

Booklist: https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9804021

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/florence-knapp/the-names-2/

The Observer: https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/the-names-florence-knapp-review

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780593833902

The Times (UK): https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/the-names-florence-knapp-review-gwhfjmpgl

Kate & Frida by Kim Fay

 

Twenty-something Frida Rodriguez yearns to be a war correspondent and travels to Paris in 1991. She can’t find some of the books she wants to read there, so she writes to a Seattle bookstore requesting them.  Bookseller Kate Fair, an aspiring writer, mails Frida books and they begin corresponding. Both young women share their dreams and fears with each other as they nudge, cajole, and support one another in the coming three years. This wise epistolary novel celebrates food, friendship, and books while it acknowledges grief and suffering. 

As Kate deals with falling in love with a pessimistic fellow bookseller and writer and the health problems of her beloved grandfather, Frida’s prompts and encouragement buoy her. The books about war correspondents like Martha Gellhorn that Kate sends Frida encourage Frida to travel to Sarajevo where the war almost breaks her. 

“The fire sounded like wax paper crackling in my ears, and there were cracks like a whip. I thought it was the flames, but it was gunshots. Kate, the snipers were shooting at human beings trying to save books. I was a human being trying to save books.”

When Frida returns to Paris, she welcomes Lejla, a Bosnian Muslim woman, and Branka, a young child, from Sarajevo. Frida researches and cooks comforting foods from their homeland and begins “The Ramona Club” when they and another displaced woman stay after dinner to listen as Frida reads from the Ramona Quimby books Kate sends them. Kate and Frida help each other find their strengths. 

“The other night the universe burst into our correspondence to make a point. Lejla showed up with flowered curtains from the flea market, and I told her how her gifts make my room feel like a sanctuary, but I feel guilty enjoying it when there are children in her country who can’t even play outside without the risk of being shot. 

Get this. She got mad at me. She says that kind of thinking is self-indulgent. We owe it to people who are suffering to savor everything good and beautiful we have in our lives. Not that we should deny bad things or turn our backs on them. But if suffering is contagious then why isn’t joy? Which virus do we want to spread? We don’t help someone who’s miserable by being miserable - we only add to the world’s misery. Lejla knows her best friend’s life is in genuine danger every single second, and she does one beautiful thing for someone every day to show the bad guys they’re not winning. She lets herself feel joy so she can share joy. After all, you can’t share something you don’t have!” 

Summing it up: During this time when many feel miserable about the state of the world, this enthusiastic epistle reminds us of the power of friendship and joy. This offering by the author of the delightful Love & Saffron is just what readers need. The welcoming language enveloped me and made me feel as if I were friends with Kate and Frida as I shared their heartaches and triumphs. If you loved the classic 84, Charing Cross Road (and who didn’t), I think you’ll find similarities in this celebration of books, bookstores, food, and friendship.

Rating: Five Stars

Publication Date: March 11, 2025

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club. 

Author Website: https://www.kimfaybooks.com/ 

Read an Excerpt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762939/kate-and-frida-by-kim-fay/  

What Others Are Saying: 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kim-fay/kate-frida/ 

Parnassus Books: https://parnassusbooks.net/book/9780593852385 

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/booklist/booklist 

“Kim Fay’s second delightful epistolary novel after “Love & Saffron” pairs effervescent 20-something pen pals, Kate and Frida, whose letters travel from Seattle to Paris and beyond. Along with the desire to become writers, they share a passion for books and food. Their embrace of joy, especially in dark times, sends a message of hope.”   — The Christian Science Monitor

Women’s History Month: Mystery and Suspense Novels

Celebrate Women’s History Month with mystery and suspense novels by women writers. Each of these books will keep you on edge until the final page. These novels feature nuanced characters, complex plots, and clues to the reasons the characters behave as they do. It’s been a strange meteorological winter in South Suburban Chicago. In the last two weeks alone, we’ve had temperatures in the eighties, snow, heavy rains, high winds, and tornadoes felling trees on homes. When the weather forced me inside, I escaped the howling winds by falling into the suspense and intrigue of these mesmerizing stories. 

Guide Me Home: A Highway 59 Novel, Book 3, In this, the last in the stellar trilogy that began with the Edgar Award winner Bluebird, Bluebird highlighting conflicted Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, Darren drinks too much, quits his job, and has a fight with the woman he wants to marry. When his estranged mother shows up with a story about a Black girl, a member of an all-white college sorority, who his mother believes is missing, Darren must decide whether to trust his mother who he thinks is incapable of truth telling. While the plot is gripping, it’s Darren’s inner demons that make this special. Reading the first two in the series isn’t essential, but it will make this one richer. Attica Locke is one of America’s best fiction writers and all her novels are exceptional. GPR, BC (Publication date: 9.3.24)

The Lost House by Melissa Larsen is a chilling Nordic noir. After an accident that leaves her fighting to get off painkillers, Agnes travels to the small Icelandic town where her grandmother is believed to have been killed by Agnes’s beloved grandfather. The unsolved murder of the famous “Frozen Madonna” memorialized with her baby draws Agnes to meet with a true-crime podcast host with the hope of clearing her grandfather’s name. When she arrives, a college student has just disappeared in the snow and could be tied to the forty-year-old case. The eerie Icelandic winter landscape infuses this page-turner with atmosphere. CC (Publication date: 1.14.25)

Marcie R. Rendon is a 73-year-old, enrolled member of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Her Cash Blackbear series is set in the early 1970s along the Red River in South Dakota and Minnesota. Finding this series and Cash enlivened my winter.

Murder on the Red River: A Cash Blackbear Mystery, Book 1, by Marcie R. Rendon introduces Cash, a 19-year-old Ojibwe beet truck driver, drinker, and pool hustler who works unofficially with Sheriff Wheaton, who helped rescue her from foster care, in this 1970 tale. When a Native man is stabbed to death, Cash’s visions and ideas help solve the case. This debut offers insight into Native culture. While the abrupt ending surprised me, it made me want to read the next book in the series as soon as possible.  GPR/PP/SN, BC (2017)

Girl Gone Missing: A Cash Blackbear Mystery, Book 2, by Marcie R. Rendon, Sheriff Wheaton has arranged for Cash to enroll at Moorhead State College. School is easy for her and she can continue driving a beet truck at night while trying to figure out the disappearance of a girl in one of her classes. When her older brother, who she can barely remember, shows up with PTSD, she faces a new challenge. Cash, with her intuitive vision, resilience, and intelligence finds her way out of this new dilemma. She is fast becoming one of my favorite characters. Rendon brings authenticity to Cash’s story. GPR/PP/SN, BC (2019)

Sinister Graves: A Cash Blackbear Mystery, Book 3 by Marcie R. Rendon, Cash investigates the death of a Native woman in the flooding of the Red River Valley. Finding a torn piece of a hymn written in English and Ojibwe, Cash looks for clues at a rural, “speaking-in-tongues” church where two small graves lie in the cemetery. Cash connects with the Pastor’s wife and a Native woman dies after giving birth and there’s no sign of her child. Cash’s trauma from foster care and her new vulnerability with a kind caring man make a stellar tale. GPR/PP/SN, BC (2022)

Broken Fields: A Cash Blackbear Mystery: Book 4 by Marcie R. Rendon, Cash is an emotional wreck. She’s drinking too much as the emotional effects of her childhood in foster care and a recent shooting catch up with her. Her discovery of a dead man and a young Native child hiding in a tenant farmhouse leads her into new danger. Rendon compellingly illustrates racism toward Natives via a wealthy farm wife and others. Cash and Wheaton feel like family. I adore them. GPR/PP/SN, BC (Publication date: 3.4.25)

Coming out today is Mrs. Oliver’s Twist: A Quinn McFarland Mystery, Quinn returns from her honeymoon to her job in her family’s funeral home and police ask her to identify the body of her former teacher Mrs. Oliver, but the body isn’t her teacher’s. Soon Quinn gets trapped in Mrs. Oliver’s histrionics and possible criminal connections as Quinn’s husband’s concerns for her safety build. After another body connected to Mrs. Oliver shows up, tension mounts. Clever twists make this book impossible to put down. The second in this series stands alone. CC/GPR

Coming out on Tuesday, April 1 is Heartwood by Amity Gaige, a suspense-filled, literary page-turner that begins when hiker Valerie disappears just 200 miles short of her destination on the Appalachian Trail deep in the woods of Maine. As the novel follows Valerie’s struggles, it picks up the story of Beverly, the trailblazing Maine State Game Warden heading up the search-and-rescue effort, and weaves in the insights of Lena, a wheelchair-bound Connecticut retirement community resident. This novel, like Gaige’s engaging Sea Wife, explores marriage and parental relationships. As Valerie jots down her thoughts while fighting to survive, Gaige shows the healing power of nature and community. The characters’s kindness, strength, and resilience make this a rich and compelling read. GPR/SF/SN, BC

 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a sumptuous symphony of images, a glittering, slim volume of spectacularly gorgeous sentences on just about every one of its 144 pages. Six astronauts, four men and two women, orbit 250 miles above the earth in a single, 24-hour day during which they experience sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Two of the men are Russian cosmonauts assigned to the toilet marked “Russian Cosmonauts Only.” Nell, the English woman, Chie, the Japanese woman, Shaun, the American, and Pietro, the Italian, frequent the toilet labeled “American, European, and Japanese Astronauts Only” while they look out on an earth with no visible borders, “a rolling invisible globe which knows no possibility of separation.” “The Milky Way is a smoking trail of gunpowder shot through a satin sky.”

That there is only a slight plot involving their assigned duties matters little as glimpses of each astronaut contemplating the beauty below them and wondering about the lives they’ve left behind on earth affords a brilliant view of grief, art, faith, kindness, and more than anything: gratitude for the creation they see. 

As the astronauts describe their view, we readers take in the images through their eyes: the nightly light shows, a developing typhoon, “a mass of moon glow, peeling backward as they forge toward its edgeless edge,” and every dawn a “blade of light cracks open and the sun explodes from it.”

When I started reading Orbital, I found myself so enamored with the poetic images I yearned to hear them spoken aloud. We were experiencing a week of below zero temperatures so I listened as my six new acquaintances circumnavigated this planet while I walked my treadmill and found myself glancing at the sky outside my window with a new appreciation. When the novel concluded, I picked up my iPad and read many of the sentences I’d recently heard with increasing awareness. That this won the 2024 Booker Prize wasn’t surprising.

“The earth is the answer to every question. The earth is the face of an exulted lover; they watch it sleep and wake and become lost in its habits. The earth is a mother waiting for her children to return, full of stories and rapture and longing. Their bones a little less dense, their limbs a little thinner. Eyes filled with sights that are difficult to tell.” 

As Orbital wends toward its conclusion, the astronauts remind us: “That the ride of your life will pass in an eyeblink, just as life does to the aging brain whose slowing makes everything appear to move faster.” Thank you, Samantha Harvey.

Summing it Up: Read Orbital to immerse yourself in one of the most beautiful books you’ll ever experience. Listen to it if you can. (It’s available in audio from many libraries via Hoopla.) If you buy the physical book, you’re sure to highlight numerous sentences in this contemplative wonder.

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: December 6, 2023

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Road Food, Super Nutrition, Sweet Bean Paste, Tapas, Book Club

Author Website: https://www.samanthaharvey.co.uk/ 

Reading Group Guide: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-orbital-by-samantha-harvey 

What Others Are Saying: 

 Chicago Review of Books: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2023/12/05/around-the-world-in-90-minutes-samantha-harveys-orbital/ 

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/16/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-review-the-astronauts-view 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/samantha-harvey/orbital/

The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/books/review/orbital-samantha-harvey.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare 

The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/orbital-samantha-harvey-book-review 

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780802161543 

The Sunday Times (U.K.): https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-review-everyday-life-in-a-space-lab-50mqk0wbw 

“One of the most beautiful and poignant novels I have read this year. It seems wholly necessary that a novel about the fragility and glory of our mutual and natural habitat, the Earth, is not even set on it.”  — The Scotsman

A Forty Year Kiss by Nickolas Butler

 

A Forty Year Kiss is a mug of hot chocolate on a cold winter day. Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years after his divorce from Vivian hoping to rekindle their love after inheriting a farm he plans to fix up. Vivian never left the town where they’d lived. She remarried, cared for her husband until he died, and had a daughter she now lives with while babysitting her granddaughters. She also has a secret. Charlie drinks too much, but when he’s with Vivian he yearns to quit. This is an old-fashioned, Kent Haruf-style, upper Midwest love story about good people trying to do the right thing. 

Butler is masterful in the art of portraying older characters without stereotyping them. Charlie and Vivian are in their sixties and Butler shows them as complete beings not out-of-touch, old fogies. Fans of Lyle and Peg Hovde, the wonderful couple in Butler’s magnificent Little Faith will find the same type of normal Midwestern characters simply trying to do the right thing and live their lives with honor in Charlie and Vivian.

Charlie found Vivian on Facebook. He signed up just to find her. They’d messaged back and forth and talked on the phone a few times. Now, here he was sitting in the Tomahawk Room on Bridge Street in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin waiting for her to walk through the door. 

She walked in. “He was just standing there like a boy. Like a boy grinning on his birthday, or Christmas morning. And now she focused on the images of only a few moments ago. The man waving. She realized that it must have been him. She must have seen him waving, and then standing up from his stool and then sitting back down. Then awkwardly rushing to the door. And now here they were. Standing within inches of one another. As close as they had been in forty years, all of this she processed very quickly, and yet, she still could not believe it. That it was happening. That he was here, standing in front of her, smiling expectantly. He looked extremely happy to see her, his cheeks red with what looked like joy.”

They greeted each other, ordered wine, and talked for a while.

“Now, he turned to her, their knees practically touching, a faint electricity there, or magnetism, between them, and he said, Vivian, listen to me—I’m sorry if I wasted those years of your life. I’ve been thinking a lot about who I was back then and the mistakes I made. But I loved you very much and I’m sorry I was a bad husband.

She stared at him, at this new Charlie. . .”

Thus begins a tale of imperfect people trying to find happiness. What more could you want in a novel? 

Summing it Up: Read A Forty Year Kiss to enjoy a novel that’s as much an ode to the Midwest as it is a celebration of second-chance love and becoming the person you were meant to be. Nickolas Butler is unusual in that he treats his characters fairly. He shows them completely without making excuses for their behaviors or trying to portray them as more than they’re capable of being. That makes them real which makes his novels feel a part of you.

Caveat: I met Nickolas Butler when his first novel debuted and reconnected with him when he participated in the Harbor Springs Festival of the Book and again when he stayed as a guest at the Good Hart Artist Residency while finishing the final draft of a previous book. He’s one of the good guys and his writing exemplifies that.

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: February 4, 2024

Categories: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club

Author Website: https://nickolasbutler.com/ 

Author Interview: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2025/02/04/a-forty-year-kiss/ 

What Others are Saying:

Book Reporter: https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/a-forty-year-kiss/about 

“This charming and empathetic portrayal of the Midwest and its denizens explores late-in-life romance, the pangs of regret, and the possibility of renewal no matter how much time has passed.” —Booklist

“The novel is beautiful and full of complex characters. It is a love story, not only between Charlie and Vivian but also between the novel and the Midwest, as the characters journey between Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, and Spooner, WI, along with Minneapolis and Chicago. Fans of Butler and of romance will be delighted with this novel.” —Library Journal

“A big-hearted, comforting novel about second chances—at love, at recovery, at forgiveness and redemption. Butler treats all his characters with dignity and affection. When we die, we’d all be lucky to come back as a character in a Nickolas Butler novel.” —Ash Davidson, author of Damnation Spring

“Life-affirming and straight up beautiful. Will stoke the good fire in your chest, I absolutely loved it. A must-read.” Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook

“Thank you, Nickolas Butler, for writing a love story that feels so powerfully real, a story that captures the hope, grace, and joy of new love—but also the mistakes, scar tissue, and regret of past love. It’s a wonder to behold, a novel. Capable of such breadth. This is the kind of book that makes me a better human.” —Nathan Hill, author of The Nix and Wellness