The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty Nat'l Book Award Finalist for Fiction

I've a hunch the mystical, magical and beguiling debut novel by Tess Gunty may garner this year's National Book Award for Fiction.  Perplexingly, this is a novel that's difficult to pinpoint.  It's a nouveau oeuvre for novels.  Rabbits are mentioned in multiplying numbers like rabbits tend to do, throughout this including its title referring to the run-down apartment complex in Vaca-Vaca Indiana.  The Rabbit Hutch is where a motley mix of eccentric residents reside.  Our heroine, Bernadine, lives with three male roommates, all having recently aged out of the foster system.  Joan, an obit writer inhabits the apartment just below the four.  Joan hears them horsing around, "When you share the building with so many other people, people parked so closely together, between cheap walls that isolate not a single life from another." Bernadine is obsessed with mystics, and the paranormal.  The novel is enmeshed in a preternatural aura whose characters are loosely intertwined by gossamer strings.  The haunting opening lines draw one in as if falling through a surreal portal.  "On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body.  She is only eighteen years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen."  Does this portend Blandine's early demise or a supernatural ability acquired?  Macabre fascinations with death shrouds the novel in numerous ways. There's Blandine's fixation on ancient martyrs, Joan's s occupational obituary writing hazards, Moses murderous leanings towards Joan for her inept obit of his famous but neglectful mother, Moses' mother's selfie photo-op and exchange with Death,  and the rage to kill just below the surface that flares up in people given an incendiary spark.  Vaca-Vaca, once a prosperous industrial town has become desolate.  It's now on the precipice of a major housing redevelopment.  The foster family transitions the four foster teens experienced leave their histories a mystery.  Blandine's scholarship to the town's only elite, private high school make her an outcast and vulnerable to the advances of her drama teacher.  There's a tempest storm brewing in the background leading to an eerie, electrifying climax.  Father Tim chimes in with his wavering devotion to the Church.  "I want to meet someone whose suffering and talk with them as myself, not as some representative for a boss I've never met.  If the boss is worth his salt, and he saw the data, he'd be pretty disappointed with the way we've been running his business."  THE HUTCH pulls so many winning witticisms and unexpected twists out of its hat that I can't wait to read what's next up Tess Gunty's sleeve.  

GREAT CIRCLE-Early 20th Female Pilot 21st C Actress Both Interminable by Maggie Shipstead

GREAT CIRCLE is a story that revolves around two fierce, female protagonists.  We learn about the unorthodox life of Marian Graves, a pioneering pilot who flew airplanes during the mid 20th C and for the war effort during WWII and we delve deeper into Marian's life through the lens of iconic movie star, Hadley, famous for portraying the love interest on and off screen in a "Twilight" like series.  Hadley is cast to portray Marian in a major Hollywood biopic.  Author Maggie Shipstead is known for the romantic comedy "Seating Arrangements" and "Astonish Me" an inside look at the dark side of ballet.  In her third novel, GREAT CIRCLE, Shipstead expansive epic novel takes an ambitious jete into the extraordinary life of a woman brandishing her own way into the burgeoning field of aviation and the titillations of an actress whose face graces fashion and gossip rags alike.  Unfortunately, the novel takes a drastic nose drive into relentless melodrama for Marian and worse, tedium and incredulity for Hadley.  Hadley is given letters that belonged to Marian leading Hadley to uncover the mystery of Marian's disappearance in her attempt to circumnavigate around the Arctic and Antarctic.  Marian has a twin brother Jamie.  Their vicarious lives were almost cut short when as infants, the ship they sailing cross the Atlantic exploded.  Their father, the ship's captain, took the two with him into a lifeboat landing him in jail and his forlorn wife in Davey Jone's locker.  The twins were reared by their uncle who gave their free rein to fend for themselves in the backwoods of Montana.  Marian fell in love with flying as a young girl after she wrangled a ride from a female circus pilot.  Flying became an unflappable aspiration that Marian achieved through whatever means available.  This included bootleg flying and marrying against her wishes.  Shipstead has more gravitas with the 20th C than the 21st where a young starlet's dalliances appear vapid in lieu of women warrior pilots.  The doppelgänger storytelling is overburdened in its opposing fluidity.  Marian's ambitious feelings for her husband Barclay tethered the plot.  "She resented Barclay horribly, her gratitude to Barclay was bottomless.  She wishes she could vanish and never return, she couldn't bear leaving him."   I wanted more but the stories didn't soar.  "Circles are wondrous because they are endless.  Anything endless is wondrous.  But endlessness is torture, too."  I found the GREAT CIRCLE interminable.  

Love Marriage by Monica Ali-Aligning of Two Families All Too Familiar

Monica Ali's novel centers around a young engaged couple, Yasmin and Joe, both young physicians living in London.  It weaves the merging and diverging of families brought together by pending nuptials.  Yasmin is of Indian heritage and the daughter of Anisha and Shaokat, a doctor.  Joe is the son of Harriet, an upperclass, outspoken feminist and absent father.  Class, religion and family dysfunction are not the only hurdles Joe and Yasmin have to get over.  They also share things in common, their medical professions and family ties with which they're shackled..  Harriet has no boundaries where her son Joe is concerned.  Shaokat has groomed Yasmin to become a doctor leaving her without questioning whether this would be her chosen profession.  The novel gets off to a hilarious and cringeworthy start with the first meeting between the in-laws at the swanky home of Harriet.  Yasmin tries to convince her mother not to bring food to the chef prepared and servant served meal and Joe tries to rein in his mother's pretentious behaviors, both to no avail.  Ali's writing soars when she's drawing out the eccentricities of both mothers, Harriet and Anisha.  The smorgasbord of characters which swirl around our lovers have more spiciness making the betrothed bland in comparison.  Yasmin deals with the hospital's hierarchy of administrative bureaucrats, competent and conniving nurses and colorful patients.  Harriet's home is a revolving door of flavorful friends.  The subplots are numerous which spurn additional subplots.  Some manage to rise to the top of this melting, Joe's therapy for sex addiction, Yasmin's younger, unemployed brother and his pregnant girlfriend, Yasmin's affair with the lead medical doctor and patients in her ward.  These subplots bubble over, sizzling with messy sex and betrayal leaving sticky situations that need to soak before scrubbing.  "The shame was idiopathic. It had no discernible cause.  Nonetheless, there it was, the flush of emotion, the warm wet feeling like some kind of chronic internal incontinence."  The story strays with so many ingredients distilling the melting pot love story.  Still,  some of the piquant morsels are surprisingly tasty.   The best lines are flybys that come from characters that slip in and slither out quickly.  The conversations at a holiday party hosted by Harriet are razor sharp social commentary.  Patients in the dementia ward spout frothy witticisms.   Topical issues of religion, race, sexual abuse and prejudice are tackled with gravitas and humor.  Yasmin comes to the realization, "Guilt is the most useless of all the emotions.  The most pathetic. The most self-involved."  LOVE, MARRIAGE is easily digestible with something to appeal to everyone.  

The Love of My Life-Love Story Mystery Misses by Rosie Walsh

Leo and Emma appear to be the perfect couple.  They're the couple that are so great their friends find them annoying.  They couldn't possibly be keeping secrets from each other, or could they?   You guessed it.  Emma has been keeping secrets that might cause Leo to think she was someone other than his loving, faithful wife.  Leo is an obit writer. This is not a macabre occupation unless you're assigned to rewrite the obit of your TV celebrity marine biologist wife whose undergoing chemo.   Leo and Emma met when he interviewed her about her grandmother at the grand dame's funeral and the two became inseparable.   Emma had no qualms about proposing to Leo who was only too happy to accept.  Their precious daughter Ruby and their rescue dog John Keats round out their cheery, London household.  When things do get dreary, Emma takes herself to the sea cliffs to search for a rare crab specie and work through her dark doldrums.  Could this be too laissez faire an attitude for maintaining wedded bliss?  Should Leo leave her be to battle her own demons?  Is Emma above board in regards to her spending time alone or away from home with her longtime friend, Jill?  Will Leo's trust run out with Emma's flimsy alibis?  The narrations shift quickly from Leon, Emma and several others to move the secrets withheld plot along its speeding tracks until it crashes into shambles. The intrigue dips into the depths of postpartum depression. Sadly, this is where the story loses its hold on what was evolving into cunning, crosshair conundrums, downward into despair.  Emma tells Leo,  "when we experience more loss than is bearable, we hold onto everything as tightly as we can."  Leon tells Emma, "I tell you everything, and I always have, because if we aren't honest with each other, what's the point?"  I say, with all honesty, "The Love of My Life" is not worth your time of day.