Jerusalem Stands Alone

Jerusalem Stands Alone by Mahmoud Shukair, 180 pages.
Shukair, a 77 year-old playwright, novelist, and writer of all sorts, presents a series of interlocking vignettes following an extended family around the city of Jerusalem. Each view is about a page long and all of them are beautifully written. In many of the stories, the characters wander around the city, going about their lives, seeing the city as it is and as it was. The narrator says of his life in the city, "I am forty and now, you see, the war is forty-two. The city is more ancient than either of us , too many years to count. While members of the extended family focus on either their present circumstances or problems from their past, the narrator and one or two others see through the centuries sometimes, meeting soldiers armed with swords and lances, or donning armor themselves to defend the city they see. All of the characters must navigate the paranoia, the actual betrayals, and the hidden fears that are the results of a city frequently at war and always in physical danger.
Translated by Nicole Fares.

A Darkness More Than Night

A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly, 418 pages.
The seventh in the Harry Bosch series has the Los Angeles police detective arresting and then testifying against a Hollywood director. David Storey, the defendant, has been accused of killing a young woman and then moving her body and setting the scene to deflect attention from himself. While the trial is gearing up, former FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is called in to help with a separate murder investigation that seems to be zeroing in on Bosch as a suspect. Harry has to work to keep his case from falling apart as he also tries to find out the truth about this second murder. fast-paced and well constructed. The audio book was narrated by the excellent Len Cariou.

You Can Never Finda a Rickshaw When it Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day

You Can Never Finda a Rickshaw When it Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day by Mo Willems, 393 pages.
Mo Willems took a trip around the world in 1991 and he put together a collection of cartoons, one from each day, recording his journey. The drawings are less polished than a lot of his work, but that shouldn't be too surprising.
Mo was backpacking, traveling as cheaply as possible and drawing the people and places that he found interesting.

Transparence of the World

Transparence of the World by Jean Follain, translated from the French by W. S. Merwin, 131 pages.
Follain died at the age of 68 (or maybe 67; Merwin talks about his death, hit by a car in 1971, but he doesn't mention the month). Follain lived through both world wars, worked as a lawyer, and wrote poetry.
Many of the poems evoke a live lived simply, with work, food, love, and death all discussed and allowed to pass.
The poem "Domestic Life," speaks of
"vegetables that are scraped or peeled
to nourish beautiful girls" quickly followed by
"animals bled in the broad day
whose grating cry
is lost in the light."
Strange and moving poems. I feel like I should smile ruefully when I read them, and then say quietly to myself something like, "well, ain't that a kick in the head?" The poems leave you strangely melancholy, aware that it's all passing to quickly, too violently, and that it's happening that way for everyone you see.
As I was writing this I opened the book and went looking for that one sad poem, the one about the man who had died too young, but it turned out that this description fit almost all of them.

A child is born
in a vast landscape
half a century later
he is simply a dead soldier. . .

The House of Broken Angels

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea, 326 pages.
Big Angel, Miguel Angel de la Cruz, believes that he has come to the end of his life. After his mother's funeral, as he prepares for what he believes will be his final birthday, he looks back on his life and shares stories with his relatives. Along with his half-brother, Little Angel, he tries to unravel some of the sticky secrets of their shared histories in Mexico and in the US. The de la Cruz family has lived on both sides of the border for generations. There are a lot of secrets and a lot of burdens that have been carried too long. An interesting story that is very well told. Well worth the read.

The Mandela Pot

The Mandela Plot by Kenneth Bonert, 466 pages.
Bonert's novel (mostly) takes place in 1980's Johannesberg. Botha is still president, but De Klerk is on the horizon. Sanctions are in place but they don't intrude too far into the life of the protagonist, Martin Helger. Martin is around 14 when the book opens, 17 during the bulk of the story and in his 20s in the weirder ending chapters. Martin doesn't have many friends, and this seems like an almost standard, bittersweet story of an awkward young man trying to connect to other, albeit set in South Africa as apartheid begins melting down, but as the book takes some odd turns. Martin makes some choices as the book progresses that could endanger him and his family. His infatuation with an American student leads him to cross path with a member of the security forces, a man with reason to hate Martin's father. And a scene from early in the book is slowly revealed as the book progresses and shows Martin to be someone other than a misguided young man. The plot device used to deliver us to an unexpected end, and Martin's changing relationship with his brother seemed a little forced to me and changed my opinion of the book.

The Misfortune of Marion Palm

The Misfortune of Marion Palm by Emily Culliton, 282 pages.
This was, for me, that rare enjoyable book with no likable characters. Marion has left her husband Nathan behind as she tries to stay ahead of the audit that is certain to expose her embezzlement. As we hear from both of them as they narrate their stories, it's hard to feel sympathy for either. Nathan is a self-absorbed and entitled writer and Marion seems incapable of true feelings for others. Throughout the book, Culliton does an excellent job of keeping the book engaging and readable, and shows her characters (or allows her characters to show) their somewhat buried humanity.
The people from whom Marion has liberated the funds are almost less likable than Marion and Nathan. It's only Ginny and Jane, the daughters of the Palms, who worry the reader. How will these two survive with an uncaring and now absent mother and a father who struggles to notice them? Culliton gives us an interesting read without easy answers.

Who is Vera Kelly?

Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht, 266 pages.

We meet Vera when she has disappointed her mother. Vera has been kicked out of school, institutionalized, and disowned. We meet her again nine years later in Buenos Aires working for the US, evaluating opposition to Argentine leadership.
Knecht does a great job with the sense of time and place, convincing the reader (or at least a sometimes inattentive reader like myself) that this is 1966 Argentina.
Vera is an interesting character, too. She is alone in the world, seemingly always will be. While she is more comfortable with herself and her sexuality in Greenwich Village, she gives us the idea that she is always detached from others. The story moves along nicely, jumping back and forth between her younger years in New York and the turmoil in Argentina.
I listened to this through our Overdrive collection.
Narrated by Elisabeth Rodgers.

There There

There There by Tommy Orange, 290 pages.
Through the efforts of a lot of people the Big Oakland Powwow is coming. The characters in Orange's first novel, interrelated in a bunch of different ways, all have their own reasons for heading to A's stadium to participate in this event. Jacquie Red Feather and her younger sister, Viola Victoria Bear Shield, are at the nexus of the novel, and we follow their lives, and the lives of their friends and family, back and forward to see where they have been and where they are going.
Orvil Red Feather and his brothers Loother and Lony live with their grandmother's sister and learn about Native culture from Youtube videos. Tony Loneman struggles with the way people perceive his off-kilter features and the actions he takes. Blue and Edwin both have worked hard to get the Powwow off the ground and they both make unexpected connections there.
A really good book with a few minor flaws; for instance I don't think that 3D printed guns without metal parts are currently capable of semi-auto fire.The book flows along nicely, but the cast of characters in this engaging novel are the best part.

Temperance

Temperance by Cathy Malkasin, 240 pages.
Pa has convinced everyone that there is an invading enemy who will soon kill them all. He convinces everyone to build the fortress Blessedbowl and to isolate themselves inside. Minerva, one of the children closest to Pa, leads the inhabitants in the years after Blessedbowl is sealed off from the outside world. She builds upon Pa's lies in order to keep the life she has built with Lester from falling apart.
Interesting story and well-done black and white art.

Educated: A Memoir

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, 334 pages.
An absolutely riveting account of the author's live growing up in an isolated home on a mountain in Idaho. Westover's parent's are super-devout Mormons. Maybe theirs was moreof a sort of a family-only splinter group, since Westover's father seems to disagree with everyone about what it is, precisely, that God wants from his flock.

Westover is a compelling storyteller, taking the reader past the edge of comfort, as she recounts scenes of violence and tragedy she encountered in her family life. Early on, I found myself hoping that Westover was another James Frey, making up the horror out of whole-cloth, or at least exaggerating, but that seems not to be the case, and I was soon caught up in the story, believing it all, especially as family member started telling their own versions of the same stories.
A great read.