Fall fiction

I got a little behind in my book reviews this fall, so here's a roundup of the fiction that I've read:

I really enjoyed The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder, about a teenager who's trying to solve the murder of the young woman who recently moved back into his neighborhood. Gifted with synesthesia, which causes him to see colors and other stimuli as colors, 13-year old Jasper doesn't have a clear recollection of the night that she died, and he has a suspicion that he's responsible. This book reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime, by Mark Haddon.

No God in Sight, by Altaf Tyrewala, is a collection of short vignettes about related characters in Bombay. Some of the chapters are only a few paragraphs, while others span 10 or more pages. Each character's story leads to the next, so a chapter about a young girl seeking an abortion leads to a chapter about the abortionist, which then leads to a chapter about the abortionist's father. Several dozen chapters later, the narrative circles back to the first character's boyfriend. It's funny and sad, painting a picture of all swaths of life in modern Bombay. I read this in one morning; it was impossible to put down.

We the Animals is a novella about the childhood of three young mixed-race boys in upstate New York. With a white mother and a Puerto Rican father, who married as teenagers, the unnamed narrator's childhood was filled with joy, poverty, and violence. Lyrical and poetic, this is an emotional journey into a young boy's psyche. I loved this book.

I was a little disappointed in the latest from Karin Slaughter. I was impressed with the last book that I read by her and I had high hopes for this one, but the plot and characters just weren't convincing to me. Andrea is the main character who is thrust into a dangerous adventure when her mother is revealed to be someone other than Andrea believed. It becomes clear to the reader (but not Andrea) that her mother is a fugitive from a long-ago crime, and there are people after her to make sure the secret is kept. Even through the non-stop action, it dragged on a little too long. I would take a pass at this one.

The Ninth Wife tells the story of a woman (Bess) who falls in love with a man she meets at her birthday party. When he asks her to marry him, he comes clean and tells her that he's been married eight times before. The rest of the book consists of her trying to come to terms with his past as she drives her grandparents across the country to their new retirement home. While the writing is good, I found the premise off-putting and the agonizing over what she should do was a little too dragged out. I also had little patience with his story, which is revealed in alternating chapters with the main character's. There are a lot of additional characters and stories woven into the book, from the grandparent's long-simmering anger, Bess' neighbor, who's mourning his partner, Bess' ex-boyfriend and his fiance, and how they're all interrelated with Bess' new boyfriend. Overall, this has good writing, but it's a little too long and drawn-out.

The Collini Case is an excellent mystery by Ferdinand von Schirach, a German author and lawyer. Caspar Leinen is a newly-minted lawyer and takes as his first case the defense of a man, Fabrizio Collini, who not only murdered a wealthy industrialist, but admitted such. As Collini refuses to explain why he murdered the man, Leinen is forced to investigate Collini's past to learn his motives. At under 200 pages, it is sparely written, but compelling.

The Grimm Legacy is a YA adventure set in New York. Elizabeth is happy to take a job at the New York Circulating Repository, which lends objects rather than books. As she advances through her training, she's eventually trusted with access to the Grimm Collection, which includes magical objects mentioned in Grimm's fairy tales. As she makes friends with her fellow co-workers, she learns that some objects have been stolen and used for nefarious purposes, and she gets drawn into an adventure trying to solve the mystery and get the magical objects back. Lots of fun!

Zom-B is the story of a zombie attack that starts in Ireland and moves to B's English town. B's father is racist and doesn't mind when the zombies are attacking the Irish or immigrants, but when they attack closer to home, it calls for action. B is caught up in a zombie attack at school, and barely escapes alive. B's own racist views are challenged throughout the book. This is the first of a twelve-volume series, and the resolution to B's questions will have to be revealed in a later book. With a flawed main character, it addresses contemporary issues such as racism along with zombie blood and gore.

Home after Dark is a graphic novel about a young boy who is abandoned first by his mother and then by his father, who leaves him with a neighbor. Told mostly through the illustrations, Home after Dark shows us the perils of adolescence without a loving family. Sad, yet ultimately hopeful.

I've long been a fan of Bill Amend's Foxtrot comic strip, and this collection from 2006 doesn't disappoint. I got this at the 2006 BookExpo America convention, and one of my favorite things about this is the personalized inscription by the author (see below).