I like a lot of historical novels but for a lot of them I have a similar objection: The narrator or protagonist has anachronistically modern views. This, of course, makes it easier to identify with and easier to enjoy, but it’s sort of a cop-out. For example, the otherwise excellent Imogen Robertson runs into this problem with her protagonists, Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther. They manage it because she’s a widow used to running her own household and he’s an eccentric, and the minor characters react with appropriate alarm at their breaches of decorum. But the people we empathize with most are people who think a lot like we do today.

M. J. Carter avoids this trap in The Strangler Vine with her narrator, William Avery, a young officer with the British East India Company in 1837. Avery truly believes he’s doing good work bringing order and Christ to the “Hindoos” and “Mohammedans” in Calcutta. He’s the youngest son of provincial gentry, brought up to be dismissive of the poor and awed by the aristocracy, and he follows through on it. Shown the worst of colonialism, he cannot believe that the system is rotten, but blames a handful of bad actors. Independence isn’t even a dream or a rumor: it’s completely inconceivable.

At first, his arrogance and confidence in his innate British superiority makes it harder to like Avery, but it also makes his portrayal more lifelike. On page 1 of The Strangler Vine, he’s a naïve young man trapped in his assumptions, but he grows and learns with realistic slowness that many of his assumptions are false. As he does so he takes shape as a genuinely interesting person. His tutor in this endeavor is an outcast former Company man, Jeremiah Blake, who gets roped into work as a “Special Inquiry Agent” from time to time.

Because Blake speaks the local languages, understands and sympathizes with the grievances of the natives, and is keenly aware of the downside of the Empire, the Company men don’t trust him. But for the same reasons, they need him. He and Avery are sent off on a quest to find a missing poet of significant political importance, meanwhile getting involved in the courts of semi-independent Indian states and persistent bands of dacoits… or are they sinister cultists?

The tension between Avery’s blind belief in the glories of Empire as he’s been raised to understand them and the reality he sees with Blake will take a lifetime to resolve, or at least several excellent novels. Midway through The Infidel Stain – several years later, London, radical Chartists demanding suffrage for all men – Avery is somewhat wiser. But he still hesitates when Blake hands him some unwashed second-hand clothing before taking him into a lower-class pub. “I’ll look like a laborer!” he objects. Then he catches himself: that’s the point, of course, if you’re going to be chatting up someone from a militant labor movement. It’s a tiny moment, but a brilliant one.

The Strangler Vine wasn’t a blockbuster sales hit when it came out in hardcover, but it got good critical buzz: lots of favorable reviews, the longlist on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, a Washington Post Notable Book and an Edgar Award finalist. It’s now available in paper, and I’m willing to bet that plenty of people who read it this month will be more than willing to pick up The Infidel Stain in hardcover when it arrives on March 29^th.

The exonerated suspect in a notorious kidnapping case is suddenly dead. Journalists and police descend upon Joanie, his widow, to try to get her to share the real story behind what went on when 2-year-old Bella disappeared.

Fiona Barton’s The Widow is hard enough to put down that I missed my stop while reading it on the train. The unreliable narrators and creepy sex crimes are sure to earn it recommendations to anyone who liked The Girl on The Train, although it’s certainly not one of those “me too” novels snapped up to try and ride on its coattails.

The psychologically damaged Joanie is captivating as she slowly reveals her escape from her manipulative husband, but we particularly liked the the portrait of the tabloid journalist, who truly loves her subjects, even as she’s monetizing their tawdry stories. Barton’s experience in journalism is evident in her feel for human interactions and the slow build and missed directions of an investigation. I imagine a newspaper editor would fault her for burying the lede, but the fact that she saves the truly earth-shattering details for the end works to great effect in her novel.

One of the first books I read this year was Helen Simonson’s forthcoming The Summer Before the War. Simonson wrote the extremely popular novel Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand which went on to spend weeks on the bestseller lists and ended up on many of the best books of the year list. I recall from my days at the bookstore it selling week after week and people urging me to read it. I just never got to it. I finished and while thinking about the book, checked its page on Goodreads. Some readers really seem disappointed, though now there are a lot more 5 star reviews on there. I’m always curious how a second novel from a favorite author will be received and am looking forward to reading the reviews when it arrives in March.

Set in the town of Rye in Essex, England right before the outbreak of WWI, Simonson focuses on the social mores and ideas on gender and class. After losing her beloved father who raised her to be a well-read and intelligent young woman, Beatrice Nash arrives to tutor 3 young boys in Latin before starting as a Latin instructor at the local school in the Fall. Immediately we learn that her hiring was controversial and the idea to do so was led by headstrong Agatha Kent who’s married to John, a senior official in the military. The  childless couple dote on their nephews Hugh Grange, finishing up medical school, and Daniel Bookham, a handsome poet about to start a literary journal.

I was quickly taken up with the inner workings of the town as nepotism threatens Beatrice’s job and other travails. The many pages flew by and the story inevitably takes a darker turn when the war begins and after Germany invades Belgium. It truly speaks well of a writer who can craft such memorable characters, even ones you might not like right off the bat but yet whose lives you worry about and you just hope they survive the horrors of trench warfare.

At the end, I loved reading it and was sorry to get to the end. Will I run and read Major Pettigrew? It’s on my list but I’m still savoring these characters for now.

As we all know, John Banville is a masterful writer. And as Benjamin Black, he assumes the mantle of another masterful writer.  His latest noirish mystery is Even the Dead, which brings us Dublin pathologist Dr. Quirke and his foolhardy investigations into corruption among the holy and powerful in postwar Ireland.

In a slight deviation from the standard noir format, Quirke’s hard drinking isn’t romanticized at all. It’s catching up with him. That, and the severe beating from a previous novel, have left him with cognitive problems described as “absence seizures.”

The tale begins with Quirke on medical leave after “taking the cure” in hospital. He’s back in Dublin and mostly abstaining… meaning abstaining from liquor. Beer and wine don’t count, apparently. But his former assistant has a quick question for him about a suspicious death, and we’re back to the game again. The victim’s father is a controversial political figure… is this a clue or a coincidence?

This is everything I’d hoped it would be: excellent writing, gripping thrills, plus enough thoughtful insights into culture and society that I don’t feel that it’s literary junk food.

I read White Collar Girl for work, frankly not expecting to like it so much. It truly speaks to the difficulties women faced trying to break into the male dominated work force, in particular here Chicago newspapers. Jordan Walsh comes from a family of reporters and writers. Her mother is an acclaimed poet, her father a nationally recognized reporter now retired, and her brother, now dead from a hit and run, was an up and coming reporter. Jordan longs to break into the ranks of the news desk, but gets relegated to the society pages, covering weddings and what visiting celebrities wore. Even with her family connections, she struggles to be taken seriously. That doesn’t stop her from trying and when she gets a big break finding an inside source in Mayor Daley’s office, she finally gets some confidential information to write serious articles.

The author does a great job with the complexities of how breaking cultural rules, even if the rules are wrong, can often lead to isolation and disagreement. I found Jordan’s journey of self-discovery compelling and believable. Jordan struggled  not with just the men, but with some of the women in her life , as they don’t understand why she doesn’t just marry and settle down. Her focus on her career loses her a few male relationships, and I was particularly happy that in the end, the focus is still on Jordan’s blossoming career. I highly recommend this very compelling novel–especially because it has such a wonderful jacket!

Do you like to cry? Have you been feeling too good about your life? Well, do I have the book for you! Seriously though, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara will stick with you for a long time. It’s a massive, dark, and elegant novel that follows a four men who meet in a expensive college. Haitain artist J.B. spoiled by his family, mixed-race Malcolm on his way to being an architect, kind-hearted actor Willem, and beautiful Jude, a brilliant lawyer who is also a cutter. But as you get lulled into reading about their 20s and 30s, the book’s focus shifts to Jude, and the many horrible things that happened to him during his childhood  and who has kept all of it buried as deep as he can. Yanagihara reveals it all very slowly, nor does she do it gratuitously. Jude’s suffering feels real and it’s the love of those he lets in as close as he can that keeps him alive.

I struggled to write about A Little Life. It’s like I’m reporting on my friends. I suffered with them, I wept with them, and I felt the glimpses of happiness.

I just finished reading Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, a book about his work with the Equal Justice Initiative, which works to overturn wrongful convictions. And it is both the most important book I have read in ages. It made me cry more than anything I’ve read in months. And it was the most expensive, in that it made me immediately pull out my wallet and make a substantial donation to EJI.

Well, not quite immediately. First I checked Charity Navigator, which gives it perfect scores on accountability and transparency.

Then I gave them some money.

You should too.