The Rabbit's Paw Book Reviews

  A novel that is both historical fiction and a mystery is very appealing, indeed. I enjoyed experiencing a bit of India as it was in 1975,  through Danny Jacob’s eyes. He’s a young journalist, attempting to cover the news from India at a critical time for its democracy, which lends this story some relevance to our own times. The story is written in a simple, straight forward way that seems most appropriate for a journalist.  Since this is a mystery,  I will avoid any big reveals. Suffice it to say, Danny inadvertently puts himself in a couple or three dicey situations, depending on how one goes about counting. He’s got his job, social contacts, and a romantic entanglement. It turns out, all of them involve risks. Danny is definitely living dangerously.  Danny Jacobs is an extremely likable character, who has previously reported from Vietnam. That is, he is no stranger to danger or getting by in foreign lands. For that reason, I did find his naivete about a coup...

  Our Country Friends is impressively rich with details and backstory, the kind of fascinating intricacy that I relish. Also, it’s a pandemic story, one in which a few old friends hunker down together at one friend’s country estate to catch up with each other while in lockdown.  Since this is a Gary Shteyngart novel, I’d expected a comedy, but I feel that this story is mostly a tragedy. When I did chuckle, I did so heartily, though, because groundhogs are always funny. That’s not to make anyone think of groundhog’s day–it’s never the same old same old with this cast.  It’s extremely important that these friends are not all alone; the landowner, Sasha, has invited a man we know only as The (famous) Actor. Therefore, this out of the way place gets some unwanted attention on social media, along with the ominous presence of an outsider.  Sasha and his wife Masha, their young daughter Nat, and friends Vinod, Karen, Dee, and Ed are together, intensely, for about six months...

  As A Visit to the Goon Squad illustrated, our culture changes constantly, and it doesn’t take long for anyone to look around and think–how did we get here?  Computers in our pockets are now a given. Social media has made it possible to communicate with millions of people, all at once, in seconds. We can now look up any information that comes to mind–except our own memories. But wait, what if a technology existed that allowed us to transfer all the memories in our minds to a device that showed us our lives, like a movie? The price? We’d have to share our memories to a collective. One more invasion of privacy.  Bix Bouton, of Mandala fame, has a new idea: Own Your Unconscious ™ .  Many people will find this fascinating, then tempting. . Eventually, most people will happily accept this and their memories will become part of the collective.  Jennifer Egan creates a world in which we the people have been so minutely studied that there are algorithms that can pred...

A Tiny Upward Shove is a stunning debut novel by Melissa Chadburn, a rich tapestry that weaves together the stories of innocent lives and dreams torn apart, the disjointed threads of the child welfare system, and real life crime, along with some colorful Filipino folklore and tradition.  The story is told by an aswang, a shape-shifter being well-known in Filipino folklore, who is presently inhabiting the body of Marina Salles, an eighteen-year old young woman who has just been murdered by a pig farmer named Robert "Willy" Pickton. (He is a real person). The aswang gives us a flashback story into the life Marina started with, and how her life took such a devastating turn. During her early childhood, Marina Salles lived with her mother, Mutya, and her loving Lola, or grandmother. Marina is very close to her Lola, and the two have a strong bond, but when Mutya decides to follow a man to another county in California, she takes Marina with her. It is obvious, quickly, that Mutya ...

  Hammer , by Joe Mungo Reed, is a nicely written novel that is billed as a thriller, but reads more like a drama. It takes place mostly in London in the years 2013-14.  The first character we meet is Martin, an ambitious youngish man working at a London auction house. His backstory is meticulously drawn, including his eccentric parents and best friend James. Later, during an important auction, Martin reconnects with Marina, an old friend, who is now married to Oleg, a Russian oligarch.  This connection with a rich oligarch is an exciting development in Martin's career, but while he is dazzled with dealing with Oleg, he is also drawn into an affair with Marina.    Oleg's story is partially shrouded in mystery--we know that many people in his native country consider him to be a crook, that he obviously took advantage of difficult, chaotic times in Russia to make his fortune. After Oleg's mother dies and he goes to visit a cousin still living in his hometown,...

  Mecca is a novel that will stay with me for quite some time. Not only is the writing beautiful, but I got attached to the characters. Several stories come together to create this wonderful work by Susan Straight, and they show a diversity that is hidden from the eye and describe some of the presumptions and bigotry present in our society. The title of this book is apt, since Mecca is both an actual place in California, and a mecca for some, for different reasons. Each character has an intricate, well-told story, some of them connected to each other in ways the characters themselves are often not aware. This makes these life stories, the types so seldom examined, all the more intriguing.  Straight is able to recreate the landscape for us, the beauty of the mountains and canyons, along with the wind, the dryness, and the heat. We are there to witness the struggles of people living in another California (without beaches and mansions), who are often caught between two worlds– th...

  This clever novel starts out masquerading as pure comedy, before morphing into a more serious drama about an unusually fractured family.  The narrator is Jake Barnes, who has his own particular origin story that the reader learns about in careful installments. Then, towards the end, Jake the writer looks upon what he has written, and the story becomes the story of the story of Charles Barnes, a metastory.  Let me back up, though. Charles Barnes has been married multiple times, tried on many lives, involving some hilarious get-rich-quick schemes. However, poor Chuck’s general direction, financially, is downward, owing to the funny, delusional choices he makes. At the age of sixty-eight, he has four children, with whom he has complicated relationships, owing to divorcing their mothers and finally settling down with a woman none of them like. Oh, I should mention that these wives have Dickensian last names. That’s a nice touch. The important, poignant thing about this stor...