My Week In Books: Examinations of Love - For Players, Ladies of the Night and Families

Over the last week (and a half), I’d read three books. Although unrelated, they do carry the common theme of love. In one, the author examines the love life of young man and his propensity for churning through women at a rapid rate. In the next, there is a mystery surrounding a “lady of the night” and her interactions with men, both those rooted in business and rooted in love. The final one focuses on a family unit and how the love changes when challenged by a third party and past mistakes.I added The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman to my reading list long ago, attracted by the bright cover as well as the ringing endorsements of reviews. When I finished the book, I was pleased just be finished. To be able to set it aside and not look back. (This post aside.) When I logged the book into Goodreads, my quickly typed assessment summed up all of my feelings in one sentence. “This book is sort of like every bad stereotype I have about upperclass, east coast, Ivy League school attending, supposed liberals rolled into one character.” I have nothing further I can add.

The dauntingly thick The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton turned out to be a lovely palate cleanser. The 800-page novel spans a relatively short period of time but is told from the perspective of many different characters, all of whom play a part in a mysterious series of event taking place in a small town in New Zealand during the gold rush. Catton does a brilliant job of letting the style of the narrator determine the length of each portion of the novel. This means that the first half, or so, of the book is made up of very long descriptions as different men try to present themselves in the most favorable light to their peers. After the groundwork of the case is laid out, the narrator changes to an objective third-person perspective and suddenly the chapters shorten and the storyline quickens.

I’m looking forward to passing this novel on to my father and hearing his take. He enjoys historical fiction, which I think is a good but not entirely accurate description of The Luminaries. It’s more like a great mystery novel that builds on the style of great historical adventures.

Never Mind Miss Fox: A Novel by Olivia Glazebrook is a book I won as a Goodreads First Read. The central characters are Clive, his wife Martha and their daughter Eliza, as well as a family friend, Eliot. No character really comes out looking altogether good, with the exception of Eliza, whose behavior fitting of a child. The others might behave as children, but since they are not… it’s harder to excuse.