3:31
According to the dust jacket, “During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, at the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. She was twenty-five. Forty years later after three marriages and five children Ann finds herself in her waning days.
Susan wrote, “She lay on her back staring up at the canopy. Her thoughts went round and round and it was like spinning staring up at the trees the way she used to when she was young. She could not focus or stop or hold onto a thought for very long. She watched things blur by and now and then a bright light like the sun flashed through the leaves. She saw the water lying in lozenge shapes in the marshes past Portland and a face like a mask with dark glasses on it. Where…she could not remember. It was either the bookstore or the auction house or doing errands for Mrs. Havemeyer or cataloguing for Mr. Stein” (14). My experience with the work of Minot gave me a feeling for what Ann was going through.
Gina writes, “Huda paced her backyard, trying to brush off her spat with her husband” […] “It was almost midnight when Huda gave up waiting for Abdul Amir to come home and crawl into bed. Above her head, the blades of the fan pushed warm air around the bedroom. She lay on her back and catalogued the noise of the night: the buzz of the fluorescent light in the foyer, the gritty wind scraping at the windows, listening for the dull snap of a lock or the tread of heavy boots on her driveway” […] “These days her husband’s black moods were worse than ever. Earlier that evening, when he arrived home from work, he’d been slumped in front of the television, still wearing his baggy pajama pants and singlet. // ‘I’m hungry,’ he’d grunted, eyes trained on the TV screen. ‘What’s for dinner?” (10). A typical family scene, but dangers abound right around the bend.
3:32
The story opens with an explosion of a passenger jet at 30,000 feet. The Prologue is by an unknown person, who disappears. Farrell begins with one of the main characters. He writes, “Charlie Radford was working late again and ignored the vibrating phone in his pocket which he knew was his wife, Wendy, texting him so he could keep flying the simulator. He needed to get this report exactly right, even if every additional minute made his wife worry and fret. Radford flew the simulated plane around again, this time lowering a notch of flaps as he came abeam the end of the simulated runway. He cut the throttle, and the propellor slowed as he banked the port wing toward a narrow grass field, carved from a stand of Tennessee pine and hemlock” (27).
3:33
Natalie Harper is a businesswoman, who has been awarded a substantial bonus for landing an important client. She is not liked by her co-workers. When the company throws a party in her honor, Natalie is disappointed her mother did not come to the event. Then, she learns that her mother and her fiancé were killed in a plane crash. Suddenly, Natalie has only her grandfather and a close friend to support her.
Wiggs writes, “The front door was hung with a Closed sign and a printed announcement of the memorial.
A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF BLYTHE HARPER. // Why was it called that when the last thing a grieving daughter wanted was a celebration? // […] The Lost and Found Book Shop had been a fixture on Perdita Street for as long as Natalie had been alive. […] The sudden demise of its owner had inspired a huge, loving, and immensely sad reaction. // (32-33)
3:31
Crossings is a rather peculiar story involving three separate characters, several mysterious murders including horrific mutilations, and attempts at escaping the Nazis. Landragin begins with a preface, “I didn’t write this book. I stole it. // Several summers ago, I received a call in my workshop on Rue des Bernardins from the noted bibliophile and book collector Beattie Ellingham. She wished to have me bind a loose-leaf manuscript that she described as the pride of her collection. There were no constraints of time or money, she said, but there was a condition, to which I agreed: I was not to read its contents. The manuscript was, in her estimation, priceless and I was to bind it accordingly. We agreed that it would be bound in what is called the COSWAY style, in doublure, framed with pearls, using material she would provide. // I’d known Beattie Ellingham all my life. She was one of the Philadelphia Ellinghams” (xi).