Vintage
Graham Swift’s elegant, dreamy Mothering Sunday (Vintage, 177 pp., $15), set primarily on one day in 1924, begins almost like a fairy tale: “Once upon a time, before the boys were killed and when there were more horses than cars…”
It’s a warm March day in the English countryside, and the windows are flung open in the room where 22-year-old Jane Fairchild is having her last tryst with her secret lover, Paul. Jane is a maid at a well-to-do country house; Paul is the heir to a neighboring estate and soon to be married to a suitable mate.
They do not rush – until he must, late for lunch with his betrothed and her family. Jane lingers, naked, wandering the house she will never again see.
And then the day takes a very unexpected turn.
Now we hear Jane, in her 90s, a writer with a long and successful career, looking back, always privately, on that day that changed her forever.
Swift’s beautiful, intimate novel reads like a literary tone poem, a small gem of great accomplishment.
Back Bay
As Close to Us as Breathing
Elizabeth Poliner
Back Bay, 354 pp., $15.99
Elizabeth Poliner’s “As Close to Us as Breathing” begins with a punch to the gut: “The summer of 1948 my brother Davy was killed in an accident with a man who would have given his own life rather than have it happen.”
The novel’s narrator is Molly, Davy’s older sister, who was 12 when Davy died. Molly’s mother, Ada, her aunts Vivie and Bec, and their children – and the husbands on weekends – spend summers at a cottage on the Connecticut shore in an area known as Bagel Beach. In an era when Jews aren’t welcome everywhere, their community provides “a kind of segregated ethnic tribalism that for us was part necessity, part comfort.”
Skipping back and forth in time, Molly weaves the story of a close-knit family dealing with tragedy. Together but distant, their lives are forever tinged by guilt, blame and anguish.
Poliner’s hazy, nostalgic portrait of a vanished time and place, of a family sharing simple joys in the days before Davy’s death, of children basking in the glorious freedom of summer, offers a bittersweet foil to her poignant examination of grief.
Penguin
Darling, I Love You
Daniel Ladinsky
Penguin, 111 pp., $17
Amid the current swirl of angry words, “Darling, I Love You: Poems from the Hearts of Our Glorious Mutts and All Our Animal Friends” is balm for the soul.
Poet Daniel Ladinsky – perhaps best known for his interpretations of the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz – composed this collection of haiku-like poems that celebrate our bonds with those “who cannot speak.” They are paired with Patrick McDonnell’s delightful illustrations that so beautifully and whimsically capture the essence of joy. (He is the creator of the comic strip MUTTS.)
The title and its eponymous poem come from a line in Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” here the topic of conversation between a dog and a cat. This simple, exuberant declaration sets the tone for the entire book, an extended love letter – not just to our own furry friends, but to all living things. Ladinsky’s deeply spiritual sense is evident in his expressions of awe and reverence, his “feeling the soul of every creature against my heart.”
As McDonnell says in his introduction, “Let these poems curl up in your lap and soothe your heart.”
Anchor
Flight of Dreams
Ariel Lawhon
Anchor, 367 pp., $16.95
On May 3, 1937, in Frankfurt, Germany, 97 people boarded the Hindenburg, the world’s largest airship and a point of pride for the rising leader, Adolf Hitler. Three days later, the ship burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey, and within a little over 30 seconds, was completely destroyed. Amazingly, 62 people survived. The cause of the explosion was never determined.
This mysterious and tragic event is the basis for Ariel Lawhon’s fast-paced novel “Flight of Dreams.” Based on what little is known of the disaster, she imagines a story of danger and intrigue, using the names and characters of several real people who were on the ship: a stewardess with a desperate secret, the navigator who loves her, a teenage cabin boy determined to rise up through the ranks, a journalist blacklisted by Hitler and a shady American businessman with an ax to grind.
We know the terrible ending, but Lawhon’s concoction of lies, agendas, betrayals and dreams makes for an exciting, heart-pounding read.
Marchetti is a critic in Cleveland Heights.
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