The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin

Published by Random House on January 5, 2021

The Art of Falling is a domestic drama mixed with an art drama. The domestic drama involves spouses who have been dishonest with each other, although the wife’s transgression involves a kept secret she arguably had no duty to reveal. Just as their strained marriage seems to be mending, their teenage daughter takes an interest in an older boy whose actions cause mild tension in the family dynamic. Like most domestic dramas, the family’s mundane issues are likely to be of more interest to the participants than to outsiders. Readers who are not fans of generic soap opera plots are likely to be among the outsiders who don’t care much about this family’s dysfunctions.

The art drama is more interesting. It involves a sculpture that (according to one theory) was made from a porous stone so that it would decay with time. Nessa McCormack is negotiating on behalf of a gallery to acquire the Chalk Sculpture from the family of its creator. Robert Locke has been dead for nearly twenty years, but Nessa has done her due diligence by researching his life and art, including interviews with Locke’s daughter, Loretta. The sculpture is believed to be of Locke’s pregnant wife, modeled on a photo of her taken sixteen years before the sculpture was created. Locke’s wife is still alive, but Loretta keeps her sheltered from the world, ostensibly because of her delicate health.

Nessa is surprised when a woman who didn’t come up in her research suddenly claims to have helped with the Chalk Sculpture’s creation. The woman, Melanie Doerr, would like some credit for the role she played. She is both persistent and annoying as she presses her claims. Loretta tells Nessa that she knows nothing about Melanie, but as events unfold, the reader will suspect that Melanie, while possibly daft, might be telling some version of the truth and that Loretta might be shading it, if not telling outright lies.

Most of the characters in The Art of Falling have been untruthful at some point. Sorting out the lies from the truth is a challenge. Did Melanie create the Chalk Sculpture, perhaps while sleeping with Locke? Did Stuart Harkin have just one affair (as he told Nessa, referring to his affair with her) or multiple affairs, as he apparently confessed to his wife Amy. Or was Amy lying when she recorded those affairs in the diary that nobody knew she kept?

Amy's son Luke reads the diary and suspects that Nessa was the cause of his mother’s suicide, fueling the soap operatic nature of the plot. Nessa frets that Luke will reveal the truth to her daughter Jessica when she isn’t fretting that Jessica will sleep with Luke. The affair occurred before Nessa’s marriage to her husband Philip, but her own transgression doesn’t deter her from judging Philip for having his own affair with Cora Wilson (whose daughter Mandy happens to be Jessica’s best friend). That affair isn’t surprising because it is the duty of a husband in a domestic drama to have an affair so he can complain that his wife never lets him forget what a rogue he is.

The Art of Falling is the kind of novel in which characters make a mess of their lives, burst into tears, and spend the rest of the book wallowing in their self-inflicted misery. Stories of that nature tend to overwhelm the reader with melodrama. While The Art of Falling doesn’t overwhelm, it repeatedly serves up scenes that are overly familiar, including Jennifer’s trite response to her mother’s parenting: “I hate you. I’m never going to speak to you again. How could you do that to me?” Nessa worries that “I don’t seem to have charge of her anymore” but since Jennifer is 16, what does she expect?

Danielle McLaughlin is a talented prose stylist. She creates characters in satisfying depth, even if the characters in The Art of Falling are unappealing. The mystery of Melanie Doerr’s claimed contribution to the Chalk Sculpture holds the novel together, giving the reader something more interesting to think about than Nessa’s first-world problems. The virtues and faults of The Art of Falling are in equipoise, resulting in a recommendation only for dedicated fans of domestic drama and, perhaps, for readers who are really into stories about art.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Exit by Belinda Bauer

First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Atlantic Monthly Press on February 2, 2021

Exit is a clever murder mystery concerning a death that may or may not be a murder. The story becomes progressively darker and more amusing as other lives are placed at risk from murders that may or may not be consummated.

The story revolves around the Exiteers, a group of people, mostly older, who help the sick and dying end their lives. They don’t want to cross the line by committing murder, so they are careful to take no fatal action of their own. Instead, they advise the soon-to-be-departed of a dentist who will sell them nitrous oxide. At the appointed hour, a team of two Exiteers arrives to provide comfort as their client stops breathing air and starts breathing nitrous. The Exiteers take a copy of the person’s Will (to prove, if they ever must, that they did not benefit from the death) and remove the nitrous cannister, making it appear that the client died a natural death.

The Exiteers are managed by Geoffrey Skeet from his wheelchair. Skeet sends Felix Pink and Amanda Bell to help Charles “Skipper” Cann make his way to whatever lies beyond. The enter the house and find a wheezing man in bed. The man grasps for a mask that is connected to the nitrous but drops it. Amanda makes the foolish mistake of handing it to him, perhaps becoming culpable for his death. That turns out to be the least of their worries when they discover that the person who died from inhaling the gas was not Charles at all, but his son Albert, who apparently thought he was reaching for his oxygen mask. Charles' grandson Reggie eventually reveals that he had arranged for the Exiteers to help Charles die, leading Felix (and the reader) to wonder whether the Exiteers were set up to kill the wrong man and, if so, whether Reggie was behind it.

Horse racing and loan sharks play a role in a plot that has nearly every character worried about paying debts, including Detective Constable Calvin Bridge. Calvin plays the horses and worries that a gangster, who placed a large wager on a horse that Calvin bet on, will seek retribution if the horse loses. Calvin has other worries as well, including his fear that his bosses will discover that his family members are all criminals. His biggest fear at the moment is that he won’t solve the mystery of Albert’s death.

Exit is a comedy of errors in which unexpected plot twists assure that nothing is quite as it seems. Belinda Bauer employs the understated humor that the British have long mastered to assure the reader’s constant amusement. The police get everything wrong and the reader will likely follow in their footsteps. The story does involve culprits and a murderous scheme, but the true culprits are skillfully concealed by Bauer’s deft misdirection. As one of the police inspectors says at the end, “I did not see that coming."

A couple of unexpected romances sweeten a plot that is never in danger of souring. Its focus on Charles, a crusty codger who wants to die, is tempered by the kindness of Felix, who is 75 but still sees the value in all lives, including that of Charles. Yet the novel also suggests, with good humor and a dash of wisdom, that choosing your own time and place and way to die might be all that anyone can ask.

RECOMMENDED

Never Far Away by Michael Koryta

Published by Little, Brown and Company on February 9, 2021

Thrillerworld has a plentiful supply of “mother fights ferociously to protect her children” novels. Most of them aren’t very good. Never Far Away is well above average.

Michael Koryta’s plot has quite a few moving parts, but the story avoids needless complexity. At its center is a woman named Leah Trenton. At least, that’s her current name. When she was Nina Morgan, she gave the FBI information about her employer, the Lowery Group. The information caused trouble for Corson Lowery and his family. Lowery came after her and she didn’t want her family in the line of fire. For the sake of her husband and two children, she faked her death and disappeared.

Ten years later, Leah has made a new life for herself as a wilderness guide in Maine. She’s a former Air Force pilot but she didn’t let the seaplane pilot with whom she had partnered know about her flying skill, for fear that her background would make her easier to trace. They’ve invested in six remote cabins that they are remodeling as part of their wilderness excursion business.

Things seem to be going well until Leah’s husband dies in an accident. Following instructions her father drummed into her years earlier, Leah’s daughter Hailey calls Leah, believing Leah to be an aunt she has never met. Leah takes custody of her son Nick and daughter Hailey, then brings them to Maine, hoping that Lowery will not suspect that she is still alive.

Seasoned thriller readers can imagine where the story goes from there. Lowery sends killers after Leah, who makes it her mission to protect her kids. One of the killers, appropriately named Bleak, is a quintessential thriller villain, devoid of conscience or empathy. Leah tries to get help from the friend who helped her fake her death but worries that contacting him has imperiled his life. The two killers are eventually joined by a mysterious man named Dax Blackwell, whose family has done business with Lowery in the past. Shootouts ensue.

The story is enlivened by Hailey’s teenage attitude. She doesn’t appreciate being removed from her home and her friends. She really doesn’t like the Maine woods, where she can’t get consistent cellphone reception. She sort of likes a student at her new school named Matt Bouchard, who has an obvious crush on her, if only because Matt has promised to help her gather information that Hailey might need to get back home. Hailey is no fan of Leah, whom she regards as an aunt who never bothered to visit. Before Leah can explain that she’s actually Hailey’s mother, a conversation that might not go well, the aforementioned shootouts intrude on their family drama.

The shootouts give Leah a chance to prove that she’s no pushover. When Matt and her business partner find themselves in harm’s way, Leah’s priority of saving her kids is joined with her need to save other innocents who have been dragged into her thriller plot. All of that gives Leah a chance to shine, both as a thriller hero and as a decent human being.

Koryta keeps Never Far Away moving at a steady pace while taking the time to define his characters with sentences like, “The man had a shaved head and dark, observant eyes and was all lean muscle, no body fat, as if he bench-pressed any incoming carbohydrate before he ate it.” Writers who craft such imaginative prose will always keep me reading if they use the prose to tell an interesting story. Koryta does that.

Unlike most modern thrillers, I never questioned the credibility of Koryta’s plot. His characters seem fully capable of getting themselves into the predicaments that drive the story. Tension builds nicely until the story reaches a satisfying conclusion. Prose, plot, and characterization combine to make Never Far Away a transcendent take on the overused “mother protects her kids” thriller.

RECOMMENDED

Kindred by Octavia Butler

First published in 1979; anthologized by the Library of America in Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories on January 19, 2021

Kindred, Octavia Butler’s first and most widely praised novel, tells the story of a black woman who is repeatedly transported from Los Angeles in 1976 to Maryland in the years before the Civil War. Dana Franklin makes the journey each time the life of her ancestor, Rufus Weylin, is threatened. Her trips have a purpose: to save the life of Rufus, the white son of a slave owner, so that he can make a slave named Alice pregnant and begin the lineage that will eventually lead to Dana’s existence.

Dana makes about a half dozen trips to the past, one time bringing her white husband, Kevin, with her. From her perspective, some of the journeys last for months. She only returns to her own time when she experiences an intense fear of death. In the present, she realizes she has only been missing for a few hours.

In a time when people who live on the fringe continue to celebrate the Confederacy and its generals, when southern schools still teach children that the Civil War was “the war of Northern aggression,” Kindred should be — and is, in any schools — required reading. Butler’s description of slavery is vivid. The lives of slaves are depicted in the same detail as the lives of their masters, the key difference being the status of slaves as property. Butler emphasizes the ease with which their masters accept their entitlement to use their property as they wish. Slaves have no right to refuse orders, whether to labor in the fields or sleep with the master. Disobedience is punished with the whip. More severe punishments are inflicted on slaves who try to run away. The most troublesome slaves — those who won’t be broken — are sold to Southern states where life will be even worse. Education of slaves is prohibited because it might encourage them to think of themselves as equal to whites. Yet many whites are also poorly educated; Rufus can barely read.

Kindred is not just an indictment of slavery. Butler explores the economic and social forces that motivated the South to rebel rather than recognize that black people were entitled to the same rights as white people. Rufus is not an entirely evil man, although he is not a good man. He loves Alice but, after he buys her, he feels he has the right to rape her — an act he regrets only in its aftermath. He is more kind to Dana than he is to his slaves but rescinds the kindness when he feels a need to punish her. He struggles with whether he should free the children he fathers with Alice. Rufus is the son of a man who values slaves only for their ability to work and to breed children that he can sell. Rufus has not fallen far from the tree but progress in American history has been incremental. Rufus is Butler’s example of a white man who has taken the first baby steps toward attitudinal change.

When Kevin is stuck in the past after Dana returns to the present, Dana worries that the intervening years before they reunite may have altered Kevin’s view of race. That fear is a product of Dana’s understanding that society shapes perceptions and that resisting the pressure of racial peers to see the world from their perspective requires strength and courage. That understanding helps Dana fight to retain her identity when slaves mock her for dressing like a man (she wears pants) and talking like a white person. Yet she can’t do much to help the slaves with whom she lives — she understands the boundaries she must not cross — because the scant protection she receives by posing as Kevin’s property won’t save her from brutality if she tries to force twentieth century beliefs upon eighteenth century slaveowners.

The complexity of Dana’s character is also illustrated by the moral choice she must make when Alice — who was once a free woman — is prepared to die rather than continue living as Rufus’ mate. Dana can well understand that feeling, but if Alice dies without giving birth to the child who will be Dana’s ancestor, Dana will never be born. She encourages Alice to stay with Rufus not just to save Alice’s life, but for the more selfish purpose of assuring her own survival.

The Trump administration was justly criticized for advocating a sanitized version of American history that it characterized as “patriotic.” The curriculum advocated by Trump's Department of Education surely has no place for a book that reveals historical truth as effectively as Kindred. Americans can’t expect to move past racial division until every child understands that slavery wasn't just another form of employment. Flying the Confederate flag, memorializing generals who fought to maintain the institution of slavery, and whitewashing American history are not the acts of patriots. An education grounded in American exceptionalism rather than the truth of America's past is founded on dishonesty and exclusion. Every student — and every adult — who gets a sense of the true meaning of slavery by reading Kindred will have a deeper understanding of how racial division continues to be shaped by dehumanizing attitudes that were widespread in the years before the Civil War.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Khalil by Yasmina Khadra

First published in France in 2018; published in translation by Doubleday/ Nan A. Talese on February 16, 2021

Written in the first person, Khalil is an impressive examination of the key months in a young terrorist’s life. Yasmina Khadra imagines how a man whose mind has been twisted by religious zealotry might respond when his mission of destruction goes wrong.

Khalil was raised and lives in a suburb of Brussels, along with his twin sister Zahra (whose husband repudiated her after a brief marriage) and his older sister Yezza (who works in a sweatshop). Apart from Zahra, Khalil resents his family. Yezza has mental health issues that may have been exacerbated by an exorcism, or perhaps by religious traditions for which she is ill-suited. Khalil views his parents as parasites. He considers his buddies to be his family, the streets to be his home, the mosque to be his private club. He happily dropped out of high school with his best friend Driss. Under the tutelage of a man named Lyès, Khalil found a path that gave his life purpose: “to serve God, and to avenge myself on those who had reduced me to a thing.”

As the novel begins, Khalil is in Paris, one of four suicide bombers who have been chosen to attack the city. Driss will blow himself up after joining the crowd leaving a soccer stadium; Khalil will explode his vest while standing in a crowded line to board a train. To Khalil’s shame, something goes wrong and his vest does not detonate. He spends much of the novel trying to understand what happened; the explanations he receives leave him puzzled.

The reader is encouraged to understand why Khalil is a terrorist, despite being surrounded by Muslims — including Rayan, another childhood friend — who deplore terrorists. He does not want to reveal the crime he tried to commit, but he occasionally argues with people who have a very different view of what their mutual religion teaches about love and violence. Rayan tries to persuade him that “God’s not a warlord, much less the boss of a criminal organization” and that the Quran teaches “that if someone kills a human being, it’s as if he’s killed all humanity.” Yet Khalil rejects Rayan for marrying an infidel, choosing pleasure over restraint, and abandoning God. Whether Islamism is Islam is a question that pervades the novel.

Khalil offers a serious look at how a terrorist might be created and how, faced with the unexpected consequences of a terrorist act that hit close to home, a terrorist might begin to question his own dogma. Khalil isn’t a likable guy — apart from contemplating mass murder, he’s incredibly judgmental about most people, particularly women who don’t cover their faces — but the story is intended to make us understand Khalil, not to admire him. The novel builds tension as Khalil positions himself for another suicide assignment. Khalil is young; whether his destiny has been written is a question the reader will ponder until the last page reveals a satisfying answer.

RECOMMENDED