Some books, you know, are just nice. And it seems this is the time of year when I need them most, when, like Langston Hughes, I am waiting for the world to be good and beautiful and kind.
Second chances, second acts. In Leif Enger’s Virgil Wander (Grove Atlantic, digital galley), the title character’s car skids off an icy road and lands in Lake Superior, but he escapes with a concussion and some memory and speech loss. His ensuing recovery becomes something of a rebirth for the part-time town clerk and movie-house owner, who is helped by the quirky residents of his small Minnesota town. Enger (Peace Like a River) mixes whimsy, nostalgia and a touch of magical realism to record Virgil’s odyssey.
Joy Davidman was an unhappily married writer and mother of two young sons when she first started writing letters to Oxford don, theologian and author C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia). Her questions about faith and religion impressed “Jack,” and their burgeoning friendship in the 1950s eventually led her from New York to England and an unexpected love. In the novel Becoming Mrs. Lewis (Thomas Nelson, review copy), Patti Callahan realistically explores the meeting of two minds and hearts whose relationship was challenged by Joy’s ill health.
Readers of Kate DiCamillo’s wonderful 2016 middle-grade novel Raymie Nightingale will remember Raymie’s irrepressible friend Louisiana Elefante. In Louisiana’s Way Home (Candlewick, purchased e-book), it’s 1977. 12-year-old Louisiana is forced to leave Central Florida and friends Raymie and Beverly when her grandmother decides a middle-of-the night road trip is in order. Only Granny isn’t planning on returning. When Granny’s toothache lands them in a small Georgia town, Louisiana finds kindness, friendship “and free peanuts” in the midst of hard times. Her narration is often a hoot as she despairs of the adults around her, but her resilience is real and endearing.
I’m not surprised Josie Silver’s rom-com One Day in December (Crown, digital galley) is already on the bestseller list. It’s Love Actually meets When Harry Met Sally meets One Day as Londoners Laurie and Jack lock eyes through a bus window. But they don’t actually meet until a year later, by which time Jack is Laurie’s friend Sara’s boyfriend. Mutual attraction, missed opportunities and a few surprises mark the next decade of their friendship, and happily-ever-after remains in doubt until the very end. Sweet.
If you’ve ever watched Escape to the Country, Britain’s answer to HGTV’s Househunters, than you’ll know the extraordinary pastoral beauty of South Devon, the setting for Marcia Willett’s contemporary family saga, The Songbird (St. Martin’s Press, digital galley). Several cottages make up the Brockscombe estate, home to an extended, blended family presided over by Francis, an elderly retired MP. The newcomer is Tim, a renter hiding the secret of his recently diagnosed neurological illness from his friend Mattie and her relatives. But others — a former ballerina, a young navy wife, a man whose wife has moved on (maybe) — have secrets, too, all of which are eventually sorted out in leisurely fashion.
