Enon by Paul Harding

Published by Random House on September 10, 2013

Paul Harding displays the power of his prose in the opening pages of Enon, as Charlie Crosby recalls the death of his daughter. The understated, deeply affecting descriptions of grief set the scene for the life that follows. Charlie blames himself for letting his daughter take the bike ride that ended in a collision with a car. After Charlie's marriage disintegrates, he becomes "a maker of dismal days." He spends them wandering the town of Enon, recalling the sweetness of the family life he has lost, seeing his daughter at different ages when he gazes at the town's children. As the months pass, he moves "deeper into the shade, further toward the border between this life and what lies outside it." He is embarrassed by his weakness, his inability to resolve his sense of loss. He has always believed that "life is not something we are forced to endure, but rather something in which we are blessed to be allowed to participate," but now he feels no gratitude for a life that "felt like nothing more than a distillation of sorrow and anger." He wants to believe that the joy of his daughter's life had its own integrity, that his life is better for having shared his daughter's life, but he measures his grief by the loss of that joy. Abuse of alcohol and pills heightens his condemnation of his failure of character.

While Enon is largely an internal monologue, it features richly developed minor characters: a cemetery caretaker who seems like "an archaic military experiment gone awry"; an elderly woman who fearlessly races down an icy hill on a sled; a poorly paid clerk who pines for his family in India while he spends his Sundays working at a convenience store. It is also a novel of place, the place being Enon, where Crosbys have lived since 1840. Charlie, taking a daily walk around the town, recalls his childhood fears of creepy woods and legendary boogeymen. We learn the history of Charlie's old house with its traces of the people who once lived there, including the grandfather who was instrumental in his life.

What do we do when "broken hearts continue beating"? Is grief a moral failing when it leads to self-destructive, irresponsible behavior? Harding leaves it to the reader to decide. Charlie, on the other hand, receives a lecture from the elderly sledding woman that seems right: at some point, particularly when it causes harm to others, grief can be selfish. There is a moral lesson in Enon, a lesson that Charlie learns about the nature of prolonged grief, about what his grief really is and why he can't release it. Although it isn't immediately apparent, the novel is ultimately redemptive and life-affirming in its perspective of "this awful miracle of a planet" we all share.

Harding's description of Charlie's thoughts, his attempts and inability to come to terms with his daughter's death, are achingly real. Enon is such a howl of pain that it is difficult to read in long stretches. Fortunately, Enon is the perfect length: long enough to tell the story but not so long that Charlie's anguish becomes overbearing. Regardless of its length, Harding's prose, sometimes stunning in its effortless beauty, would have kept me reading. This isn't a novel for readers who wish to disappear into a make-believe world that's filled with sunny characters, but for readers who want to understand the full range of life (including people who have given up on life), Enon is a work of great value.

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Poison Pill by Glenn Kaplan

Published by Forge Books on October 22, 2013

The title of Poison Pill has a double meaning. It's the name given to a strategy to prevent hostile takeovers of corporations -- in this case, a pharmaceutical company -- but its literal meaning is also applicable. Someone is poisoning the company's leading product (a headache remedy) in order to destroy the company's value.

In chapter two, Peter Katz tells his mother all about the safe room in the basement of his father's Greenwich house. The savvy reader knows that, like Chekov's gun hanging on the wall, the safe room will reappear near the end of the novel. Peter's mother, Emma, is an executive at Percival & Baxter, a pharmaceutical company. His father, Emma's ex-husband Josh, is planning a hostile takeover of Percival & Baxter for his client, a mysterious Russian named Viktor Volkov whose reason for wanting control of the company is far-fetched but amusing. Viktor, hoping to create a dynasty in London, wants his daughter Tanya to breed with the little brother of the woman Viktor plans to marry, thus merging his wealth with the brother's title and producing the heirs he can no longer manufacture. Tanya wouldn't mind breeding but she has her own ideas about an appropriate sperm donor.

In many ways, young Peter is the most interesting character in the novel. He's caught in the middle of a war between his hotshot parents. His father wants to use him to influence his mother while his mother is poisoning his thoughts about his father. Peter and Tanya both belong to the Kroesus Club, an exclusive group of teens and young adults, the children of wealthy parents from around the world, a group that Peter generally despises. Peter is peripheral to the central story for much of the novel but he stars in an interesting subplot of his own. He is a believable character, although perhaps a bit more grounded and likeable than most teenage offspring of wealthy parents.

The other characters, like the plot, are well-conceived, although you wouldn't want to hang out with most of them. Family dramas pepper the novel and they turn out to be related to each other in unexpected ways. Scenes of domestic discord between well-paid Emma and her struggling artist second husband are dull and some of the scenes involving Emma and Josh approach melodrama, but there aren't many of those.

An interesting theme in Poison Pill is the ongoing debate about hostile takeovers. Josh sees himself as creating shareholder value while Emma sees him as destroying good companies. Greed is a related theme and while the lesson is obvious (greed isn't good), it is nonetheless satisfying. Those themes animate the thriller in a fairly conventional way. The story races to an unconvincing ending (Emma displays intuition that borders on ESP) that wraps up the story a little too neatly, but the novel as a whole is better than its disappointing climax.

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The Sound and the Furry by Spencer Quinn

Published by Atria Books on September 10, 2013

Chet continues his literal-minded (and dog-minded) commentary on life in The Sound and the Furry. Chet doesn’t like thunderstorms but he loves to ride in boats. He can’t understand why birds are so unfriendly. He doesn’t recommend grubs, edible though they are, but a roast beef sandwich is a tasty meal.

Ralph, the only member of the Boutette family who isn’t behind bars or on electronic monitoring, is missing. For reasons that Bernie understands better than Chet, Bernie agrees to find him. Chet knows it’s the right thing to do because Bernie always does the right thing. The new adventure takes Chet and Bernie to New Orleans, where they encounter a shrimp heist (Chet is fond of shrimp), an oil spill, and a family feud. The plot is more complex than some of the Chet and Bernie novels, meaning that much of what’s happening is going over Chet’s head. But, as Chet likes to remind us, he brings other things to the table. Figuring things out is Bernie’s game.

Of course, the plot of a Chet and Bernie is always secondary to Chet’s canine commentary. The breezy nature of the Chet and Bernie novels makes them easy to read. The bad guys are generally affable. Most of them even like Chet, so they can’t be all bad. This is nonetheless a more harrowing adventure than most for Chet. A couple of bad guys who aren’t dog-friendly give Chet a hard time, adding some tension to the story, as does an alligator. Fortunately, nothing can change Chet’s upbeat nature. Bernie is also part of the story, and he’s again getting himself into trouble with girlfriend Suzie for reasons that Chet (and sometimes Bernie) can’t understand, but Chet is the reason these novels are worth reading.

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Parasite by Mira Grant

Published by Orbit on October 29, 2013

Parasite is hard to categorize -- and that's a good thing. It has elements of a corporate conspiracy thriller, a biotech thriller, a creepy science fiction/horror novel, and a mystery. It combines a low-key love story with an offbeat family drama. At its heart, Parasite is an "aliens take over human bodies" story, a staple of bad science fiction, but with the refreshing twist that parasites are substituted for aliens. Parasite will teach you more about tapeworms and other parasites than you might want to know, but it tells an innovative story and builds tension without resorting to car chases and explosions.

Sally Mitchell, brain dead and on the verge of having her organs harvested, opens her eyes. She awakens in a blank state, her brain wiped of its memories. Sally has been given a new life by virtue of a genetically engineered tapeworm called the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard. Six years later, she's relatively normal, but very different from the person she doesn't remember being before her accident. Sally copes with being reeducated, studied, and psychoanalyzed, while living in fear that SymboGen will stop paying her medical expenses if she isn't an appropriate guinea pig.

Sally's life becomes even complex with the outbreak of an apparent disease that turns people into dangerous shambling sleepwalkers. My initial reaction to this was "oh geez, Mira Grant found a way to add zombies to the story." Fortunately -- since the world really doesn't need another zombie novel -- Parasite takes off in a wild and unexpected direction. The mystery of Sally's true nature is telegraphed so often that the reveal isn't much of a surprise, but that doesn't detract from the story. Other revelations at the novel's end are more surprising, and they whet interest in the next installment.

Sally, her boyfriend Nathan, and the other principle characters are realistic, including Sally's parents, who provide fruitful family drama by being less than ideal role models. One of the characters is completely daft in a dangerously amusing way. Dogs play a critical role in the story, providing further evidence for my theory that every novel is made better by the inclusion of a dog -- particularly when a writer portrays them as sympathetically as does Grant. (Grant is also sympathetic to tapeworms, but I'll let that pass ... so to speak.)

Parasite delivers a crash course in parasitology but, by using fascinating examples of parasitic behavior, it never becomes boring. This is one of the better biotech thrillers I've encountered. I don't know whether it's credible, but Grant convinced me that it could happen, and that allowed me to enjoy the well-crafted story.

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Bad Houses by Sara Ryan

Published by Dark Horse on November 12, 2013

I never thought much about (or paid any attention to) estate sales until I read this graphic novel. The contents of houses tell stories about their owners, the choices they made, what they held dear. People cling to possessions they don’t really want. Professional and amateur vultures devour the things left behind by the dead. One person’s junk becomes another person’s treasure, an endless cycle of acquisition and disposal.

Bad Houses is a story of ordinary people in an ordinary town (aptly named Failin). A bitter son puts his aging mother in a dilapidated assisted living center. He begins to date Danica, one of the center’s employees. Danica is a hoarder. Her daughter Anne feels suffocated by her mother’s obsession with the objects from her past. Anne begins to date Lewis, a young man who wants to escape his mother’s vice-like grip. Lewis works for his mother, conducting estate sales. He’s never known his father. In the midst of all this family drama, we learn things about relationships among the characters that they don’t know themselves.

Can people change their lives? One of the characters says that lives change all the time, and that’s true, but they don’t always change according to our plans. Some of the characters want to leave Failin but feel trapped by their circumstances. When should we hold on to things … or people? When should we let go? Sara Ryan examines these questions in a surprisingly moving, thought-provoking story.

The lives of the characters weave together in a graphic novel that is elegant in its simplicity, insightful in its complexity. The sketchy illustrations add nuance to the text.

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