Places to Stay the Night, by Ann Hood (1993)
As you might expect from the title, there is a lot of "staying the night" in this book. Teenagers are staying the night, adults are staying the night, everyone is running around staying the night with everyone else. Somehow it manages not to be the overriding theme.
Libby leaves her husband Tom and two teenaged children in order to Find Herself; as usual with such cases, she believes that Herself is living in Hollywood as a famous movie star. One floor wax commercial later, she's on her way home, having decided that Herself might be living in her nice house with her nice wage-earning husband after all. There's the beginning and the end of the book for you. In between, Libby and her husband Tom both experiment with other relationships, and their children Troy and Dana each do some experimenting of their own, Troy becoming less wild as Dana becomes more so. A woman named Renata Handy, who used to live in the same small town as Libby's Herself-less self, returns to that town from New York when her young daughter becomes seriously ill, and becomes involved with the Libbyless family. Two big crises merge and then split off again.
I have a much easier time explaining why I hate a book than explaining why I really liked one, so I'm going to have to leave it at this: I really liked the book.
Five Fortunes, by Beth Gutcheon (1998)
With the vague feeling that I should be embarrassed to confess this, I'll say that one of my very favorite kinds of books is the kind where a group of people, usually women, have interconnected lives that the reader follows individually. In Five Fortunes, the women meet at a health spa and then go their separate ways--but they remain in touch and continue to affect one another. I guess the reason for my embarrassment is that this is "girl fiction," and many of the books of this type are shallow and poorly written. In fact, I've complained time and time again about the juvenile way authors prevent the women's personalities or lives from overlapping at all: for example, if one woman is beautiful, tall, thin, and blonde, the next woman must be plain, short, plump, and dark; if one woman is confident and cursing, the next woman has to be mousy and prim. This book, however, does not have that problem, or at least not to a noticeable degree. It's true that the women are of distinct types and there aren't any you'd have trouble telling apart, but there isn't a feeling of forced segregation: some of the characters actually have things in common with other characters. A pleasingly frivolous twist is that the women have their fortunes told at the health spa, so you can have the fun of flipping back to that part after you're done reading the book to see what was true. I appreciated the way the author didn't make a big deal of it (okay, beyond putting it in the title of her book I mean) or draw attention to it at the end of the book. I also appreciated reading the details of careers that are a little unusual for this type of book: instead of the high-powered executive who doesn't seem to do anything except be busy and glamorous and confident, the writer living in a loft typing on her father's old typewriter, and the model with her travels and wardrobes and relationships, we have a private detective and a politician and a philanthropist.
More Than You Know, by Beth Gutcheon (2000)
It would be difficult to say exactly what sort of story this is. Is it a ghost story, or a story of a marriage gone wrong? Is it a story of maternal favoritism, or a story of teenage romance? Is it a murder mystery, or . . . well, what? Two stories alternate throughout the book. One is the story of Claris Haskell, her murdered husband Danial Haskell, and their children Amos and Sallie. The other is the story of teenagers Hannah Gray and Conary Crocker, and a ghost who seems to want something from them. I advise reading the book jacket description after you've finished the book; it gives a summary that cleared up a few things for me. Not everything is made clear, however: I still don't know what the ghost wanted. I enjoyed the book and found parts of it touching.
Fear Nothing, by Dean Koontz (1998)
Dean Koontz has a "boy" style of writing: any introspection is self-consciously embarrassed, affection is found in insult humor, knowledge is exchanged in no-eye-contact, ultra-casual, action-movie-type subdued conversations that make little sense, and there are references to, for example, "bun floss bikinis." There are long descriptions of exactly how territory is laid out, complete with widths and compass points. Surf jargon and "cool" are foundations of speech and thought. There's nothing wrong with Boy Writing, but I like to know when to expect it so I can get in the mood to scratch and burp and maybe say "righteous babe" or something else that shows I can appreciate the finer points of boy communication.
Christopher Snow, main character in Fear Nothing, has a genetic disorder that makes him unable to be out in the sun or even flick on a 60W bulb. He can't drive because of oncoming headlights, and he can't use a computer because of the UV rays from the screen. As the story begins, Christopher's father is dying of cancer; following the death, Chris sees/hears a number of things that make him realize he's been completely in the dark in more ways than one. (Oh, stop it, there was no way to do a whole review on this book without at least one sentence like that.) Christopher's mother died in a car accident a few years before, and it turns out that before she died she came up with a genetics idea that was meant to correct Christopher's disorder but instead is going to end up bringing about apocalypse, either by total destruction or by irrevocable change. This is a story of genetic mutation, so of course there's the downplayed but constant theme of scientists/governments playing God and not being cool enough to just live life ridin' the waves. There are several soapbox sections where the writing style changes from "we were doing cool" to "We know not what wonders or horrors the future may bring us...," and that gets a little old but at least it doesn't overwhelm the story.
Emma, by Charlotte Bronte and "Another Lady" (1980)
Considering that Charlotte Bronte wrote only two chapters, it seems unfair that the real author of the book gets anonymous second-billing. I'm not familiar enough with Charlotte Bronte's writing to know if it has been faithfully imitated, but I enjoyed the book enough to feel indignant that there's no way to go find other books by the person who ought to get the credit for writing it.
A little heiress turns out not to be a little heiress at all and is cast out into the cold without her finery, bringing to mind many a Shirley Temple pout. She is taken in by Mrs. Chalfont, a widow in her late 30s, who with the help of a friend Mr. Ellin tries to find out the true identity of the little girl. Impossibly coincidental connections abound, and expect a tremendous teary ending with great satisfaction and resolution all around. It would be best not to read the book in a cynical mood, but if you can conjure up the right mix of sentiment and credulity, it's a terrific book with a pleasantly old-fashioned flavor. The ending falls short only in that whole worlds of sentiment and credulity can't explain the level of forgiveness and acceptance all characters show towards evil Emma, whose name would be far less popular with new parents if this book were better known.
God Bless the Child, by Ellen Feldman (1998)
Part mystery, part parenting angst, part teenage growing pains, God Bless the Child is a little hard to pin to a category. Bailey is mentor to a teenaged girl and also birth mother to a early-20s boy she gave up for adoption. Mack is a divorced man trying to be a good father to his sullen, resentful teenaged son. In the midst of Bailey's search for her son and Mack's dealings with his, a young woman falls or is pushed from a balcony and dies, and the ensuing mystery and trial put the town into turmoil. The main questions: What happened to the girl? Can a birth parent form a relationship with a child after more than 20 years? Can a divorced parent handle parenting responsibilities for a child who doesn't live with him? Can any parent deal with a teenager? Are Bailey and Mack going to have a relationship or what? Good book, nice mix of different plots.
A Spell of Winter, by Helen Dunmore (1995)
I don't expect a book that features an incest story to be cheery, but there's solemn and then there's DISMAL. The title is apt: the whole book has a cold, dark, bare-tree-limbs-against-freezing-grey-skies feeling that lingers long after the book is out of your hands and back on the library shelf. A girl can't just have an affair with her brother, she also has to deal with an insane father, an abandoning mother, a creepily attentive governess, and heaven knows what else. Her sanity starts slipping, and I'm not fond of narrators whose sanity is slipping, particularly if it's slipping into, say, the dark recesses of the human soul. The book is excellent, and it is dismal; it's up to you whether one is worth the other.