Well, when I read Beth Gutcheon's More Than You Know in January, 2011, I did say I would read more of her books if our library had any. When I first saw this cover of Gossip I passed right by it - didn't even look like my kind of book. Then I thought, "Beth Gutcheon, haven't I read her before?" So I picked the book up and read the inside cover.
And learned something. "Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is 'god-sibling'? It's the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It's talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect."
Gossip is about three girls who first meet at boarding school in the 1960's, Dinah, Avis and Loviah and follows their lives through sixty years of friendship - through post 9/11 in Manhattan. Maybe it is because I do not like gossip or maybe because I can't identify with wealthy socialites, but I didn't care all that much for this novel.
As you know, Anne Perry is one of my favourite authors. I love her William Monk series - have read them all and am patiently waiting for the latest one to come out next month. And I really wished she had written more than the five World War I novels - they were superb. But I have shied away from her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. I read the first one (written in 1979) and thought it was okay, but I just wasn't as interested in these two characters as I was in William Monk and Hester Latterly.
I believe that is going to change, however, after reading her latest (#27) in the Pitt series, Dorchester Terrace. It is now 1896, the intrigues in Europe leading up to WWI are already beginning. This later era may have something to do with my liking Thomas and Charlotte better or I may just be needing an Anne Perry fix, but I really enjoyed this book. So much so that I am going to start working my way through the series - at first going backwards to find out what happened in Ireland that this book refers to. (Treason at Lisson Grove) After that, we'll see where I go, maybe back to the beginning so I get to know the characters the way the author developed them.
Ron Rash was first recommended to me by a friend. I have yet to read the book of his she had read and thought so good - Saints at the River - but I did read Serena, the novel for which he was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist.
The Cove is set in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina at the close of WWI. Though the war in Europe is near its end, feelings against anyone of German ancestry run high. Laurel Shelton is a lonely young woman living within the shadows of the cove. Townsfolk believe the cove to be haunted and that Laurel is a witch. Her parents are dead, her brother, Hank, is in the trenches in France. She aches for something to happen to change her life.
When Laurel finds a strange man in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, she takes him to her cabin and nurses him back to health. All she knows about him comes from a note in his pocket, saying his name is Walter, he is mute and he is bound for New York.
Hank comes home from the war having lost one hand. He starts working to improve the farm and offers Walter a job helping build fences and dig a well. As time passes, it is evident Walter and Laurel have feelings for one another. But Walter harbors a secret which could destroy everything.
You know from reading the prologue when a man visits the deserted cove thirty years later and finds a skull in the well, that someone dies. But you won't know who it was until the very end of the book. Reading Rash's lyrical prose describing his characters and the setting makes The Cove a fascinating, atmospheric, historical novel.
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