A Year of Books

Sandra Parshall

I’m always disheartened when I look over my list of books I’ve read – or listened to – during the past year and realize I can’t recall a thing about many of them. No, this isn’t a consequence of advancing age. It’s always been the case: a lot of the books I read are instantly forgettable.

If I can remember the plot or style or – most important – the characters in a novel months after reading it, I know there’s something special about that book. It’s either very good or unforgettably bad. This year my list has an unusual number of terrific novels on it (some of them published in previous years).

My favorite was The Help by Kathryn Stockett, not a mystery but a surprisingly suspenseful story about a young white woman in the 1960s south who secretly transcribes and publishes the tales told by black maids working in white households. This was a time and place when white people could kill blacks with impunity, so the risks taken by “the help” in the novel are enormous. The story is spellbinding and every character is unforgettable.

I also loved The Last Child by John Hart, another intense, gripping novel set in the south. The child of the title is a boy who has watched his mother slowly destroy herself with drinking and an abusive relationship since her daughter disappeared. The young son is determined to find his sister, dead or alive, and give his mother some degree of peace. His probing sets off a string of terrifying consequences. I found The Last Child riveting, and I think it’s the best Hart has published so far.

I read two Michael Robotham novels this year, Shatter and The Night Ferry, and this writer is now on my must-read list for his future work. Shatter is about a man whose past comes back to haunt him... only trouble is, he doesn’t believe it is his past. The Night Ferry is equally gripping but utterly different, except for the always superb writing. It introduces Alicia Barba, a British police detective who is the child of Indian immigrants, a character I would love to see in a series. When an old friend is murdered, a shocking revelation sends Alicia on a hunt for the truth about her friend’s life and the baby everyone thought she was about to have.

Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects is a stunning debut. Her lead character is a young female newspaper reporter with a history of emotional problems that included a compulsion to cut herself. Now she’s out of treatment and must return home – the source of her troubles – to write about the murders of several children. Flynn’s insight into human behavior is keen and her prose is as sharp as the razors that tempt her heroine. The conclusion of the book is going to stay with me for a long time.

The Brutal Telling may win Louise Penny a third Agatha Award and a few other honors as well. She’s on a par with Julia Spencer-Fleming and Nancy Pickard, producing traditional mysteries with all the expected features – the familiar community, the beloved regular characters, respect for the gravity of murder without dwelling on the gore – plus the emotional depth and insight found in the best literature.

When Will There Be Good News? is, in my opinion, the best of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brody novels. Her books are considered more literary fiction than crime novels, but this one is as compelling as any mystery or thriller I’ve ever read. The opening sequence left me gasping in shock.

I loved Karin Slaughter’s Undone because it brought together Dr. Sara Linton from her Grant County series and Will Trent, the GBI agent from Fractured. This is a powerful story, perhaps the best Slaughter has ever written.

Other novels I enjoyed this year are The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah, Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon, Death and the Lit Chick by G.M. Malliet, Exit Music by Ian Rankin (the last Rebus novel), The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell, The Private Patient by P.D. James (possibly the last Dalgliesh novel), The Keepsake by Tess Gerritsen, Careless in Red by Elizabeth George, Sand Sharks by Margaret Maron. I've just started Jeri Westerson's Serpent in the Thorns and I can tell already it's going to be one of my favorites. I have lots more 2009 releases that I haven't gotten to yet.

I feel as if I’ll never catch up with all the books I want to read, and now here comes 2010 with a whole new crop. Erin Hart’s False Mermaid in March, Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One Was a Soldier and Elizabeth George’s This Body of Death in April... Do you ever wish you could drop everything and just read for a few months?

What books did you love in 2009? What are you looking forward to in 2010?

Characters Who Haunt Us

Sandra Parshall

I can’t get the girl out of my mind. I worry about her. I want to know what happened to her after the book ended.

Throughout most of Elizabeth George’s Missing Joseph, I found the 13-year-old character Maggie Spence exasperating in the way a lot of teens are. Lying to her mother, sneaking out to rendezvous with a boy she was forbidden to see, engaging in sex long before she was capable of dealing with it emotionally. I wanted to shake some sense into her.

As the story threads came together, though, and I saw the full horror of this girl’s situation, I began to fear for her. How on earth could she emerge whole and healthy from the tangle of deceit created by the adults in her life? She couldn’t. My last glimpse of her in the book was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read. George made the girl so real, her predicament so disastrous and her emotional response so raw that I will never forget her.

I want Elizabeth George to bring her back in another book and tell me what has happened to her. I suspect the news wouldn’t be good, but I still want to know. This character will haunt me until I learn her ultimate fate.

It may be a form of torture, but I have to applaud writers who can make me care so much about their fictional characters that I worry about them after the books end or mourn the loss when they’re killed off. I can’t help contrasting my feelings for the girl with my reaction when Helen, wife of George’s detective Tommy Lynley, was shot and killed. For some reason, Helen never seemed quite real to me, and I never liked her. I was, frankly, glad to see her go. Helen’s ghost, in designer shoes, does not haunt me.

Another character who won’t let go of my imagination is also a teenager, but several years older than the girl in Missing Joseph. Her name is Reggie, she’s an orphan who pretends her mother is still alive so she can maintain her freedom and self-reliance, and she is the emotional center of Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? Reggie’s stoic perseverance in the face of catastrophe, and her determination to find out what has become of the woman doctor she’s been working for as a child-minder, drive the story, and Reggie all by herself kept me turning the pages. At the end, her fate is uncertain. I know what I want to see in her future, but even if I’m guessing wrong I hope Atkinson will bring Reggie back and let readers share her life.

I’ve wondered many times what became of Boo Radley after he broke out of his sad, self-imposed isolation to save Scout’s life in To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have no hope at all that Harper Lee will write another book.

I’ve created one character of my own who haunts me: Rachel’s mother, Judith Goddard, in The Heat of the Moon. I gave her a terrible background and more pain than anyone should have to bear. A lot of readers have told me they hated her, and my impulse every time has been to defend her. I’m grateful when someone says they felt sympathy for her and understood why she clung so fiercely to Rachel and her sister and tried so hard to remain in control. Her awful childhood, and the heartbreak she endured as an adult, are very real to me and so is her emotional distress. Although I wouldn’t have had a story without all those events, I find myself wishing I could have made life a little easier for her.

The legacy of a haunting character is something I take away from very few novels, but every book offers the possibility of encountering memorable characters. That’s the reason I read fiction. The characters, not the plot details and certainly not the blood and gore of murder, make a book memorable.

What characters have continued to haunt you long after you finished reading the books? Do you want the authors to produce sequels that will show you what has become of those characters -- even if the news is bad -- or would you rather go on wondering?