Book Short
Two novels that embrace place
By Stephanie Miller
We love many novels for character. Others for pacing. Some capture us with the power of a unique story — or an old story newly told. These two novels are grounded in place: The location is what drives the story and the character development.
‘All the Broken Places’ by John Boyne
In “All the Broken Places,” best-selling author John Boyne gives us the sequel to the disturbing Holocaust story he wrote for middle-schoolers, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” Here, ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby lives a quiet life in London but has never lost the look-over-my-shoulder fear that someone will expose her dark past as the daughter of a man who ran one of the most fearsome concentration camps.
A new downstairs neighbor shakes up her hard-won, anonymous, and comfortable life, while her son increases his thinly veiled demands for her to sell her apartment and provide his inheritance early. Although the narrative jumps from Berlin to Paris to Sydney to London, everything centers on the place she is trying to hide: Those few years she spent in Poland, and the many years since when she has refused to talk about it.
This book positively thrums with tension. Is a young girl complicit in the crimes of her father and a nation? Can she bear to face the comfort and power of being her father’s daughter at that time and place? Throughout the story, Gretel struggles with her grief, guilt, and the risk of revealing the secrets she has so long protected.
‘The Great Alone’ by Kristin Hannah
Place also leads the story in “The Great Alone” by award-winning novelist Kristin Hannah. She takes us to remote Alaska with a family led by a struggling Vietnam War POW who is desperate to escape his demons. Thirteen-year-old Leni is caught in the wake of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship. Sure that moving to the wildlands of Alaska will give him the space to heal, her father does his best to set them up for survival in the unforgiving and dangerous landscape. As the 18-hour daily darkness of winter descends, his mental state collapses and Leni and her mother realize that the danger inside the cabin is more deadly than the threats outside.
We grow up with Leni through this frightening family dynamic, even as she falls in love with Alaska and matures into a capable frontier woman. As her father descends further into the dark places, the two women have to make horrible choices. This is an ode to the incomparable beauty and danger of Alaska, as well as a compelling coming of age story. (Sensitivity disclosure: Domestic violence is featured in both books.)
Micro Shorts
‘The River We Remember’
by William Kent Krueger
Here is an author who makes small town drama an art form. William Kent Krueger, award winner for “This Tender Land” and “About Grace,” turns his piercing lens on the murder of a man no one really liked, but many people feared, and the struggles of the local boy turned sheriff to right the wrongs in a small Minnesota town in 1958. The crime unleashes a torrent of anger and bigotry that quickly threatens to tear the town into pieces. Laced through it all are incredible acts of kindness and neighborliness.
It wouldn’t be a Krueger novel without some deep-thinking young characters who muddle into the mess with the righteous single-mindedness of inexperience. Although slightly sappy, this novel is worth a trip to meet the people of this remote town who struggle with old grievances and their own troubled histories.
‘The Book of Charlie’
by David Von Drehle
This is a true story of how to live a long and happy life as illustrated by the youthful Charlie White, who lived to be 109 years old. Losing his father at a young age to a tragic accident, he nonetheless keeps his adventurous boyish spirit and cultivates his ability to accept fate. We think technology changes rapidly now, but Charlie lived through similar upheaval in the early 20th Century and he early on adapted a stoic commitment to embrace change while living fully in the present. Written by a veteran journalist who happens to move across the street, the best parts are the memories, respectfully chronicled so we can hear the echo of a delighted storyteller in Charlie’s voice.
‘Istanbul Passage’
by Joseph Kanon
The staccato pace of this period novel set, as the title implies, in Istanbul, matches my impression of that mysterious and multicultural city that sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia and has long been a crossroads of trade and culture. We meet American expatriate Leon Bauer who is drawn into a shadow world of espionage upended by the grim recovery days at the end of WW2. Shifting loyalties and moral quandaries confuse everything he trusted, and literally everyone is actively deceiving everyone else.
Played out amid the bazaars and faded mansions of the ancient city, the story weaves around Leon’s desperate solo play to keep himself and his secrets from being gutted onto the floor. Despite the complex set of characters, the story is very comfortable to follow. It’s perfect for those who love a good spy novel set in a gorgeous place that is both a setting and a player in the action.
