Like Anita Shreve, Myerson writes in a literary and yet accessible manner. Her fifth book is a story of a troubled woman who falls for an outsider who has come to uncover the truth.
This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could ever have predicted.
In her highly anticipated new novel, Ann-Marie MacDonald takes us back to a postwar world. For Madeleine McCarthy, high-spirited and eight years old, her family's posting to a quiet air force base near the Canadian-American border is at first welcome, secure as she is in the love of her family and unaware that her father, Jack, is caught up in his own web of secrets. The early sixties, a time of optimism infused with the excitement of the space race and overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War, is filtered through the rich imagination of a child as Madeleine draws us into her world.
But the base is host to some intriguing inhabitants, including the unconventional Froehlich family, and the odd Mr. March, whose power over the children is a secret burden that they carry. Then tragedy strikes, and a very local murder intersects with global forces, binding the participants for life. As the tension in the McCarthys' household builds, Jack must decide where his loyalties lie, and Madeleine learns about the ambiguity of human morality -- a lesson that will become clear only when the quest for the truth, and the killer, is renewed twenty years later.
The Way the Crow Flies is a novel that is as compelling as it is rich. With her unerring eye for the whimsical, the absurd, and the quintessentially human, Ann-Marie MacDonald stunningly evokes the pain, confusion, and humor of childhood in a perilous adult world. At once a loving portrayal and indictment of an era, The Way the Crow Flies is a work of great heart and soaring intelligence.
"A hilarious and poignant love story about the way families are invented, told with the savvy of Zadie Smith, the energy of Junot Diaz, and an inventiveness all Ian Williams' own, set amidst a collision of cultures banging together in one polyglot suburb of Toronto. Felicia and Edgar meet as their mothers are dying. Felicia, a teen from an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy heir of a wealthy German family, come together only because their mothers share a hospital room. Felicia's mother dies and Edgar's "Mutter" does not--not right away, anyway. On her own in the cold white north, Felicia drops out of high school and takes a job as Mutter's caregiver. While Felicia and Edgar don't quite understand each other, and Felicia recognizes that Edgar is selfish, arrogant, and often unkind, they form a bond built on grief (and proximity) that results in the birth of a son Felicia calls Armistice. Army, for short. Some years later, Felicia and Army (now 14) are living in the basement of a home owned by Oliver, a man of Portuguese descent who works a gripe about his ex-wife into any conversation. Oliver has two kids, the teenaged Heather and the odd little Hendrix, and these three, along with Felicia and Army, form an unconventional family, except that Army wants to sleep with Heather, and Oliver wants to kill Army. Army has never met his father, but his fascination with his absent father--and his absent father's money--begins to grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up (like a case of Jolly Ranchers and some red shoelaces). And Felicia, who has kept her distance from the man, feels Edgar's shadow looming over them. A brutal assault, a mortal disease, a death, and a birth reshuffle this group of people again to form another version of the family. Reproduction is a profoundly insightful exploration of the bizarre ways people become bonded that insists that family isn't a matter of blood."--
Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson | Literally Just Books
