Publishers Weekly – August 05, 2019

44 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019

Review_FICTION

language that keeps the story fresh. There

is rough poetry in both the self-serving

speechifying of the leaders and the violent

threats of the rank-and-file. This is a canny

update of one of the world’s oldest stories.

(Oct.)

The House of Brides

Jane Cockram. Harper, $27.99 (384p)

ISBN 978-0-06-293929-6

In Cockram’s atmospheric debut, a

clever twist on Daphne du Maurier’s

Rebecca, a woman hoping to learn more

about her deceased mother steps into a

wasp’s nest of secrets and lies. The reputa-

tion and finances of Miranda Summer, an

Australian social media influencer, are in

ruins after she makes fraudulent claims on

her health and wellness app. She receives

a letter addressed to her mother, Tessa, an

author who died when Miranda was a girl,

from Tessa’s 12-year-old cousin Sophie,

asking for help at the family house. The

letter leads the impulsive Miranda to the

foreboding, and possibly haunted, Barnsley

House, now a renowned English oceanside

restaurant and hotel, which Tessa wrote

about in her famous—and only—novel,

The House of Brides. The intimidating

housekeeper Mrs. Mins mistakes Miranda

for the new nanny, which Miranda doesn’t

correct. Miranda’s estranged uncle, Max,

is aloof, and his wife, Daphne, a famous

chef, has stayed in bed since the auto acci-

dent that put their daughter, Agatha, in

a wheelchair. Miranda senses things

aren’t quite right in the home, but she

enjoys caring for Agatha, Sophie, and

their brother, Robbie, and starts piecing

together her family’s strange history and

its extraordinary women. When Daphne

disappears, shocking secrets rise to the

surface. Miranda, who narrates, is flawed

but relatable, and Cockram’s plot crackles

with tension, hitting all the right notes

for readers fond of gothic-flavored tales.

(Oct.)

The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

Susan Holloway Scott. Kensington, $16.95

trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-4967-1918-8

Scott (I, Eliza Hamilton) imagines the

life of Mary Emmons, an enslaved woman

from India who had a relationship with

Aaron Burr, providing her a voice that

highlights the hypocrisy and cruelty of

the white imperialists around her. Born in

IRA soldier while simultaneously being

an informer for the British. When she

fears exposure, she is spirited out of the

country, thus paving the way for an SAS

roll-up of her husband’s unit. To combat

the SAS, Pig, the local IRA head, calls

for the support of Achill, the most feared

member of his unit. But Achill has a

personal grudge against Pig and turns

him down. In his stead, Achill’s friend,

Pat, goes one-on-one with an SAS officer,

Capt. Henry Morrow, even as the powers

that be in London, Belfast, and Dublin

use the cease-fire to their own, opposing

cynical ends. The tragedy that ensues

sheds light on what these past and present

conflicts have in common. The original

gang from The Iliad is represented—

Helen, Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus,

Menelaus, Hector—and it is the author’s

swirls and doubles back on itself on both

a story level, with memories bleeding into

one another, and on a prose level: Reinhardt

seeks “to unearth the melancholy at the

root of joy, or perhaps the joy at the root of

melancholy, because the order, he said, has

always been immaterial.” Haber’s dizzying

vision dextrously leads readers right into

the melancholic heart of darkness. (Oct.)

Country

Michael Hughes. Custom House, $26.99

(320p) ISBN 978-0-06-294032-2

Hughes’s clever conceit in this dark

take on political violence—the Irish

author’s American debut—is to transport

The Iliad from ancient Troy to Northern

Ireland in the mid-’90s, during a cease-

fire between the IRA and the British. The

year is 1996, and Nellie is married to an

★ Olive Again

Elizabeth Strout. Random House, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8129-9654-8

A

s direct, funny, sad, and human as its heroine,

Strout’s welcome follow-up to Olive Kitteridge

portrays the cantankerous retired math teacher in

old age. The novel, set in small-town coastal

Crosby, Maine, unfolds like its predecessor through 13

linked stories. “Arrested” begins just after the first novel

ends, with 74-year-old widower Jack Kennison wooing

73-year-old Olive. “Motherless Child” follows the family

visit when Olive tells her son she plans to marry Jack.

In “Labor,” Olive awkwardly admires gifts at a baby

shower, then efficiently delivers another guest’s baby.

Olive also offers characteristic brusque empathy to a

grateful cancer patient in “Light,” and, in “Heart,” to her own two home nurses—

one a Trump supporter, one the daughter of a Somali refugee. “Helped” brings

pathos to the narrative, “The End of the Civil War Days” humor, “The Poet” self-

recognition. Jim Burgess of Strout’s The Burgess Boys comes to Crosby to visit

brother Bob (“Exiles”). Olive, in her 80s, living in assisted care, develops a

touching friendship with fellow resident Isabelle from Amy and Isabelle (“Friend”).

Strout’s stories form a cohesive novel, both sequel and culmination, that captures,

with humor, compassion, and embarrassing detail, aging, loss, loneliness, and

love. Strout again demonstrates her gift for zeroing in on ordinary moments in

the lives of ordinary people to highlight their extraordinary resilience. (Oct.)

Paul Goat Allen

Allen Appel

Nancy Bloch

Vicki Borah Bloom

Maurice Boyer

Rob Clough

Stephan Coleson

Lynda Brill Comerford

Jessica Daitch

Shaenon Garrity

Daphne Grab

Idris Grey

Sara Grochowski

Patricia Guy

Don Herron

Katrina Niidas Holm

Zina Hutton

Mary M. Jones

Michael M. Jones

Pam Lambert

Sally Lodge

Patty MacDonald

Chloe Maveal

Sheri Melnick

Patrick Millikin

Elizabeth Morse

Julie Naughton

Dionne Obeso

Joy Parks

Leonard Picker

Eugene Reynolds

Christina Rinaldi

Joe Sanders

Antonia Saxon

Tonia Thompson

Julia Tilford

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