Calvin Trillin wears many hats. He has written novels, memoirs, articles and essays. He is a reporter, a liberal, a family man and a gourmand. When he writes he can be funny, nostalgic, sensitive, sarcastic or angry. He can be serious when writing about the civil rights movement and humorous when describing pompous politicians. The Lede is a compilation of some of Trillin’s articles dating from the 1960’s to 2013.

When I saw that Calvin Trillin had another book out(he is 88 years old), it was like welcoming back an old friend. Although I don’t think The Lede is Trillin at his best, I’ll take him anyway I can get him!

Annie Brown is 37 years old with a loving husband and four children. One night while fixing dinner, she has a brain aneurysm and dies. After Annie is a character study of Annie, a fun loving perceptive woman who loved being a wife and a mother. It also describes how her husband, children and best friend react and eventually cope with their loss.

Although After Annie sounds like a terribly depressing read, in Anna Quindlen’s hands it really isn’t. It is a heart warming novel about good people doing the best they can during a trying, traumatic year.

It is the late 1800’s in rural Scotland. Lizzie Craig has lived most of her life toiling on her grandparent’s farm. Lizzie has a gift-she has occasional visions into the future. However, she is frightened and ashamed of this sixth sense. Lizzie is bright and a fine artist but she is naive. When a tailor’s apprentice comes to the farm to lend a hand during harvest time, Lizzie falls in love. Her lack of worldly wisdom gets her in trouble and to solve her predicaments, Lizzie continues to make some poor decisions.

Although what happens to Lizzie Craig is a tale that’s been told again and again, her visions into the future and the characters she encounters make The Road from Belhaven unique, interesting and enjoyable.

When Benjamin Herald visited the suburb he grew up in outside of Pittsburgh, he noticed that it had become poorer, more diversified in terms of the population, the infrastructure was old and in disrepair and the educational system was suffering. He pursued this and began investigating suburbs of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta as well as his own hometown. Herold zeroed in on one family in each of these suburbs to help him and his readers understand the change. 

I read this work of nonfiction because I live in a suburb and one of the suburbs Benjamin Herold describes is 10 miles from my home. At first I kept getting the five families and their suburbs mixed up, but eventually I was able to keep them straight. The author researched each suburb and he describes the fears, goals and daily lives of the families, but I never got a clear understanding of how to solve the suburban dilemma.

When her brother is killed in Viet Nam, twenty year old Frankie McGrath decides to carry on the family tradition and enlists in the army as a nurse. She leaves her upper-middle class California lifestyle for a chaotic, challenging, exhausting, dangerous life. And as difficult as it is in Viet Nam, it is even harder for Frankie when she returns home.

The novel is divided into two parts-before and after Viet Nam. I thought the first part of The Women was good. It vividly described the horrors of that war. However, for me, the second part dragged on, and Frankie seemed to have every negative experience possible for a returning vet. Also, Kristin Hannah frequently describes the clothes,hair styles and songs of that era. I felt it took away from the plot.

Growing up on the same street in New Rochelle, New York, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor had a lot in common and became best friends. They were both bright but Michael was extremely smart. They were both personable, but Michael was very outgoing. They both went to Yale, but Michael graduated in three years and it took Jonathan four. Michael had a charmed life until the year after he graduated when he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. The Best Minds is Michael’s story before and after the diagnosis as well as how mental illness is dealt with.

This work of nonfiction is fantastic. It is part memoir, part treatise on schizophrenia, and also part description of the people and organizations who helped Michael and why it wasn’t enough. Rosen has a wry sense of humor usually directed at himself. His figures of speech are creative and usually right on. Best Minds clearly and objectively describes Michael Laudor: an exceptional person with an horrific disease. 

Told in alternating chapters voiced by Cecily and her children, Jujube, Abel and Jasmin, during the years 1935 and 1945 in Malaysia, The Storm We Made describes two turbulent years in that country’s history. In 1935 Cecily is chosen, because of her husband’s position, to become a spy for the Japanese who are trying to take over the country from the British. When they do, it has disastrous effects on Cecily, her family and her country.

Vanessa Chan’s debut novel is a fine read. Her characters are well flushed out and realistic, her plot is dramatic, and the book describes a piece of history I knew very little about. I highly recommend reading The Storm We Made.

Every summer a Native American family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine where the adults are employed picking blueberries. The summer of 1962 is different. It is the year that their youngest child, Ruthie, disappears. The last person to see her is her brother Joe, and Joe spends the rest of his life feeling guilty that he was somehow responsible for her disappearance. In Maine, Norma lives a good life although her mother is fragile and overprotective of her. Yet Norma always feels that something is amiss in her life, but she can’t figure out what it is. Joe and Norma each narrate alternating chapters, so the reader sees life through their eyes.

I think the premise of The Berry Pickers is fine, but the characters are not complex and the ending is predictable.

Tom Lowe Jr., age 54, has made some poor decisions and has had a lot of bad luck. While working construction, he fell off a roof and permanently damaged his hip and pelvis. Either directly or indirectly as a result of the fall, he got hooked on pain killers, got divorced, became permanently unemployable, never visits his twenty year old son, and lives in public housing. When he learns that his son has been hospitalized, he tries desperately to go see him. This odyssey makes Tom aware of his faults and the kindness of others.

While reading Such Kindness, I remembered how much I like Andre Dubus. Although it is not as good as House of Sand and Fog, Such Kindness artistically illustrates how our choices, our understanding of those choices, and how these choices effect others makes us who we are. Tom Lowe Jr. is an interesting character and I was eager to see where he would end up.

Millie Cousins is a resident assistant at The University of Arkansas. She is a hardworking senior who hopes to save enough money to buy a home off campus. When she cooperates with a visiting professor who is working on a study about college students and finances, Millie’s steady, reliable complacent life is turned upside down.

I cannot recommend Come & Get It. I found the plot weak-no real excitement or mystery-and the conflicts that do occur are not a big deal. Although Millie was an interesting character, most of the others were underdeveloped, so I had a difficult time differentiating them.