Short-listed for The National Book Award and long-listed for The Man Booker Prize last year, My Friends is the story of Khaled and his two friends, Hosam and Mustafa. All three are Libyans who cannot return to their homeland while Qaddafi is in power. Because each of them are frightened of being discovered by Qaddafi’s spies who are all over Europe, the three friends are overly cautious, secretive and fearful. My Friends is a novel about the love of family, friends and one’s native land, but above all it is about how it feels to be exiled from them.

Hisham Matar is a gifted writer, but My Friends is not for everyone. Although I appreciated it and sometimes found Khaled’s plight awful, My Friends is slow moving and highly descriptive.

A man walking his dog in rural Ireland comes upon an expensive abandoned car with the motor running. After turning off the car, he heads towards the closest house, but on his way learns from the woman’s husband that she fled the car and may have flung herself into the ocean. Detective Strafford and Dr. Quirke are called in to investigate her disappearance.

The Drowned, another Quirke mystery, begins where Banville’s last mystery, The The Lock-Up, ended. It is not essential to have read The Lock-Up before reading The Drowned, but it does help. I don’t read mysteries often, but I appreciate Banville’s prose and enjoy his characters, especially Quirke and Strafford. There is a mystery in The Drowned but at times it is laugh out loud funny and not very mysterious.

With her husband, Richard Goodwin, Doris looks through boxes chock full of papers and memorabilia of Richard’s time working for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Sifting through tons of material brings back memories and detailed descriptions of the couple’s involvement with the key players in our country during the turbulent 60’s as well as the historic happenings. An Unfinished Love Story gives a personal perspective on the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, the Viet Nam War, the 1968 Democratic convention and other events during that decade.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a great writer. She writes with feeling, insight, sensitivity and enthusiasm. Having lived through the 60’s, I thoroughly enjoyed An Unfinished Love Story. However, I’m not sure younger generations would appreciate this work of nonfiction as much as I did.

Alexei Navalny was a Russian who fought the Putin dictatorship and other Russian oligarchs. He protested by demonstrating, writing letter, forming opposing organizations and even running in a presidential election. In this memoir which he secretly wrote while he was in prison, we see the human as well as the activist side of Navalny. He was a loving husband, father, son and brother, a brilliant caring intellectual, a man with a sense of humor, a Christian, and a true patriot.

Just when I thought there were no recent works of nonfiction that appealed to me, I found Patriot. When I thought there were so few heroes in the world, I learned in detail about Alexei Navalny. Patriot begins with his poisoning in August of 2020 which he describes in detail, and it never lets up. Navalny’s memoir is infuriating, intellectually stimulating, heart felt and definitely worth reading.

Jonathan Haidt’s work of nonfiction is about something many of us have suspected for a while: the harm that comes from looking at your smart phone too often. His main thesis is that smart phones have done a disservice to children of GenZ( anyone born after 1995), cutting them off from direct contact with their peers, harming their education, introducing them to pornography and resulting in anxiety and depression. Haidt cites statistics, studies and personal experiences that support his theories.

I decided to read The Anxious Generation because it appeared to be the nonfiction buzz book this year. I was not disappointed. The Anxious Generation is not a difficult, dry read. It has interesting examples, easy to understand graphs and statistics, and Haidt certainly convinced me that I, like so many others, am spending too many waking hours looking at my phone!

Blackburn Gant and Jacob Hampton have been friends since they were young children. Blackburn’s face is disfigured from polio. It is now 1951 and Blackburn is the caretaker of the cemetery in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Jacob is the only living child of the town’s wealthiest family. When he elopes with Naomi Clark, his parents are devastated, feeling that she is not good enough for their son. Soon after Naomi learns she is pregnant, Jacob is sent off to Korea. When he comes home wounded, his conniving, unscrupulous parents make the most of this situation.

The Caretaker is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Ron Rash takes a while to set up “the situation,” but once he does, the book takes off. The Caretaker is an easy, exciting, well-plotted read.

The Best Minds-nonfiction by Jonathan Rosen

The Coast Road-fiction-by Alan Murrin

Don’t Be A Stranger-fiction by Susan Minot

Familiaris-fiction by David Wroblewski

Friday Afternoon Club-nonfiction by Griffin Dunn

Kent State-nonfiction by Brian Vandemark

Lazarus Man-fiction by Richard Price

Long Island -fiction by Colm Toibin

Playground -fiction by Richard Powers

Tell Me Everything-fiction by Elizabeth Strout

Time of the Child-fiction by Niall Williams

What I Ate in One Year-nonfiction by Stanley Tucci

In the dead of winter in Maine in 1789 a man is found frozen in the Kennebec River. Martha Ballard, a midwife in her 50’s, is asked to examine the body and concludes that he has been murdered. Martha’s pronouncement and her job as a midwife leads her to learn details of the rape of a woman by two townsmen, one a judge and the other the murdered man found in the river. While Martha tries to uncover the truth about the rape and murder, she encounters many obstacles and discovers a number of well kept secrets.

The Frozen River is a good work of historical fiction. Martha Ballard, who really was a midwife in Maine, is a strong, compassionate, intelligent character. The one drawback to the novel, for me, is that there are a lot of minor but important characters in The Frozen River and I had a hard time remembering who was who.

Susan Rieger’s third novel is divided into three sections. Each focuses on one of three generations of Pereira women. Zelda Pereira is married to Aldo, a Sephardic Jew who is verbally and physically abusive to his wife and children. Aldo commits Zelda to a mental institution and tells his children that she died there. His family is not sure he is telling the truth. Lila is the youngest of Zelda and Aldo’s three children. She was the recipient of most of Aldo’s abuse. She marries into a wealthy Jewish family, has a loving husband and becomes a successful editor of a DC newspaper. Her youngest daughter, Grace, has a love/hate relationship with her mother, and feels obligated to find out what really happened to Zelda.

For me, Like Mother, Like Mother is the perfect airplane read. It has interesting characters, an engaging plot, some clever dialogue without a lot to discuss or think about. It is what it is.

The reader once again visits Faha, a small Irish village where This Is Happiness took place. Jack Troy is the town doctor; he is a good doctor and thoroughly professional. He lives in Faha with his oldest daughter, Ronnie, who assists him in almost everything. In December of 1962 a baby girl is found near the local church, and Jack Troy is asked if he can “bring her back to life.” The infant changes Jack and Ronnie’s lives in ways they never expected.

Reading Time of the Child is like listening to an Irish story teller. Niall Williams cannot stick to the stories main plot, instead veering off track to discuss another villager or a Faha tale from the past. The girl child of the title doesn’t even appear until almost halfway into the novel. If you want a quick read with a straight plot, DON’T read Time of the Child. However, if you enjoy all things Irish and like a good cry at the end of a tale, this book is for you.