Love and Summer is not a typical romance, indeed there is very little that is romantic in these pages. As I read to the novel's climax I could not help but think: this is the most unromantic retelling of a love story I have ever read. And that is the very soul animating this slim and powerful novel. This is a novel about love and desire. It is a story that illuminates all of the imperfections and nuances of those emotions. Love and Summer is a tale of true love, real love, the kind of banal, ever-present love that exists in reality. This is a novel about wanting and needing and what it means to be the giver and taker in love and life. The love story portrayed here is one that millions of people, past, present, and likely, of those even yet to be born would recognize in a second. As I read it, I could not help but also think: I've seen this love. I've felt this. How, William Trevor, and when did you peek into my life? 

The tale takes place in a small, rural Irish village, in a time that is rarely mentioned except for hints dropped here and there, which tell the reader that this happens in a moment passed, but not so long ago as to be beyond our imagined lifetimes. There is a suspension of chronology embedded in Trevor's prose that adds positively to its emotional delivery. It makes the love story relatable to anyone in any era of history. 

The place: a sleepy, conservative Irish village is a key component -- indeed a character itself -- of the novel. The residents and the pervasive Catholicism of this locale are the skeletal supports conveying to the reader what life in Ireland, for the ordinary person, is like. Through precise dialogue, the banal and expansive decisions and actions of its characters, and -- perhaps more significantly -- what is left unsaid the reader is treated to a palpable element of romance: the reader cannot help but acknowledge how social environment is as much a partner in romance as the lovers themselves. 

Trevor is brilliant in never mentioning religion or even the Church outright. This is a wonderful authorial trick; those words, those things never need mentioning for they are so entrenched in the social fabric of Ireland that its presence and influence is seamless. This is Trevor's brilliance: the sentence hung in mid air, a conversation unfinished but clearly ended, the just barely perceptible motion of an eyelid or a twitch in the wrist conveys more than an entire page of text could. The place and the people surrounding the lovers are critical to the love story. 

The first one hundred pages of this just-over-two-hundred paged novel are devoted to these seemingly peripheral -- but oh-so-crucial characters. The novel opens, in fact, in the middle of an event unrelated to the love story itself. But by the time you get to page 100, it starts to make sense: these disparate events and conversations, this focus on place and people and society, are important. 

The second half of the novel and the unfolding of the lovers' tale itself is made all the more poignant and heart-rending by the first one hundred pages. Trevor plans the reader's descent into love and the final plunge into heartbreak with finesse; you can't tell you've fallen in love -- with the novel or the lovers -- until it's too late to extricate yourself. The effect is devastating, and it mimics the romantic fall of the lovers themselves. I must stop here, or I risk spoiling the novel for the reader. 

I will end with this: Love and Summer is a love affair not to be entered into lightly. This novel is the lover that will haunt all your future romances. It is a novel that will remind you over and over again how lacking other love stories are. But you'll be thankful that you had the chance to read such a love story, that you were privileged enough to have had such a novel in your life. 

Originally published in 1976, The Easter Parade, justifies its classic status. The story, revolving around gendered concerns, the complications of family and love, imparting a sense of futility and time passing, remains wholly contemporary. Yates' novel is one that entered on a timelessness human experience: life and living. 

That said, for all its timelessness, the novel is grounded in its historical moment. It carries the reader through several decades, letting them be witness to shifts in American culture, especially as it pertains to gendered expectations and the function of love and sex in the lives of educated white women in mid-twentieth century America. 

The plot follows the life of two sisters, though it is centrally focused on the younger, Emily Grimes. As children Sarah and Emily Grimes were part of a generation whose parents were divorced; their mother is a single mother, their father is an absent, yet present factor in their lives. The tale follows them through adolescence and then young adulthood, where their paths diverge. Sarah takes the more conventional path of marriage, child-bearing and raising, while Emily pursues academic life, single womanhood, love affairs -- marriage too, but also divorce -- and a career. The Easter Parade is built on their divergent, yet intertwined lives; Part three and four of the novel take the reader into the interiority of their familial and sibling bond. Despite their differences, the sisters remain, well, sisters. 

In a sense, this is a novel about nothing and everything, the intangibility of our lives and the worth of living those lives. I have just finished reading it, feeling like I have traversed the twentieth century, like I have witnessed humanity being played out among other people, been given a privileged view into someone's life. 

With such a well-known historical figure as the eponymous character, a reader has to wonder, "What is Chen going to bring to the story that we don't already know? What's going to be unique about this version?" In other words, why read this when Joan of Arc's biography can be so easily accessed elsewhere. The answer is apparent almost immediately, but -- in all honesty -- didn't fully hook me until Part Two. 

Chen's "Joan" unfolds in four parts, the longest are the first two, which are focused on Joan's childhood and early life. Here, a word of warning on the content is warranted: I won't spoil it for you, just know that there are prolonged episodes of abuse and gendered violence.  However, these are critical parts of both Joan's story and Chen's commentary on medieval gender; it is in these initial sections of the novel that the thread of feminist commentary on late Medieval injustice against the female sex and gender begin -- and is continually woven throughout the remainder. Parts three and four are shorter, though no less powerful or impactful. These sections cover the part of the Historical Joan's life that we know: her military victories and defeats, her incredible and rapid rise in the French court and royal favor, and her violent, tragic death. 

Given that she was aged nineteen when she was executed, Chen's emphasis on the early and historically unknown years of Joan's life immediately signals Chen's intention. This is not a novel of SAINT Joan of Arc, not a novel about the Maid of Orleans, but -- as the title should amply hint -- is a novel about the girl, the woman, the person, Joan. 

There are other ways Chen immediately announces this is a fictional take on the non-Historical Joan: the novel is written in 3rd person, present tense, which suggests to the reader that none of the events unfolding should be taken as a foregone conclusion; they are happening right now, the reader is a witness. Since historical scholarship is always written in the past tense (as a rule), Chen is clear that this should not be read as a piece of creative non-fiction. 

Speaking of history, it is worth noting that Chen's novel is also not about Joan at all. While Joan is a fictional protagonist, Chen's novel is grounded in solid history. And I do not mean merely the dates and outcomes of the battles or the names of the characters who inhabit this world. Chen has clearly immersed themselves in the medieval French world and successfully does the same for the reader through their prose. Descriptions of characters and scenes convey not only the image of the person or the place, but reveal the rigid class hierarchies, influence of religion, gendered expectations, and cultural milieu of this period. Chen not only gives us a biography of Joan, but also texturizes her world for the reader so that the reader walks away with an almost tactile, palpable sense of this world. For example, in describing one character, Chen writes of how Joan notices their hands are smooth and absent of callouses, a clear signal of their status and lifestyle. "Joan", the novel, is a vivid landscape of medieval France and its culture. This is arguably Chen's strongest answer to the question I posed above, the special "thing" Chen brings to an already famous, somewhat overdone historical narrative. 

A final and related note to this praise: Chen does not romanticize medieval European history and the effect of injecting medieval elements into her prose is (thankfully) not pedantic. It is informative and necessary, serving to achieve that cultural immersion I spoke of above. For example, religion is a major element of this period of history and in Chen's novel, but Chen does not pose secular, material concerns and ambitions in opposition to religion or divine will; Chen understands history and its nuances, framing the events of Joan's transformation in much more human and earthly terms. The effect is refreshing. Too much historical fiction assumes a presentist perspective; the characters are contemporary people, holding contemporary worldviews and values plonked down in some other era in time. Chen successfully avoids this annoying anachronism. 

All in all, Chen's Joan is a fantastic novel: I personally dislike present tense narratives and Joan of Arc is not a historical figure that appeals, so my rating of four stars is not indicative of the merits of the novel itself. It's worth reading. Read it if you love medieval history, women's history, or Joan of Arc! 

A beautiful, character-driven tale of mothering and daughtering; that is, the ways in which we mother our children and the ways in which daughters express and manifest themselves as the offspring their mothers. This is a quiet, assuming novel about the ways in which we express parental and filial love, the unspoken reasons why we come to expect love in particular ways. 

The plot follows a touristic vacation for the narrator and her mother in Tokyo, Japan. It begins and ends with this short episode in their lives, but the novel reveals their lifetimes of emotional involvement with one another and draws other family members into these reflections. The reader is given a privileged view of this family's most private interior relationships. 

Au's choice of a touristic holiday is perfect for the discussion of belonging and not, of generational divide and continuity that fills the narrator's thoughts. A history of immigration, transnational, and transcultural trauma and identity-building is threaded into the fabric of the novel; the events of the mother-daughter duo's traipses around the Japanese city and its sights are the perfect backdrop to this commentary. 

This is book no one could possibly regret reading. If regret is invoked, it is because one missed its slim presence on a shelf.