Too Wyrd by Sarah Buhrman

Sarah Buhrman’s Too Wyrd offers a welcome twist on the conventional fantasy protagonist who embarks on a quest.  As the story begins, Nicola Crandall is plucked from the comfort of home by a late-night summons for help, and she readily places her life on hold to combat a supernatural menace. But in this urban fantasy set in Indianapolis, the supernatural exists side by side with real-world problems that take the greatest toll on the most vulnerable.  So in addition to confronting otherworldly abominations, Nicola comes face to face with regular people scrabbling to survive on the fringes of society, and proves to be their staunchest defender. On the whole, her capacity for empathy and inclusiveness is what makes her a compelling hero, more so than her courage or resourcefulness when under threat.

The trouble begins when Nicola’s friend Joseph arrives at her door with worrisome news. Her half-sister Muriel, who has spent time living on the street, has been taken in by a cult that dabbles in magic. Nicola’s help is needed to extricate Muriel both because of Nicola’s skills as a magical practitioner and because one of the cult leaders is her ex, Keith, who is also the father of her child. Nicola and Joseph soon discover that Keith has become involved with very old magic connected to Norse mythology. Nicola and her allies must puzzle out Keith’s intentions and determine the source of his new powers and how they relate to the demons who keep materializing.

In keeping with Nicola’s compassionate nature is the type of magic that she practices. Rather than using magic for aggressive ends, she employs it to assess and affect others’ psychological states. In one scene, Nicola and Joseph use magic to calm an unruly crowd.

I quickly reached for the emotion I wanted: laying back with a cool drink in the shade of an umbrella, with a warm breeze, the soft roar of ocean waves, and the warm colors of a tropical sunset. It was calm, content, and sedate. I sent that feeling into our combined energies and projected it out in a broad arc over the crowd.

The result was subtle but quick, taking hold in a matter of minutes. People who were hyped up and bouncing on their toes, stepped back, rolled their shoulders and relaxed their stance. The crowd stopped its steady press forward and, after a momentary hesitation, began shuffling towards the doors. Instead of the aggressive shoving, people began to display more courtesies, letting people go before them, saying “thank you”.

But make no mistake, Nicola is no weakling. She pushes back hard against anyone who tries to prevent her from attaining her objective, whether it’s an old adversary out for revenge, a police detective trying to connect her with a crime she didn’t commit, or Keith confusing Muriel with glib obfuscations. In the latter instance, Nicola relentlessly interrogates Keith in hopes of getting at the truth.

“What about telling us who’s giving you this ‘truth’ that you’re calling destiny?” I said, pushing our advantage of having surprised him.

Keith frowned and took a step back. “I cannot reveal the name.”

“Because you don’t know?” Joseph asked, pressing forward at my side, “Or because no one would believe you?”

“Or because it’s just you making shit up?” I added. “Must be nice to have your life funded by the people you’ve conned with your line.”

I realized I’d made a mistake in my assumptions when Keith’s shoulders relaxed and he smiled. He shook his head and tsked.

“Nicola,” he drawled out my name. “You’ve grown so bitter and cynical…”

“I’m not bitter,” I continued. “Just because I don’t buy what you’re selling? That’s not bitter, that’s having half a brain.”

But in the end, Nicola is most admirable for the way she treats others.  While tracking down Muriel, she gets a tip that someone who frequents a local soup kitchen might have information. Nicola decides to combine her investigation with providing some much-needed volunteer help at the kitchen.

I talked Mercy into helping us convince some of the Bridge Kids to come with us to the city mission for supper. I knew most of them could use the meal, but the walk was too far for most of them to make the effort. Plus walking meant taking the risk of running into trouble with a capital fist to the gut…

At the mission, a flustered woman thanked us for our help and gave us our assignments… I was put at the end of the food line, helping people with walkers, wheelchairs and kids get all their silverware, food and drinks to their seats. I smiled and chatted up the guests, knowing that half the reason they came to the kitchen was for the small degree of human interaction they got.

Nicola ultimately manages to find the answers she’s looking for and faces down her enemies in a rip-roaring confrontation. However, her quest will continue. According to the author’s blog, she is writing a second installment in the Runespells series. The sequel would benefit greatly from more development of the secondary characters, many of whom are interesting, but lack sufficient depth and backstory. For example, two pivotal characters in Too Wyrd turn out to be not what they initially seemed. But their reversals are, for the most part, inexplicable and leave the reader longing for a greater understanding of their motivations.

At its core, Too Wyrd is an engaging adventure, propelled by a strong, eminently likable lead character. Sarah Buhrman has created an immersive fictional world that skillfully encompasses both the magically sublime and the poignant struggles of everyday people.

For more information, please visit the author's website.

Madam Tulip by David Ahern

“All the world’s a stage” would be an apt subtitle for David Ahern’s madcap thriller/mystery novel Madam Tulip. Several characters are struggling actors, but even the non-thespians engage in performances of varying degrees of desperation. They include a steely businessman trying to disguise shady dealings, undercover police posing as wealthy socialites, and a murderous international criminal who assumes a more mundane persona to avoid detection.

Into this unfolding intrigue inadvertently stumbles 27-year-old out-of-work Dublin actor Derry O’Donnell. Prompted by her chronically poor finances, she decides to capitalize on the psychic abilities that run in her family by setting herself up as a fortune teller under the moniker “Madam Tulip.” She lands a gig at a glamorous charity event hosted by supermodel Marlene Doyle, wife of Peter Doyle, the aforementioned shady businessman. As Derry plies her new trade amidst the beautiful, the famous, the wealthy, and the venal, a promising pop star in attendance dies suddenly. Derry, by dint of information gleaned during fortune-telling sessions, begins piecing together the tragedy’s antecedents.  The well-meaning Derry also fears for Marlene’s safety, and in trying to avert another tragedy, she becomes drawn into an increasingly dangerous mystery.

Madam Tulip sets off at a brisk pace that accelerates as the book progresses. In the early chapters, Ahern deftly sets to the stage for the mayhem to come by hinting at secrets and questionable motives. On meeting Marlene and Peter Doyle at a racetrack, Derry’s immediately detects that they are not what they seem.

Doyle is an actor, thought Derry. He’s playing the rich and successful host, a man in control. He’s having an off-day for some reason, but he doesn’t forget his lines, and he stays in character no matter what.

Very quickly, Derry’s relatively uneventful life is upended. Following the death of the pop star Mojo, Derry’s friend Bella is unjustly detained by the police, collateral damage from the plot that Derry is investigating. Derry herself becomes a target. With the help of her friend Bruce, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, she embarks on a series of maneuvers to unmask a deadly conspiracy. Like many characters who are suddenly catapulted into an adventure for which they are ill prepared, Derry faces strange and sometimes comical dilemmas, such trying to figure out how to dispose of planted drug money without leaving forensic traces.

…Derry hadn’t got a shredder.

How do you get rid of money? Never in her life had Derry imagined she’d be asking herself that question. “I know,” she said, jumping up and rooting in a kitchen cupboard. She pulled out a blender, plugged it into the socket and poured in a little water from the tap.

“I guess if it’ll turn cabbage into a smoothie it can do it to twenties.”

Derry proves to be a perceptive observer, and her impressions effectively draw the reader into the story.  She quickly spots incongruities in the behavior of the Doyles’ chauffeur Paulo.  On one occasion when Peter summons Paulo, his response to his employer is unusual.

The chauffeur of a rich man might have been expected to jump to attention and follow his master meekly across the lobby. To Derry’s surprise, Paulo did nothing of the kind. He put his hands in his pockets, walked backwards towards the door and, as he had done once before, blew Derry a kiss.

Her instincts are unerring. Several times in the book, she must decide whom to trust without having all the facts. Her training as an actor stands her in good stead in these situations, enabling her to identify subterfuge and sincerity. After the pop singer Mojo’s death, suspicion falls on his girlfriend Sonya, but Derry is confident that she is innocent.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine Sonya killing Mojo. Nobody, not even the best actress in the world, could fake the feelings Sonya had shown.

Madam Tulip’s overall tone is light-hearted, with comic relief provided by a feud between Derry’s divorced parents – her mother Vanessa, a flamboyant art dealer, and her father Jacko, a raffish painter perpetually one step ahead of trouble of his own making. Ahern’s wry observations like the following also contribute to the book’s wittiness.

The phalanx of policemen now fanned out around the offending car as though the driver inside were a terrorist or a wanted gangster. Meanwhile, the helmeted motorcyclists tried to disperse the watching crowd, shouting, “Nothing to see here, nothing to see! Move on!”

No crowd of Dubliners promised the delightful spectacle of raised voices, shouted obscenities and discommoded policemen will willingly accept an instruction to disperse, especially if accompanied by the ludicrous statement that there is nothing to see. Plainly, there was lots to see. The mood was turning ugly.

The novel has a couple of minor weaknesses. One subplot explores Derry’s potential rekindling of a past romance; however, the interactions between Derry and her former boyfriend lack any spark, and his character is woodenly unappealing. Another flaw, in light of the fact that this is the first in a planned series, is that Madam Tulip does not introduce any compelling character or story arcs that would span multiple installments. Because the novel is very competently written and succeeds on many levels, this is not strictly necessary. But to keep readers strongly engaged with a series, a novel should leave interesting questions and conflicts unresolved.

On the whole, though, Madam Tulip is pure entertainment, striking an ideal balance of comedy and suspense, with a cast of delightful eccentrics flailing their way through a gripping adventure that culminates in a satisfyingly cataclysmic conclusion.

For more information, please visit the author's website.

Athame by Morgan Alreth

I hate to admit it, but I sometimes avoid the local library’s fantasy section because I’m not up for the intellectual investment in a fictional world’s historical and political minutiae, simply to understand the conflict at hand. I don’t always want to spend page after page hearing about all the factions, which dale or fell they inhabit, and which one slew the other’s thane. If you share these sentiments, Morgan Alreth’s Athame may be of interest. This charming novel falls squarely on the more playful, less overwrought end of the fantasy literature continuum.

Athame begins with a chance meeting in the forest between Jess, a woodsrunner and witch, and Peteros, the youngest son of King Jansen and Queen Lora. Pete, as Jess immediately begins calling him, is lost and without provisions after a werewolf attacked his group, killing all his companions and their horses. Because of his privileged upbringing, Pete lacks wilderness survival skills and is ignorant about the creatures that threaten travelers in that part of the world. Jess conducts him safely back to her family’s cabin and then agrees to escort him to a nearby town, where he can find transport back to his home city of Kulhn.

A romance ensues, and Jess travels with Pete to Kulhn. Numerous conflicts erupt after they reach the city. Confronted with the nobles’ disdain for her as a commoner, Jess must decide whether she and Pete can overcome the differences in their backgrounds and build a life together. They also face hostility from Pete’s father and brothers, who will go to any lengths to cut Pete out of the succession. The priests of Hohdwan, who persecute witches, arrive on the scene, determined to take custody of Jess. She and Pete also struggle to understand why their movements are dogged by ghaunts, which are deadly, nocturnal creatures of unknown origin.

Because these obstacles are relatively straightforward, Athame has no need for exhaustive world-building. Relationship woes, family drama, and class conflict don’t require a lot of context-setting to make them understandable. When Jess and Pete make their first appearance at court, its denizens’ antipathy toward Jess is obvious. We don’t need to know who is in the sneering crowd or why they hate Jess. It’s the age-old contempt of the haves toward the have-nots:

The jewel encrusted mob of satin-choked humans in front of Jess made Marge’s bird collection look drab and subdued. They stood crammed together, rib to rib and ankle to ankle, whispering and staring at Pete while he walked the length of the carpet toward the platform. Then some of them, mainly the women, started sizing her up and snickering. Jess tightened her jaws and straightened. She took a grip on her belt with both hands and lifted her chin.

In spite of Pete’s advantages as a prince, he and Jess are equals in their adventures. When they meet trouble, they rely on Jess’s magic and woodlore along with Pete’s swordplay. As they prepare to spend a night in a dilapidated fort, Jess detects signs that something nasty already occupies the structure. She instructs Pete to prepare by making torches and smearing garlic on their weapons. When they encounter the vampire Selvana inside the fort, Pete draws first blood, but Jess makes sure that the vampire is permanently out of commission.

…Pete lunged and buried the point of his sword in her belly.

Selvana’s form began to twist and morph as the edges of her body faded into mist. Jess took one step, drew back her arm and snapped it forward. The belt ax flew spinning across the room and chopped its way through undead breastbone, directly into the heart beneath. A stinking corpse hit the floor, already falling in on itself.

“Take the head, Pete. Quick.” He obeyed promptly. Jess grabbed it by the hair and ran for the fading sunlight outside. She called over her shoulder, “Grab my ax and put the stick through her heart.”

There was still enough sunlight for the head to start fuming when she emerged. Jess tossed it onto a pile of nearby trash and lit the disgusting thing with her torch. Pete came pounding up behind her and watched in wonder as the head crumbled into ashes.

“The old ones like her are hard to put down,” Jess said. “Gotta finish them in the sunlight or they might heal up. But that should take care of her.”

Jess exhibits strength, intelligence, and confidence when dealing with assorted natural and supernatural threats, and a well-developed sense of humor adds to her appeal as a main character. As she and Pete approach the vampire’s lair, he asks, “Shouldn’t we have some kind of holy symbol?” “Only if the vampire goes to church regular” is her response.

Although the character of Jess is one of Athame’s strongest points, she is also the source of its main shortcoming, which is the dearth of information about Jess’s life up to the point at which the story opens. The novel provides much more insight into Pete’s background. But the reader is left to wonder how Jess honed her magical abilities, what kind of relationships she had with family and friends, and what her prospects were before she met Pete. Clocking in at slightly more than 200 pages, the novel could easily have accommodated more backstory on Jess. Athame is the first book in The Unfortunate Woods trilogy, so perhaps this missing detail will be provided in subsequent volumes. Wrath, which I have not read, is already available, and Recompense is in progress, according to the author’s blog.

On the whole, the novel has much going for it. The two main characters’ experiences are easy to relate to – struggling to adapt to new circumstances, compromising in order to make a relationship work, and trying to figure out where you belong and what will make you happy. The pace is just right, striking a good balance between action and introspection. And the unresolved dilemmas are intriguing enough to leave the reader with a sense of anticipation for the trilogy’s remaining installments.

For more information, please visit the author's website.

Magic’s Heart by Thomas Oliver

If you write about a quest to deliver a magical object to a far-flung destination and thereby save the world from evil, you had better be up to the challenge, for your brave travelers unwittingly toil in the shadows of Frodo and Sam. Thomas Oliver makes a credible foray into this formidable subgenre with Magic’s Heart. This novel’s would-be heroes are a close-knit family whose members each possess a distinct magical talent. Seventeen-year-old Aliya has an affinity for bodies of water and the creatures that inhabit them. Her twin brother Crick has highly developed outdoor skills honed through years of exploring. Their brother Yori, 11, has the most advanced abilities of anyone in the family – he can detect magic and read the thoughts and feelings of others. The remaining family members, including parents Orlando and Siu and grandmother Abetta, each have their own magical specialties.

Yet they live in a region in which magic has come to be suspect. The Darkness is gathering strength, and the leaders in the nearby city of Immelus rely on military might to protect the people of the region. Url, an elderly friend of the family who has dedicated his life to studying the origin of magic, believes that the only way to combat the Darkness is to find the Heart of Magic. After an arduous search of a subterranean cave, Url and the family members find the Heart, which turns out to be a gemstone approximately five feet in diameter. The group formulates a plan to deliver it to a legendary stronghold of magic, the city of Iala. There it would be incorporated into a magical torch on the Tower of Elliad. This torch, in theory, would be a weapon sufficient to defeat the Darkness. As Url explains,

“When the Heart brought Magic into our world, it also, unintentionally I believe – brought something else. Something far worse.  A darkness from beyond our world and our understanding, attracted through the stars to the Magic of the Heart like a terrible moth to the light of a distant flame… it brought the horror around which the Black Wind exists. The true Darkness itself; ever hidden, ever unknown, ever terrible… Sometime after the first Magic was found, the first breaths of the Wind appeared. They started small and isolated, hovering around the borders of our world like wolves around a flock, picking off the weak and unwary. But over the years these breaths grew and came together in one vast storm, engulfing horizons and destroying towns and cities and their peoples within as quick as sound. And all the time it looked inwards, in towards the light. In towards the Heart, seeking it, craving it… The Heart is the key – the only key, beneath us this whole time – to ending the Black Wind! It is the one and only thing which can bring to us the peace our world has lived without for so long! The Heart is our freedom!”

But the group must brave hundreds of miles of wilderness, the Black Wind, and an assortment of other threats to reach their destination. They are joined on their quest by Tarryn, a young guardsman from Immelus, and Aulan, a mysterious, otherworldly outcast.

A quest can be a tedious thing, fraught with empty miles, bad weather, hunger, exhaustion, and often a growing tendency among the travelers (and sometimes the readers) to ask, “Are we there yet?” Magic’s Heart tames the inherent tedium of a long journey by revealing a fully realized world with its own geography, politics, and bestiary. The travelers encounter friends and foes along the way. They enter and quickly retreat from the dead city of Irraigon, devasted by the Black Wind years ago. They sojourn for a time in the Undervalleys, where an entire society dwells underground to avoid the perils of the encroaching Darkness. They meet up with waterfaeries, scarravers (ants the size of wolves, with deadly pincers), and stalkers, which are alchemically altered humans whose wailing paralyzes its hearers with terror.

Throughout their journey, the group struggles to understand the Heart’s capabilities and the role of magic in their world. Magic is not without its pitfalls. A recurring theme is corruption resulting from the lure of magic’s power. Tarryn describes to the others how the leaders of Immelus hoard information about magic: “Any knowledge that’s ever been passed down to the main of the City and the rest of the Heartlands has been sieved and corrupted a hundred times over by the Council… Anything which may benefit them in some way, either then or sometime in the future, they hold back for themselves. There’s so many centuries of history and secrets hidden within the City, they’ve probably forgotten half of it themselves…”

This novel is intended to be the first in a series called The Núminway Chronicles. There is much to admire in this ambitious opening installment. The author has clearly lived and breathed the world he describes for a very long time, imagining it down to the smallest detail. There are grand concepts and epic struggles, and it’s apparent that much more remains to be revealed about this world in the coming volumes.

The execution, however, is not flawless. Parts of the novel dragged. The chapters describing the search for and retrieval of the Heart of Magic from the cavern are a prime example of this. Another quibble I have is with the character of Yori. He is characterized as possessing the greatest magical talent of anyone in the family, yet he spends significant stretches of time withdrawn and afraid, brooding silently on the growing danger instead of making himself useful. To put it bluntly, I found him annoying. Finally, some of the prose was a bit challenging because of word choice, punctuation, and sentence construction. I think a good editor could make a profound difference.

When the travelers finally reach Iala, the novel really takes off. These final chapters are the strongest in the book. They introduce the most memorable secondary characters, culminate in a satisfyingly cataclysmic conclusion, and effectively set the stage for the sequel.

For more information on Magic's Heart, visit the author's website.

The Girl in the Photo by Wally Wood

Surgeon Robert Emmerling’s death at age 86 in The Girl in the Photo’s opening chapter serves as a catalyst for a series of discoveries by his two children. While clearing out their father’s home, David and Abbie find a memoir he had written about being stationed in Japan during the Korean War, years before he met their mother. It describes his involvement with Masami, a woman he met there. David and Abbie also turn up Masami’s photograph and a letter she had written to Dr. Emmerling after he returned to the U.S. This previously unknown episode in their father’s life raises questions for the siblings: Why did the romance end, and what happened to Masami afterward?

The novel draws the reader into this family’s story through plot elements that span past and present-day action. In the present, Abbie and David deal with their grief, pursue the truth about Masami and try to resolve dilemmas in their personal lives. But the past mingles freely in the form of frequent flashbacks to the siblings’ childhood and the memoir, whose chapters are interspersed with the main text of the novel.

During the events described in his memoir, Dr. Emmerling exhibits some of the same qualities he did while raising David and Abbie. Central to his character is the tendency to pass judgment on others. His memoir recounts Dr. Emmerling’s efforts to discourage a fellow military doctor from marrying his Japanese girlfriend. He enumerated various reasons for his objections to their marriage, such as cultural differences and the prejudice that a Japanese wife and children would be subjected to in the U.S. during the 1950s. He concluded, “Face it – marrying a Japanese woman is taking someone from a third-world country and expecting her to make it in a first-world country.”

David and Abbie’s recollections also depict a judgmental, controlling man who made his children feel inadequate. David recalls the confrontation in which he told his father that he didn’t have what it took to continue with his pre-med studies.

Dad wouldn’t let that pass. “Of course you’re good enough. You’re smart enough. You’re not trying hard enough. You’ve got to try harder.”

David looked to his mother at the other end of the dining room table for understanding and support. “I am trying! I’ve been trying all year. I just can’t do it.”

“You’re not stupid, David,” said Dad. “I refuse to believe you can’t pass second semester chemistry.”

Abbie too has memories of unsavory aspects of her father’s personality. She had been selected to perform in a school musical, but his reaction shocked Abbie, who remembers,

He said, “I understand you want to sing a duet in public with that colored student.” I didn’t know what to say. He never paid any attention to what I was doing in school. “You may not,” he announced. “I absolutely forbid it.” … I was crushed. I couldn’t believe my own father was so prejudiced. I probably said something like, ‘”Why?” He wouldn’t look at me. “I’m your father,” he said. “As long as you live in my house, you’ll do what you’re told. The subject is closed.”

On the other hand, the memoir illuminates aspects of their distant, unemotional father’s character that David and Abbie never knew existed. It reveals him to be capable of tenderness, rage and confusion – things they did not witness while growing up. Describing how he feels when he’s with Masami, Dr. Emmerling writes in his memoir,

At these moments, I feel as if I’ve briefly come truly alive. This is the only reality I crave. Not the hospital. Not the operating room. Certainly not the war and the endless train of wounded GIs. Not whatever is to come after this time – the States, a hospital affiliation, a career, a wife, children, a home, two cars, country club membership. None of that could ever be as real as this.

Further muddying the waters are flashbacks in which Dr. Emmerling unexpectedly behaved with great kindness toward those in trouble. As a result, he initially appears to the reader as a man rife with inexplicable inconsistencies. But through the shifts between present and past, the author gradually assembles the various pieces of the puzzle that is Dr. Emmerling’s life. Behavior that seemed incomprehensible earlier in the book makes sense in the context of subsequent revelations. Along with David and Abbie, the reader comes to an understanding of a complex man whose character was indelibly marked by the profound experience he had in Japan.

This novel’s greatest strength is its characterizations. Dr.Emmerling emerges as a flawed, often unlikable but fully realized human being. The reader can easily imagine how he might react in any situation. The characters of Abbie and David are also painstakingly constructed. The reader learns about their relationships, their careers, their triumphs and their disappointments. Their father’s influence reverberates in their lives, and the reader can trace his impact on their choices.

The memoir’s descriptions of Korean-War-era Japan and its denizens are richly detailed and effectively transport the reader to another time and place. In some sections of the book, however, the level of detail about Japanese culture is somewhat excessive, and readers may find their interest flagging through these passages.

Overall, The Girl in the Photo is an absorbing tale whose characters remain vivid in the reader’s memory long after the closing chapter.

This book is available from Amazon.

Remember Big by Kelly Wittmann

Remember Big follows the bumpy journey of Charlie Matthias as he tries to rebuild his life after bottoming out in his early 30s. When the story begins, he’s living in his wealthy parents’ suburban Chicago home after addiction wrecked his marriage and professional golf career. He’s surrounded by dysfunction – a bullying father, a manipulative mother and an assortment of insensitive acquaintances – all of them passing judgment on Charlie’s squandering of his potential. Despite his loathing for the shallow country club enclave into which he’s retreated, Charlie is hobbled by inertia. He has no motivation to find a new career or do anything other than pine for his ex-wife. His family’s relentless criticism finally goads him into making a new start, and he moves to the city. His apartment building’s owners are the parents of a woman he’d known as a teenager. The daughter, Erica Denner, also lives in the building, and Charlie is immediately attracted to her, even though she is the antithesis of what Charlie has been taught to appreciate in women. Unlike the meticulously groomed trophy wives who populate the spas and shopping malls of Charlie’s hometown, Erica leads a more authentic life – helping her parents manage the building, working in a feminist bookstore, pursuing artistic endeavors and treating everyone with kindness.

The main plotline is the relationship between Charlie and Erica. Conditioned to worship material success and go to any lengths in its pursuit, can Charlie find happiness with a woman whose modest lifestyle centers on the intangibles that no amount of money can buy? Interwoven with the romance are various subplots including friction with Charlie’s parents, who disapprove of his relationship with Erica; his sisters’ struggles with anorexia; and a run-in with a cop who carries a grudge about something that happened when he and Charlie were schoolmates.

Remember Big incorporates many conventions of contemporary romantic comedy – the spunky, insightful elderly mentor (Charlie’s grandmother); the juxtaposition of old-world traditions with modern American life (Erica’s parents are East German immigrants); the inevitable big night out scene in which the female lead transforms herself into the spike-heeled, cleavage-spilling vixen of every man’s fantasy. The novel avoids descending into cliché thanks to the engaging voice of its antihero narrator. Charlie makes humorous, piercing observations of himself, those around him and the banality of American suburbia. Describing his parents’ aversion to visiting Chicago, he says, “It was dirty and loud and there were unpleasant poor people there. Rich and Faye didn’t miss the sophistication, or if they did, it apparently wasn’t worth the trouble of finding a parking spot.  They needed to be – always – in places where it was possible to just glide to the next destination, rolling slowly to a stop at the end of a path as smooth and crisp as a brand new polo shirt.” At times Charlie can be exasperating. He fails to exercise self-control at critical moments and lapses into self-destructive behavior when beset by troubles. But he is also compassionate and endearingly vulnerable. Explaining his reluctance to visit the bookstore where Erica works, Charlie notes, “Lesbians and their unknowable, half-removed society made me feel like what I feared I really was, a shallow ill-educated philistine from the suburbs who was in over his head, trying to be cool for his new girlfriend while everyone laughed behind his back. A guy who couldn’t be hip if his life depended on it.”

In spite of the narrator’s penchant for introspection, the novel doesn’t get bogged down in navel-gazing. Charlie pauses the narrative when he needs to in order to explain his thinking or relate a snippet of relevant backstory, but these pauses are nearly always justified and, with one or two exceptions, never become unwelcome digressions. As a result, the plot moves briskly enough to hold the reader’s interest from start to finish. My one quibble with the pacing is the abruptness of the events leading to the resolution of Charlie’s vacillation between his residual feelings for his ex-wife and his new relationship with Erica.  It seemed to me that near the end the novel suddenly shifted from third gear to fifth, and then a couple of chapters later, it was over.

Remember Big has a robust cast of secondary characters – some lovable, some annoying, some entertainingly quirky, and nearly all somehow dysfunctional. As each one is introduced, the author provides ample characterization through words and actions, so the reader immediately understands what type of person this is. Because each new character immediately makes a strong impression, the reader never has trouble identifying characters when they reappear later. On the other hand, I was looking for more insight into the motivations of two main characters – Charlie’s parents. Their behavior toward Charlie inexplicably seems aimed at destroying his self-esteem. For example, at one point his father, trying to convince Charlie to break up with Erica, says, “So you’re happy? You’ve been happy since you started – having relations with this Denner girl? Because if you are, you should win an Academy Award. Do they have a Best Lead Moper category? Oh, wait – you’re never in the lead, are you?” Nothing that Charlie relates about his parents adequately explains such cruelty.

For a novel whose characters have so many issues, Remember Big is a lively read. I enjoyed the references to Gen X pop culture and the skewering of upper-middle-class pretension (on being told that his pregnant sister is considering the baby names Camden and Mason, Charlie involuntarily spews out the cookie he had been eating). In addition to being entertaining, the book raises deeper questions about social expectations and what it means to be happy and successful. For this reason, I think it would be an appropriate selection for book groups, since it has enough substance to provide adequate fodder for discussion.

Remember Big is available from Amazon for the Kindle and in print.