The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies. (Houghton Mifflin 2007)
Already an award-winning short story writer, Peter Ho Davies makes his novelistic debut with this thoughtful and multi-layered account of a Welsh village during World War II. When British troops construct a POW camp near town, it stirs up old nationalistic resentments and new questions in the isolated community. Although the plot progresses little from that point, Ho Davies uses his increased length to flex his skills and,focuses on unraveling the subtleties of his characters: local barmaid Esther, German POW Karsten Simmering, and British Captain Rotherdam. Each deals with conflicting conceptions of loyalty that lead them to surprising decisions.
The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. (Knopf 2006)
In this glittering satire of New York City’s cultural elite, Claire Messud wonders what happens to children who wait to inherit the robe of an utterly naked emperor. (Why cap Emperor, exactly?) The titular despot is Murray Thwaite—a journalist living off of the reputation he built during Vietnam. His it-girl daughter Marina and her best friends, Danielle and Julian, haven’t accomplished much since their days at Brown. Aware that, as Julian puts it, “charming wastrel” is increasingly difficult to pull off after 30, they struggle to create the lives they’d imagined, and to which they believe they are entitled. Messud mocks their vanity with a Whartonian pen along the way.
Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon. (The Penguin Press 2006)
If this novel’s heft isn’t imposing enough (580 pages), the ending of Pynchon’s intro address might deter all but the most ambitious: “Let the reader beware. Good luck.” Yet for Pynchon devotees and other readers willing to face a challenge, this novel is a long-awaited gift. The cult author has not published since 1997, and this new effort seems like a collection of all of the ideas he’s had in the interim. He offers up a baker’s dozen of international plotlines spanning the turn of the twentieth century, and bound by his usual themes: paranoia, technology, bureaucracy, and chance. For those with the guts to get on, it’s a rollicking literary ride.
