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Reading: The pleasures and problems with multiple narrators 

I read all the time but read most at our lake house in Quebec — especially when it’s too hot to go outside. I sit on the screened porch and read for hours. Bliss. 

Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace is a slender book (196 pages) that took me days to read because it’s told by 21 narrators. I read the first few chapters a few times trying to figure out who was who and how they were related. I was engaged, I wouldn’t give it up, I wished he’d included a character chart. (A bookish friend said that should be my review: needs an org chart.)

I was interested in the book because I wanted to see how the author pulled off 21 narrators. Too, it had won the Irish Book of the Year prize. I read, and love, a lot of contemporary Irish literature. 

This book deserves its prize. It’s about a small town in Ireland peopled by gangsters, drug runners, teenagers, migrants, strivers. Friendships and marriages are tested. Can a father accept that his daughter married a woman? That his son is a fraudster? 

This is a beautifully written portrait of a place and its inhabitants. It made me cry, more than once, because of its tru-isms about forgiveness and unlikely pairings. 

Note to self: make your own chart. 

Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann contains a character chart of the building’s residents, which I needed ’til about halfway through. 

This is a wonderful read about families and individuals who live in a Brussels apartment building before and during World War Two. Central to the story is Francois Sauvin, an architect, who survived World War One’s trench warfare with a damaged leg. He’s In 4L, raising his motherless daughter Charlotte, who is brilliant in her own way, and can’t see color.

Art dealer Leo Raphael and his family, 4R, are secular Jews who flee to Britain. Son Julian — Charlotte’s childhood sweetheart — becomes a navigator for the Brits. How he returns to 33 Place Brugmann is worthy of Le Carre, and gives dastardly Dirk DeBaerre, 2 R, the opportunity to redeem himself.

There’s sadness, suspicion and intrigue in the city and in this building. Also laughter, beer making, and a dog named Zipper, 3L, who turns vicious at just the right time.

I’ll read anything by Joyce Carol Oates. Her newest work of fiction, Fox, is the story of a private school and its people, charmed by a pederast. The campus is in South Jersey, with its haves and have nots, who intersect on school grounds. There are many narrators, but I didn’t need a chart. I was hooked right away by the immediate intrigue: why are vultures circling the wetlands nature preserve? Why are there boot prints leading away from the wrecked car, but not approaching? The town’s police detective is among the book’s narrators.

The monstrous English teacher — Francis Fox preys on pre-pubescent girls — is already dead when the book begins, yet we come to know him. Fox charms the headmistress, her adult niece, the school librarian. Fox knows this is his last gig, as he’s already been run out of a prep school in Massachusetts. This is a disturbing topic, yes, but a fascinating read, because we see how a young man’s looks and manner allow him entry to a closed world. 

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