Author: Andres Kabel

“Razor Blade Tears” is a classic revenge crime novel overlaid with modern twists and executed with such panache that it stands out as memorable. When a gay couple in Richmond, Virginia, is gunned down gratuitously, seemingly without motive, the two fathers, both ex cons, one black, one white, find themselves uniting to exact bloody justice. The sinuous plot is masterfully unfurled, the hardscrabble settings come to life on the page, and the dialogue sparkles with noir flourishes, but the heart of Razor Blade Tears is the examination of the motives and prejudices of the fathers. Neither a good man in the classic sense, both twisted up with hatreds and regrets, together they carve out a joint, monumentally bloody path to redemption. The author lays down lyrical, hardboiled prose, especially powerful during the many Kill-Bill-style action scenes. I came to this marvelous novel cold, having read neither of the author’s prior two novels, but I am heading back to them right now.

Joanna Glen is out there as a stylist, vividly and quirkily present from the eyes of her vivid, quirky heroes, and with many other authors, I can see myself framing this comment as a criticism. Clunky, earnest, in-your-face characters populate sentimental pap novels. Not so with Glen. Always sharp, often witty, her intelligent prose keeps the reader engrossed and on edge. “The Other Half of Augusta Hope” is her debut and it is a scorcher, relating the weaving tale of Augusta, born as one of two twins to parents she seems to dismiss from early childhood, and yearning for a different, more real existence. Marvellously precocious (for example, drawn towards the country of Burundi from an early age), her life is upended by family tragedy and a new life begins in Spain. Never formulaic, always true, the emerging narrative is a reader’s heaven. The ultimate message is one of hard-won joy. Anyone trapped in lockdown could well use The Other Half of Augusta Hope as a dreamscape into a better world.

Frederick Backman employs a quirky, jittery style in which the writer often talks to the reader, and this style both irritates and, at its best, invokes involvement. “Anxious People” is not, in that context, as captivating as Backman’s breakout hit, A Man Called Ove, but it is never dull and can unexpectedly hit comedic and emotional heights. I can barely describe the heady caper-style plot but it revolves around a hapless bank robber holding an apartment full of potential purchasers hostage. Switching between aftermath police interviews (themselves replete with complications between the police officers) and the hostage crisis, the plot is a rabbit warren of unlikely connections and surprise switchbacks. As a caper novel, I found it absurd, and that plot dissonance spoiled my enjoyment, but towards the end, I relaxed into the author’s touching, if dictatorial messaging. Overall, Anxious People is a maverick caper jaunt married to earnest sentimentality, and an easy read.

“A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds” is the new go-to book on one of the miraculous, misunderstood natural phenomena, that of birds, moulded by a relative static Earth and evolutionary pressures, regularly migrating, often over incredible distances. I have digested numerous books on bird migration over the last half decade, but this is the standout. Scott Weidensaul is not only a dedicated, self-taught ornithologist but an unstoppable journalist, and this combination, plus an impassioned, intelligent writing style, combine to produce a riveting, fascinating read. Weidensaul is especially valuable for being at the forefront of the new technologies, such as incredibly small GPS trackers and radar, enabling startling discoveries of what actually happens in the skies, years in, years out. As well as distilling the new migratory knowledge, the author takes journalistic trips to the heart of bird hunting, and to conservation efforts around the world. With the new understanding of the complexity of migratory birds’ annual cycles comes a greater appreciation for the subtleties hammered by a heating earth, and Weidensaul is brilliant at unpicking our understanding of the unmistakeable threats to so many species of migrating birds. A World on the Wing is essential, eloquent, and spirited.

Anyone reading the blurb for “Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology” might expect an engaging every-person account of a captivating subject, namely the evolutionary origin of birds, whether from dinosaurs or elsewhere. Perhaps as readers, we have been spoilt with an array of explanatory, pleasurable reads from leaders in the field, but in any case, this book is something else altogether. Although scientific consensus is that birds evolved from ground-dwelling dinosaurs, the science is not fully settled, and a dissenting voice over decades has been paleornithologist Feduccia, who sees birds as having evolved from some other reptiles and as having learnt flight from falling out of trees (rather than learning to fly from the ground, as most think now). Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs consists of twenty-three pithy chapters tackling aspects of his dissent, some of them being general reasoning, most being disagreements over the lessons of recently discovered fossils. In other words, this book is an old argument presented once again. Each chapter is dense with complexity and I certainly was not able to follow his arguments with a neophyte’s grounding. I admired his verve and wit and was able to decipher, with the aid of some ancillary research, the bones of his arguments, but I really can recommend Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs only to insiders from his field or a related one.

“The Wife and the Widow” is the eagerly awaited sophomore release of Christian White, after The Nowhere Child was a bestseller (I enjoyed it). This stylish mystery novel juxtaposes the lives of a widow, exploring the hidden secrets of her dead husband’s life, and a woman on a sleepy island off the Australian coast, exploring sudden secrets of her husband’s. The author is adept at building up the two characters and their stories, and the locales are well portrayed, but at the book’s heart is one of those all too rare plot twists that have you declaiming to your friends, “I’ll say no more but you must read this.” And I’ll say no more. And you must read The Wife and the Widow.

Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth, a history of climate change inaction, captivated me two years ago, so I came to “Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade” ready to be enthralled again. And there is much to love in this set of essays, a number of which have already appeared. As the author puts it in a preface, the essays fall into three categories. The first three essays are exposes of corporate malfeasance; I especially enjoyed “Here Come the Warm Jets,” covering a massive ongoing methane leak. Then there are some fascinating essays about places and milieus already changing in a warmer world; “Aspen Saves the World” is brilliant, tackling a rich person’s skiing play town when the the snow is disappearing, while the town itself reimagines itself as a climate activist forerunner. And the final section concerns hubristic tales of attempts to fix old wrongs, often resulting in further debacles. Second Nature is an intriguing, educational, stylish romp through parts of our new climate emergency world.