Time Off for Good Behavior Lani Diane Rich

From the cover:

Expressing anger is healthy.

Wanda's gonna live forever.

I can hardly improve on that as a summary of this book. Wanda Lane is someone I'd like for a friend, especially if it meant she wouldn't be an enemy.

When some people's lives get out of control, they sink into self-pity. Wanda fights back. After marrying a man who alienates her from her family and friends, tries to kill her once, and continues to threaten her, she manages to get him out of her life (somewhat), but she lurches along as if he were ruining her life at every turn.

When she's hit bottom, she meets a man who genuinely cares about her, but Wanda doesn't trust either love or affection. Despite her mistrust, she manages to find guides in the form of a priest, a psychotherapist, an elderly book owner, and others who recognize the Wanda she can't see.

These friendships help her see her life can turn around-if she does the turning. Slowly and with a lot of backsliding, she finds the road home.

Written with a heavier hand, this could have been self-help faintly disguised as fiction. Instead, Wanda's self-deprecating, angry, and always-hilarious voice makes it sheer entertainment.

Sure, it's uplifting, but never was being uplifted so much fun.

The Ragtime Kid Larry Karp

Recently I made a comment during an online chat of my writer's group that I like to listen to Scott Joplin rags while I write. Another member commented that she'd always thought she and her husband were the only people who'd heard of Scott Joplin. This, of course, was an exaggeration, but it aptly notes how under-appreciated Joplin's music, which influenced Satie and Debussy, is in his own country.

That the reason for the burying of a significant American musical genre is racism is made abundantly clear in The Ragtime Kid--not through heavyhanded rhetoric, but via a fast-moving and sometimes shocking story.

Brun Campbell, a teenaged white boy, is the Huck Finn of ragtime, pursuing the magic of its music and determined to master it. A runaway who lands in Sedalia, Missouri, home of Scott Joplin, he finds himself confronted with the body of a young woman. The murder plot intertwines with his musical quest.

While, as some reviewers have noted, the murder mystery aspect of the book is fairly lightweight, the writing is wonderful, the research impressive, and the characters memorable. This is a book I will long remember and very likely re-read.

In the book, Scott Joplin tries to explain classical ragtime to Brun. "It is not a musical painting of a sunny day, or a beautiful woman, or a fresh-baked sweet-potato pie. It is how you feel on that sunny day, seeing that woman, smelling that pie. But despite yourself, you know that inevitably the sun will set. That woman will grow old and bent and wrinkled. The pie will get eaten or moldy. While it lasts, though ..."

That is the melancholy beauty of ragtime and of The Ragtime Kid.

Time's Witness Michael Malone

I read this book as a selection chosen by my book club, although I'd originally read it when it was first published in the late 1980s. Although there was a huge cast of characters, the author made each character distinct.

Without being pedantic or doctrinaire, the author uses the story line to show, rather than tell, his philosophy: that the super-rich use racism to keep poor and working-class whites and African-Americans divided. This is a singularly significant premise at this time, as we note the way in which women's rights, religious bigotry, and other issues have been added to the arsenal.

I don't want to leave the impression that this is a grim tale. The author has a unique sense of humor, and at times, his characters are almost too witty, as if they'd stepped into the pages of the novel from a stage where they'd been doing improv. I enjoy this style of humor, but others may not.

Overall, this is a big, richly dramatic, and greatly satisfying book.

The Baby Trap Sibel Hodge

When I read the summary of this book, I was very curious to see how the author would pull off stirring humor into a very sensitive subject often steeped in disappointment and pain. It takes a deft hand to strike a good emotional balance, and Sibel Hodge is, I am happy to report, equal to the task.

Those who have undergone similar attempts to become pregnant can only be comforted by the writing of a woman who has shared and describes the experience with immense sensitivity. Those who have not will gain access to greater understanding.

I also learned a larger lesson from reading this book. Though the experience of trying unsuccessfully to become pregnant is specific, it's also a dramatic example of how often our own fears, resistance, and anxiety can keep us from realizing our dreams. This book proved a good reminder, and I thank the author.

The Current Rate of Exchange Jacqueline Lynch

Combine well-defined characters, humor, and an exotic location (New Zealand), and I'm hooked. The Current Rate of Exchange blends these ingredients in satisfying abundance, with a dash of family secrets and a redemptive finale that's absolutely believable.

Part of my criteria for giving a book a 5-star review is whether I would read it again. This book is a hands-down reread.

Driving Me Nuts P. J. Jones

P. J. Jones, best known for her parodies, breaks new ground in Driving Me Nuts, a tale of three patients at a mental institution. Ruckus, who relieves his bottomless sorrow by urinating in unusual locations, Fred, locked in a prison of childhood trauma, and Apple, a self-confessed klepto nympho, whose back story is far more tragic, steal a car and take a ride that turns into a Texan version of Dante's Inferno.

As an adventure full of hair-raising and life-threatening episodes, it's a first-rate read. What makes this story outstanding, though, is the tender treatment Jones gives her wounded protagonists. We see deep into the hearts of Ruckus, Fred, and Apple and watch them face and vanquish their individual demons in a way that's both convincing and moving.

We need many more stories like this, and I hope P. J. Jones is working on a new one.

Out of the Limelight James Bagworth

Before I was halfway through this book, I hoped that it was the first of a series. All the characters, from the protagonists down to the walk-ons, are memorable. The author deftly weaves the subplots into a tapestry that is at once hilarious and at moments horrifying. The background, Victorian London, is richly described, and the macabre climax is wholly convincing.

I am delighted that the author promises more adventures like this one. I hope the next will be published soon, because I am suffering serious withdrawal.