The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion. On Dec. 30, 2003, while preparing to eat dinner, Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne, died at the table. He suffered an apparent heart attack and Didion, unprepared for the event, was at first cross with him because he had stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. This book encompasses the year after his death and tells, from the first person point of view, what grief and mourning were like for Didion. In the telling, she is both emotionally forthright and keenly analytical about her own feelings. Grade: B+

The Last Good Day

The Last Good Day (2003) by Peter Blauner. Lawyer Barry Schulman and his wife, Lynn, have moved to the bedroom community of Riverside. Waiting for the train to Manhattan one day, Barry witnesses a headless body wash up on shore. To Lynn's shock, the body is identified as her old friend Sandi. Thus begins a book that is less a murder mystery than a meditation on the state of middle-class America post-9/11 and post-stock market crash. Blauner goes into intimate detail about several of the families in Riverside, and finds most to be rotten to the core. The book ends in a spasm of violence which seems oddly appropriate, given what has gone before. At any rate, it makes for a good, entertaining and thought-provoking read. Grade: B+

Intuition

Intuition (2006) by Allegra Goodman. A team of scientists seeks a cure for cancer. They seem to have found a promising line of inquiry, but did one of the scientists cheat when reporting his results? Or is it just his jealous ex-girlfriend trying to sabotage him and the laboratory where he works? This book got some great reviews (which is why I read it), but I found it less than satisfying. Grade: B

Oblivion

Oblivion (2005) by Peter Abrahams. Interesting detective fiction in which the private eye is stricken with brain cancer when he's right on the cusp of solving a mystery. The treatment costs him a couple of weeks in the hospital and nearly all of his memory. Nick Petrov is his name. Before his illness he is Petrov, a calculating thinker who unravels problems with brain power and muscle when needed. After his hospital stay he becomes Nick, his body wasted, with little to go on but intuition and a few leftover clues. His search for a lost girl named Amanda turns out to have intriguing links to a serial-killer case he solved years before. Grade: B