Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for the weekend include the new novel by Annie Barrows, and two fun beach books for kids.
The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows; The Dial Press, 512 pp.; fiction
It takes a brave author to make the heroine of a new novel an observant and feisty girl who has no mother and adores her father, growing up during the Depression in a small Southern town where everybody knows everybody and their business.
Like Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Willa Romeyn, the 12-year-old who narrates much of The Truth According to Us, is looking back to identify the moment when her world "began to heave itself free of its foundations.'' But her father, Felix, is no Atticus Finch.
Annie Barrows is the co-author of the best-selling novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society, which she brought to fruition after its original author, her aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, became too ill to finish. Guernsey was told entirely through letters, and Barrows' new book, set in 1938, includes letters written to friends and family from Layla Beck, a young Washington, D.C., socialite kicked out of the house by her father and ordered to get a job.
Layla arrives in Macedonia, W.Va., to research a history of the town for the Federal Writers' Project, the New Deal program that employed writers and photographers and best known for the series of guidebooks it produced.
Paste BN says *** out of four. Barrows "has created a believable and touching character…engaging."
In the Waves; written by Lennon and Maisy Stella, illustrated by Steve Björkman; HarperCollins, 40 pp., for ages 4-8; fiction
Lennon and Maisy Stella, the young stars of ABC's Nashville, pen a picture book celebrating two sisters having fun in the sand. Released simultaneously with a song of the same name that streams free on the publisher's website.
Paste BN says ***1/2. "Joyous."
Beach House; written by Deanna Caswell, illustrated by Amy June Bates; Chronicle Books, 32 pp., for ages 3-5; fiction
We follow a family arriving at a much-loved beach house. Rather than head right for the waves, they first have to do their chores — unpacking, settling in, applying sunblock.
Paste BN says ***. "A refreshingly realistic story."
Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs by Sally Mann; Little, Brown, 496 pp.; non-fiction
The photographer who courted controversy with nude photos of her children tells her life story, through words and pictures.
Paste BN says ****. "Troubled and triumphant, Hold Still is a memoir that never shrinks from life's damage as Mann keeps finding a way to steer us toward the light."
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume; Knopf, 397 pp.; fiction
Judy Blume's new novel for adults is based on events in the 1950s when three commercial flights crashed in and around her hometown of Elizabeth, N.J.
Paste BN says ***. "Judy Blume is still here, opening our eyes to the daily astonishments of life all these years later."
Contributing reviewers: Martha T. Moore, Eliot Schrefer, Matt Damsker