A Reliable Wife ((Robert Goolrick)

Ralph Truitt, the stern, upright titan of business in a small town in Wisconsin in 1907, long widowed, placed a newspaper ad seeking a "reliable wife." Catherine Land, who answered the ad, is not who she seems to be. We follow the two of them, their lives, past and present, and their deepening relationship, built on lies and lust. There is a whole lot of lust in this book; most of the characters seem driven by unslakable desires. The author explores in some detail life in the darkest, most depraved corners of society, as well as the life available to Truitt, who seems to be limitlessly wealthy.There are secrets within secrets here, but aside from one surprise in the middle of the book, few of the secrets are so very secret after all. I found the setting and the characters interesting and well-drawn and I cared what happened to them, even as they seemed larger than life, nearly mythic. There was more lush, slow description and is my preference, and I found myself skipping paragraphs and whole pages, especially toward the end of the book. This first novel is not without its problems, but its strengths outweigh them.

A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki)

On hold for now - I'll get back to it later.

Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)

I enjoyed this rather odd story, but left it unsatisfied. Ursula Todd is born on a snowy morning in 1910, but dies in childbirth. She is born, and is saved by her doctor, but falls from the roof when she tries to rescue a doll that was tossed out the window. She drowns at the seashore; she is rescued by a stranger. Over and over again, she lives, and dies. It is fascinating to see the events in the world, and in her life, from so many different perspectives, and all the settings and people are beautifully drawn.. Eventually she begins to remember her past lives, and starts trying to manipulate what happens. I really enjoyed it all, but at the end it didn't seem to have gone anywhere. She set herself a specific goal, and I can't even tell whether she accomplished it or not. Aside from this letdown at the end, it is a good story.

Great North Road (Peter Hamilton)

This one was overambitious of me. I think it is a good story, with lots of intriguing sense-of-wonder science fiction stuff layered over a gritty police procedural dealing with a very odd murder - but it's almost 1000 pages and I just couldn't pull it off. I ran out of energy and time less than a third of the way through, and moved onto another. I could argue that it failed to grab me sufficiently, but in all honesty, I think it was a failure of my patience, not a failure of the book. Sorry.

Odds Against Tomorrow (Nathaniel Rich)

This is an odd story, but engrossing. Mitchell has always been fascinated with disasters, carrying a card with him listing the probabilities of dying in various odd ways, and this leads him into a career calculating risk for a financial institution, but he feels that he is not getting anywhere in his job and his personal life is essentially nonexistent. He jumps to join a brand new company that helps corporations prepare for disaster, and his obsessions spiral almost out of control as he spins worst-case scenarios for clients about everything from terrorist attack to the Second Coming. When a superstorm targets Manhattan, he is hailed as a prophet who foresaw the disaster, but the reality of his fears is nearly overwhelming. Intertwined with his psychological apocalypse is an unexpected connection with a woman he spoke to once in college, who addresses her own worst-case scenario in a very different way. I was definitely interested and wanted to find out what happened next, even though Mitchell's twisted psyche was always just a touch too over the top for me to really identify with him.

Jack Glass (Adam Roberts)

This quirky set of three linked stories focuses on a murderer called Jack Glass. We are told up front that there are several murders committed in these stories and Jack Glass is responsible for most of them, but exactly who he really is and how the murders are committed only gradually becomes clear. The stories take place in various exotic futuristic environments, one of them planet Earth, with different point-of-view characters, and the stories have different tones and voices, but in the end they all hold together. I was somewhat disappointed in the resolution to the last mystery (I don't know how it could have been anticipated by even the cleverest reader), but overall I found the stories interesting and the puzzles entertaining.

Spin (Robert Charles Wilson)

One quiet evening in October, everything changes. All Earth's satellites fall out of the sky at once and the moon and stars flash and vanish. We quickly discover that the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere is experiencing time differently than we do; millions of years pass every day. The sun rises the next morning as usual, but it's a bland imitation of the real thing, with no sunspots and no aurora. As scientists compute the time differential, it dawns on us that within a few decades we will have outlived the sun, engulfed in its swollen surface, and no matter what this barrier is that blocks us from the universe, we will die. Who did this to us, and why, and how will humanity cope? Though these events are literally world-shaping, Wilson tells it in the most personal, compelling way, by focusing on one man, following him from the childhood night when the stars disappeared to the unthinkable new world he finds as an adult. Through his eyes we observe two people, one vital to the planet, one vital to his own soul, and this makes us care. I very much liked the book. It makes me think about big ideas and about human questions.