Author: Meghan Siegler

Familia, by Lauren E. Rico (Kensington, 368 pages)

I started reading Familia in a hotel room while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to dinner – and promptly lost all desire to go out to dinner. (I mean, we went — she wasn’t about to buy “but I really like this book” as a reason not to).

Lauren E. Rico’s novel is a fast-paced story that covers a lot of bases: family, obviously, but also different cultures and how they form us, a bit of a mysterious crime, and coming to terms with a life that can change in so many significant and unexpected ways.

A DNA test brings together Gabriella and Isabella, the former young woman fully believing the results were a mistake and the latter having no doubt that they weren’t. Isabella, who has lived her whole life in Puerto Rico, used to have a sister, Marianna, and she disappeared when she was seven months old while in the care of their extremely inebriated father. Gabby, a magazine fact-checker who lives in New York City and was raised by now-deceased parents whom she loved deeply, does not believe it’s possible that the parents who raised her — Mack and Lucy — were not, perhaps, her birth parents.

Gabby embarks on a trip to Puerto Rico, for the sole purpose of writing a magazine story about what happens when DNA test results are wrong. She thinks it’s the perfect way to show her boss that she has talents beyond fact-checking and deserves a staff position as a writer.

It seemed a little unbelievable that Gabby is a fact checker — her job is literally to dig in and find facts — and yet she doesn’t make much of an effort to dig into the facts about her family history despite the DNA test results. I guess there’s that emotional component that would make it difficult to believe that your history is anything other than what you remember and what you’ve been made to believe.

As Gabby explains to Isabella, “For what you’re saying to be true, I’d have to believe Mack and Lucy would have — could have — literally stolen a baby off the street. … This isn’t about not being able to believe that I’m your sister. It’s about being able to believe that I’m not their daughter. And I just … I can’t.”

The story mainly alternates between Gabby’s and Isabella’s points of view, but there’s a whole cast of interesting characters, and Rico gives most of them at least one chapter. This means the story is tied together from all sorts of perspectives, from Alberto’s — the book opens with him, coming to on a street, baby missing — to the detectives’ on the missing-baby case. It was a really fun way to see the mystery unravel, because, of course, nearly everyone has a secret. The narrative also switches between now and “that day,” the day the baby disappeared, offering another compelling angle.

There’s the mystery, and then there’s the juxtaposition of two young women who were raised very differently and have different kinds of intelligence; Gabby is more book smart while Isabella is more street smart. Rico shows this subtly but effectively, in scenes like this one, from Isabella’s point of view, as the women walk through one of the shabbier areas of Puerto Rico.

“When Gabby takes out her phone to snap a picture, all she can see is the mural — a spray-paint reproduction of the Mona Lisa draped in a Puerto Rican flag. All I can see are the two guys standing just out of the frame, conducting a little street-side retail.”

There’s definitely a “wealthy girl from NYC vs. poor girl from San Juan” piece of the narrative, and while I personally didn’t feel like it was overdone, I think someone who is of Puerto Rican descent or is more familiar with Latino culture would likely read the representations of Puerto Rico a lot differently than I did. A lot of the descriptions shine a negative light on the people and places of Puerto Rico, mainly San Juan and la Perla, and I can’t pretend to know how accurate they are. The author does include a note at the beginning of the novel explaining her own family history and that she is trying to honor her heritage and the stories she heard from her Cuban grandfather and Puerto Rican grandmother, along with her extensive DNA connections to the island and her own experiences visiting there (which she acknowledges were from a tourist point of view).

Familia is a quick read that manages to be both fun and a bit dark, but it’s also meaningful and has a lot of heart. A-

Maame, by Jessica George (St. Martin’s Press, 320 pages)

There’s a lot to like about 25-year-old Maddie Wright, the main character in Jessica George’s debut novel. Born in Ghana and living in London, Maddie is navigating her unique brand of young adulthood struggles, from low-key workplace racism to familial responsibilities and expectations. She is sweet and kind and very innocent, at times frustratingly so. But watching Maddie grow up and figure out who she is and who she wants to be is what Maame is all about, and it’s a charming journey.

In some ways, Maddie is forced to be more of an adult than many 25-year-olds; she’s taking care of her dad, who has Parkinson’s disease, and her mom, though still married to her dad, spends most of her time in Ghana running a hostel while Maddie and her dad live in London. Her mom is critical of Maddie and the fact that she isn’t as engaged in her Ghanaian heritage and customs as her mother would like her to be — yet Maddie is the one paying all the bills at home and sending money to her mom in Ghana, while her brother does little to help.

In other ways, though, Maddie seems younger than most women her age, and she knows it. That’s why she sets a goal to transform herself into “The New Maddie.” She makes a list of who she wants to be, which includes “drinks alcohol when offered, always says yes to social events, tries weed or cigarettes at least once (but don’t get addicted!), goes on dates, is not a virgin,” and so on.

Maddie gets the chance to work on these goals when her mom returns to London for a year to take over the care of her husband. Maddie moves out and into a flatshare with two women her age, both very different and seemingly more worldly than she is, which gives her a whole new opportunity to live her own life. At the same time, she starts a new job at a publishing house, and, of course, there’s suddenly a new guy hanging around. (Happily, though, romance is not a central plotline but rather a nonintrusive piece of Maddie’s coming-of-age puzzle.)

George expertly depicts both Maddie’s Gen Z traits and her innocence through her frequent Google searches. She Googles random things like “back pain in your mid-twenties” and gets mostly-useless answers from random people: “CC: ‘It’s all linked to the Government. … From a young age we’re told office jobs are the goal. Then you sit at a desk hunched over 9-5, 5 days a week for most of your younger years.’ LG: ‘Why would the government want a nation suffering from back pain?’ CC: ‘So we don’t take over.’”

Many of her questions show her uncertainty and lack of confidence, particularly in the social domain. Waiting to hear back from a potential love interest, she Googles “How long do guys wait before asking a girl out on a date?” (Some very realistic Google answers range from: “I spent four months getting to know my now-girlfriend before I asked her out on a date” to “One hour.”) George incorporates these searches sparingly enough that they’re not annoying and they add some relatability to Maddie’s character no matter how different she is from the reader. We can all relate to the frustration of such drastically diverse search results with no definitive answer from a source — the almighty internet — that is supposed to have all the answers. (Honestly, who hasn’t Googled “weird rash” and been led to believe it’s either totally normal or a sign of impending death?)

Maame covers all the bases of growing up with cultural barriers, without being heavy-handed or preachy. Despite Maddie’s sometimes cringy naivete, I was rooting for her all along. Her story is often funny, and always heartfelt and engaging. A

Ms. Demeanor, by Elinor Lipman (Harper, 304 pages)

I’ve never before finished a book and thought, “That was delightful,” but that’s the phrase that kept running through my mind as I transitioned from the fictional world of Ms. Demeanor to the bleak reality of New Hampshire in winter. It was a bright spot in a string of cold, gray days, and it’s a step up from the typical beach read romance, with a unique plot, witty writing and fun, well-developed characters.

Protagonist Jane Young, a spunky, sassy lawyer, is under house arrest for public indecency, having been caught on camera by her nosy neighbor as she was enjoying an intimate moment with a coworker on her semi-private rooftop.

This house arrest leads to Jane meeting an amusing cast of characters, including cute, age-appropriate Perry Salisbury, whom she learns from her doorman is also under house arrest, also for a white-collar crime. (I said it was a unique plot, not necessarily a believable one — regardless, a nice change from the average fictional meet-cute.) I like that Perry is just a normal dude. In many chick-lit-type novels, the male characters who end up with the female protagonist are often portrayed as pompous jerks who eventually show that they have a kinder, softer side worth loving, or as friendly next-door-neighbor types (as opposed to an actual neighbor, a la Perry, who is neither annoyingly friendly nor a pompous jerk). He’s a great foil to Jane, pretty chill and tolerant compared to her less relaxed, quicker-to-anger vibes.

Lipman’s minor characters are well-developed and quirky. There’s Mandy, another building dweller Jane introduces herself to, because why not, being stuck there for six months, and there are Dani and Krzysztof, whom Jane meets because of their relation to the old woman who called the cops on her. Even Perry’s parents are hilarious, his mom especially, being all posh and snotty but also likable somehow.

This book features a lot of relationships of convenience. Jane and Perry’s relationship is transactional at first, starting with food — Jane is trying her hand at making food from the 1800s and posting her cooking videos on TikTok, and she agrees to make meals for Perry as well, which gets her a bit of a paycheck and helps him curb his fast-food habit. That quickly transitions to a friends-with-benefits situation.

Dani and Krzysztof, meanwhile, are looking for green cards through any means necessary so they don’t get deported back to Poland. They ask Jane to hook Krzysztof up with anyone she knows who might want to get married, like perhaps her twin sister Jackleen, who is saved from the absurdity of even considering that plan because when Jane mentions it to Mandy — a quirky woman who apparently has no qualms with marrying someone, anyone, because her biological clock is ticking — Mandy jumps on the opportunity.

Some of Ms. Demeanor’s plot seems to go off the rails at times. For example, there’s a possible murder situation that isn’t really resolved — but that didn’t bother me at all because a resolution wasn’t really the point. The whole cooking on TikTok thing, which Jane is doing because for some unknown reason her sister has been asking her to for years, was kind of pointless. Jane cooking for Perry would have made just as much sense without that, though it may be more that I don’t understand how people use TikTok. Like, she’s making very old-school foods while complaining about her current house-arrest situation — why would anyone care? But my teenage kids tell me it’s normal to follow random people doing random things. My daughter was just watching a total stranger getting ready for a first date while talking about the guy’s red flags. So, there’s that.

The easy, witty writing made me want to keep reading no matter which storyline Lipman was on. Plus, it’s a quick read with those deliberately short chapters that make a book hard to put down (just one more chapter, I thought many times). I think the readability is one of the reasons it’s so delightful. Sure, there’s no going back to read over gems of sentences; this isn’t Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination. It’s fast-paced and fun and at no point trying to be a contender for a Pulitzer Prize. So if you’re looking for serious, this isn’t it. B

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine, 384 pages)

You know when a book’s protagonist is really hard to like but, for reasons that you can’t quite understand, you root for her anyway? That is Carrie Soto.
When we meet Carrie, she’s 37 and has been retired from professional tennis for six years. After watching Nicki Chan match her Grand Slam record, she decides to come out of retirement and win back her spot at the top of the tennis world.
Taylor Jenkins Reid has created a character in Carrie who is so real, I keep expecting her to show up in daily sports headlines. But her name appears in fictional media stories time and again, as Jenkins Reid uses sports commentary and news articles to help shed light on what the world thinks of Carrie. And the world sees her exactly as she is: supremely talented but ruthless. In fact, she was given the nickname of “the Battle-Axe” when she was in her prime.
We see some of that ruthlessness during a press conference that takes place during her first event back, the Australian Open. One of the reporters asks if there’s truth to her comeback being a stunt. Carrie responds, “I’ve proven so far that my game is outstanding. So everyone can whine and moan all they want about me being here, but I’ve earned the right.”
Another reporter asks about her upcoming match, to which she replies, “I’m gonna crush Carla Perez and anyone else I play on my way to the final. I’m going to hold their beating hearts in my hand.”
That’s Carrie, inside and out. She’s as abrasive internally as she is externally; it’s not just a show for the media. She’s hard on everyone else, and she’s equally hard on herself. We see this in the thoughts that permeate her mind during her games, including during a tight match against Natasha Antonovich, one of her more formidable rivals.
“I do not look at my father. I do not want to see the worry in his eyes. I tell myself: Do not let her win this set. You are either a champion or a ****up. There is no in-between.”
Rarely, we see Carrie’s vulnerability. She puts a hard wall up against Bowe Huntley, a fellow tennis pro with whom she’d gotten too close to in the past. She has the chance to train with him again, and she imagines a scenario in which she does let him back into her life.
“He’ll say something wonderful at some point, and I’ll start to believe he means it, despite all evidence to the contrary. And then I’ll start to like him or love him or feel something that I swear I’ve never felt before. And then one day, when I’m in too deep, he’ll stop liking or loving me, for one reason or another. And I’ll be left with a hole in my heart.”
Also softening the storyline is Carrie’s relationship with her dad and coach, Javier, a former pro himself. Their relationship, at first, seems all business; when Carrie trains with him as a child, Javi is demanding and has what some might see as unrealistically high expectations. But as the story goes on, we see how deeply he loves her and just wants her to be happy. And Carrie’s feelings for him change, seeming to soften over the years. She had fired him as her coach during her pre-retirement career, but she agrees to work with him for her comeback. Javi becomes a likable character, an endearing foil to Carrie’s hard-headedness.
Carrie Soto is Back is very much about tennis, but don’t let that stop you from picking it up, even if you care nothing about sports in general or tennis in particular. I’ve never played tennis, never watched more than a few minutes of tennis, and never really cared to. But Carrie is tennis, and who she is is expressed through her intense tennis practices, tennis games and tennis relationships.
It helps that Jenkins Reid has done her homework. According to an Aug. 29 interview on The Cut, Reid has played tennis for fun, but “I don’t think I’ve ever won a game, let alone a set or a match. … I had to learn it all for this book, and I’m very insecure about it. Did I learn it right? I don’t know, guys. I’m an imposter. I’m trying really hard. I’m trying to learn as much as I can so that I can give you a good time.”
Jenkins Reid has done just that. Carrie Soto is Back is a good time, not in spite of Carrie’s brashness — or the intense focus on tennis — but because of it. A-

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf, 416 pages)

If a great writer is someone who can take a subject like video games — loved by some, maligned by others, inconsequential to the rest — and use it to weave together a story that even the latter two categories of people can appreciate, then Gabrielle Zevin is a great writer.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about love, friendship and, yes, video games. That might sound like the premise of a young adult novel written to entice middle school gamers to put down the controller and pick up a book, but no; this is a beautifully written, emotionally complex story that unravels over the span of 30 years through various characters’ points of view — though mainly protagonists Sam Masur and Sadie Green’s — and in settings that range from hospitals to living rooms that serve as creative epicenters and offices, to inside the world of a video game that Sam creates.

Sam and Sadie met as kids in a hospital, where Sam was recovering from a car accident that killed his mom and Sadie was visiting her sister, who had cancer. Their very first interaction drew me in, with some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read. Sadie walks into the hospital’s game room, where Sam is playing Super Mario Bros. She sits down next to him and watches him play.

“Without looking over at her, he said, ‘You want to play the rest of this life?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘No. You’re doing really well. I can wait until you’re dead.’

The boy nodded. He continued to play, and Sadie continued to watch.

‘Before. I shouldn’t have said that,’ Sadie apologized. ‘I mean, in case you are actually dying. This being a children’s hospital.’

The boy, piloting Mario, climbed up a vine that led to a cloudy, coin-filled area. ‘This being the world, everyone’s dying,’ he said.

‘True,’ Sadie said.

‘But I’m not currently dying.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you dying?’ the boy asked.

‘No,’ Sadie said. ‘Not currently.’

‘What’s wrong with you then?’

‘It’s my sister. She’s sick.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Dysentery.’ Sadie didn’t feel like invoking cancer, the destroyer of natural conversation.”

Thus begins their relationship, though it’s derailed after 14 months when Sam finds out that Sadie has been counting the time she spends with him at the hospital as a community service project: “Their friendship amounted to 609 hours, plus the four hours of the first day, which had not been part of the tally.”

Sam and Sadie reconnect in their college years after a chance meeting at the subway station. They end up collaborating on a video game, Ichigo, which is a huge success and propels them toward future collaborations. Over the years, though, that work is complicated by emotions and miscommunications, deep love and unrequited romantic love, outside forces and other people, like Sam’s roommate, Marx, and Sadie’s professor/lover, Dov. These characters are what make Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow the compelling story that it is, and they’re a big part of the reason why people who don’t like video games can still appreciate this book. These are characters that readers can care about, and get mad at, and grieve with.

Zevin’s writing is exquisite; there are so many passages and sentences in the book that are worth reading more than once — an especially good thing when time jumps and perspective shifts get a little confusing and you need to stop for a moment and reread to make sure you know what’s going on.

There are some people who are not going to be able to get past all the video game references, because there are a lot. There are references to old-school games, and there are some technical aspects related to the behind-the-scenes work of creating a game, like design and programming and graphics engines (I’m still not quite clear on what such an engine does or why it can seemingly make or break the quality of a game, but those details don’t take away from the ability to understand what’s going on). There’s also a whole section that takes place in a video game called Pioneers, and while it wasn’t my favorite part, I can appreciate the depth that it adds to the storyline, as the game becomes an essential part of Sam and Sadie’s relationship.

I haven’t considered rereading a book in years — who has the time when there are so many new books waiting to be read — but this is one that I’m definitely going back to again, to savor the prose, spend more time with the characters and possibly get a better handle on what a graphics engine does — not that it really matters. A

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Book Events

Author events

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair in a Literary Lunchtime event at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will discuss her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough; toadbooks.com, 924-3543).

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• BOB BUDERI author of Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub will beat the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 5:30 p.m. for a discussion with special guests C.A. Webb and Liz Hitchcock. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.