Anchor Books | Book Chatter

Save What’s Left
By Elizabeth Castellano
Anchor Books, 9780593469170, June 2023, 204 pp.

The Short of It:

Chaotic in an oddly entertaining way.

The Rest of It:

“An outrageously funny debut novel about a woman who moves to a small beach town looking for peace, only to find herself in an all-out war with her neighbors..” – Bookshop.org

I actually thought this book was hilarious. I picked it up when I wasn’t feeling too great and was instantly perked up. Unfortunately when I finished it I was really out of it so couldn’t formulate my thoughts. This is my best attempt now.

Kathleen Deane finds herself on a little discovery adventure when her husband of 30 years decided he no longer wants to be married. This is a shock. I mean, 30 years is a long time. As she tries to make sense of it, she begins to think about her next steps and that lands her in a small beach town. The idea of growing old in a quaint little beach town has always appealed to her so she sets it all in motion to make it a reality.

What she doesn’t count on is the town being completely off kilter. Construction, building violations and city officials who do not return her calls. It’s comical at best. The interactions with neighbors and honestly folks just walking by really make you rethink idyllic beach towns. Do they exist?

This story is very episodic. This happens and then that happens. Every time I picked it up it put a smile on my face . If you need something a little different to add to your reading list, add Save What’s Left.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Nutshell
By Ian McEwan
Anchor Books, 9780525431947, May 2017, 224pp.

The Short of It:

A clever take on Hamlet as told by a fetus.

The Rest of It:

You don’t need to be familiar with Hamlet in order to enjoy Nutshell but it certainly helps.

Trudy leaves her husband John for his brother, Claude. Together, Trudy and Claude come up with a plan to murder John. The house they occupy is quite valuable. With John out-of-the-way, they could potentially make quite a bit of money. But their plan is not a secret to Trudy’s unborn child. The child is fiercely loyal to his mother and somewhat loyal to his paternal father, John, Mostly because he cannot stand the vile Claude.

This is not a new idea. Movies like Look Who’s Talking have provided platforms for the unborn to voice their opinions but in Nutshell, Trudy and John’s child is very well-spoken, a wine connoisseur (due to his mother’s affinity for drink) and hilarious with his high-brow take on the dim-witted plan these two have hatched.

Nutshell is very literary and clever and superbly written. I’ve read many of McEwan’s books and all of them have been good, with Atonement being my favorite. However, Nutshell was very enjoyable. It was a book club pick and many in the group agreed that it was humorous in its own way, but some felt it was a little over-the-top with its pretentiousness. I didn’t mind that part of it and had no trouble suspending my disbelief over the fetus telling the story, but the scheme these two come up was riddled with holes from the beginning so believability in that regard is non-existent.

Have you read it? I think some readers are intimidated by McEwan and if that’s the case, I recommend Nutshell because it’s not as heavy as some of his other books.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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