18 Stories

Heinrich Boll's stories put on display in a concentrated form his incisive understanding of the varieties of human behavior. The idea that flowers could become a necessity in demolished, postwar Cologne figures in one; how a crooked scale cheated peasants for decades features in another. The trick to these is to be wise in the ways of the world but still capable of wonder. In that, Boll excels.

The Middle Ground

To learn what London was like in the late 1970s, a reader could do a lot worse than consult this Margaret Drabble novel. It is kaleidoscopic and drills deeply into the personal and societal challenges of the era. Kate Armstrong, approaching 40, is the central character, and rarely has a person's muddling to get along been invested with such thoughtful perception. As often with Drabble, the plot is not the point; the point is life.

The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

To have found Penelope Lively's 2016 book of stories in a recycling bin is another one of those fortunate reading discoveries that come from poking around, like how stumbling on Margaret Drabble's The Millstone in a dusty bookstore in Maine opened me to her incisive mind and winning prose. In these stories, Lively, who is 84, demonstrates a penetrating understanding of human nature and a flair for the dramatic. Such is the intensity of some of them that they provoke a powerful physical response.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

This book, edited by Bandy X. Lee, M.D., is subtitled, "27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." It evaluates the behavior of the president and its current and potential consequences. Potentially, it is not farfetched to imagine that a person as impulsive, erratic, and pathological as the president could lead the world into a nuclear holocaust. As for the here and now, the book explains how the president's behavior has a damaging effect on the mental health of the population as a whole. 

War and Turpentine

Stefan Hertmans's novel is a tender account of a 20th century life touched by ghastly inhumanity and, ultimately, unceasing grief. The writer's grandfather is the subject, and the tale is told through scraps of memories and, most directly, a diary. An exemplary soldier in Belgium in the Great War, Urbain Martien endures and describes the horrors of that conflict in the novel's central section. The bookending sections tell of his childhood and postwar life, which were colored by his own father's work as a church painter restoring the images of saints. The result is a family saga that is compellingly told, with layers peeled off and secrets effectively withheld until the very end.