Smile

Roddy Doyle's novel will rise or fall in the reader's estimation in large part on his or her assessment of the final few pages. Victor Forde, mid-50s, is looking back on an adult life that started with some promise but has landed him in a pub, alone, looking for new friends. In walks Fitzgerald, apparently a schoolmate from the 1970s. Forde doesn't remember him, but Fitzgerald seems to know quite a lot about Forde. After a school trauma is revealed, the stage is set for the surprise ending. It is genuinely disorienting, but the publisher's note in my edition assures readers that there is no "trick," that everything in the novel adds up. I suspect a second reading would confirm that.

Moon Tiger

As she lay dying, historian Claudia Hampton writes her own life history in this Penelope Lively novel. One great love (and loss) is at the center, from her time in Egypt during World War II as a young reporter. The account is wide-ranging, both wistful and hard-nosed, and envelops the reader.

Delano

John Gregory Dunne's account of the grape pickers' strike in Delano, California, led by Cesar Chavez, balances perfectly the roles of disinterested observer and decent human being. Dunne can see what is in front of him, which is rare (cf. Orwell), but he has no illusions about the purity of any particular side. The historical background provided (large-scale theft of land by the railroads and others) is valuable in setting the context out of which this struggle arose.

Heather, the Totality

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's attempt at a novel reads like a cross between Sherwood Anderson and Don DeLillo. A flat, affectless prose is used in service of a story about a well-to-do New York family and a down-and-out construction worker. That the paths of these two factions will cross is inevitable, but the climax is a bit of a damp squib. This is a very short novel, really more a long short story with four characters, easily and pleasantly read and then forgotten.