Very Old Bones

This installment of William Kennedy's Albany cycle has a more self-consciously literary style, as befits being narrated by an aspiring writer. That leads to some curious flights of fancy. And while the excavation of family secrets is as appealling here as in the other novels, some of the incidents appear rabbit-out-of-a-hat style instead of, more satisfyingly, organically. Overall, this is an excellent depiction of what happens when you have a writer in the family.

Three Years in Mississippi

James Meredith had two goals when he attempted to register at the University of Mississippi in 1962: to get an education and to break down the system of white supramacy in his home state and perhaps the nation. An education was secured, but the second goal remains elusive 60 years later. Meredith's memoir shows him to be iron-willed, brave and strategic. His relationship with the civil rights establishment, including the NAACP, was not particularly warm, although his admiration for Medgar Evers was immense. Constance Motley's work as Meredith's lawyer was tenacious. Above all, the feeling that lingers after finishing Three Years in Mississippi is hope – the civil rights bills that Meredith thought were essential in giving Blacks their due were passed a few years later – mixed with sadness that the poison of white supremacy that Meredith sought to purge from America is perhaps as strong as ever.

The Pigeon

The Pigeon by German writer Patrick Süskind is a short novel (115 pages) that punches above its weight. In the style of Thomas Bernhard (but with paragraph and typographical breaks), it tells the story of a middle aged man set in his routines whose life is upended by the appearance of a pigeon in the corridor outside his apartment door. This one seemingly small but odd event sends him into a spiral that makes him question everything he's ever known. Süskind effectively shows that the veneer of civilization, and the mental layer that protects an individual's sanity, is very thin.

The Netanyahus

I had marked this novel in February to be read, never got around to it, and picked it up after it won the Pulitzer Prize last week. It is the kind of book that can be admired but never really loved, and its subject matter is awfully slight. "Cold porridge" passing as "hot stuff," to repurpose a Saul Bellow blurb, comes to mind. Still, although authors who wear their erudition loudly have never impressed me, Joshua Cohen may be the exception that proves the rule.

A Time to be Born

Dawn Powell's 1942 novel is in many ways the typical high-low story: high society, low stakes. After reading Native Son from only two years earlier, it seems almost obscene that someone would write a story that spoofs Clare Boothe Luce and the nonexistent problems of New York society types. But, to Powell's credit, the style is crisp, the scenes are well-observed, and there is a good amount of perceptive social commentary. Powell gets up on her high horse for an opening section and once again deep in the novel, but for the most part she constructs a narrative that is compelling and gathers pace as it rolls to a conclusion.

A High Wind in Jamaica

Reading this 1929 novel by Richard Hughes reminded me again of the vast differences between American English and British English, and of the hoary saying that the two countries are separated by a common language. There is much to enjoy here – an adventure story, an examination of how children think, some attractive set-pieces – but the overall effect is of a slog through the typical hyper-reserved and oh-so-clever English mind.

The Graduate

Writing a novel that is 85 percent dialogue must have been a challenge, but Charles Webb was mostly up to it. Where The Graduate succeeds is in presenting a very cool, distanced critique of suburban middle class values, or more accurately the lack of values parading as such. This is old hat by now, and when done today it comes off as sneering and pompous, but there was still something worth saying on the subject in 1963 when the novel was published. The dialogue can annoy at times, as when the characters repeat each other and ask questions without question marks, but this I suspect is all part of the plan of presenting a very specific world of alienation and meaninglessness. One advantage of the reliance on dialogue is that the reader never has to endure digressions about motivations and feelings – the characters simply act. The reader can fill in the rest.

Spies of the Balkans

Alan Furst's reputation for smart spy novels set during World War II led me to this book, which concerns the looming German threat to Greece in 1940. Furst wears his research lightly and has an appealing prose style. Although this story, centered on a police official in Salonika, is a bit scattershot, I will be dipping into to others in the series.

Double Indemnity

James M. Cain's short novel moves along at a breakneck pace, pun intended, with snappy patter and knowing glances into the dark underside of human behavior. Every bit a good as the film.

The Man Who Lived Underground

Richard Wright's novel was first published 60 years after his death, although it appeared in short story form in the 1940s. It mixes a type of magical realism with trenchant social commentary, opening with a brutal section in which a black man is tortured by police into signing a confession to a crime he didn't commit. The man escapes underground, lives in the sewers of the unnamed city and pokes holes into basement walls to observe a variety of scenes and people. Ultimately, he finds wisdom underground, the wisdom of one who sees the hopelessness of daily striving, the false allure of religion, and the injustice and dishonesty of what was then a world at war. Such a man cannot be allowed to exist, obviously, much as the Counselor in Mario Vargas Llosa's War of the End of the World could not be allowed to exist. The world kills its prophets, even the genuine ones. A sad but bracing tale told beautifully by a great writer.