Lotería by Mario Alberto Zombrano

Published by HarperCollins on July 2, 2013

Luz Maria Castillo is eleven. She's been in a government facility for a few days with only a deck of Lotería cards from home. Her sister Estrella is hospitalized, in critical condition. Luz feels responsible for Estrella's injury but its cause remains a mystery through most of the novel. Luz refuses to speak. Her aunt Tencha wants her to talk to the counselors, to open up, because that's the only way to get her father out of jail. Luz' counselor interprets Luz' silence as a reaction to trauma. Instead of speaking, Luz follows Tencha's suggestion to write down her thoughts. She writes as if she were speaking to God.

In her journal, Luz tells a series of stories about her life, memories of her past, each inspired by the picture on a Lotería card. Whether all of the stories are literally true is unclear; Luz reminds us that we each tell our own stories in our own ways. Some of the stories are cute but seemingly pointless (that's to be expected when random memories are triggered by pictures) while others bring Luz' life into sharper focus. To an extent, her story is typical of an immigrant family transplanted from Mexico to the United States, struggling to assimilate and coping with discrimination. On a more personal level, Luz describes parents whose domestic life transitioned from romance to violence, a father whose rough discipline leaves its mark on both of his daughters and a mother who (in Luz' view) abandoned them. Mario Zombrano makes it possible to understand and even empathize with Luz' father while, in the same moment, condemning his abusive behavior.

It's also easy to understand Luz, a girl who doesn't understand herself. She questions her role in her family as well as her identity: Is she Mexican or American? Is she good or bad? Does she have religious faith or has that, like so much else in her life, been lost? Luz is young but she will clearly spend many years trying to define herself. While I wasn't always convinced that the narrative voice was that of an eleven-year-old, I was usually too absorbed by the story to wonder at the maturity of its narrator.

Luz' stories come together in a powerful but touching narrative as she weaves her way, card by card, to Estrella's injury and her father's incarceration. While the mood is somber, Zombrano occasionally lightens the tone with playful sentences. This is one of my favorites: "I took guitar lessons for a year but quit because my teacher smelled like tomato soup."

There is a certain amount of untranslated Spanish in the book. Some readers won't like that. If you don't speak the language, you might want to have your laptop open to a translation website while you read. The extra effort is rewarding.

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Long Lankin by John Banville

First published in 1970; revised edition published by Vintage on July 2, 2013

Originally published in a slightly different form in 1970, the current incarnation of John Banville's first book collects nine of Banville's short stories. Banville's skillfully crafted sentences are pregnant with meaning, his language is rich and evocative, but even more can be mined from the silences between sentences, the words left unspoken. In "Wild Wood," for instance, three boys in the woods talk about a woman who was murdered. The meat of this story is left untold; Banville leaves it to the reader to fill in the empty space. Similarly, most of the action in "Summer Voices" revolves around an old (possibly crazed) man who shows the body of a drowning victim to two children, a brother and sister. The real story, however, involves the relationship between the siblings, an innocence lost before their encounter with the dead body.

Nature, and particularly the sea (an instrument of death in "Summer Voices"), are recurring symbols in the stories. The sea surrounds the protagonist in "Island," a writer who, full of ambition when he leaves Ireland, grows stagnant while living on a Greek island. Or so says the woman he's with, the woman he's about to leave because she's too easy to understand.

Religion and death, estranged families and madness are recurring themes. "A Death" refers both to a death in the family and to the death of love. An old man at a funeral, ranting of evil and desolation and godless times, sparks the renewal of a discussion a couple must have had countless times before. Peter and Muriel, the lead characters in "Lovers," visit Peter's father before they leave town to start a new life -- a man who, having seen everything in his life slip away, is eager to meet his own death, but only after making sure that his son's hopes will also die. In "De Rerum Natura," a demented old man, bald with bandy legs like "an ancient mischievous baby," is attuned to the life that surrounds him, including the pigeons in the bedroom and the rats in the kitchen, but cannot make the same connection with the son who shudders at his "malevolent, insidious gaiety." But how much of the father lurks in the son?

One of the most thought-provoking stories (again, because of how much is left unsaid) is "Nightwind." A failed writer hosts a party where a murderer lurks on the premises and a friend makes a pass at his wife. The writer talks about the unhappy citizens of "the new Ireland" who are "trying to find what it is we've lost" but it is the writer's own losses -- of pride and ambition and his child -- that dominate his thoughts.

A couple of stories, I must confess, I didn't fully appreciate: "The Visit" concerns a girl whose mother died in childbirth. She waits to meet the father she's never seen, but her attitude changes after she talks with a strange little man on a bicycle. Julie, a student in "Sanctuary," discusses her fears of moving away as she prepares to leave her professor, Helen, with whom she has been spending the summer. Julie's fears are compounded by a visit from a black-clad stranger who seems to know Helen and who has come to say goodbye. Even the stories about which I was less enthused, however, provide early evidence of Banville's uncommon ability to conceal layers of meaning within simple stories.

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House Odds by Michael Lawson

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 25, 2013

John Mahoney is the minority leader in the House of Representatives. His daughter Molly has been arrested for insider trading. Mahoney turns to his fixer, Joe DeMarco, to get Molly out of trouble. Is Molly guilty? Is someone trying to frame her to put the squeeze on her father? The fast-moving plot involves a lobbyist, a shady investment manager, a crooked casino manager and the mob boss who employs him, a former NFL linebacker, assorted thugs, devious politicians, a hyper-aggressive SEC lawyer, and an unsolved murder that occurred while some of the characters were still in their college years.

Politics is a dirty game and Mahoney is a dirty player, which means his go-to-guy DeMarco isn't your usual squeaky clean thriller hero. In the Washington of House Odds, bribery and blackmail are business-as-usual. Apart from the creative wrongdoing that keeps the plot moving, Mike Lawson peppers the story with the everyday shenanigans of congressional politics: the tricks pulled by the out-of-power political party to become the in-power political party; the use defense appropriations bills to fund projects that have nothing to do with defense. Lawson has fun with the nonsensical babbling that substitutes for political discourse in the House of Representatives, as well as the scuzzy nature of politically motivated federal prosecutions. If you're cynical about politicians (and who isn't?), this is the book to read.

Fortunately, Lawson writes with a light touch, avoiding the overbearing attitudes that too often mar novels set within a political milieu. Politicians of both parties are dirty in House Odds; this isn't a partisan rant. The scheme that Mahoney cooks up and that DeMarco executes to get Molly out of trouble would make Machiavelli proud. Some of the novel's events are just a little too convenient for the real world, but given the novel's tone, I was willing to accept the unlikely for the sake of amusement. House Odds is the sort of novel you can read while giving your brain a rest, the literary equivalent of junk food: not particularly nutritious, but satisfying.

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The Humans by Matt Haig

First published in Great Britain in 2013; published by Simon & Schuster on July 2, 2013

An alien (specifically, a Vonnadorian) comes to Earth to destroy evidence of a breakthrough made by Andrew Martin, a Cambridge professor of mathematics who proved the Reimann Hypothesis. To accomplish his mission, the alien must assume the unfortunate professor's identity and eliminate the unfortunate people who might know of Martin's discovery, including his wife and son. The alien Martin is equipped with the usual array of alien powers, including the ability to induce heart attacks and to heal blind dogs.

The alien's mission gives him a chance to study the odd species with midrange intelligence called humans. The Humans is the alien's account of his experiences on Earth. Like most anthropological examinations of humans through alien eyes, this one is quite funny. Martin ponders the meaning of human life (pursuing "the enlightenment of orgasm" seem to be "the central tenet") and draws pointed conclusions about the meaninglessness of most human activities: consumerism, war, sexual embarrassment, bad poetry, the endless need to state the obvious. Oh, and social networking, which "generally involved sitting down at a nonsentient computer and typing words about needing a coffee and reading about other people needing a coffee, while forgetting to actually make a coffee." Human concepts are bewildering, particularly delusions like love and free will. "Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible." The alien finds it difficult to distinguish between madness and sanity and is amazed at the human capacity for hypocrisy. The many uses humans find for cows, on the other hand, fascinate him.

To some extent, The Humans is a throwback novel, echoing the feel-good message that was common in science fiction of an earlier generation: humans are special, humans are unique, human traits (curiosity, tenacity, empathy, hope) will always assure their survival. The message is slightly tempered by the modern tendency toward realism (or cynicism) but the novel's weakness is the alien's all too quick and all too predictable realization that humans are not primitive beasts but lovable beings standing on the threshold of greatness. At times, the novel is embarrassingly gushy in its praise of humankind ("a miraculous achievement"). It's also crammed with enough simplistic platitudes to rival a self-help book.

A funny story about an alien who reviles humans but is forced to become one is bound to follow a predictable path. The notion of an alien embracing human emotions and beliefs after taking human form isn't new, and the reader suspects that the alien will eventually be a better human than was Martin because that's how these stories work. The human characters also tend to be predictable, including the son who suffers because he can't live up to the standard set by his brilliant father. I appreciated, however, Matt Haig's willingness to make the alien Martin true to himself, and to avoid a contrived ending to the story.

I don't entirely buy the notion that by taking human form, an alien who views humans as repulsive would so quickly decide that one of them is lovely, much less embrace human conventions of romance (without, at least initially, having much of a clue about sexual desire). Would an alien raised in an environment of peace, beauty, and immortality really reject the "dullness" of that life in favor of the pain and loss that characterizes human existence? That notion is the foundation of the plot but Haig didn't convince me to buy into it. The story's predictability and doubtful credibility make The Humans an unsuccessful drama, but the novel works well as a comedy.

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The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy

Published by Harper on June 11, 2013

The theme of The Illusion of Separateness -- the connections among people living in different times and places, and their witting and unwitting dependence upon each other -- is telegraphed by the title. Even when we are apart from the people we know (and from people we don't know), we are not truly separated.

Martin is a handyman in a retirement center where residents pass their days "remembering the lives they once inhabited." He is the first of several characters who come into focus as the novel progresses. Their stories are so diverse that The Illusion of Separateness creates the illusion of reading several separate novels at once, yet the characters have much in common, including their ongoing attempts "to unravel the knot of their lives" and, in some cases, their understanding of what it means to be hated.

Some of the characters connect in France. Martin is the adopted son of Parisian bakers who, in 1955, make a sudden decision to move from Paris to Los Angeles. In 1942, a pilot named John takes a picture of himself on Coney Island, standing in front of a Ferris wheel with Harriet, his wife. His plane is shot down over France. In 1968, a schoolboy finds the picture of John and Harriet in the wreckage of the airplane. Years later, the photograph resurfaces in another country.

Some characters connect in England, a country that becomes important to John's story. After the war, a man with a serious head injury, stripped of voice and identity and mistaken for French, slowly recovers from his wounds in Paris. Named Victor Hugo for the book in his pocket, the man eventually relocates to Manchester, where his neighbor is a young boy named Danny.

Some characters connect in the United States. Danny moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a film director. The retirement center where Martin works is also in LA. John's blind granddaughter, Amelia, lives on Long Island, as did John before the war.

To say more about how the characters relate to each other would risk ruining the story's considerable charm. Some of the connections, revealed in the final chapters, are surprising, dramatic but (for the most part, at least) believable. To the extent that some seem like stretches, it's useful to remember that life is full of coincidences that are no less improbable than those that Simon Van Booy invents.

The novel's best moments are reminders of how people, with generosity and kindness and sometimes at risk to their own security, make it possible for others to go on living, or to live better lives. The most involving chapters -- certainly the most intense -- are devoted to John and his struggle during the war, although Hugo's story is probably the most moving. That, again, is a tribute to Van Booy's writing ability, since Hugo isn't the kind of character with whom most readers would instinctively sympathize.

Van Booy crafts deceptively simple sentences that conceal a depth of meaning. A few moments in the novel are so sentimental that they border on corniness -- I had the occasional sense that I was being manipulated with "feel good" stories -- but Van Booy writes with such sincerity and conviction that I was able to let those reservations slide. Some of the characters articulate the novel's messages in terms that seem too obvious and the ending is a bit abrupt, but again, those are quibbles, not serious flaws.

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