Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email bellis@denverpost.com. – Barbara Ellis
“Memorial Days,” by Geraldine Brooks (Viking, 2024)
Following the sudden death of her husband, author Tony Horwitz, Brooks soldiers on, completes her award-winning novel “Horse” and doesn’t take the time to grieve. Some three years later, she presses the Pause button and moves to a remote Australian island to take that time. Nice, but who among us has that luxury? I guess I expected to learn about Brooks’ grief journey, the actual, hard work of grieving. Instead, what I found was a narrative largely recounting what happened in the days following her husband’s death and a parallel narrative, in alternating chapters, of the natural wonders of her remote island. Nice, but not very enriching. — 2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World,” by Irene Vallejo, translated by Charlotte Whittle (Knopf, 2022)
I read the library hard copy of this book two years before the paperback came out this year, and had no intention of reading it again. But soon I was deep into it, underlining passages, making notes in the margin, shaking my head. How could one book do so much — entertain, transport, amaze, touch? Do you want to experience unfurling a scroll with the right hand and rolling up the previously read columns with the left, “a deliberate, rhythmic, internalized movement … back slightly rounded, body hunched over the words”? Learn what happened when we shifted from muttering words out loud to reading silently inside our heads? Do you want to explore connections between Plato and George Orwell, Aristophanes and Charlie Chaplin? I especially appreciated revisiting Umberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and reconsidering tattoos as “a remnant of magical thinking, a leftover trace of ancestral faith in the aura of words.” If you want to luxuriate in a carefully woven tapestry of early books and those who revered them, I highly recommend this one. — 4 stars (out of 4), Michelle Nelson, Littleton
“Morning and Evening,” by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls (Dalkey Archive, 2022)
This novella, first published in 2000, is, on the surface, the story of a Norwegian fisherman. The “Morning” section is about his birth, told from his father’s perspective, and presents the father’s aspirations for his son. The “Evening” section surrounds the fisherman’s death, with a series of recollections of important life moments and memories of significant persons in his life unspooling in a stream of (ever lessening) consciousness. Fosse’s novella illuminates what can create meaning in anyone’s life. (Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.) — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“The Maid’s Secret,” by Nita Prose (Ballantine Books, 2025)
(Third in Prose’s “maid” series.) Molly the maid, by now promoted to head maid at her posh hotel, is on the spectrum, and her literal understanding of the world makes for both funny moments and good insights. Molly discovers a Faberge egg of her gran’s and decides to have it evaluated on a “hidden treasures” show. During an auction where the highest bid is in the millions, the egg disappears. The search is on. Chapters alternate between the search for the missing egg and excerpts from Molly’s gran’s diary, which unlocks the key to everything. An entertaining read, though the plots of the books in the series have become a bit formulaic. — 2 stars (out of 4); Jo Calhoun, Denver
