Category: 20 Books of Summer

#BookReview A Stranger in My Grave by Margaret Millar

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About the Book

A nightmare is haunting Daisy Harker.

Night after night she walks a strange cemetery in her dreams, until she comes to a grave that stops her in her tracks. It’s Daisy’s own, and according to the dates on the gravestone she’s been dead for four years.

What can this nightmare mean, and why is Daisy’s husband so insistent that she forget it? Driven to desperation, she hires a private investigator to reconstruct the day of her dream death. But as she pieces her past together, her present begins to fall apart…

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Publication date: 4th July 2019 Genre: Crime

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My Review

I was introduced to the crime novels of Margaret Millar when Pushkin Press kindly sent me copies of three new editions of her books issued by their Pushkin Vertigo imprint. I read the first two of them, The Listening Walls and Vanish in an Instant in 2019 and 2021 respectively (links from each title will take you to me review) but this one has been gathering dust – literally – on my bookshelf until now. A determination to finally read it was the motivation to put it on my list for the 20 Books of Summer 2023 reading challenge.

Like her other novels, A Stranger in my Grave is tightly-plotted and based on an intriguing premise: Daisy’s recurring dream about a gravestone with her name inscribed on it along with the date of her death. But she is very much alive. Dismissed by her husband and mother as nothing more than a strange nightmare, Daisy cannot rest until she has discovered the meaning behind the dream. A chance encounter brings her into contact with bondsman and private investigator Stevens Pinata. Grudgingly he agrees to help Daisy try to piece together the events of her ‘deathday’. It sets off a chain of events that means Daisy has to rethink everything she thought she knew and reveals some long-buried secrets.

There’s a strong theme of parentage that runs through the book. For example, Pinata is a foundling given his name by the religious institution that took him in. Whereas Daisy is unable to have children, a source of disappointment to her and her husband, Jim. Similarly, racial identity plays a part in the plot.

I really liked Pinata as a character perhaps because, alongside the reader, he’s trying to piece together the bits of the puzzle. And the occasional allusions to some things about his life make him a sympathetic figure. Unlike most of the other characters, he comes across as trustworthy although sometimes his instincts let him down and, as the author warns us, he has failed to see he’s being taken in or has missed something important.

Margaret Millar has been described as ‘a genius of plot twists’ and in the other two books I’ve read I could see the evidence for that accolade. Unfortunately, in this case, less so. Although A Stranger in My Grave is a taut, well-crafted mystery and there a number of surprises along the way I was disappointed in the motive when it was eventually divulged and although there is the final page reveal that is the author’s trademark, I had already worked it out.

I received a review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press.

In three words: Clever, assured, intriguing

About the Author

Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books and a masterful pioneer of psychological mysteries and thrillers. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she spent most of her life in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband Ken Millar, who is better known by his nom de plume of Ross Macdonald. Her 1956 novel Beast in View won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In 1965 Millar was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award and in 1983 the Mystery Writers of America awarded her the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement. Millar’s cutting wit and superb plotting have left her an enduring legacy as one of the most important crime writers of both her own and subsequent generations. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

#BookReview Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt #20BooksOfSummer23

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About the Book

Zoya Andropova, a young Russian refugee, finds herself in an elite New Jersey boarding school. Having lost her family, her home and her sense of purpose, Zoya struggles to belong, a task made more difficult by her new country’s paranoia about Soviet spies.

When she meets charismatic fellow Russian émigré Leo Orlov – whose books Zoya has obsessed over for years – everything seems to change. But she soon discovers that Leo is bound by the sinister orchestrations of his brilliant wife, Vera, and that their relationship is far more complex than Zoya could ever have imagined.

Format: Paperback (256 pages) Publisher: Raven Books
Publication date: 27th June 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

I received this as part of a Reading Heels book subscription back in 2019. (Reading in Heels is no longer in business.) For me it was a ‘curate’s egg’, i.e. good in parts.

It’s apparently loosely inspired by the marriage of Vladimir and Vera Nabokov and supposedly set in the 1920s and 1930s, although it didn’t feel much like that to me, of which more later. The story is told by way of letters between Leo Orlov (for whom read Nabokov) and his wife Vera, occasional other official documents such as police witness statements but mainly through the journal of Zoya, a young Russian orphan sent to the United States as part of a refugee programme. Yes, that well-worn narrative structure, the journal; written by someone with an amazing memory, who can reproduce conversations verbatim and recall scenes from when they were in the crib.

The author achieves a good variation of styles between the different narrative structures, especially in the letters between Lev and Vera. Other reviewers have commented on how cleverly Celt mimcs Nabokov’s style but since I’ve never read anything by Nabokov this rather passed me by. I think this was one of my problems with the book in that I was missing allusions to Nabokov’s life and work.

For me, the first section of the book was rather slow and, frankly, lacked credibility. I found it difficult to believe that a Russian refugee would be placed in ‘an elite New Jersey boarding school’. If the intention was to contrast Zoya’s situation with that of the girls from privileged families who attend the school then that at least succeeded as Donne School comes across as a sort of toxic Mallory Towers. Zoya is ostracised and bullied mercilessly with the staff seemingly having no duty of care. This section, which accounts for about half the book, feels distinctly anachronistic with references to ‘bobby socks’ and the like which I don’t think were prevalent in the 1920s! Eventually Zoya is put to work in the greenhouse of the school, on the strength of having grown some lilacs from seed brought from her homeland. She’s obviously a horticultural genius because lilac is a shrub which takes at least three years to bloom and doesn’t seem the sort of thing you’d grow on your windowsill.

Over the years Zoya has become obsessed with the books of Leo Orlov so depending on your point of view it’s either convenient, fate or incredible coincidence when he arrives at Donne School. To borrow from the film Casablanca, it’s not so much “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine” as “Of all the schools, in all the towns, in all the world, he becomes a teacher at mine”. They embark on a passionate affair, their sexual encounters being intensely sensual, erotic but at the same time slightly disturbing.

I can’t say I was a fan of Leo, but then again perhaps I wasn’t intended to be. He’s completely untrustworthy, manipulative and self-centered. I couldn’t buy into the whole ‘I’m a literary genius so I must be allowed to get away with anything’. Zoya is the perfect victim; she’s needy and, apart from John her workmate, friendless. Lev attempts to convince Zoya that Vera is the villain of the piece, a controlling woman who has suppressed an early work of genius. At the same time, he’s professing his undying love to Vera in passionate letters whilst simultaneously plotting to get rid of her. ‘He was a writer. He could come up with the right set of circumstances to forestall any serious suspicion.’ Too right.

The publisher describes the book as ‘a gripping psychological thriller’ and there is a definite change of tone in the final quarter of the book as the Lev-Vera-Zoya triangle plays out in a quite unexpected way. This was the part of the book I enjoyed the most.

Invitation to a Bonfire is the second book from my 20 Books of Summer 2023 reading list.

In three words: Intimate, sensual, slow-moving

About the Author

Adrienne Celt’s debut novel, The Daughters, won the PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction and was an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her story ‘Temples’ was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 after originally appearing in Epoch. Celt’s short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, Ecotone, the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Esquire, Electric Literature, and Carve Magazine, among others; her nonfiction has appeared in the Rumpus, Tin House‘s ‘OpenBar’, Lit Hub, the Toast, Catapult, the Millions, and elsewhere.

Adrienne has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University, draws weekly web comics at loveamongthelampreys.com, and lives in Tucson, Arizona. (Photo: Author website)

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