Anna Quindlan is such a good columnist (New York Times, Newsweek) that is constently thrills me that she also such a good and prodigious writer, Black and Blue, being my favorite among her novels…

Every Last One is her newest and … holy you know what.  I walked into the library to fight with their fax machine (I damned mine to the basement for insubordination) and Barbara Carlson hurled the book at me while muttering something akin to OMG.  Being naturally quiet people (not this bunch, but still), any time a librarian thrusts a book at you, you must take it.

Next image is me reading quietly at home while two sick children cough and gag in the background and the other three cough at school.  I sit.  I read.  I want to flip ahead to the part that made Barbara say OMG, but I can not.

Mary Beth Latham is a mom.  A wife.  She and her doctor husband have three children.  All at home.  I read.  They are normal and fairly happy.  Dinner, school, camp, boyfriends, the usual.  Mary Beth has friends and neighbors with varying degrees of involvement in her life.  The past has a few thorns as does, we assume, the future.  This is life after all.

What happens is staggeringly heinous.  Take the magic eight ball.  Shake it and ask a question.  Then, in lieu of an answer, throw it out the car window and watch a tractor trailer drive over it.  Now imagine that was your heart.

Now get up the next day.  And the next.  Repeat until the day you die.  This is the new world for Mary Beth Latham.

It is quite extraordinary how resilient mankind really is.  Things you can not imagine surviving are survivable simply because you have no choice.  You literally CAN NOT imagine them.  Thank God.  You can decide to act a certain way or not to act that way, but it really makes no difference.  You breathe in and out until life moves on.  It is actually merciful to be shocked and numbed because operating at full capacity with full cognizance is totally out of the question anyway. 

I certainly couldn’t have and neither can Mary Beth.  The testament to the power of Anna Quindlan’s novels is her grasp of reality.  She sees and hears and tells you a story that has happened.  It happens all the time.  Thankfully not quite like this, but horrifyingly often nevertheless.

It is a gift to feel another’s pain.  Empathy is far more useful than sympathy.  If you can for one moment be in Mary Beth’s shoes, you are a stronger, more understanding person.  If for one minute of one conversation when you meet or know someone who has been in staggering circumstances, you can choose the better thing to say — the more empathetic thing to say — then it is a gift for you both.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

I know I should be reviewing something smarter, or more current, or hipper, but I can’t help myself.  I am reading everything I am supposed to — Cleopatra, Unbroken, some book about Voltaire’s mistress.  This book really got to me though, so I just can’t help but do this.

I went to the Book Barn (akin to Harry Winston in my opinion for sheer delight and fabulousness) and came back with yet another coal bag full of books.  Everything Marian Keyes has written was among them.  

There are five Irish sisters and there is a book about each.  Love, divorce, family trials, etc. … the Walsh Family is a riot.

What I am compelled to say about Anybody Out There is that the mix of humor and pain is notable.  How on earth, I thought, can this really be at all amusing when what I think has happened has happened?

Anna Walsh has a really cool, make-up PR job in the City.  She has moved to the States with her best friend Jacqui and her sister Rachel (Rachel’s Holiday) is also there with her fiancé Luke. The gang of their friends is a riot.  The “real men” absolutely will crack you up.  Anna is young and spunky and clever, and falls in love with her dream man.  Aiden is her life.

We meet Anna at her parents house in Dublin recovering from horrifying injuries that she has little recollection of getting.  What is going on?  You figure it before Keyes tells you and it makes you feel sick.

It’s just awful.  Interestingly, you don’t really see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel until Anna does.  It goes neither too slow nor too fast, and even though this is essentially a chick-lit beach book, it surprises you with its insight.  Keyes very deftly maneuvers through real pain with real humor.  I was compelled to comment … and so I have.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Ah, the fates have intervened again and a long misplaced email has called a book to my attention. Ann Blair Kloman wrote a wonderful suspense novel last year (… longer? Who knows?  I age without consent) and has now written another.

And to think I almost missed it.  Isobel’s Odyssey is a treat.  Wonderfully reminiscent of my beloved Mrs Polifax series (Dorothy Gilman), Isobel Van Dursan has broadened her horizons.

A sweet widow (do not believe this) from the picturesque coast of Maine, she decides travel and piles of caviar-type accommodations whilst doing so is her new future.  Why should she suffer in coach when the Admiral’s Club has such great chairs and champagne?  She is equally resolute in her inability to suffer fools.  Some less than others.

Certain people really have it coming and, if the two propensities can work together? … ahhh.  Isobel’s niece Chloe married a particularly obstreperous individual with whom Isobel has taken great umbrage.  What to do?  How about a small electrical problem?

Indeed.  Well, he asked for it.  Who else is behaving poorly and asking for it?  Quite a number of disreputable characters apparently.  And if something were to happen, who would suspect a sweet American widow?

See where this is going?  Just wonderful.  The unlikeliest of scenarios when written with humor and zest is going to be a fun book.

Ann has nailed it again.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Swamplandia!  The reviews of Karen Russell’s last book, “Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” are enough to make you pick this new one up and clutch it to your chest as you race from the shop … “Run for your life. The girl is on fire.” (Los Angeles Times)

Not even a page in and I was captivated by the ease and grace with which she writes.  A pseudo-real Indian tribe on an island with beer and alligators and ghosts?  Really?  And I didn’t bat an eye.  It felt a bit like finding Harper Lee again.  The character of Ava Bigtree is so tangible, so familiar that it grabbed me.

I’ll digress a bit for the sake of clarity (hardly my forte as we all know).  The Bigtree family owns Swamplandia!, the alligator theme park where they also live.  Ava, her parents, brother and sister know little else but life with the “Seths” (as they name each and every alligator) on their island on the west coast of Florida.  The world outside is encroaching.  Cancer, theme park competitors, old folks’ homes,  love affairs.  They all loom on the horizon. 

There is a slightly off-kilter magical quality to Swamplandia! that makes all of this pain bearable.  It is reminiscent of Victorian goth or a dark fairy tale.  This lift keeps it just above the waterline of despair.  Some parts are hard to read.  Her brother Kiwi and her sister Ossie are teetering on a dangerous edge.  Her father, mother and grandfather have fallen over.  Ava’s narrative is just high enough to keep Swamplandia! afloat. 

The beginning seems strangely positive.  Campy, but exhilarating.  When Ava’s mother dies, the change is swift.  The darkness starts to flood in.  Ava’s father, Chief Bigtree, is gone.  Her siblings are too engrossed in their own struggles to cope.  Ava is left to pick up the pieces of their lives and their livelihood.  She has no support.  She has one to rely upon.  She has an island crawling with Seths.  She is 13.

And yet, she is no dummy. 

You hope right away that she will be fine.  She will fight long and hard to be fine.  Hell, her mother swam through alligator-infested swamps for a living … how weak could Ava be?  There is hope and dark humor and stalwart narrative that keeps you reading. 

And the symbolism of one red seth in the congregation is worth holding onto.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.”