THE SECRET LIVES OF MURDERERS’s WIVES – Elizabeth Arnott

“Don’t feel bad. A housewife can’t solve a murder,” he says gently. “Not even one like you.”

I really expected to like Elizabeth Arnott’s The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives (Berkley 2026). The premise is fantastic: three former wives of serial killers work together to catch a killer that is terrorizing California in 1966. Despite this fantastic setup, the novel falls flat. Somehow the women never seem fully fleshed, and the ending is, dare I say, disrespectful to not only the wives but the readers. Everyone deserved a bit more.

Beverley, Elsie, and Margot all had the potential to be well formed and complicated characters, but they all read as caricatures with brief glimpses of substance.  There’s beautiful Beverley who has spent her entire life seeking approval of men.  The studious Elsie who has also spent her life seeking approval of men and silencing her own goals – both under the thumb of her professor husband and under the eyes of the men in the newspaper room that she serves coffee.  And then there’s Margot, the glitz and glam girl.  Her role pretty seems solely to create tension between the women and to embrace a Hollywood angle.

There was significant potential with Beverley with the media interviews, the plea to women, and the concern her son is going to be a killer like his father.  There is also potential with the secretary dreaming of being a journalist.  The Hollywood mogul section is honestly a waste of words. Arnott never lets her leading ladies truly excel, and the ending is just a neat and tidy little wrap up.

Also, the sections with the woman currently being held by the serial killer are interesting, but head-scratching once this person is identified.

It’s not a bad novel.  It’s a quick read that will hold your attention. I guess it’s okay for what it is.

SAID THE DEAD – Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 9/22/026 – a huge thanks to the publisher for the galley copy)  is one of my top reads of the year. I have to assume it wasn’t submitted for Booker consideration, likely due to the genre-blurring elements that lean heavily into nonfiction, because I can’t imagine a panel that would intentionally pass on this novel. I personally think Said the Dead, Son of Nobody, Transcription, and May We Feed the King should all be studied together (and I really would have appreciated them all on the longlist, but we only got one).

Said the Dead is genre-defying, but it is very heavy on the nonfiction.  The novel follows someone called the “Reader” who is finally named at the end of the book at Doireann as she dives into the archives of a derelict Victorian mental hospital in Cork, Ireland.  She spends years pouring over the casebooks, following mostly the notes and life of Dr. Lucia Strangman. Breathing life into the patients, the Reader takes us, the second reader, along on a ghost story, with the women in the asylum and their stories taking center stage. They will not be forgotten. The Reader, obsessed with the asylum, Lucia, and the women, teeters on madness herself.

As the Reader recreates the past, she slips into it. Her trespass into the past is often noticed by the patients and on occasion, a doctor. She once exposed the hiding place of a thief.  (How this works in the text is a bit like how Perry does it in May We Feed the King.)

I gravitated to the women who had babies in the asylum or who were admitted not long after birth. This is likely due to the current interest in postpartum psychosis in the States as the jury continues to deliberate in the Clancy trial.  But all the bits are marvelous. From Ernest’s injury and a fleeting fear that history will repeat itself in another hunting accident to memories of grandchildren of a woman they loved – it’s a remarkable novel.

Read this book.

MAY WE FEED THE KING – Rebecca Perry

“In this way, my work has sustained me when people could not.”

“My house had been holding its breath for a long time.”

“No, he will not come when called. He is no dog.”

Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize before being longlisted for the Booker; there is understandably a lot of hype around the novel.  Is it worth the hype? I wrote before that this novel may be at least part of the reason why Martel’s Son of Nobody wasn’t listed as they are simply too similar. (Martel has a scholar translating ancient text and blurring the lines between history and present. Perry has a curator setting a historical scene and blurring the lines between history and present.) For me, I liked how Martel did it more. That said, May We Feed the King is a remarkable debut. It may possibly be slightly overhyped, but I don’t hate it on the longlist.

In this novel of dual timelines, we have a curator commissioned to set 6 scenes for the 750th anniversary of a former palace turned historic site. (The fact no one knows what the anniversary is actually for is a fantastic detail.) The unnamed narrator purchases numerous replicas, particularly food, to incorporate into the scenes. She wants to be alone in the palace, to “see” the scenes. A wee bit of a romance, one of longing looks and dreams, emerges with the archivist. The narrator is dealing with a loss. Her partner has left, the house is empty, she is unmoored. This loss combined with the longing for the archivist makes its way into her scenes.

The second timeline deals with the king who does not wish to be the king. (One review says it’s a novel of two people who are horrible at their jobs. Three if you count the author. Ha) He’s soft, more content to be with his cats or learning how to make a cinnamon cake than ordering executions and forcing his will on his subjects.  There’s no heir forthcoming. The Queen is sleeping with the physician’s assistant, and the King prefers the company of his young male attendant. As his story unfolds, the reader gets glimpses of the curator. The King feels like he is being watched from windows, closed trunks, and keyholes. This is the curator. Much like Martel uses animals that are not historically accurate in his time and place, Perry references the “guava flesh” that the King “has no knowledge of;” the curator openly admits she’s not that concerned with accuracy.

It’s a novel of how the present reworks history, how the replica is never as good as the experience, how the teller inserts themselves in every story. And it’s about escape.

THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT – Chloe Aridjis

“No more tricks, no more abracadabra, no more misdirection or uncertainty, no more seeing things one way when most people saw them another.”

“My mother didn’t mention him, I didn’t mention him, but there he sat in the room with us.”

“…she didn’t believe in blank pages…”

Right now, Chloe Aridjis’s The Shadow of the Object sits at the very top of my Booker rankings; it’s absolutely fantastic. The novel itself is a bit of shadow puppetry, and the light play and storytelling Aridjis employs in this novel of grief and distance, and change is absolute magic.

The novel opens with Flora visiting her mom and stepdad after three long years. She is bitten badly by the family dog and spends much of her time in Mexico in the hospital. There, she meets Wilhemina, a German collector of magical things and toys. Each night, she sits with Wilhemina.  They share stories. They share magic.

Wilhemina talks about how her adult son, still in England, is still waiting for his “swerve.” This approach to life is one that grabs Flora and holds fast.  She becomes obsessed with Wilhemina, the story telling, and the magic lantern show holds.

What unfolds is a story of loss, grief, and growing up.  One of being unmoored and set adrift.  One of a father who goes out to play chess and never comes home, and the family that pretends to be over it.  One of a mother who cares more for her objects than her child. One of animals that bite.  The story is told in the shadows of magic and the polish of silver.

If you’re keeping track of my Christmas bits, this novel features a slide for the lantern of a Christmas pudding that turns into a monster.

Read this novel.

THE END OF EVERYTHING – M. John Harrison

“Whole worlds… trapped in a few daisies, some grapes in a bowl.”

“What would she remember about him in the end anyway that could be separated from everything else that happened?”

Baffling and bizarre, M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything is a bit Seascraper meets Fringe.  (You remember – the tv show where Joshua Jackson is an FBI agent investigating fringe science and unexplained phenomena with his institutionalized mad scientist father.) The blurb and the opening would lead one to believe this is about Phillip, a beachcomber, who has found an iGhetti artefact and is seeking to sell it. The artefact is shimmery and gelatinous, growing, molding, and reforming by the second.

Spoiler – it’s not about Phillip. The novel, distorted and rippling like waves on water, is about Phillip’s 70-year-old aunt, Marnie. She used to paint still life. This is important. The thing she misses most since the disaster that has uprooted and forever shifted her world is air travel.

By the way, you’re not going to learn about the disaster, the so-called “bad patch” that has descended on London.  You will get very little about the iGhetti or the artefacts that wash up. Because this isn’t really about that. Harrison kicks us out on the beach where the world is what it is, and whati t is ain’t great.  Buck up, figure it out, and survive.

Marnie is losing her marbles.  And she has a gun. And Phillip, Phillip has found the artefact to top all artefacts.  It has hands and has mastered speech.  It seems to have feelings. Marnie hates it.

For not a long novel, there’s a lot going on here. We have emails between Phillip and Marnie when he was a kid. We have Hampson’s notes – Hampson is a bit of a mad scientist who buys artefacts. (What has he done with his parents and the artefacts? What is he creating?!?!)

Did I mention Marnie has a gun? What does Chekhov say about a gun?

Bang.

Read this one. I want it shortlisted.

THE RENOVATION – Kenan Orhan

“Better not to be making memories right now anyway,” he said.

“In my father’s reality, my mother had never died and his country had never betrayed him.”

“What is the weight of memory?”

“Then she died and no one called me that anymore.”

There is typically a novel of exile appearing on the Booker longlist (and quite often, it makes its way to the shortlist), and Kenan Orhan’s debut novel The Renovation ticks the box this year.  The novel is about a woman who fled Istanbul with her family and is living in Italy. A former school psychologist, Dilara is unable to find employment in Italy. Her husband, a former accountant, works as a mechanic. Her father, a former academic and novelist, has Alzheimer’s and has moved in with them, prompting the need for a bathroom renovation. Dilara is gobsmacked when the workers leave and she goes to see her new bathroom and finds a prison cell; the contractors have built the Silivri Prison. (Silviri Prison, now called Marmara Closed Prison, is a high-security state correctional institution complex in Istanbul. It is one of the largest prisons in the world, and it is full of the people betrayed by their own country.)

Dilara under reacts to the fact there’s a prison cell in their house.  And it’s not just a replica of the cell, it’s a portal.  Her husband freaks out and flees; he is convinced the Turkish government will punish them or force them back. He is intentionally a caricature used to further show the flesh on Dilara’s bones.

The story, however, is one of exile and memory and grief. Dilara is losing her native tongue and her memories of Istanbul are fuzzy.  Dilara’s father’s memories have been lost to Alzheimer’s, but he too seeks a home where Dilara’s mother is still alive and the country has not turned on them. The juxtaposition of his memory loss and her craving what they fled is well done.  He is losing his memories, confusing her with her mother, and she is reaching for every scrap of the home they left.  She finds escape in the prison. Escape from her father and the reality of his condition. Escape from her husband who has abandoned her and their home. Escape from a country she doesn’t feel like she belongs in. In that prison, she has her memories, a Turkish sun, familiar accents, and her mother still lives.

I won’t spoil the ending other than to say it’s one you will likely remember.

I think this one is likely to be shortlisted.

KINGFISHER – Rozie Kelly

“Human ashes look just how you’d imagine them to look – somewhere between the contents of an ashtray and the surface of the moon.”

Rozie Kelly’s Kingfisher (Saraband 2025) is a beautifully heartbreaking novel where everything is messy, life hurts, but there are birds and poetry. You’ve likely read before how I typically don’t like books about creative writing academics / scholars; Kingfisher is special.

The novel follows a creative writing academic who finds himself smitten with a colleague – the poet. Not only is the poet older than him, the poet is a woman, making her an interesting choice for his affections. His partner, Michael, has fully embraced their open relationship, but our narrator hasn’t.  Not until the poet. Things are messy and brilliant.

Meanwhile, the narrator is trying to set boundaries with his homophobic mother while coming to terms with some of the hardness of his childhood and the impact of the loss of his dad at a young age.

The novel is about grief, loss, and letting go.  But it’s also about love, the importance of both give and take in relationships, and finding the people who see you as you are and let you be.  And the birds.  It’s about the birds.

I really loved this novel and see why it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. 

HELEN OF NOWHERE – Makenna Goodman

“Isn’t it a joke, how you can tell a story and other people hear a different story than the one you told?”

“Reading became an intellectual pursuit, one of focus instead of escape.”

In many ways, Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere and Missouri Williams’s Vivisectors are telling the same story – just recast with different characters. Both are “love” stories. Both deal with an overwhelmingly unlikeable unreliable narrator. Both address the role of universities/academics in “saving the world.” Both deal with writers/editors/scholars who have the world’s biggest chip on their respective shoulders. Both tsk tsk the state of reading today. Both show a longing/fondest/desire for nature. And both are just a wee bit mad. 

Goodman takes a theatrical approach, structuring her slim little novel like a play.  And instead of a young woman grad student, we get the middle-aged male professor who has been left by his wife and fired.  Parts of his character reminded me of Coetzee’s Lurie of Disgrace fame, but our leading man isn’t confronting the fragile relationship with his daughter, but that of the memories of his wife, a woman who has decidedly moved on. (Thank heavens.  She took far too long after he hit the dog.) A nature writer, he is seeking refuge in the country. Enter the “Realtor,” who is showing him Helen’s house, despite deciding it’s not for sale. Things take a weird but not uninteresting turn when the Realtor channels “Helen” for some paranormal conversation with the Man. Helen does show up with a three-legged dog. It ends in madness, with a man unable to reconcile his own nature and becoming a dog.  (Dogs everywhere are offended.)

There are some well done things here, but a book dealing with the fragile masculinity and relevance of a middle-aged white man is going to have to bring something more to table to get my attention.  (For the record, Disgrace is one of my favorite novels so it can be done.)

It’s a classic man vs. himself dilemma, but it didn’t work.  At least not for me. 

CAT LOVE – Tomás Q. Morín

“Call me… call me whatever you like. I’ve had many names over the years. Did you think I was going to say Ishmael? Or actually tell you my real name? Not today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. I bet you’re wondering how a cat knows about Moby-Dick. Especially the tortoiseshell cat sealed in the box in this lab.”

And so opens Tomás Q. Morín’s Cat Love (Pantheon Books 2026), a slim dystopian elegy narrated by a cat imprisoned in a Schrodinger’s box. The cat was catnapped, victim to the black market of felines, to be part of the “Emotional Statistics” course, which prepares students to be Emotional Support Humans; it’s now illegal to force animals into those supporting roles, and it’s a viable career option for humans – especially if they’re small enough to fit under an airplane seat.

The novel centers around the cat and her memories, which is where the novel is rather beautiful.  Especially when looking at the cat’s connections to others, including the man she calls “Mustache.” The animal human bond is a pretty special one, and I think Morín captures it in a unique way.

There’s an interesting part dealing with the spirit of a child that was not born that seems odd but somehow works.  And for a small novel, this hits on a lot of things, including the prison system and the education system.  But, pun intended, the claws aren’t out and it barely scratches the surface.  So while I enjoyed this weird little book and it  made me miss Kitteh Puss, it’s not as purrfect as it could have been.

BLACK BAG – Luke Kennard

“I’m sure this comes up somewhere in Revelation.”

“You try not to become a full-blown alcoholic,” she says. “Fetishize small pleasures. A good water bottle. A first edition of a novel you like. A really good cup of coffee. The crack as a needle hits the record.”

“I have measured out my life in coffees I cannot technically afford.”

If Endling, Flesh, and Audition had a baby, it would be Luke Kennard’s Black Bag.  I will not be explaining that any further. Right now, Black Bag is at the head of the pack in my Booker rankings. (To date, I’ve only read five.)  At first glance, it just appears an absurd, funny little story.  And while it is hilarious, writing it off as a “funny” book does it a disservice. It belongs on the longlist, and unless I’m completely wowed with the following 8 selections, it also belongs on the shortlist. It’s well done. It holds your attention. It makes you think. It makes you feel. And it makes you question what is real.

Our unnamed and out-of-work actor takes a gig on campus wherein he will wear a bag and attend Dr. Blend’s seminar and lecture every week. Dr. Blend is conducting an experiment. Our unnamed narrator takes his craft very seriously – a method acting approach that renders him nearly unable to function outside of the bag. He frequently refers to himself as a snail or a hermit crab, the bag initially representing safety, security and anonymity, but it grows into so much more – for our narrator, his friend Claudio, and the community.

Is it funny?  Yes. There’s a talking border collie puppy, a scene where the bag takes a swan pedal boat as a form of transportation, a shakedown from a cockold husband whose voice modifier malfunctions so that he sounds like a child, murder mystery theater, questionable money-making schemes, and the main character goes around London in a Black Bag. (Getting coffee, getting in a fight, having sex, etc.)

But it is oh so much more.  Of the five I’ve read, this is the one that will stand up most to a reread.  There is so much going on and humor makes it easy to bypass the not so funny, but this is a book to be experienced.  I’ve called it a chaos goblin, and I stand by that.

Read this book.