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
“How to Build a Boat,” by Elaine Feeney (Biblioasis, 2023)
In a small town in western Ireland, Jamie O’Neill is about to start secondary school, a Catholic school run by a fanatic and filled with plenty of bullies looking for someone just like Jamie to persecute. Autistic or genius or ultra mature (it’s hard to tell), he started speaking at 3 years old with full and elaborate sentences from Edgar Allen Poe. Now, at 13, he wonders where the energy of a dead person is stored as he watches, over and over, a two-minute video of his mother, who died when he was born. At school, he befriends his English teacher, Tess, and the two of them discover an ally in the woodshop teacher, a personable loner of a man who convinces them that what Jamie needs most is to build something.
“How to Build a Boat” is a deeply compassionate novel, simple and regional, but the language takes off with sentence and paragraph breaks that resemble poetry. This book left me joyous and in tears. (Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the 2023 Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year.) — 4 stars (out of 4); Michelle Nelson, Littleton
“Martyr!,” by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf, 2025)
A young Iranian immigrant, newly orphaned, struggles to find his footing and meaning in his life. He embodies the clichéd image of Iranian males: a passionate poet, having the certitude of being on the right side of history, drawn to a fatalism around martyrdom, to die for something larger than life. He decides to write a series of poems devoted to martyrs and his work leads him to an unexpected discovery, which seems a fated cliché in itself. Despite this novel’s popularity, I was disappointed, expecting more, somehow. (Goodreads 2024 Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Fiction) — 2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“Clear,” by Carys Davies (Scribner, 2024)
Rarely do I finish a book and then immediately reread it, but “Clear” is simply that good. Eighteen-forty-three is a year of upheaval: the Great Disruption in the Scottish Presbyterian Church that sidetracks the career of minister John Ferguson; the eviction of tenant farmers, like Ivar, by Scottish landlords to replace them with more profitable and tractable sheep; the rift in their marriage when John is compelled to leave Mary behind to accept a commission to remove Ivar from his island home. I fell in love with each of these characters as they form unlikely relationships.
Davies’ pellucid writing made reading this small, quiet book sheer pleasure. Of note is the incorporation of vocabulary from Ivan’s archaic Norm language, a special touch that entranced me. This is the best book I’ve read this year. — 4 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker
“Sweet Fury,” by Sash Bischoff (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
An homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night,” Bischoff cleverly has her own privileged and flawed characters making a movie based on the Fitzgerald novel, while mirroring the novel with a startlingly similar plot line in their own lives. Or, wait! A slight shift of perspective turns this kaleidoscope of a story into a whodunit page-turner. A gripping debut novel. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Framed as a memoir of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s marriage, this ’ history is based on hundreds of boxes of papers and memorabilia that speechwriter/journalist Dick Goodwin saved. It covers all the chaos of the 1960s – the Vietnam War, the assassinations, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, the tensions between the Kennedys and the Johnsons, and the McCarthy “kids” – all from two insiders’ perspectives. A fascinating read with great potential for discussion. — 4 stars (out of 4); Jo Calhoun, Denver