Liars and Saints

 My son seems to know, now, that passivity is not always "the only option." At bedtime, he walks to the stairs, nods at the safety gate, and looks at me until I press the "unlock" button. Then he hurls himself up the stairs, while cradling his elephant, and he throws himself into his bedroom. Sometimes, he seems to chant, "Bed, bed, bed, bed." If I need to ring a doorbell, and I'm not doing my job, my son will widen his eyes and point at the doorbell. Finally, for entertainment, he'll try to gnaw on a shoe. These seem like small steps -- but, to a parent, it's like your son has crossed the Rubicon. We're reading a great deal of William Steig stuff--"Doctor De Soto," "Sylvester," "Amos and Boris." Steig celebrates small creatures--often mice--who use their brains to triumph over brute forces (and the brute forces might be a fox, an ocean wave, a large ape). Although Steig likes to write warmly about love and tog...

 I know I'm not alone in feeling moved and wistful about the final season of Issa Rae's "Insecure." Tributes are popping up. Walking with my co-fan, Marc, last night, I was floored to consider the changes our leads have gone through. Issa began the show in a bad relationship with a guy who was clinically depressed, and Issa was working for a white-savior group called "We Got Y'all." Meanwhile, Issa's friend Molly was working with lawyers who didn't value her, offering unsolicited advice, dropping a boyfriend because he said he had once hooked up with a guy. Now, in Season Five, both Issa and Molly seem to enjoy their work, neither is entangled in an intense secretive extracurricular affair (though, yes, Molly is withholding info from colleagues) ..... neither seems to be on the verge of administering a best-friend "stab in the back" ...... I love a story that shows emotional change over time--and this is what "Insecure" has be...

  Anthony Horowitz has been a sensation for many years -- with "Magpie Murders," "The Word Is Murder," "The Sentence Is Death," and so on. These books generate buzz, and they fly from store shelves. Finally, I've found my way to Horowitz -- because his new book, "A Line to Kill," is among the Top Ten Thrillers of the Year, in the NYT. "A Line to Kill" is a title with a funny meaning: The villain, and victim, in this novel, is so unpopular that there might actually be a "long line" of people hoping to kill him. The villain is Charles, a wealthy resident of a remote island, and he hosts various writers at his mansion for a second-rate literary festival. Charles is unloved basically because he wants to "turf" the island; he thinks removing various beautiful natural sites will make the island into a technological powerhouse. Also, Charles's wife is having many affairs and (maybe) hoping to profit from a life-insu...

  Gift-giving is such a tricky endeavor, and so likely to result in awkward comic misunderstandings. George the hippo gives a large cuckoo clock to Martha, and she must pretend that she likes it. Martha cooks special pea soup for George, and George must stash it in his loafers, because an honest conversation seems so difficult. Gifts are a great source of interest among the Maplewood Moms, because the moms* have cash and some time on their hands, and because an especially tacky gift can be such a useful vehicle for drama. The mother who gives her maternity-ward daughter a thigh-master for Christmas. The husband who hands his wife an unwrapped Hanukkah cheese-grater.... Recently, the moms* listed the worst gifts their kids had ever received, and these are the three stories I liked most: * Mom gave a small, delicate Rodin knock-off sculpture to my toddler. Later, she asked if this had been a nice addition to playtime. I said: "Are you referring to the fragile, priceless statue that ...

 My husband studies me. He says, "I'm surprised you're not writing about the occupational therapist." This makes me think of the writer Lorrie Moore--and the moment her husband said, "Write about our child's tumor?" Moore said: "I do zany holidays. I do wacky family outings with the dog. Child tumor? I don't cover that." The occupational therapist was wildly mediocre. I could empathize--because I've made friends with mediocrity, many times in life. The O.T. was named Emily, and she wanted to assess my child via Zoom. She suggested that she just park herself in her desk chair--and watch the clock, for sixty minutes.....and then she could e-mail a "visit log" to me, and this could help me to "procure services." When I insisted on an in-person visit, Emily began a week-long tug-of-war with many references to her own childcare burdens, then she lost my address, forgot the time she had committed to, and asked me to resear...

 A new book that seems to have slipped under the radar--Sutton Foster's memoir--deserves some attention this year. Foster writes about her "crafting" hobby -- stitching, sculpting, sketching -- and this part doesn't interest me at all. If she needed this "hook" to get into her life stories, fine. But I don't think anyone needs to dwell on the paragraphs about collage, crochet tools, etc. Here's the meat of the story. Foster had a difficult mom who suffered from some combination of agoraphobia and borderline personality disorder. As the years went by, the mental illness grew stronger. Despite being often impossible, Mama Foster had ambitions and sometimes-weirdly-clear thoughts about the future. She recognized that her small child had an extraordinary talent--and she found ways to cultivate the talent. Also, when Patti LuPone appeared on PBS to do her now-famous version of Stephen Sondheim's "Being Alive," Mama Foster looked at her adole...

  Oliver and Ciara meet at a fancy bodega. One is wearing a NASA bag on the shoulder; the other happens to love NASA. Discussions about famous launches ensue. The two decide to meet--again and again--and soon a romance is brewing. But this is Dublin, in the recent past, and COVID wants to rear its head. As the restrictions get tighter, Ciara and Oliver have a joint brainstorm. What if they use the lockdown to live together in secret? What if they really pursue this romance--but without interference from the world? What if they have fun in an apartment, and they make a point of withholding their news from prying relatives, prying friends? Flash forward 56 days. A cop finds a rotting body in a shower. We know the body is Oliver--or it's Ciara. This is the setup for "56 Days," a novel by Catherine Ryan Howard. It's on at least two "10 Best 2021 Thrillers" lists (in the Times and in the Washington Post). Howard notes, in a letter to the reader, that many writers...