Fiction Binge

My Notorious Life
By Kate Manning

Girl Waits With Gun
By Amy Stewart

Lady Cop Makes Trouble
By Amy Stewart

Funny Girl
By Nick Hornby

That Old Cape Magic
By Richard Russo

In the depths of my post-election depression, I've decided to catch up on my fiction reading. I've found it therapeutic.

Richard Russo's "That Old Cape Magic" is the story of a middle-aged academic going through a marital crisis -- it's not what you might think of when you think of escapist literature. Luckily, Russo is so engaging as a writer that I forgot about, you know ... everything going on ... for a while. The academic, middle aged protagonist is similar to the main character in Russo's hilarious "Straight Man," rather than the working class guys who populate his more somber novels like "Empire Falls" and "Nobody's Fool." Not a lot of writers can write about both types of characters convincingly. Maybe they live too much in their bubbles of ... Oh, let's change the subject.

I started reading Kate Manning's "My Notorious Life" before the ... disaster, and my perception of this historical novel changed once the current political reality changed. It's the story of Axie Muldoon, an Irish American orphan who grows up to be a midwife in the 1860s and 1870s. There's a lot to the story, but most of the action revolves around the fact that Axie provides contraception and abortion when both were illegal and often dangerous ... So yeah, you see where I'm going with this, right? This novel gives a really great argument for why we need to make sure women's reproductive health is not set back 150 years.

The subject matter makes this sound like a really dark book, but it's not. For a novel that involves suicide, abortion, orphans, imprisonment, grinding poverty and so on, it's almost breezy. I really loved the way Manning uses a 19th century framework to address a debate that still divides us. As Axie puts it, men love to talk in moral absolutes but women, and especially midwives, have to deal with the consequences of men's decisions and areas where the morality is not so clear. Maybe I should spell this out: Axie doesn't like abortion, but she thinks it's the better option in some cases. Reading about the horrors some of these women and children live through, you realize Axie makes a very strong case. There are a lot of Americans who should be reading "My Notorious Life" right about now.

Speaking of easy treatments of difficult topics, Nick Hornby's "Funny Girl" is so breezy that at times it almost seems like a Cliffs Notes version of a longer book. I've seen some criticism of the book for that reason, but I thought Hornby's approach makes sense, given the subject matter.

"Funny Girl" is the story of actress Sophie Straw (nee Barbara Parker) who becomes famous for her role in "Barbara (and Jim)," a fictional British TV sitcom in the 1960s that sets itself apart by touching on the era's big social issues in a 1960s TV sitcom way -- that is within a tight 30-minute structure, and with jokes.

Similarly, the novel itself tackles a lot of heavy themes (sexism, class, homosexuality, the high culture vs. low culture debate, etc.) but does so without getting too bogged down in the details. I appreciated that: I've read about the social upheaval of Swinging London many times, and I was happy to have a light approach to it this time around.

At many points in the book, Hornby refers to actual people and events that took place during the time period of the novel, including some that were probably an inspiration for his fictional characters and events. At times, he even includes photographs of real people, such as the starlet Sabrina. At several points early in the novel, characters mistake Barbara/Sophie for Sabrina, so the reader is clearly meant to make the connection. Some of these pop culture references were lost on American me (I had never heard of Sabrina) but I kind of liked how the real people (Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Yardbirds singer Keith Relf, etc.) prop up the fictional story Hornby creates.

Amy Stewart has done something somewhat similar with historical fiction in her Kopp Sisters books. "Girl Waits With Gun" is a novel about Constance Kopp and her sisters, who are terrorized by a gangster in pre-WWI New Jersey. Read Stewart's afterword and you find out that Constance Kopp was a real person, and "Girl Waits With Gun" is a heavily fictionalized version of real events.

Stewart continues in this vein with "Lady Cop Makes Trouble," which finds Constance Kopp working as a deputy for the sheriff who protected her in the first novel. This much was apparently true, and the afterword provides a photo of the real Constance that appeared in newspapers at the time. According to Stewart, the exciting story -- complete with escaped madman, bizarre murderess and fraudulent medical treatments -- is based on real events, although this time not all of them involved the real-life Constance.

I'm not sure it was necessary for Stewart to rely on historical records -- this isn't Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell series, so Stewart didn't have to conform her story to fit something as well-known as the reign of Henry VIII -- but whatever she did, it works. I want to keep reading about Constance and her adventures, at least for the next four years.