The City in the Middle of the Night: Charlie Jane Anders

My son read this book first. He liked it, with reservations. (More about that later.) The subject interested me, so I decided to read it also. It is science fiction, about life on a colonized planet, where half of the planet is perpetually cold and in the dark, and the other half is always in the light and hot. 

This summary is from the back of the edition I read:

Humanity clings to life on January–a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other.

Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization–but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives–with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice.

The story takes place thousands of years in the future. The planet of January was populated by humans from earth and many nations worked together to create the ship that carried the people to January. The cooperation between the nations was not entirely successful (not surprising) and resulted in problems in setting up the cities for the settlers. There are two point of view characters: Sophie and Mouth. Sophie's sections are told in 1st person narrative; Mouth's sections are in third person. 

Sophie is the primary character in the book. She and Bianca are students in a school in Xiosphant city, but Sophie is lower class and won her place at the school with her intelligence. Bianca is from a rich family and is spoiled and manipulative; they are close friends, and Sophie has a strong attachment to Bianca.

Mouth is the last surviving member of a nomadic group called the Citizens, and was traumatized by losing her community at such a very young age. She feels like it is her duty to preserve their heritage. These things drive a lot of her behavior and decisions. When the story opens, Mouth is traveling with another nomadic group named the Resourceful Couriers, who carry contraband between the two major cities.

My thoughts:

• Overall, this was a good read. The pace was good, the story was good. It took me a good while to warm up to Mouth. Many of the characters were flawed, which is to be expected, but Sophie had a good heart to the end, so I hung on to find out how she weathered the vicissitudes she suffered. She and Mouth sort of balanced each other out.
• There were so many characters (besides the three I have mentioned), and most of them were interesting, with their own agendas and flaws, but it was hard to keep track of all of them. And I could have used a map.
• I think the book was too long although it was hard to say what could have been left out. The book was only 360 pages but I would have liked it to be closer to 300. But, this book has stuck in my mind since I finished it a month ago, and most books don't do that.
• The story goes in a weird direction in the last 80 pages. Very weird, and it would be too much of a spoiler to talk about it here. There are hints of this ending as the story progresses, but still I was very surprised. I liked the turn of events and I liked the way it was handled.

I asked my son what his one sentence review of The City in the Middle of the Night would be. He said it was "a well written book that doesn't quite know what it wants to be." He also thought it was longer than it should be.

The Ivy Tree: Mary Stewart

This story is about a young woman, Mary Grey, who bears a strong resemblance to the heiress to a fortune, Annabel Winslow, who disappeared several years before the story starts. Mary Grey lives in Canada but is visiting Scotland because her ancestors lived there. 

As soon as I read the first few pages of The Ivy Tree, by Mary Stewart, I was pulled into the story. It is rare that I get interested in the characters that early in a book. Partly it was the first person narration by Mary Grey, but also her encounter with Connor Winslow, in which he mistakes her for Annabel. He is convinced that Annabel has returned to the area so that she can take over the estate when her grandfather dies. Connor has been working as the manager of the estate, and believes that he should rightfully inherit it. Eventually she is persuaded to impersonate the heiress in a scheme to get the inheritance.

My Thoughts:

I was not sure if I would like the romantic suspense type of novel as much as I might have when I was younger. It ends up that I liked pretty much everything about The Ivy Tree. I was pulled into the impersonation story from the very beginning. I thought that the main character's voice was done very well. And the plot was very compelling and believable.

I usually don't like TV shows or movies where characters go undercover; the suspense is too much for me. And impersonation stories are very much the same type of thing. This one was very convincing and there were many tense moments for me. 

At about 50 percent into the 400-page book, there is a big surprise that changes everything, and it makes perfect sense. And then there was at least one more major twist at the end but I had pretty much guessed that last one. 

I just cannot say enough good things about this book. The ending was great, the suspense was great, and the writing was beautiful, especially regarding nature and the setting.

I had not realized that there was a connection to Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. The two books have similarities. I had read Brat Farrar when I was much younger, but I don't remember much about it. Brat Farrar was published in 1949 and The Ivy Tree was published 12 years later in 1961. Brat Farrar is mentioned in The Ivy Tree, as Connor's sister schools Mary Grey in all the facts she needs to know to play the part of Annabel. 

Also, the story begins as Mary Grey stands by a tree near Hadrian's Wall. That doesn't affect the plot much but there is a minor connection.

Also see two other reviews at Clothes in Books (by Moira) and Staircase Wit (by Constance).

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Post-Office Girl to Going Postal

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zwieg. The book was published posthumously in 1982. Christine works in a post-office in Austria in 1926. Her mother is ill and they have little money. Christine has the opportunity to live with her aunt for a while and see how the rich live, then she has to return to the poverty of her previous life. I gathered all this from various reviews or summaries I read; I hope my description is reasonably accurate. 

1st degree:

My first link is to Rest in Pieces by Rita Mae Brown. The heroine of that book, Mary Minor Haristeen (nicknamed "Harry"), is the postmistress of the small town of Crozet, Virginia. She owns a farm, with horses, and has a grey tiger cat and a Welsh Corgi. Many of the residents of Crozet and the surrounding area are odd and quirky to say the least. In Crozet, everyone knows everyone and there is a lot of gossip.

The animals have a role in the story. They do not detect, but they do try to attract Harry's attention to clues, etc. They interact with other animals: Simon, the opossum; a barn owl; and Pewter, a neighbor's cat. The animals talk among themselves. At first I found that silly and distracting, but after a while, their conversations sounded much more intelligent that the humans.

2nd degree:

For my second link, I am sticking to the postal theme. My husband found this book for me: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. I found the best description of this book at Old Paper and Cats. S. Hargrave, who writes the posts on that blog, describes it as: "a trilogy of novels written by Flora Thompson about growing up in a remote English hamlet called Lark Rise and, later, her years working in a post office in the village of Candleford Green. These novels aren’t exactly ‘novels’ per se, in the sense that they are not traditionally structured narratives. Instead, they are more of a collection of stories about rural life in the later nineteenth century."

There are three short books in the series: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). Only the last book in the series covers the time that the main character was an assistant at the post office.

3rd degree:

I am staying with the mail theme, but moving on to those who deliver the mail. My next link is to Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant.  In Mailman, Grant has written a memoir about delivering mail in Appalachia, after losing his job for a consulting firm. He moved back to his hometown of Blackburg, VA and got a job as a rural mail carrier because he needed to have health care and support his family. This major change in his life took place in the first few months of Covid. My husband read this book and enjoyed it a lot; the writing was good and the author comes across as a mellow person. I want to read Mailman later this year.

4th degree:

Another book about a letter carrier is The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault, a Canadian author. The setting is Montreal.  

This description is in my Kindle edition:

Secretly steaming open envelopes and reading the letters inside, Bilodo has found an escape from his lonely and routine life as a postman. When one day he comes across a mysterious letter containing a single haiku, he finds himself avidly caught up in the relationship between a long-distance couple who write to each other using only beautiful poetry. He feasts on their words, vicariously living a life for which he longs. But it will only be a matter of time before his world comes crashing down around him.

This book sounds appealing and in the Kindle edition it is only 106 pages long.

5th degree:

My next link will be to another book with postman in the title: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. The book is a classic noir mystery and also very brief, only 120 pages long in this edition. James M. Cain is a well known author of noir fiction; this was his first novel. I did not really enjoy reading this book (too noir, too grim, too gritty), but it is very well written, with good pacing. The last 30 pages was the best part and pulled the book together without going for an unrealistic "happy" ending. But what does it have to do with the postal service? Nothing. The title is symbolic and there have been many conflicting explanations for why it was used.

6th degree:

My last link is very definitely about the postal system, but it is a postal system set in a fantasy world. Going Postal is the 33rd book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Most of the books in the series are humorous and satirical. The main character in this book is Moist von Lipwig, a swindler and a con man, who has been sentenced to hang for his offenses. But he has been given the alternative option to take over the ailing postal service of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's city-state. Thus Moist von Lipwig accepts the position of Postmaster. He is also assigned a golem watchdog to keep him in line. It sounds like fun to me and I have a copy on my shelves.

My Six Degrees took me from the state of Virginia in the USA to the fictional fantasy world of the Discworld Series. Along the way I also stopped in Canada and the UK. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on July 4, 2026, and the starting book will be Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

Short Story Wednesday: Stories from Murder and Other Acts of Literature

Murder and Other Acts of Literature is an anthology of 24 short stories that include a crime but are written by authors who are not crime fiction authors. Some examples are William Faulkner, W.S. Gilbert, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel García Márquez,  Rudyard Kipling, and Naguib Mahfouz. The stories are not whodunnits or puzzle mysteries, just stories that often include a death.

This is my husband's book. He bought it at the 2025 book sale and read all of the stories in May. He liked a bit more than half of the stories. His favorite stories were "The Hotel of the Idle Moon" by William Trevor and "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" by Evelyn Waugh. 

Here are my reviews of three of the stories in the anthology.

"Montraldo" by John Cheever

This is the first story in the book and it is 9 pages long. It was first published in the print edition of the June 6, 1964, issue of The New Yorker. 

The first sentence is very good, and sets the tone of the story:

"The first time I robbed Tiffany’s, it was raining."

That is how the narrator of the story finances his trip to Italy. After his sea voyage to Genoa, he buys a second-hand car and drives to Montraldo. Instead of staying in a hotel, he decides to stay in a rundown villa on the cliff. Why would he stay there when he could stay in two luxurious hotels in the area?

He says:

"I stayed because of the view, because I had paid my rent in advance, and because I was curious about the eccentric old spinster and her cranky servant."

The spinster owns the villa, and she and her servant have a very contentious relationship.

I do not remember reading any of John Cheever's short stories before now. I liked this story a lot, and I want to try more stories by him. I like the style of his writing.

"The Hitch-Hikers" by Eudora Welty

A traveling salesman picks up two hitch-hikers. One has a guitar, the other man is kind of surly, and it appears that they have been traveling together for a while. The salesman decides to stay at a motel, one of his normal stops on his route. While he tries to get the motel manager to let the two men sleep on the porch in the back, the two hitch-hikers have a fight, and the man with the guitar is badly injured. There are reports that the two men were trying to steal the salesman's car.  

I haven't had much luck reading stories by Eudora Welty. I have read a few stories from The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, and I did not like any of them. I have not given up on her stories, but I did not like this one particularly. It sets a mood, which to me was depressing. It was not a bad story, it just did not do anything for me. It was not engaging, and I kept expecting more out of it. It was first published in 1939.

"The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark

This was the only story in Murder and Other Acts of Literature that I had read previously. I covered it in a previous post, and I have copied my review from that post.

In this story, the narrator is a ghost. For some reason not described in detail, this ghost has not left the earth. She often strolls down Portobello Road, visiting the marketers and their stalls on the pavement. On one of her strolls she sees two people she knows, Kathleen and George. She speaks to the man and he can see her, although the woman cannot. From this point the ghost tells the story of four children who were friends: herself, nicknamed "Needle"; Kathleen; George; and a boy named "Skinny." They are very close friends while in school, but after they graduate, they go off to other areas, even other continents. George goes to manage his uncle's farm in Africa, and Skinny and Needle end up visiting him there. George later returns to Great Britain to see Kathleen, and eventually marries her. I am not that fond of ghost stories, but I liked this one.