Rediscovered Reviews: 5 Masterful Books That Balance Plot and Prose

April 11 2023
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The perfect blend of plot and prose is tricky to get right, but when an author masters both elements it can make for one of the best reading experiences. One page propels you forward with the character agency, and another page pulls you in with the character’s deep reflections. Filled with those momentous scenes that propel the story forward and sentences that carry you through with both beauty and efficiency, these rediscovered book reviews showcase books across multiple genres, written by the masters. 

Where Are the Children?
by Mary Higgins Clark

Young mother Nancy Harmon is desperately trying to put the horrors of her past behind her. Seven years earlier her two children had disappeared, a nightmare that continued when Nancy was put on trial for their murders and her first husband took his life in grief. Released on a technicality, Nancy fled to the quiet anonymity of Cape Cod and remarried. Surrounded by the warmth of her kind husband and their children, Nancy’s scars are healing—until her little boy and girl vanish.

A violent storm gathers along the coast as Nancy’s friends and neighbors identify her as the child killer sensationalized by the press. Under police scrutiny, Nancy’s mind begins to swim with memories of her first family’s macabre deaths. As a reader, your heart aches for Nancy, for her anguish as a mother and despair over the fresh accusations. Yet remarkably, Clark’s careful composition still allows for a shadow of doubt toward Nancy’s innocence.

Read more of Elizabeth’s review.

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Where Are the Children?
Mary Higgins Clark

The #1 New York Times bestselling author and Queen of Suspense launched her career with this “indescribably suspenseful” (San Francisco Chronicle) classic thriller following a woman whose past holds a terrible secret.

Nancy Harmon long ago fled the heartbreak of her first marriage, the macabre deaths of her two little children, and the shocking charges against her. She changed her name, dyed her hair, and left California for the windswept peace of Cape Cod. Now remarried, she has two more beloved children, and the terrible pain has begun to heal—until the morning when she looks in the backyard for her little boy and girl and finds only one red mitten. She knows that the nightmare is beginning again...

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Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward

In this intimate and emotional family saga, 13-year-old Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, accompany their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a road trip to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, where Jojo and Kayla’s father is being released from prison. Thus far Leonie has been an inconsistent presence in her children’s lives, leaving their grandparents to raise them. Pop tries to teach Jojo how to be a man while Mam battles cancer. At the penitentiary, there is another 13-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all the ugly history of the South with him. He, too, has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love.

SING, UNBURIED, SING deftly examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power—and limitations—of family bonds. Few writers possess Ward’s artfulness, and fewer still write about topics more relevant—justice and injustice, poverty, incarceration, racial profiling, family, drug abuse, faith, the limits and the limitlessness of love. Her incredibly skillful writing makes these topics digestible.

Read more of Taylor’s review.

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Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward

WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, is a “tour de force” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.

Jesmyn Ward’s historic second National Book Award–winner is “perfectly poised for the moment” (The New York Times), an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. “Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love… this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it” (Buzzfeed).

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic and unforgettable family story and “an odyssey through rural Mississippi’s past and present” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

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Remainder
by Tom McCarthy

After suffering a traumatic brain injury caused by an accident that he is legally prohibited from speaking about (and that he cannot remember), REMAINDER’S nameless narrator must relearn even the simplest of actions, leaving him with a stifling sense of his own inauthenticity. The £8.5 million settlement he receives does little to relieve his confusion. But when the sight of a uniquely shaped crack in a bathroom wall triggers a sudden memory, the narrator feels momentarily connected to reality in a way he thought he never would again.

Chasing this fleeting sensation of déjà vu, he puts his newfound wealth toward staging a series of increasingly involved “reenactments.” These reenactments range from mundane mimicry of daily life to dangerously vivid scenes of violence and murder. Participating in these staged events is the only way for him to act “fluently” and escape his sense that he is living several paces behind real life. The narrator soon grows addicted to the “intense and serene” tingling sensation he gets when reconstructing a memory. With his mental state deteriorating, his reenactments begin to spiral out of control. His final great reenactment irrevocably blurs the line between the theatrical and the actual, to disastrous effect.

Despite the ever-present backdrop of trauma and existential confusion, REMAINDER is a surprisingly easy read, cleverly sucking you into its own warped world. A psychological roller coaster punctuated with moments of unexpected empathy, REMAINDER is an uncannily profound glimpse into one man’s fragmented perception of (un)reality—one that is all the more disturbing because you may just recognize something of yourself in his dysfunctional mind. After all, as REMAINDER’s narrator knows all too well, “minds are versatile and wiley things.”

Read more of Emma’s review.

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Remainder
Tom McCarthy

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By Emma Volk | July 29, 2015

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On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan

It’s short, barely 200 pages, but every word in this lovingly rendered portrait is as meticulously placed as paint on a porcelain miniature. The story follows Edward and Florence, a young English couple on their wedding night during the pre–Sexual Revolution 1960s. While a plot about the events leading up to the consummation of a marriage might sound limited in scope or even ludicrous, in McEwan’s masterful hands, it’s riveting.

Edward and Florence’s first night together becomes the turning point not just in their marriage but in their subsequent lives, and because McEwan makes this couple so real to us, we care—deeply. Any reader squeamish about delving into such a personal moment will find comfort in McEwan’s honesty, humor, and great affection for his characters. We come to know Edward and Florence as well as we know ourselves—maybe even better—and are eager to forgive them even when they can’t forgive themselves.

Read more of Lynn’s review.

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On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan

It’s short, barely 200 pages, but every word in this lovingly rendered portrait is as meticulously placed as paint on a porcelain miniature. The story follows Edward and Florence, a young English couple on their wedding night during the pre–Sexual Revolution 1960s. While a plot about the events leading up to the consummation of a marriage might sound limited in scope or even ludicrous, in McEwan’s masterful hands, it’s riveting.

Read Lynn Cullen’s review here.

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The Mothers
by Brit Bennett

High school senior Nadia has just lost her mother to suicide, and spends the days riding different buses all over her California coastal county to avoid her father’s grief at home. In this way she meets Luke, a pastor’s son who is waiting tables after a football injury devastated his plans for a sports career. Then there’s Aubrey, the pious teen saved by the very church Luke’s father oversees, who becomes friends with Nadia.

Death, injury, and spiritual salvation: each of these alone is a major turning point in anyone’s life. But Bennett takes these isolated events and brings them together at a crossroads with a single action that connects and forever changes all of her characters’ lives: Nadia’s painful decision to end her unwanted pregnancy.

As the years spiral away from this moment, Aubrey, Nadia, and Luke each grapple with what they truly want—and need—to fill the absence in their lives: ambition, education, family, love. It’s only when a family emergency brings the three together again do we see their real trauma is not the past, but learning to live with the past’s messy, unresolved hurt as a permanent part of their world.

Read more of Elizabeth’s review.

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The Mothers
Brit Bennett

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MENTIONED IN:

Rediscovered Reviews: 5 Masterful Books That Balance Plot and Prose

By Off the Shelf Staff | April 11, 2023

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Photo credit: iStock / Serbogachuk

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