May 2, 2020 – The Correspondents by Tim Murphy (2019) Grove Press
I was restless today. I must have started four or five different excellent movies and gave up on each of them within the first 15 minutes. Some days I get tired of it all: the quarantine, working too much, the threat of illness, not being able to keep up with everything and not being able to escape. I did finally escape though, into the novel The Correspondents by Tim Murphy (2019). It is the story of two families in Massachusetts’ Merrimack Valley – one an Irish Catholic family and the other a Lebanese-American family – and the half Irish, half-Lebanese foreign correspondent descended from these two families. The characters in The Correspondents are well-drawn and charming – you want to spend time with them. My only gripe with the novel is when it switches between characters, and sometimes between decades and continents. I don’t want to leave any of the characters to switch to other ones. I am only a quarter of the way through the book, but I can already recommend it. Thanks to Brett Benner for recommending it to me.