Early Warning By Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley’s Some Luck, the first in her Langdon family trilogy, was one of my favourite books last year, so needless to say I couldn’t wait to dive into part two. In this ambitious three-parter, Smiley takes the reader from newlyweds Walter and Rosanna Langdon on their 1920s Iowa farm, right through to their scattered children and grandchildren all over the U.S. Each chapter covers a year in the Langdon story, against a backdrop of civil unrest, Vietnam, the Kennedy assassinations and other momentous periods in history. It is the family saga to out-saga all others. But what makes Early Warning so appealing is not the big, dramatic backdrop but rather the dozens of tiny, everyday issues that face families all over the world: money worries, infidelity, love, babbling babies, squabbling children, unexpected death, illness, and the happiness that comes from good, solid relationships. The only negative is the long wait from here till October for the final instalment to be available.

Ghettoside: Investigating a Homicide Epidemic By Jill Leovy

Has there ever been a more timely book? Given the number of police killings of unarmed black men we have been hearing so much about lately, Jill Leovy’s painstaking investigation into the killing epidemic of young black men in Los Angeles makes for chilling reading. There, she explains, families are so inured to the fact that they may not get to raise their young boys to adulthood, that they have come to accept the shootings as part of life. Some families leave the area, rather than risk losing their boys. Some families, like that of LAPD detective Wallace Tennelle, stay – precisely because they want to show solidarity and kinship with their neighbours. When Tennelle’s 18-year-old son Bryant is gunned down as he walks home with a friend, the respected detectives colleagues are determined to solve the case. The family are devastated, needless to say, but stoic in the face of their loss. Leovy makes the Tennelle case the main part of her book, but she also introduces the reader to the scores of other young men shot dead around the same time. It’s a tough but excellent read.