Broken Monsters & The Children Act: Two New Releases, Two Mini-Reviews

Let's start with what is officially my favorite read of the year so far — that would be Lauren Beukes's Broken Monsters, which is out today. Set in Detroit not long after the Great Recession set in, this moody, terrifying, mind-blowing, atmospheric story is as difficult to put down as any book I've read in recent memory.

Ostensibly, it's a murder mystery — in the opening pages, our hero, Detective Gabriella Versado, is charged with tracking down a lunatic who has murdered a kid, cut him in half, and glued the top half of his body onto a deer torso. Sick stuff.

But the novel is far from a typical mystery — a wide cast of characters really adds depth and realism to this story about the shattered American dream. We follow Gabi's daughter — a witty, Internet-addicted teen right out of a John Green YA story — and her friend Cas as they concoct schemes, which, tragically, wind up intersecting with Gabi's murder investigation. Then there's the douchey new media journalist named Jonno (even his name is douchey!) whose crusade to reveal all he believes the Detroit PD is hiding from the public is really just a crusade to edify his own ego. And finally, there's the creepy, mysterious truck driver and artist named Clayton who is overtaken by what he thinks of as "the dream." Crazy stuff.

All this comes together in a last-100-pages conclusion that is not just glued-to-the-page riveting, but also profound and smart in a way straight genre murder mysteries never are. I can't recommend this more highly — I loved it.

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Next, let's talk about a return to form for one of my heretofore favorite writers, Ian McEwan, whose last two novels, Solar and Sweet Tooth,  I've not been a fan of at all. However, his new novel The Children Act is a short, entertaining piece of totally typical McEwanness. It's told his signature droll, dryly humorous, ultra-logical prose — which is a bit of an acquired taste, frankly, but works really well for this story.

It's about a London judge named Fiona who has arrived at a small measure of fame for deciding really tough family law cases, like the case of twins who had to separated for one to survive, but whose religious parents wouldn't abide that solution, because only God can decide between life and death. So they'd rather let both die. We learn about this case early in the novel — which foreshadows the two main components of the rest of the story.

First, Fiona's husband of many years decides he wants an open marriage — he accuses Fiona of losing her passion, and he wants to reclaim that (read as: sex!) with another (younger) woman. She still loves him, and at first, struggles with whether she should agree to his indecent proposal. (Should she kill a main tenet of a marriage - faithfulness - to save the big picture?) Secondly, a case comes before her court of a 17-year-old kid named Adam being treated for leukemia. He and his parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, and one of the pillars of their faith is that blood is sacred, and therefore a transfusion of someone else's blood — which is required for him to live — is profane.

With the stress of her now-irreparably broken marriage weighing on her, what will she decide? Are Adam's beliefs his own, and even if so, isn't requiring the treatment (since he's a minor) in his best interest? What's cool about this story is that judgment is handed down halfway through the novel, and the rest is about how the decision changes all the characters involved. I really enjoyed this, and I think if you've liked McEwan's more lauded novels, like Atonement and Saturday, you'll really dig this one too.