Sorrow Floats. Although I am only halfway through the third installment in this trilogy, I can already say that the second installment, Sorrow Floats, is by far the best. I would not call any of these great literature, but Sandlin’s voice is engaging and although his characters seem awfully familiar, they are familiar in a likeable way.

Skipped Parts, the first novel, is narrated by a teenage boy, and Social Blunders, the third novel, is narrated by that same boy as a disenchanted thirty-something. I don’t really care for him as an adult, so the third book isn’t doing much for me, but Sorrow Floats — the book that first drew me to the series — is much more affecting. The narrator here is Maurey, a young mother who slips into alcoholism after her father’s death, and winds up losing custody of her baby as she slides down towards rock bottom. Sounds like a real upper, doesn’t it?

Oddly, it sort of is. As seen through the eyes of the male narrator in the other two books, Maurey is sort of an impossible fantasy girl, but once she is given her own voice, you find yourself wanting to listen. Although this book was written in the nineties, it feels like a seventies road novel (probably because it is set in 1972 and involves a road trip). The characters, like all of Sandlin’s characters, are a little hokey, a little unbelievable, a little straight out of central casting … but I like them anyway. This trilogy has been a nice diversion, and Sorrow Floats is by far the best of the lot.

Skipped Parts. I finally managed to finish this book, which has been on my to-read list longer than just about anything. When I looked for reviews of Sandlin’s work, I saw lots of comparisons to Tom Robbins and John Irving, neither of which I really understand. I guess he’s raunchy like those two authors used to be raunchy, and he has a wacky cast of characters, but his writing is rougher around the edges than either of those two at their best, and his characters are not as wacky as all that.

I liked the book. There is a Salinger vibe here, and from me that is kind of a criticism, but I liked it anyway. Raunchy coming-of-age novels seem to be a thing of the past, and this book was published fifteen years ago so I wouldn’t count on any kind of comeback for the teenage boy sex novel. I got caught up in the stock characters and the way Sandlin shakes up expectations. The novel is good-humored and funny as hell, so I forgave it a lot.

And there were some things that needed forgiving. In particular, I think Sandlin could do a better job avoiding anachronisms. Over and over, I got pulled out of the moment — 1963 Wyoming, specifically. And in either this or the sequel, Sorrow Floats, which is set in 1972 and which I am reading now, a character refers to a woman as thin “but not anorexic,” and I just don’t think that term entered the popular lexicon until the eighties.

And let us not discuss the appearance of the phrase “present company accepted.”

Those nitpicky issues aside, I liked the book quite a bit, enough to move straight on to the sequel and to order the third book in the trilogy so that I won’t have to wait. I want to know what happens to these characters, and I enjoy the way that Sandlin balances tragedy and humor. And I swear I will deny this if the word gets out, but I kind of miss the days when novelists wrote about fucking.

(Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth blurbed this novel. Drew Barrymore blurbed the sequel. Just some trivia.)

Harm Done. This is not a review of the novel, because I didn’t read the novel. This is a review of the audio version available at Audible, and the review could stop right here after these two words: it sucks.

I bought this about a year ago without realizing it was an abridged version. Once I realized that, I set it aside and didn’t listen to it. Then last week I found it in my library, wondered why I hadn’t listened to it, and put it on my iPod. And it was terrible. The reader is Christopher Ravenscroft, and unlike the other readers who have tackled her Inspector Wexford novels, Ravenscroft gives Wexford a hokey, fake-sounding accent that made me wonder if the reader was actually an American.

The abridgement is also just plain terrible. I half wonder if this was originally an unabridged recording, because at times the reading is awkwardly cut off with some phantom sounds remaining, like the reader got cut off mid-sentence with an old-fashioned tape recorder. No attempt is made to smooth out the abridged transitions; nights turn to days, scenes change, new characters show up but aren’t explained or introduced. I suspect that, in its entirety, this book would have been at least twelve hours long, but the abridged version is barely three.

It’s terrible, so bad that I am not going to blame Rendell for what felt like a heavy-handed, unsatisfying mystery involving spousal abuse and cancer patients. (Well, I blame her a little. But as someone recently pointed out, I obviously don’t know what great literature is or what makes a great writer.)

The Magician’s Assistant. The general consensus seems to be that this novel compares unfavorably to Bel Canto, but I disagree. I liked Bel Canto well enough, but I got tired of defending the ending to people who hated it. I thought The Magician’s Assistant was a lovely little novel, oddly hopeful and written with a light touch. I liked it very much, and although it felt sort of slight while I was reading it, I find myself thinking about it now and then, days after I finished it.

And it has a happy ending, Bel Canto haters.

The Black Tower. Another one I have read before, although I thought I remembered a different ending. I must be getting her books mixed up in my head in my old age. I like this one quite a lot; it’s not one of her very best, but it’s much better than more recent offerings.