It's not often I start a book and don't finish it, but recently I started John Irving's In One Person and gave up on it. I love John Irving. But this new novel...I just couldn't get past that there are things I don't need to know, especially in great detail. I don't think I'm prudish--I read and appreciated Russell Banks' The Lost Memory of Skin--but I feel like Irving didn't give me enough of the characters to stay with the gory details.
I needed something light but not fluffy after that, so I picked up Paul Doiron's Trespasser. I don't know how Doiron manages to edit Downeast magazine and write really good, character-driven novels but he does. I thoroughly enjoyed his first novel, The Poacher's Son, and I am sometimes skeptical of second novels, but Trespasser is just as good, if not better. A mystery set in Maine and featuring Mike Bowditch, this is not an overly-plotted (at least, it doesn't come across that way)story with a perfect hero. Bowditch is flawed, and the story takes its time. And, most importantly for me, the ending is satisfyingly surprising but not completely out of the blue.
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