Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email bellis@denverpost.com. – Barbara Ellis
‘Land,’ by Maggie O’Farrell (Alfred A. Knopf, 2026)
In 1865, Tomas, a land surveyor, takes his 10-year-old son Liam on an expedition to map a remote Irish peninsula for the Redcoats. More than a decade removed from The Great Hunger (also known as the Irish Potato Famine), feelings of blame and grief still run deep in every family. When Tomas comes upon a deep well hidden in a remote copse of aspen and oak trees, he has a mystical experience that leads to a crisis of conscience about working for the very regime that allowed the tragic famine to go on for years. O’Farrell, the author of “Hamnet,” masterfully weaves the tale of the land from thousands of years ago to a resilient young family that builds a home and lives there for several decades. The challenges and heartbreaks of each sibling as they make their way to a better future, with or without each other, are richly detailed in this immersive novel of 19th-century Ireland, as is the suffering that went on for generations after the potato crop failed over several years as British rule took the wealth from their land and allowed a million impoverished people to starve to death. — 4 stars (out of 4); Karen Goldie Hartman, Westminster
‘The Last Movement,’ by Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins (Europa Editions, 2026)
As this novel opens, Austrian composer Gustav Mahler is aboard an ocean liner headed east across the Atlantic and on his way back to Vienna, where he will die in a few weeks. Feverish and physically weak, Mahler’s thoughts wander in and out of consciousness and, in this fugue state, he recalls meaningful moments with his family or from his career, depicting his strengths, weaknesses, stubbornness, his devotion to his music, his loves, his losses and regrets. Seethaler not only humanizes this musical titan by gently revealing the man behind the mythos in so few but carefully chosen scenes, he also explores the costs of a life dedicated to one’s art. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
‘Lives of the Saints,’ by Nancy Lemann (New York Review of Books Classics’ 2026 reprint of 1985 first edition)
“Everyone was too drunk. Everyone was unglued.” Lemann’s first novel takes place in New Orleans in the mid-’80s when the narrator, Louise, returns from college to attend a wedding and reacquaint herself with the Collier family. Everyone at this wedding has a breakdown, and one sane person (Louise, sort of) shrewdly observes the debacle while the weather swelters. Louise sees these crazies clearly, even the son, Claude, with whom she is in love. She is aghast yet holding tight because these people, like no others, make her come alive. The partying that never ends moves fast because Louise’s remarkable voice mirrors the dialogue between these characters: clipped, deadpan, rapid-fire, unstoppable. This is a short book, big on rhythm and self-deprecating humor, and drenched in the atmosphere of a beloved but decaying civilization, the American South, where defeat is everywhere. A lack of seriousness belies the belief that we have forever to figure this out, and of course we don’t. — 3 stars (out of 4); Michelle Nelson, Littleton
‘Elegy in Blue,’ by Mark Helprin (Abrams Press, 2026)
“Preserve your memories, they’re all thatap left you,” sang Simon and Garfunkel. And that is what befalls Helprin’s unnamed protagonist in this sometimes mystical, sometimes improbable rendering of one man’s rise and fall, now left with nearly nothing, musing over his highs and lows, and seeking one last act of redemption. Helprin moves the narrative along with witty wordplays and some groan-inducing, Dickensian names. Even the book’s title is a twist on Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” In the end, though, Helprin’s musings on the meaning of life and the possibilities of an afterlife shine the brightest. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
