77 Words: “Natural Elements” by Richard Mason

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“Natural Elements” by Richard Mason (Knopf, 2008) –

The impulse to read this novel slowly to savor it belies its plot: A mother and daughter in contemporary London, each adjusting in her own way to the older woman’s move to a nursing home. Mason has a bold, uncanny ability to hijack the brainwaves of a driven middle-aged daughter; a mother with a complex past and other well-shaped characters, including the elder woman’s unlikely friends, from a devoted South African cabbie to a nerdish young librarian.

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)