Reading is a lifeline to me, as much a part of me as breathing, as vital as running, as familiar as my sons. As each year begins anew, I never quite know what books I’ll read throughout the year, whether Booker short-listed or finalists, Pulitzer Prize winners, recommendations from “The Guardian’s” Sunday book section, selections of the Carolina Public Humanities Great Books program, friends’ “must read” titles, or a new or previous book written by a favorite or newly-discovered (to me) author. 2024 was no exception. The total number of books read was higher than previous years (94 completed and several “did not finish”). The genres (nonfiction, including memoir; historical fiction; fiction; a book-long poem; and short stories), subject matter (The Vietnam War; science; Native American; African American; American History’ England/Ireland), and new authors (Elif Shafak; Samantha Harvey; Daniel Mason), surprised me by percentage of books in various categories that might not have had the attention in prior years.
A few notables before the actual list (books by category, author, and short summary): Daniel Mason’s “North Woods” and “The Winter Soldier.” “I Who Have Never Known Men” by Jacqueline Harper. Emily Watson’s recent translation of “The Iliad” (long, at over 800 pages). “Midwinter Day,” a book-length poem written on one day, winter solstice, by Bernadette Mayer. Several by Elif Shafak, including “The Island of Missing Trees,” “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World,” and “There are Rivers in the Sky.” Joyce Kearns Goodwin, the presidential biographer extraordinaire, “An Unfinished Love Story.” “Orbital,” the Booker Winner, by Samantha Harvey. Richard Powers’ latest novel, “Playground.”
NONFICTION:
[3] Scenes from a Provincial Life, Boyhood, Youth, Summertime, J.M. Coetzee (Fictionalized memoirs combined as trilogy. Coetzee has won two Booker Prizes, Nobel Prize in Literature, numerous other book awards, and is one of South Africa’s great writers. “Boyhood” is the author as young boy, his internal thoughts, how he sees his family [too loving and supportive mother, younger brother, alcoholic and untrustworthy father], his school life, distinctions between Afrikaans and English—and those, like him, who speak English, have Afrikaans’ surnames, betwixt and between, trying to understand his world but without mentors or parents to guide him. “Youth” finds the author in England, distancing himself from South Africa, yearning to be a poet, a lover, a writer, but stuck with jobs as a computer programmer. Again, the internal dialogue, the young man desperate for something, someone, a way to distinguish himself, instead, considering himself a failure, cold, friendless, insecure. “Summertime” details the life of one John Coetzee from the perspective of five people who have known him, several women, a cousin (in this case, Coetzee is presumably dead and the interlocutors are relying their remembrances of him), two colleagues. Their opinions are of a quiet, somewhat cold, almost loveless man, who left South Africa and then returned, but without success or change (leaving out the fact of his Booker Prize winning novels, etc.). The “Biographer” does the interviewing to elicit a perception of Coetzee but is it in reality Coetzee’s impression of himself? Self-effacing, unique style.)
The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, Eric Silbin (The timing and circumstances of the writing of Bach’s Cello Suites are not entirely known. Discovered two hundred years later in a book store by Pablo Casals, who first recorded them for the public in the early twentieth century, they have become some of the most famous and recorded music for solo cello. Silbin is enchanted by the story of the suites and explores Bach’s life, his writing of the suites, Casals discovery, and their musicality. The book is divided into six parts, each one focused on a suite, the components, their composition, the playing of them, their interpretation, etc. History of Bach and his music.)
Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, Oliver Sacks (A collection of stories of patients and others with various brain diseases or impairments the consequence of which is “music in one’s head.” Sometimes brief, other times long-lasting, loud, soft, known and unknown songs or cacophonies of sounds, the causes are sometimes known, other times not, the cure usually non-existent. Some people accommodate the music, others are nearly driven crazy by it. He includes stories of people with perfect pitch, amnesia for everything except music performances, weird and wonderful examples that defy science and medicine but that give some hope to the sufferers.)
On Trails, Robert Moor (Naturalist, philosopher, journalist, Moor teaches us about trails, and from them, he seeks answers to the questions of evolution, why and how creatures move, change, adapt. His studies take us from the earliest fossil’s trace trails on rock in Canada, to ants following strict trails, to elephants making and finding trails over generations, to humans trekking in new forests. Fascinating study, bringing together disparate ideas, showing new ways of thinking about movement, individual and collective actions, dispelling old myths about intelligence, a potpourri of learning, all with some sort of connection to trails. Very unique perspective on nature and evolution but a little tedious at times.)
*The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (The Landmark edition: One of the first written accounts of war, written by Thucydides during the time of the Peloponnesian War, appx. 431 BC until 404 BC. Personal accounts, reliance on friends, colleagues, debates (ones he heard, ones that were conveyed to him by participants, ones he thought would be how the speaker would have presented the persuasive arguments), oral histories, anything, it seems, that might have presented information about the various cities at war (the Peloponnesians, e.g., Spartans and Corinthians versus Athens), the allies, the treaties made and broken, the detailed inventory of ships, men, arsenal, citizens, land won and lost, battles at sea. Considered the definitive, if early, history of war, democracy, politics, the fabric of society. The use of debate to persuade specific points of view on how one should consider whether, how, when, and to what cost and/or benefit going to war, participating in battles, will provide. An accounting of the plague that most affected Athens during the third year of the war. The important factors to consider in going to war: the largest number of ships, the ablest commanders, the most unhesitating patriotism; and at other times, naval prowess, revenues of allies/empire, preparedness. The folly of the various participants, the hubris, the fall of the Greek city-state (polis), all told with incredible knowledge and insight, but also with biases (although Thucydides would disagree, as he wanted to give an “account” of the war not a political treatise). Long, detailed, convoluted, yet brilliant accounting considering the times, the inability to get information quickly from one place to another, the breadth of the territories at war, the length of time involved. The speeches were highlights for me!)
The Age of Grievance, Frank Bruni (Bruni, NYT columnist, writes ‘opinion piece’ in book form of this era of grievance, where individuals are not taking responsibility, consider themselves victims, blame others for their place or situation in life. Trump, the right, the left, all have grievances, but Bruni is partisan, with bias that the primary problem are Republicans. But grievances permeate all political spectrums. How did we get here? Can we change the public’s narrative? NYT review: “The Age of Grievance” is appealingly moderate in tone, positively beseeching, in fact, but also unabashedly partisan. The book is pitched at the so-called classical liberal, who believes the progressive left sometimes goes too far, but that the real danger to the country’s well-being comes from the Trumpian right. The cure: “humility.” But how to achieve it?)
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt (Haidt examines the epidemic of mental health issues (especially anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide) in our children and youth, attributing much of it to the ubiquitous availability of smartphones during the years 2010-2015. His lays out his foundation for a healthy childhood (no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16 years old, phone-free schools, far more unsupervised play): “play-based childhood” versus “phone-based childhood” (social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction). His research is significant into the devastating effects to our children and their ability to develop into healthy adults from phone-based childhood. He provides suggestions for governments, schools, parents, and communities to combat the raise in mental illness by focusing on more play, less over-protective parenting, and less access to smartphones. He is hopeful but believes we must act now to prevent current and future generations of children from the harmful effects of isolation, loss of community, inability to connect, etc.)
Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives―and Save Theirs, Richard Louv (Louv redefines the Human-non-human animal existence to encourage co-existence, co-becoming, for the goal, among others, of eliminating the human “species loneliness.” He uses science, philosophy, psychology, animal behaviorists, ecologists, etc., to provide a deep analysis of human-animal connection to show how humans are connecting with animals in new ways whether through therapies to assist in mental health field, studying and protecting urban animals, using dogs to teach children ethical behavior, and the role that human-animal relationships have for our spiritual health. Author of “Last Child in the Woods,” about the growing nature-deficit in humans, he argues for using the human-non-human animal relationship as a way to create a sustainable and shared habitat for all creatures, not an Anthropocene era (human-centric).
The Worst Hard Time, The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Tim Egan (In the late 1800s, the High Plains of the mid-west were billed as the place to become farmers, grow wheat, sell at high prices, make it rich. Instead, the once stable long grasses of the area, grazed by buffalo and cattle, became the greatest ecological disaster in American history. Farmers destroyed the land, lured by a few wet years, the invention of the tractor that enabled millions of acres of grass lands to be converted to bare land for farming. Years of unprecedented drought turned the farm lands into dust, unable to sustain crops, but the perfect ingredient for horrible “black” dust storms that buried everything in light silt, caused children to die from “dust pneumonia”, and was the catalyst for a million or more people to leave the mid-west. Told from perspectives of individuals and families who lived in the High Plains during late 1800s-mid 1930s, through letters, first person accounts, why they moved to the area, promises made by governments and hucksters, the turning of grasslands into farmlands for wheat, the stock market crash, the overselling of wheat, low prices, inability to sell, dreams and hopes devastated, horrible black dust storms, families ruined. A detailed broad-based account of the human and ecological disaster, the government response (or non-response in many cases), the human toll: a grim tale but one that we should remember.)
*The Doctor Stories, William Carlos Williams (The Doctor Stories collects thirteen of Williams’s stories (direct accounts of his experiences as a doctor), six related poems, and a chapter from his autobiography that connects the world of medicine and writing. Williams wanted to be a poet, but became a general practitioner who worked unbelievable hours but also took time to write poetry. He believed in people and learning about them, whether their medical problems or their lives, scraps of which he incorporated into his poems.)
Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science, Erin Zimmerman (A scientist’s memoir, a glimpse into the ordinary life of someone in a fascinating field. This is a memoir about plants, about looking at the world with wonder, and about what it means to be a woman in academia—an environment that pushes out mothers and those with any outside responsibilities. Zimmerman delves into her experiences as a new mom, her decision to leave her position in post-graduate research, and how she found a new way to stay in the field she loves. The early part of the book is fascinating, the study of plants, the taxonomy, the systematics, the hundreds of years old herbaria and how botanists and naturalists work. A little heavy on the “victim” of women scientist, although I believe her experience are common but not only among women.)
An Unfinished Love Story, a Personal History of the 1960s, Doris Kearns Goodwin (Part history, part biography, and part personal memoir, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes the book that evolved from discussions with her husband, Dick Goodwin, as they examined over 300 boxes of notes, speeches, and memorabilia that Dick had gathered during the 1960s from his time with JFK, LBJ, and RFK. Stories of the birthing of the Great Society, the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Act, the debacle of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and RFK, the demonstrations and riots, the hopes and aspirations of a nation. Extremely readable, Goodwin pulls together the best and the brightest from Dick’s materials to examine what worked, what mistakes were made, the “what ifs,” trying to bring to the present what we can learn from history. It’s the Goodwins love story of this country we call America—and its unfinished business. Excellent read not only for those of us who lived during those times but for people unfamiliar with the highs and lows of that decade in the American experience.)
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, Erik Larson (The extensive history behind the origin of the Civil War, with focus on Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC harbor where the first shots were fired by the South. South Carolina led the seceding states in breaking from the union, its leaders adamant of the moral imperative of slavery, the critical influence of enslaved people to the commerce and success of the region, even the entire United States, and the righteousness of their actions both before and during the war. Northern abolitionists believed conversely, that it was evil and immoral to own people. More than states’ rights, free states v. enslaved states, Larson clarifies the deep misunderstanding by Northerners, including Lincoln, of this divide. From letters, diaries, journals, newspaper articles, and political documents, Larson delves into individual and collective actions in setting the stage for the war between the states that eventually cost the lives of 750,000 people.)
Memoir:
Losing Music, a Memoir, John Cotter (Cotter gradually starts losing his hearing, along with vertigo, roaring noises in his ears, headaches, inability to focus, in his mid-thirties. This book is part history, (Jonathan Swift had similar disease), part medical science, part losing oneself and perhaps reimagining that self, a compelling, thoughtful, heartbreaking story of how life changes, without our control, and of our ability to cope with and change, too. Milkweed: “A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating—a story that will make readers see their own lives anew.”)
The Best Minds, a Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, Jonathan Rosen (A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness. Michael Laudor and Jonathan Rosen were best friends from the age of ten, attending school together from grade school to Yale, competitive, intelligent, Jewish. Michael was brilliant, a voracious ready, adept at multi-tasking, manic, almost. Jon was more fearful, shy, introspective. They grew up in the sixties and seventies, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Nixon and Watergate, the rise of transcendental thinking, hallucinogenic drugs, the lack of understanding of mental illness. Laudor was “famous” as a brilliant scholar, schizophrenic, Yale Law School graduate, planning to write a book about his “madness,” almost coddled by those who cared so deeply for him, as Michael transcended his mental illness, or at least compartmentalized it, deluded himself and others that the illness was under control; he stabbed and killed his pregnant fiancée, Carrie. Rosen uses his personal history with Michael to give an overview of mental illness in the twenty and twenty-first centuries, the misunderstandings, the misdiagnoses, the horrendous treatments, the lack of protocols, the misuse of drugs, the legislation, the intended and unintended consequences of actions, the issues of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the goal of community centers, and finally, the prosecution of Michael. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. …” Allen Ginsburg, inspiration for title. The line between brilliance and insanity is porous, as we see over and over again. The tragedy is that we don’t have a diagnosis for many mental illnesses, the funding to properly care for those with mental illness, or the empathy for most that Michael was able to engender, until he didn’t.)
*The Lost Boy, Thomas Wolfe (The Lost Boy (a novella based on Wolfe’s older brother,) is a captivating and poignant retelling of an episode from Wolfe’s childhood. The story of Wolfe’s brother Grover and his trip to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair is told from four perspectives, each articulating the sentiments of a different family member—and their sense of the loss or absence of this favorite child. The Lost Boy also captures beautifully the experiences of growing up at the turn of the century and the exhilaration and loss of childhood. The repetition of words and phrases gives the book a poetic, almost song-like feel.)
Girlhood, Melissa Febos (In essay form, Febos reconsiders the narrative of her childhood and transition to young adult (“girlhood”) when at age eleven her body starts to change and with it she experiences society’s assumptions about beauty, youth, self-worth; friends disappear; boys take advantage of her; she explores her own body in ways she doesn’t understand; she loses any agency she might have over herself. “I turned away from the real inside of me and oriented myself outward. I did not look back for a long time.” A philosophical, investigative, personal exploration of being a young woman in our society; our body images based on those that men deem acceptable; our deep criticism, ingrained over thousands of years, not to listen to what we as women want, our desires, why we protect men over our own bodily and spiritual protection (the “empty consents,” the need to apologize for men’s behavior that makes us feel less than, our lack of self-love). Insightful, contemplative, relatable.)
Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward (Ward’s devastating memoir focused on the deaths of five young Black men, friends and her brother, Joshua. They died by various causes in their mid-twenties: despair, poverty, loss of hope, lack of father figures, young Black men caught in cycles without long lives. “The endless struggles…, the drugs that lit his darkness, the degradations that come from a life of poverty exacerbated by maleness and Blackness and fatherlessness in the South—being stopped and searched. By the police, going to a high school where no one really cared if he graduated and went to college, the dashed promises…” You are there in the sweltering weather, in the thick woods, in the two-room rotted houses, yet still with the pull of home and friends and family.)
Fi, a Memoir of my Son, Alexandra Fuller (Fuller’s memoir about her devastating, deep and inconsolable grief after the unexpected death of her twenty-one year old son, Fuller (“Fi”) is heart-breaking. She captures the wildness and loneliness of her grief even as she realizes her two daughters are heart-sick and lost, too, after the incomparable bounds of the three children are broken—now only two. Fuller is reflective, at times humorous, overwhelmed, as she considers death, something so immediate and sharp that it can’t be true. She faces it, she almost drowns in it, she plumbs the depths of it, non-stop, bone-wrenching, grief. Her unconventional journey, her heritage as a white settler in southern Africa colors it, her connection with nature, her community and family, all surround her so that she doesn’t lose herself to despair. Haunting yet illuminating, a beautiful elegy to her son, the meaning of mother.)
Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri (Autobiographical novel by Nayeri, all of which is true, but memories fade and change and are not always what you recall. He recounts his early years in Iran before becoming a refugee in America with his mother and sister. His father stays behind with a new wife. Daniel’s story is a telling of history, myths, legends, and partly remembered stories, interwoven with his precise description of feelings of being the outsider, addressing us, the reader, trying to get us to understand what he is saying. Using the construct of the “1001 nights”, he tries to explain his life to his third grade class. Clever, a way to seek what is the truth, how memories change, what leads us to where we are.)
Abandoned, James Thompson (A couple abandons a baby in Depression-era 1930s, out of money, no job, husband always drunk. It is told through the mother’s eyes in first person—unusual narrative but very effective, although the dialogue was stilted. Times were still hard, but why abandon their son? This is the author’s story. He was that baby. Most of the book is speculation though the facts are correct.)
*This Isn’t Going to End Well, the True Story of a Man I thought I Knew, Daniel Wallace (In this memoir (part eulogy, part cautionary tale, love letter, and sob of anger), the bestselling author of Big Fish tries to come to terms with the life and death of his multi-talented longtime friend and brother-in-law, who had been his biggest hero and inspiration, in a poignant memoir. William Nealy, extreme adventurer, artist, writer, caretaker of his wife, the “cool dude,” ultimately could not reconcile his internal (shy, imposter syndrome, sexually assaulted as a child, depressive, never good enough) and external selves, ultimately resorting to suicide. The author feels he betrayed William by reading his private journals after his death perhaps justifying these actions because everyone was so stunned by the death. Yet, he publishes a book with the knowledge gained from his relationship, that of his family and friends, and the journals. Query: is this ethical or moral? Memoir seems more about Wallace and how angry he was than about William. Also, he didn’t honor his sister’s specific instructions about handling their ashes—what gives him the right to make those decisions?)
The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit (The title taken from a line from Georgia O’Keefe, writing to friends in New York having moved to New Mexico (the letters are from the “faraway nearby”), Solnit’s memoir is a book about stories and story-telling and their importance to our lives. It’s also about her relationship with her mother, her bout with an unnamed disease, her living in Iceland for seven months, her being saved by friends and mere acquaintances. It is lyrical, poetic, mystical, imbued with others’ stories, fairy tales, myths, all with the common ground of searching for one’s self.
The Guardian: “Dominating Solnit’s rich repertoire are two main thoughts: that imagination, activated through reading and art, can help overcome the feeling of being a stranger in the world, lost among strangers; and second, that characters and places can build another home, and provide alternative stories to the dismal and constrictive plots of our own lives. “We are all the heroes of our own stories,” she writes, “and one of the arts of perspective is to see yourself small on the stage of another’s story, to see the vast expanse of the world that is not about you, and to see your power, to make your life, to make others, or break them, to tell stories rather than be told by them.” If that has a slightly homey sententiousness, her own storytelling avoids it, for Solnit is a resourceful spinner of yarns and forger of symbols, a powerful reporter, a marvelous reader of other writers’ works, quick and deft with aphorisms.
The faraway subjects include: Mary Shelley’s myth-making, with her tragic modern monsters, Frankenstein and his Creature; Che Guevara’s transmutation from a selfless and courageous medic, bringing knowledge and succor to lepers, into a brutal revolutionary executioner; a comparatively recent cannibal episode in the Arctic, when a mother devoured her children to survive; and, perhaps most mysterious, the fable of the Chinese artist Wu Daozi of the Tang period, who, his life under threat from the Emperor, painted an image of a landscape with a cave, stepped into the cave, and disappeared.”) Apricots. Her mother’s disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit’s raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passage. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association”.
The Sorrow of War, a Novel of North Vietnam, Bao Ninh (Not quite of memoir of North Vietnam before and after the “American War,” given that Ninh uses Kien, a fictional character as his protagonist, a seventeen year old North Vietnamese man who joins the military and experiences ten years of war. Twenty years after the war, Kien writes thousands of pages about his war experiences to explain them to himself, to rid his brain of the horrors that he saw and in which he participated, to recall his days with his childhood girlfriend. Honest, deliberate, Ninh deftly describes the brutality, the deaths and the murders, the innocence lost during the wars in Vietnam. Brilliant writing style, Ninh introduces western readers to a very different war than we imagined. The deep sorrow and sadness of war, truly.)
Historical Fiction:
The Magician, Colm Tóibín (This compelling fictionalized biography explores the life and times of Thomas Mann, the exiled German Nobel Prize winner, exquisitely balancing the intimate and momentous. “Buddenbrook,” “The Magic Mountain,” long, ponderous, books, Mann was famous from his first writings. “The Magician” is focused on Mann and his family (his father and mother and siblings, especially Heinrich, also a writer, and then his wife, Katia, and their six children especially Erika and Klaus, staunch anti-Nazis) in the early years of the twentieth century, World War I, the rise of Hitler, his exile to the US, World War II, and Germany post-WWII. The Guardian: But always behind the parade of characters lures the dark background of Germany’s decline and fall and subsequent division. Tóibín expertly balances the private and public, as he follows Mann’s trajectory from patriotism to disillusion with non-judgmental finesse. Tóibín writes with depth, knowledge, and compassion. Mann was the most famous novelist during his career, only to be later castigated for his lack of political awareness during Hitler’s rise and his lack of understanding of post-WWII Germany.)
Burma Sahib, a Novel, Paul Theroux (The imagining of George Orwell’s early life, born Eric Blair, in British military in Burma in the 1920s. Awkward, shy, tall, middle-class but with Eton education, Eric feels misunderstood, a misfit, choosing the military because his father wanted him to make something of himself. In Burma, he fails as a policeman, is disliked and ridiculed by his peers, has an affair, is assigned to undesirable outposts. The descriptions of Burma, the British rule, the Burmese and Indian “natives,” the weather, the countryside, are superb. Slowly, as Eric starts to rebel, at least internally, against the British authority and his fellow mates, he finds writing as an outlet. As his inner self comes to the fore, he is able to find and enunciate his true beliefs, becoming one of the twentieth centuries foremost writers, George Orwell.)
The Magnolia Palace, Fiona Davis (A fictional account of Henry Clay Frick, a wealthy New Yorker who built his home to be art museum after his death. The story toggles between 1919, when Lillian (a young woman who was model for many of the statues around the city) unexpectedly takes job as private secretary to Helen Frick, daughter of Henry, and 1966, when Veronica, a young girl from London comes to US to be a model, with the first shoot at the Frick Museum. Mysteries abound, especially regarding a lost cameo, that ties the two eras together. A good description of much of the art and its provenance in the museum along with the difficult personalities of the Fricks. Enjoyable, quick read, similar to other historical fiction novels of that era.)
The Evolution of Annabel Craig, Lisa Grunewald (The city of Dayton, TN, convinced John Scopes to admit he’d taught evolution as described in the high school science book to be able to challenge The Butler Act, a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in school (First Amendment provision that there shall be no establishment of religion by state and the requirement of public school teachings). Based on real events surrounding the trial, including speeches by William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, Grunewald inserts fictional Annabel, an orphan and then wife to one of the defense attorneys, as she slowly learns about evolution and change as a natural part of any animal’s progress, which doesn’t preclude religion. Strong characters within the context of the south in 1925.)
By Any Other Name, a Novel, Jodi Picoult (Two women playwrights who use male pseudonyms to have their plays published. One is Emilia Bassano, based on a real woman who historians think may have been behind some of Shakespeare’s most acclaimed works. The second is Melina Green, a modern day playwright who gains recognition after her play is submitted to a festival under her Blake friend’s name.)
Claude & Camille, Stephanie Crowell (A fictional account based on real facts of the life of Claude Monet, starving artist, and his marriage to Camille, daughter of a wealthy French family, who was strongly opposed to their relationship. An insightful “look” into the beginnings of the Impressionist art movement, with many of the main characters (Degas, Pissarro, Brazille, Boudin) sharing rooms, studios, all struggling even to pay rent let alone buy their paints and canvases. Incredible focus and dedication, for years, even to detriment of families and friends. Good perspective of northern France beauty, Parisian hopes, the exclusion from the great salons, until finally some breakthroughs—for many after they died. Friendships, lovers, betrayals, hope.)
*Arrowsmith, an Autobiography, Sinclair Lewis (The most widely read of Sinclair Lewis’s novels, “Arrowsmith” is the incisive portrait of a man passionately devoted to science. As a bright, curious boy in a small Midwestern town, Martin Arrowsmith spends his free time in old Doc Vickerson’s office avidly devouring medical texts. Destined to become a physician and a researcher, he discovers that societal forces of ignorance, greed, and corruption can be as life-threatening as the plague. Part satire, part morality tale, Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (which Lewis declined) illuminates the mystery and power of science while giving enduring life to a singular American hero’s struggle for integrity and intellectual freedom in a small-minded world. The protagonist, Arrowsmith, is devoted to science but he’s also small-minded, petty, not always a likable character! At times brilliant, other times slow & plodding, this book was challenging to continue, but also compelling to see where the author would take it.)
The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali (Iran during the era of the Shah, his overthrow, the Iranian Revolution, the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, when the Islamic republic was established in 1979, the women’s rights movement (“Women, Life, Freedom”), and the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022 for wearing improper hijab. Told through the enduring friendship of two young girls, Ellie and Homa, the author weaves a compelling story of women, their lives, their strengths (the lions), their heartache during the past fifty years in Iran. “The fight for women’s rights continues, against the backdrop of Iran’s quest for freedom and tragic cycle of protests and crackdowns.”)
When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary, Alice Hoffman (Hoffman reimagines Anne Frank’s life in Amsterdam during the several years before her family went into hiding when the Nazis removed almost 75% of the Jews in the Netherlands. Anne was special but still a child, realizing the darkness that was coming but still with the joy, youthfulness, schooling, ice-skating. Closest to her father and his love of books, different from her older sister, Margot, but with whom she becomes close as the Nazis close in and family goes into hiding, worried that her mother doesn’t love her because she’s talkative, mischievous, wants to be a writer. Taking historical context, and knowledge of Anne’s diary, Hoffman gives us a potential prelude to a fifteen year old girl who’s diary changes the world.)
Absolution, a Novel, Alice McDermott (1963, the story of the wives of the generals, doctors, lawyers, living in Saigon, the early years of America’s involvement in Vietnam. Patricia, newly-married, Charlene, the self-designated ring-leader of the women, all there at the behest of their husbands, trying to make a life in the hot, muggy, humid, and foreign country. Charlene “adopts” Patricia (who she calls Tricia) as her project, involving her in charitable activities, decorating Barbie dolls in Vietnamese dress for children in hospitals and orphanages, helping at leper colony. Yet, there is a darker side to being an American wife in that time period, whether in Vietnam or back home, subservient to one’s husband, no agency, barely the ability to think for oneself. The book is divided into three parts, a long letter from Patricia many years later to Charlene’s daughter about the years in Vietnam, and Rainey’s letters back about her life as a grown-up after her mother, Charlene, died. While realistic about women’s roles in many respects, the characters’ reactions to the lepers and to some of the disabled children was disheartening. The characters were stereotypical, not as developed as I’d liked and lack of a binding theme, except perhaps Charlene, made the story less compelling.)
The Women, a Novel, Kristen Hannah (The often-untold stories of the US women who served in Vietnam War, as nurses, doctors, Red Cross volunteers, etc. (“Women didn’t serve in Vietnam”) and their treatment (spat upon, called baby killers disrespected, shamed) once they returned home after their tours of duty. The novel centers around Frankie McGrath, an idealistic young nurse who joins the Army in order to serve in Vietnam, partly to honor her brother, Finley, who died in a helicopter crash there, and partly to break free of her traditional family life where young women’s futures mostly included marriage, children, and family. The devastation of working in high-stress evacuation hospitals, the friendships forged, the loves found and lost, highlighted after return to “normal life” by PTSD (not yet a mental health diagnosis), addiction, suicidal tendencies, the silence and anger, are captured well by Hannah, although at times the romance stories overshadow the depth of the characters. Our country lost a war, 53,000 were killed, some still MIA, and yet, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial was conceived and created by veterans, not the government. Shameful.)
Native American/Indigenous Peoples:
Wandering Stars, a Novel, Tommy Orange (Jude Star, a Native American, escapes the Sand Creek Massacre where most of his family and community members are killed. He is taken to prison-castle, incarcerated, later freed to start life on his own, the trauma of the massacre leaving him speechless. Thus, the stories of Native Americans in modern America are revealed, through Jude’s descendants, Cherokees living in Oakland, California. The novel is epigenetic and generational, following family members, both biological and adopted. The brutality of their lives, their invisibility, their addictions, their longing for identity and home, their wanderings. The NY Times interview with the author: “Orange continues, “[A]ll the Indian children who were ever Indian children never stopped being Indian children … whose Indian children went on to have Indian children.” In spite of the calculated terror, and the incalculable loss, the government’s campaign [to lose all the “Indianness” in Native Americans] failed and could only ever fail. This framing is part of what’s so special about this book: As we move through generations of the family — as Stars become Bear Shields, who become Red Feathers — and even as knowledge of their histories and customs becomes muddled or lost to time and tragedy, Jude Star’s lineage, and that of his people, remains unbroken.” Orange’s literary style is unique, almost stream of consciousness, with self-discovery and self-awareness, even while lost to one’s self, as the characters wander across time and space. He states that in Greek, planet means “wandering stars,” maybe also for the ancestors of the book’s characters, wandering until they find home among their ancestors.)
Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese (Saul Indian Horse, a First Nations (Ojibway) boy from Ontario is placed in a Canada residential school system when he was eleven, alone with only the memories of the lakes and land and ancestors who came before him to comfort him. He is befriended by one of the priests and discovers he has a gift for hockey, “seeing” how the game will play out even before it happens. Hockey is his savior and his joy as Saul becomes a talented ice hockey player. Eventually, though, his past traumas resurface in his adulthood, sabotaging his budding career. The joy of the game becomes lost, his rage and anger, stuffed deep inside, change him, until he retraces the steps of his childhood, faces his demons, and begins to understand the past. The realities of taking of Indian children to erase their culture, their families, their identifies, is told in another heart-breaking story. )
The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters (Ruthie, a four year old Indigenous child, goes missing. Her family, in Maine for their annual work picking blueberries, is heart-broken. Years later, the story navigates between Joe, Ruthie’s next older brother who feels guilty being the last one to see Ruthie, broken, estranged, dying of cancer, and Norma (Ruthie), who is navigating life with her Mother and father, wondering about her dreams, why she feels and looks differently than her parents. Capturing the life of the itinerant berry pickers, a family devastated by loss and hardship, a child who doesn’t understand her place in the world, living in a home with love but without laughter, and how we remember so much more than we think we might. Ties that bind, hope, forgiveness, all find their way to lessen the ache of years apart. The story was compelling, enough intrigue and sensitivity to keep the pages turning.)
The Seed Keeper, a Novel, Diane Wilson (Rosalie Iron Wing is Dakota Indian, who is taken to live with white foster parents after her father, who has taught her the ancient ways to live, to preserve seeds, her heritage, the strength of Indigenous women, dies. She marries a white farmer, has a child, discovers gardening and the power of seeds and stars and rivers to the Indigenous way of life. Returning to the land of her birth as a widow, she reconnects with her history and family, especially the forced march of Dakotans from Minnesota to prison, the taking of Indigenous children to boarding schools, the ongoing racism, and the importance of saving and nurturing seeds in tying together generations.)
*Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich (Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families told through three generations and multiple voices: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Black humor mingles with magic (the “trickster”), injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life. Originally written as chapters, Erdrich pulls them together as a novel, of community, of families (blood, adopted, gathered together), of Native Americans in their richness of character and culture, often at odds with the US Government, of people tied together in various ways across time and space. Love and violence, hate and forgiveness, jealousy and tenderness, all the human emotions in the myriad characters are strong and vivid. )
Shelterwood, a Novel, Lisa Wingate (Set in the backdrop of Oklahoma in the early 1900s, a time of conflict over who owns land (here, the Winding Stair Mountain area claimed by various of the Five Tribes, the federal government, and private landowners), the abuse of young children, often orphans whose guardians steal their land allotments or abuse the guardian relationships, and Kate Barnard, the first woman elected to an office in Oklahoma who is an activist for children’s and women’s rights. We meet Ollie Auggie in 1909, a white girl who with several Indian girls (some the “elf children”) try to escape her abusive step-father and other nefarious characters, and Val in 1990, a single mother National Park Ranger, new to the area. Val investigates the mystery of three young girls found in a cave on national park land (where she begins to learn about the child abuse of the early 1900s of which Ollie’s story is a part) along with a potential kidnapping, death, and the circumstances surrounding a young girl whose brother and grandmother seem to be missing. The beauty and ruggedness of the Oklahoma mountains are a contrast to the human misery. Wingate weaves two parts of the same story together as Ollie and Val struggle to make a life for themselves and those they love in the beauty and ruggedness of the Oklahoma mountains. Historically accurate, the uncovering of the substantial abuses of the law and the fight to find justice create a compelling narrative.)
Ireland and England:
*Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (Carolina Public Humanities Great Reads series: Serialized between 1837-1839, the novel relates the trials and tribulations of a young, orphaned boy (Oliver Twist) who falls into the company of criminals. It also provides a unique glimpse into how nineteenth-century writers and readers grappled with the challenge of representing these subjects — urban crime, poverty, and violence — for the first time. The cast of characters: Fagan, Sikes, Mr. Bumble, Oliver Twist, Nancy, the endearing Rose, Mr. Brownlow, and friends, is at times overly melodramatic, almost caricatures, representing the black/white of morality and truth, vileness and evil as perceived by Dickens. The writing is descriptive, colorful, and verbose, thoroughly engaging. George Cruikshank was illustrator for each serialized edition of the novel.)
The Heart’s Invisible Furies, John Boyne (Ireland, beginning in 1950s, after being banned from her village, a young unmarried pregnant girl starts life anew in Dublin, giving her son, Cyril, up for adoption. The saga of Cyril’s life begins as a seven-year-old with adoptive parents who are distant, unloving, odd, with Catholic Ireland (“There are no homosexuals in Ireland”) as a major backdrop. Cyril will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity (as a homosexual when it was still illegal in many countries, during the AIDS crisis where “gays” deserved it), love, what/who makes a family, a home, a country, and much more. Poignant, heart-felt, funny and sad.)
Prophet Song, Paul Lynch (Booker Prize, 2023: The novel depicts the struggles of the Stack family, including Eilish Stack, a mother of four who is trying to save her family as the Republic of Ireland slips into totalitarianism. The narrative is told unconventionally, with no paragraph breaks, the effect of which might be like the disintegration of Irish society, rules rejected or ignored, the past no indication of how the present or future will unfold, the uncertainty of daily life. The NAP and its security force, the Gardai, take people from places of work and home, to detention centers, then perhaps to prisons or their deaths, without notifying their families, vanished in all respects. Grime photos of protests, killings, military rule, rebels battling the military, become the new normal. Eilish’s husband, Larry, is apprehended by the Gardai, and disappears. Lynch brilliantly paints Eilish’s internal and external turmoil, not truly believing what is happening, that her husband will return, that her children will be safe, all as the world around her devolves into chaos, destruction, death. Lynch says idea for novel was based on Syria, the refugees, authoritarian rulers. Prophet Song refers to the songs of the prophets, song over and over, in different circumstances, with the outcomes often the same. Excellent dystopian novel.)
Instructions for a Heat Wave, a Novel, Maggie O’Farrell (The retired father of a family of three disappears one day during the unbearable heat wave of 1976 England. Gretta, his wife, gathers their three adult children (Michael Francis, trying to keep his marriage intact, Monica, failing as a step-mother, and Aoife, with undiagnosed dyslexia) to find him. Each has secrets, each has disappointments, each misunderstands the others. O’Farrell is known for writing of families, of secrets kept, of satisfactory resolutions. Interesting premise but at times the characters are too much, too repetitive, too perfect in their imperfections. The ending is abrupt, unsatisfactory, perhaps the most important secret, left unknown to the reader. [NYTIMES: Yet, here, the temperature is never searing. It is both the charm and the failing of this warmhearted novel that O’Farrell seems far less interested in what purportedly drives the plot — the emergence of what’s been hidden in a family — than she is in what’s in plain sight: the highly particular details and habits of her characters, their ways of moving through the world.])
Long Island, Colm Tóibín (Somewhat of sequel to Toibin’s novel “Brooklyn,” Eilias Lacey and family now live in a family-enclave on Long Island. The novel opens with Eilias being confronted by the husband of a woman with whom her husband had a brief affair–and with whom he is about to have a child–who states clearly that the baby will be left with Tony, Elias’s husband. Eilias refuses to help raise her husband’s child and abruptly departs to Ireland to visit her mother, having not seen her for twenty years. The story has twists and turns as Eilias returns home, reuniting, uneasily, with her almost eighty-year-old mother, her wayward brother, best friend, Nancy, and the lover, Jim, that Eilias left behind many years before. The novel is busy with town gossip, the comings and goings of the various family members, secrets held and inappropriately disclosed. The story is less focused on Eilias’ character, although she is central too much of what happens, than “Brooklyn.” A favorite author, this book disappointed in the cliffhanger ending (perhaps a sequel planned?) and less attention paid to Eilias’s motives and spirit.)
The Bee Sting, Paul Lynch (Multi-generational tale of the Barnes, a family living in rural Ireland: Maurice, the patriarch, a self-made man with automobile dealership; his sons, Dickie and Frank; Imelda, Dickie’s wife, and their children, Cass and RJ. Four of the individuals “narrate” their chapters, in different writing styles to depict their voices. Frank, the athletic, popular son, falls in love with exotic, beautiful Imelda, a poor daughter raised by violent father and brothers. Dickie, the smart one, leaves the rural home for Trinity College, where he has homosexual experiences after several years of loneliness. The death of Frank throws off the family’s plan of succession as Dickie marries Imelda, whether for love or to rescue Imelda or to escape his own live by living Frankie’s. The recession of 2008 hits the family with tragedy, failures, and successes. Each character, primary and secondary, is unique with secrets that haunt and impact their lives. A moving, well-written, gripping novel. Murray explores humanity’s endless contradictions: How brutal and beautiful life is. How broken and also full of potential. How endlessly fraught and persistently promising. Whether or not we can ever truly change our course. A long book, over 650 pages, but frenetically paced. A bit difficult to read Imelda’s chapters (written without punctuation supposedly to indicate her lack of education) and ending not clear, possibly extremely tragic.)
The Wren, the Wren, Anne Enright (Three-part generational story: Irish poet (Phil Mcdaragh) who leaves his wife (Terry) when she is sick. They have two daughters, Imelda and Carmel. Eventually, Carmel has a daughter, Nell, about whom the story centers. The author uses this structure to consider the heritage of the Irish lyric form. Phil is a poet, not a great one, with a large effect on his several wives, daughters and granddaughter, sort of a shadow to their lives. The reference to “the wren” is from Phil, as he describes in a famous television interview in America how he will always be Irish, misses Ireland, and its small birds, including the wren. Enright states the book is concerned with inheritance, of both trauma (the disappearing father) and of wonder (the beauty of Ireland perhaps?). The book was slow to start, trying to understand the relationships, the adoring love between Carmel and Nell, yet also the casualness and carelessness in how they treat one another. A bit of a puzzler.)
Normal People, Sally Rooney (Connell and Marianne meet in high school, small town in Ireland. With little commonality (Connell’s mother cleans house for Marianne’s family), they strike up an unusual, unique, and private friendship, connecting on a very personal, almost spiritual level. Normal People is the story of their mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from an initial conversation in high school, to college and the years beyond, two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t. Each is the one friend whom understands the other, the person called when most in need, the intimate conversations and understandings they don’t have with anyone else.)
MISCELLANEOUS (Mostly FICTION) :
Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward (“Let us descend,” the poet now began, “and enter this blind world.” Inferno, Dante Alighieri. Arese is young enslaved girl, raped by her master, separated from her mother, then sold to another owner, bound together with other enslaved women on a forced walk from the Carolinas to the fields of Georgia. Ward uses Dante’s The Divine Comedy (with its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience) as structure for the extreme suffering of Arese and her fellow travelers and enslaved. Arese/Annis becomes internal, visited by her mother and assorted spirits (Aza, who watched over her mother and grandmother), some of whom can help with the present, others all-knowing into the future, still others that remember and give. Ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation, it reimagines slavery in America before the Civil War. Intense and powerful imagery and descriptions.)
James, Percival Everett (A brilliant reimagining of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. Jim escapes from his owner after learning he might be sold (and separated from his wife and child). He encounters Huckleberry Finn, who is escaping his violent father. Their adventures on the Mississippi River, traveling by raft and canoe, encountering all type of people, trying to get to the elusive free states, are well-known American literature, but Everett shows Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion in radically new light—imagine a slave speaking proper English, reading and writing, astonishing to his owners, but powerful in his humanity and anger. “I am James.” Those three words, after twenty-seven years of being “Jim”, or “n–“, another man’s property, always frightened, beaten, worked without end, show the power of freedom, a man’s realization of who he is and who he can be.)
The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty (Vacca Vale, Indiana, a dying town, centered on The Rabbit Hutch, a run-down apartment complex, whose tenants each have their stories: Blandine (an ethereal, brilliant orphan, who is an autodidact, who relies on the mysticism of Hildebrand, the 13th century mystic, for her life-learnings) and her three teenaged boy roommates (all having aged out of the foster system); the couple whose baby’s eyes scare the mother; Elise, the deceased actress, and her son, Moses, who wants to scare Joan, a lonely, online obit writer; the elderly couple trying to get through life). These disenfranchised now live amidst despair, poverty, promises unfulfilled in an apartment building where each sound is magnified. Over the course of one week, the flawed characters’ actions devolve into dangerous and criminal acts. Gunty brilliant describes the frailty and absurdity of being a person in the world with all their soft, secret needs and strange intimacies {New York Times review}.)
Day, a Novel, Michael Cunningham (April 5, 2019; April 5, 2020; April 5, 2021: a family (Isabel, Dan, their children, Nathan and Violet, Isabel’s brother Robbie) shares an apartment in Brooklyn, the story of their daily lives on each of three specific days, before, during, and after the COVID pandemic (although it is more alluded to than specifically discussed). The family is slowly, perhaps, falling apart, the members living interior lives, Isabel, the mother, the center piece without wanting to be, as the expectations of others and of one’s self, are disappointments. The book is filled with love, unspoken, unrequited, homosexual and not, the characters’ yearnings both physical and psychological. The writing is ephemeral, vividly descriptive, capturing the characters’ indecisiveness, their wanting something but not knowing what it is. Quite good.)
Trois, Valerie Perrin (Author of “Fresh Water for Flowers.” Amazon: In Three, Perrin brings readers along with her through a sequence of heart-wrenching events and revelations that span three decades. The Three, Nina, Adrien, and Etienne, who meet as ten-year-old children, become inseparable, the sum greater than the parts. A moving, suspenseful story of love and loss, hope and grief, friendship and adversity. Time changes, distorts, reconnects. Brilliant and imaginative, one doesn’t want to put the book down.)
After Annie, a Novel, Anna Quindlen (Annie, wife of Bill, mother to Ali, Ant, Benjy & Jamie, best friend to Annemarie, died suddenly at age forty from an aneurysm. Her family and friends are devastated, lost, anchorless as Annie was the spoke of the wheel of the family. The novel is broken into four parts, as each individual experiences his or her grief, takes on new roles, steps in when needed, questions their lives. But Annie’s voice is in their heads, guiding them through the days, reminding them of who they are, what she might have done, how she would have listened. Heart-warming, Quindlen captures the immediacy of grief, how one might go on—or not—stronger or changed and provides the reader with tools on interacting with those who have experienced tragedies.)
Eastbound, Maylis De Kerangal (The Trans-Siberian train, taking conscripts to an unknown place in Siberia and a French woman who has left in lover. Aliocha, a 17-year-old conscript, tries to escape, unwilling to serve Russia in the far East, overwhelmed by the openness of Siberia, by the unknowing of life as a soldier, by the near-captivity of the recruits. The French woman agrees to help him escape, not understanding his language, unsure of why she decided to help, questioning her own decisions in fleeing to Vladivostok to return to Paris. Elegantly describing the rhythm of train travel, the background beat of the few days together, this short story captures a moment in time with feeling and great depth.)
This Dark Road to Mercy, Wiley Cash (Southern novel, two girls (Easter and Ruby) in foster care, father kidnaps them, wants to get back in their lives, but his past—stealing money—catches up with him. A bit of mystery, family ties, foster care, betrayal, baseball. Easy read.)
All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews (The novel recounts the tumultuous relationship of the Von Riesen sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, the only children of an intellectual, free-spirited family from a conservative Mennonite community. Elfi is a brilliant pianist, loved by her husband, who struggles with depression and the desire to kill herself (she is “weary of life”). Yolo is a twice-divorced mother of two, a writer of books about rodeos, who loves her sister deeply. The relationship between the sisters in the context of their family and circumstances: Elfi wants to die, Yolo wants to keep her alive. What would you do for love (Help your sister kill herself? Assisted suicide?), how far would you go, what should we ask of those we love or who love us? Elegant, funny, thoughtful, sad with well-crafted characters. The title is from a Samuel Coleridge poem. Toews is author of the recent book, “Talking Women,” based on true story of women raped by their husbands and brothers in a Mennonite community.)
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett (KMMC Book club: Centered around Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” Tom Lake is novel about family, young love, married love, parents and children—especially how children view their parents’ lives before they became parents, secrets kept, life imagined. Emily, Nell, and Maisie, children of Lara and Joe, return to the family farm during the pandemic. The girls beg Lara to tell the story of Pete Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared a summer at the Tom Lake summer stock theatre. The story becomes a narrative of (some, but not all) Lara’s life, of leaving New Hampshire to star in a movie in Hollywood, how her “acting” really only works for her character in Our Town, how she falls in love with Duke but learns that he will always be a fantasy to her. A quiet, gentle book, Patchett pulls the reader into the lives of the characters, allows us to think about our past, what we share, what we might keep private.)
I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman (An event happens, men and women are rounded up and placed into bunkers, deep underground, forty women or forty men per bunker, surrounded by guards, no touching, no privacy, no natural light, no physical activity. The “child,” a younger girl who was placed with older women, has little remembrance of the world before the bunker. Over the years she tries to gain information from her bunker-mates but they hold secrets, perhaps were drugged to forget their past. And then, loud sirens, the guards immediately disperse, the women make their way out of the bunker into the outside world—unknowing, unfamiliar, out of place and time, direction-less, no other people—the outside world becomes as much a prison as the bunkers. Over the years, the women survive by moving from place to place, finding food stores in other bunkers (whose inhabitants all died). Finally only the child is left alive, to wander, to discover, to try to understand the essence of being human in the world around here. She has never known a man, either intimately or otherwise (except perhaps her father when she was a young child): from this premise, the slow discovery of herself is a wonder. Like peeling the layers of an onion, the child’s discoveries as an adult are slow but vital. Creative, thoughtful, chilling.)
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner (Traces the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples (based on Stegner and his wife (Larry & Sally Morgan) and good friends (Sid & Charity Lang)) who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, as professors/writers. “Crossing to Safety” is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage with its joy, tragedy, contradictions, expectations. For Stegner, friendship and deep marital love are life-long subjects about which he writes tenderly, beautifully, creating a strong pull to have those relationships in our own lives.)
Enter Ghost, Isabella Hamad (Sonia and Haneen, British-Palestinian sisters raised in London, who spent their summers with their Palestinian grandparents in Haifa, reunite in their late thirties in Haifa, where Haneen is professor and Sonia an out-of-work actor, recently divorced. Haneen’s friend, Mariam, is a single mother and director who wants to produce the play, “Hamlet” in the West Bank. Sonia is convinced to remain in Haifa and act in the play (playing Gertrude and Ophelia). A coming-of-age existential time for Sonia as she learns more of her family’s history as Palestinians as well as a political awakening in her own right of the circumstances of the West Bank, Israelis and Palestinians. NY Times: “Indeed, the novel seems to argue, real growth and connection, both political and personal, cannot begin until everyone’s ghosts have emerged from hiding. Art is, if nothing else, a powerful tool for coaxing them out.”)
Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara (It’s Christmas week, 1930. Julian English and his wife, Caroline, are the center of “high-society” Gibbsville, a small town in Pennsylvania. It’s prohibition and the Depression coming on, but parties and drinking and gossip are in full swing. Over the course of a few days, Julian breaks with society and spirals downward, drunk, despair, hating his life, his friends, his wife, until tragedy occurs. Highly regarded when published, it was O’Hara’s first novel depicting, as many of his novels and short stories did, a slice of 1930s society life, putting the reader in the center of the characters’ actions, thoughts, and behaviors.)
Missionaries, Phil Klay (With extensive military experience and global war knowledge, Klay creates a novel centered on Columbia and the vote for peace, but with the real focus on the four main characters who have been in wars as either special forces (Mason), journalist (Lisette), Columbian military (Juan Pablo) and local military (Abel, whose family had been killed by paramilitary gang, led by Jefferson). He weaves the story around the various military, paramilitary, Narcos, gangs, etc., in Columbia, trying to take control of the country, for money, for power, for influence. The heavy toil of combat, the uncertainty of life outside of combat, the “pull” to do something better with one’s life, is shown in each of the characters, who we might call them “war junkies,” unable to shed the draw of the danger and risks of war. Underlying much of the action is the often covert US involvement in battles, undercover military operations, drug-cartels, deals made, likely murders, etc., throughout a number of countries. Thoughtful and informative, but disappointing about the extent that ordinary citizens do not know or appreciate what CIA, military, etc. is doing in global affairs.)
North Woods, Daniel Mason (The story of one house built in New England by a young man and woman escaping their Puritan village. Over the generations different people occupy the house, imbuing it with their stories, their spirits, maybe even their ghosts. Nature and the environment are key characters in this wonderful story, each chapter a different character with his/her distinctive voice, each chapter a different month in the woods, perhaps spring blossoms, winter snow, autumn leaves, summer fruits. “North Woods” shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Beautiful nature writing, and while some of the characters may be a bit shallow, overall, the author’s reverence for forests shines throughout this book. Much to consider about this life and the life that may (or may not) come after. )
The Winter Soldier, Daniel Mason (Austria, 1914, a young man, Lucius, still a medical student, joined the military at start of WWI. He is sent to small hospital in mountains where the only medical provider is Margarete, a sister/nurse. Set in the mountains during the horrors of war, Lucius and Margarete battle together the injured, the amputations, the crude surgeries, the dying, the soldiers with neurological disorders, the not-yet-understood PTSD, the “winter soldier,” a case that will eventually haunt Lucius. Margarete and Lucius become friends, lovers, then are separated by battles. Life continues during the war with stories, longings, what-might-have-been. Written with care and thoughtfulness, respect for the wounded, Mason creates a gentle love story, surrounded by the lovely mountains and the cruelty of war.)
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, Elif Shafak (A Turkish sex worker is murdered. During the 10 minutes 38 seconds between her death and her final expiration, she reflects on her life (“mind”), chapter by chapter, in minute detail, her family, her way of life, her friends, the community around her. The second part of the book (“body”) is a caper as Leila’s five friends, four of whom are sex workers and one a dear childhood friend, exhume her body from The Cemetery of the Companionless, to give her a real burial (ultimately at sea off the Bosporus Bridge). The short third part (“soul”) gives us the five friends living together aging in Istanbul, the city that itself a character in the novel. “Shafak’s novel is a stunning portrait of a city, a society, a small community and a single soul.” Highlighting a part of society kept in the shadows, with violence, poverty, anger, and loss, this book is also about women and their sisterhood, protecting one another even as others discard their lives. Unique and compelling.)
The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak (A young Turk Cypriot woman (Defne) and Greek Cypriot man (Kostas) fall in love in 1974, when their relationship, if discovered, would be forbidden. The time was when Cyprus was a Republic, before civil war and the division of the country between Greece and Turkey. Toggling between the secret time of their young love, the late 2010s London, after Defne dies and Kostas and Ada (their daughter) are on their own, and the early 2000s in Cyprus when Defne and Kosta reunite. This is a story of place, of islanders, of displacement, of immigrants, of committees of missing persons, of civil war, of identity, of trees (the Fig, as much a protagonist as the human characters, who brings understanding and wisdom and stories of generations), of environmental destruction—but perhaps most of all, a story of love, of love lost, and of love reclaimed. The writing is exquisite, detailed descriptions, sonorous passages especially by the Fig, to allow us to feel the sadness, despair, and hope.)
There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak (An elegy to water, of a rain drop that falls on the head of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Mesopotamia centuries ago, to King Arthur Smythe, a polymath boy growing up in the slums of London in the late 1800s, to Narin, a young Yazidi girl whose home is going to be buried by a dam in 2014 in the Middle East, to Kaleekhah, a hydrologist living in London in 2018. Memories made, memories forgotten, memories controlled by others, Shafak weaves together a tale of connection, of water, of foreigners, of forgotten rivers, the first known poem (“The Epic of Gilgamesh”), and of the rivers the Thames and the Tigris. NYT: “Shafak asks us to think of water as not a resource but a companion, to imagine its precious, ancient story. She reminds us that the story of written language, from the counting of cereal crops to the first epic tale of a deluge, was born from the water feeding the harvests of Mesopotamia and used to mold the first cuneiform tablets. She reminds us, powerfully, of the material nature of human thought and culture, the continuity of time and the proximity of our ancestors.” Shafak’s descriptions are exquisite, her use of language lyrical; some of the book drags but overall unique perspective and deep respect for history.)
By Any Other Name, Jodi Picoult (How are women’s voices heard? Why are women so often invisible? Playwrights Emilia Bassano in Shakespeare’s time, and Melina, in the present, use a man’s name to be able to submit their work for consideration. Toggling between the 1500s and the present, Picoult paints a picture of the difficulties for women to be recognized for their intellect, and their lack of agency. Emilia is orphan who becomes courtesan to wealthy Lord, using her wit and beauty to please him while writing anonymously as one of Shakespeare’s playwrights, struggling in marriage, humiliated, hurt, kept from her true love. Melina, in 2024, a graduate of Bard College, has a play submitted to a writer’s festival under her male friend’s name. The intrigue, the struggles, again, for a woman or any non-white male to be heard, told in modern setting, are not so different from sixteenth century England. Picoult’s thoughtful analysis of whether Shakespeare could have written all his plays (in her opinion, no) forms much of the basis of this story.)
*Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (Brontë used male name to publish the book (allonym). One of the best-loved novels of 19th century, Brontë’s protagonist, Jane Eyre, is orphan, shuttled off to live with relatives, then to charity school, where she was student then teacher. Her demeanor, quiet, yet self-reliant, smart, willing to speak for herself, to consider her agency in a world seemingly tilted against her, serves her well—but is unusual for that day and time. She becomes governess for ward of Edward Rochester, wealthy bachelor, with whom she falls in love. On the eve of their wedding, she learns he is married to a “lunatic,” living in the attic of his house. Jane disappears, poor, hungry, devastated, only to be friended by St. John, Diana and Mary, siblings. The story continues from there: a coming-of-age tale, a romance, a Gothic novel, a governess story, this book is replete with brilliant descriptions of nature, of human frailty, of Jane’s reflections on her internal and external self (self-reliance, not typically then considered a character of women); class in England; colonialism; wealth; religion; and passion. Amazing longevity and relevance, still very readable today.)
*The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson (One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer’s Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War, the last year of the ten-year battle. At its center is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his conflict with his leader Agamemnon, the death of his friend, Patroclus, and the fight against the Trojans led by Hector. Interwoven in the tragic sequence of events are powerfully moving descriptions of the ebb and flow of battle, the besieged city of Ilium, the feud between the gods, and the fate of mortals. This new translation by Wilson is propulsive, making this 2500 year-old epic poem still relevant, raising questions of war and violence, the role of women, the interference, then, of the divine gods in the lives of men, and maybe today, artificial tools that might direct our fates or destinies. Beautiful, lyrical poetry, rich with metaphors, similes, truly a great work of literature.)
Within Arm’s Reach, Ann Napolitano (Three generations of an Irish-Catholic family, living in northern New Jersey, who are jarred by the unexpected pregnancy of twenty-nine-year old, unmarried Gracie. The story is told from six perspectives: Gracie, her grandmother (Catherine), her mother (Kelly), Gracie’s sister (Lila), Gracie’s father (Louis), and Noreen Ballen (widow of one of Louis’s employees and Catherine’s nurse), various aunts, uncles and cousins. The family is tight-lipped, silent, critical of one another, their characters and perspectives honed by Catherine’s marriage to Patrick (now deceased), who was haunted by the death of their three-year-old daughter and a few years later, their still born twins. Their Irish heritage is strong, their mores set by Catherine, their secrets hovering below the surface, a family in name but not in closeness. Gracie’s pregnancy upsets the family dynamics, bringing out long-standing hurts, slights, jealousies, and love.)
*Utopia, Thomas More (“Utopia”, written 500 hundred years ago,is a wonderfully satirical, yet odd, piece of prose. While it is not the first work of utopian fiction, it did give us the term ‘utopia’. More’s prose satirizes unrelenting idealism by creating a utopia or ‘no place’, an ideal society which cannot exist in reality. Each utopian world reveals a lot about its author and about the society in which they live(d). “Utopia” contains so many contradictions: More, a devote Catholic who persecuted Protestants, seems to advocate for easy divorce, female priests, married priests, and euthanasia in his utopia. Utopia practices religious tolerance, especially of pagan religions, and even atheists are allowed to inhabit the island (even if they are despised). The narrator/ traveller, Raphael Hythlodaeus, attempts to convert the Utopians to Christianity because that’s what European colonists did but religious tolerance is at the heart of Utopian society. There’s a welfare state with free healthcare, women have a more liberal role than in English society in the 16th century, and the Utopians attempt to avoid war where possible. More also puts slavery in his utopian society, makes premarital sex punishable by life-long celibacy, and eradicates privacy altogether. More is clearly satirizing the lifestyle and ideas of Early Modern Europeans, made obvious by the playful asides that run throughout the story, but so much of the piece seems to be at odds with More’s own views and actions that it’s difficult to understand how he would truly consider a utopian society (and his listener, at the end, laments how many questions he has and that there is much with which he finds issue). What about creativity, innovation, curiosity, internal and external beauty?)
Playground, Richard Powers (“Clearly It Is Ocean,” the title of a book written by one of the four main characters of “Playground,” lays the foundation of this beautifully written, descriptive book of the ocean, the “last frontier,” that is under siege. Evie, a diver, Ina, an artist who grows up on Makatea, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Rafi, a black boy from South Chicago with an abiding love of literature, and Todd Keane, best friends with Rafi as children, a technology giant who discovers “Playground,” an AI game that looms to outperform humans. Multiple story lines, adventures across the globe, a slow start but one that eventually comes together and makes sense (if this new world can make sense) while singing the praises of the ocean. Ultimately I found this a book about friendship among Rafi, Ina, and Todd, unbreakable even as differences threaten to tear them a part. “But the greatest takeaway from the novel, which brims with love for humanity and the planet, is that while change is inevitable, the fragile enchantments of life — underwater and on land — are worth savoring and saving.” [Kirkus review])
Soldier, Sailor, a Novel, Claire Kilroy (The internal monologue of a mother (the Soldier of the title) addressed to her son (Sailor), exists, almost, outside of time. No context is provided, and only Soldier’s perspective is given; this is her description, unqualified and unquestioned, of “all I had lost and all I had gained”—becoming a mother. In a world that has diminished her, reduced her to the near-voiceless role of “mother”, this is her experience. It’s her account of the feeling of finding herself torn out of what she had believed was her real life and deposited in a sleep-deprived, incoherent parallel universe where achieving anything is momentous but anything that is achieved is both negligible and banal. But amongst all the grief and tiredness and loneliness of a mother raising a baby, almost alone as the father is almost non-existent, is the great love of a mother for her child, without which she would die and for whom she would kill. Kilroy captures exquisitely with almost stream of consciousness the thoughts of being a mother, the love, the despair, the loneliness, the dailyness, the completeness of mother and child.)
Big Fish, a Novel of Mythic Proportions, Daniel Wallace (Author of “This Isn’t Going to End Well” :In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do —and do well. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school, even in the worst blizzard. He saved lives. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He was an inspired salesman — a visionary, in fact. And he knew more jokes than any man alive. Or at least that’s what he’s told his son, William. William doesn’t really know his father because, actually, Edward wasn’t home all that much. What William knows about his father he’s had to piece together from the little bits of stories he’s gathered over the years. Now, watching his father die, William grows increasingly desperate to know him before it’s too late. And in a wonderful sleight of hand, William recreates his elusive father’s life in a series of legends and myths inspired by the few facts he knows. Through these tales, William begins to understand Edward Bloom’s great feats —and his great failings. He manages, somehow, to reckon with the father he’s about to lose. And he finds a way to say good-bye.)
Orbital, Samantha Harvey (Booker Prize 2024: Six astronauts, twenty-four hours, sixteen orbits of earth. The book is about everything, it is about nothing. Lyrical, floating, descriptive, from the sublime of viewing earth’s sunrises and sunsets sixteen times a day to the mundane of cleaning the toilet in a space ship, to thoughts of family on earth, to complicated experiments on mice where their muscles are growing while yours are wasting, Harvey blends the lives of four men and two women, from five countries, as they orbit the earth, inescapable, yet free. Considered a love letter to earth, the descriptions are beyond this earth!)
Creation Lake, a Novel, Rachel Kushner (A novel about a seductive and cunning American woman (“Sadie Smith”) [who originally worked for governments but is now a private contractor] who infiltrates an anarchist farm collective in France. She is entranced by Bruno, an aging activist who mentors the younger workers, as she gathers information about potential political and activist violence by the Molinards, rural farmers. A “noir” thriller, Sadie tries to manipulate events to incite violence as ordered by her contractors. Some interesting peripheral information about Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, cave drawings, the stars and travel—but didn’t track much with the primary story).
All Fours, Judy Miranda (A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention (creating a fantasy room in a motel, becoming involved with a young man who works at the local Hertz) that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. A quest for a new kind of life as a woman, whether sexual, romantic, domestic *wife & mother*, aging, who is she and who might she be, the novel is humorous, absurd, entertaining. One is most steady on “all fours,” like a dog—or sexually, in the doggie position!)
The Safekeep, Yael Van der Wouden (Short-listed for Booker Prize. Set in 1961 Netherlands, after WWII, two women, (Isabel, sister to Hendrick & Louis, lonely, isolated, friendless) and Eva (Louis’s girlfriend, silly, poorly dressed, flirty), find themselves spending the summer together in the siblings’ house. Isabel is rude, assumes that Eva is stealing from them, snubs her, until one night things change. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue and sex, The Safekeep is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one’s own desires”.)
The Mighty Red, Louise Erdrich (The North Dakota plains, a community trying to survive during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, farmers of sugar beets, the life-blood of the community but the bane of the land. A horrendous accident cracks open families, pulls together Gary and Kismet, sparks their wedding but deepens Kismet’s questioning of who she is, what she wants, what are the secrets behind the accident, how she can reconcile her life and that of her family. Land being scarred by high-tech farming as Kismet tries to reclaim the natural ways of her ancestors. Deeply drawn and flawed characters, the beauty of the stark plains vividly described, Erdrich at her best.)
The City and its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami (The Guardian: “The novel, like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, operates in two distinct spheres, one more or less realistic, the other fantastical. We understand that the unnamed narrator, Boku (one of the ways of indicating the first person in Japanese), has been unable to recover from the disappearance of his childhood sweetheart and so has gone looking for her in the mystical town where she works in a library as a reader of dreams. She is unable to recognise him in this world and, worryingly, she is still 16 (he’s now middle-aged). This is not the only problem: there are grumpy unicorns roaming the streets, a Gatekeeper who wishes to separate people from their shadows, walls that realign themselves to contain the population.
There is little here that passes for plot – dei ex machina abound in the form of ghosts who crop up to deliver important pieces of information to the reader. There is an endless central section set in a library in the “real” world in which Boku befriends a lonely adolescent. Then we return to the unicorns. Murakami’s work is often described as fantasy, but there is none of the intricate world-building that we find in the classics of that genre. Bad magical realism lacks both magic and realism.”)
The Story of the Forest, Linda Grant (1913, Latvia, thirteen-year-old Mina goes out to the forest near the Baltic Sea and meets a group of young man, communist revolution on their minds. The adventure leads to flight from to Liverpool, a new language, a new life, the pursuit of happiness or idealism. The forest story becomes almost a fairy tale, embedded in the Mendel’s experience in England from 1913-1970s, with stories of the old country, flowing from one generation to another, myths and memories, how families adapt in order to survive, lose touch with one another, are caught in circumstances. Humorous with wisdom.)
True Biz, Sara Novic (“True biz (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk”; Charlie is deaf, with cochlear implant (CI) that doesn’t work—her language functionality is minimal. In custody dispute, a judge awards sending her to Deaf School as junior. She discovers a new world as she learns to communicate in ASL but also learns the perils (and prejudices) of CI and Deaf people. A coming-of-age story, a primer on ASL (with wonderful designs and explanations of ASL) and CI, the tension between hearing and deaf, especially within a family. Carefully drawn characters, budding friendships, growing agency in Charlie and others as they are forced to speak for themselves on how they identify and want to be identified. Deaf as a culture, not a disability.)
Crow Talk, a Novel, Eileen Garvin (Garvin combines the myths of popular folklore of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Aesop, as well as science, to help us understand the struggles of Frankie, working on her dissertation on owls, Anne, an Irish musician and mother to Aiden, and Aiden, a five-year-old boy who doesn’t talk. The group meets on a remote summer island near Mount Hood, each lonely and closed off. The birds themselves become living characters in the story, trying to tell us something, if only we are wise enough to listen. Touching, dealing with loneliness, what it means to be a friend, following one’s heart.)
SHORT STORIES (5):
Roman Stories, Jhumpa Lahari (Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories. The short stories feature the daily lives of immigrants, people walking up and down famous stairs, an annual party, families, always nameless protagonists (e.g., the wife, the mother). Lahari captures the richness, beauty and sorrow of life through the brief encounters of her characters. Lahari now writes solely in Italian, her adopted country.)
So Late in the Day, Stories of Men and Women, Claire Keegan (Three short stories: a man regrets not marrying a woman, even though they were probably not compatible; a woman writer is at retreat, meets an angry German man, and begins writing a story about his imagined life, including a long and painful death; a wife decides to have sex with a stranger, but after a lovely weekend, the man turns on her. Brief, gripping short stories of power, imagination, loneliness.)
Antarctica, Claire Keegan (Ten short stories written in the 1990s with Ireland as the background; each unique but with Keegan’s clear ability to quickly and succinctly delve into her characters, make statements, color the pages.)
Shine, Jodi Picoult (An introductory short story to Picoult’s novel, “Small Great Things,” Shine introduces Ruth, the young child of a Black housemaid of an Upper West Side family, a third grader who is a scholarship student at The Dalton School, along the Christina, the white family’s daughter. A story of privilege and racism, seen through the eyes of Ruth. Picoult captures the innocence and the awakening of Ruth to the world around her, the taunts of fellow students, the aloneness of being different, the finding one’s place where others don’t want you to be.)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami (Twenty-four short stories, unrelated, brief tales, of people, places, wanderings. Discrete happenings, some odd, some disconnected, almost musings about nothing. Murakami says he writes short stories in between his novels, enjoys them because he’s able to complete one in about a week. Not very memorable, though.)
Poetry:
*Midwinter Day, Bernadette Mayer (In six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day—morning, afternoon, evening, night—to dreams again: “. . . a plain introduction to modes of love and reason / Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season / Now I’ve said this love it’s all I can remember / Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December.” Various modes of form, poetry, prose, sentence-long paragraphs with no punctuation, almost stream of consciousness, writing of the minutiae of a day, the stuff of dreams, the history of the town, the poet’s family, the idea of mapping, free flowing, relatable. Fascinating. The poem is often read on winter’s solstice, a tribute to time and stories, the sun and the short day, life, most especially love. Mayer was experiential, New York School poet. )