The Sun at Midday by Gini Alhadeff. Towards the end of this fascinating and beautifully-crafted memoir, Alhadeff explains, in the honesty and acuity that is so wonderfully typical of her writing, "That I know who I am is clearly proved by the fact that I have no clear idea what that is, other than the sensation within any given moment. The only course of blood I can honestly say I feel running through my veins is the desire to understand and to make a record of the journey….I see as I write." And she allows her readers to see and to understand so much of life and the world around us, through the wonder and beauty of her writing.
The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass. Glass's latest novel illustrates that the true sign of maturity
is the ability to understand the consequences of your acts not only on
yourself but on everyone around you, those who love you and depend upon
you. Understanding our "footprint" in the world is not only a carbon
question, it is much closer to home: what footprint do we leave on those
we care for? In addition to this compelling message, The Widower's Tale
is also a very, very good read, engaging and pleasurable. As always, Glass fills her novels with interesting characters, an arresting plot, plenty of wit, a few
surprises, spot-on observations of modern life, richly-developed
landscapes, and a conclusion that while perhaps too neat and tidy, is so
moving that only the most hard-hearted of readers won't feel the deep
satisfaction of a tale well-told, and an ending well-deserved.
To the End of the Land by David Grossman. What is this book about? It is about everything that matters in the world. It is about three friends who find each other during one war; lose themselves during another; and try to reconnect during a third, and in the reconnection, save at least one life. To the End of the Land is about war, identity, family, motherhood, friendship, faith (both secular and religious), passion, and love. I implore everyone I know to buy, borrow, and lend out this marvelous novel. It is a book that will change the lives of the people who read it, and in changing lives, a difference is affected, and the world can be changed. I am reminded again of that great bumper sticker, "Fight Evil. Read a Book" and want to create a new one: "End War. Read a Book."
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. This marvelous and great novel about extraordinary people finding themselves in difficult circumstances provides a message for living. Even in the darkest of scenes, the light
of humanity glows in the ever present potential for compassion and
fortitude that lies within all of the characters, and indeed, within all
of us readers. One of the characters, Hema, says, "Life is beautiful and horrible." What else can we do but enjoy the moments of beauty and survive
the horrible through the help of family and community, while also taking
take responsibility for ourselves? The characters in Cutting for
Stone illustrate what it takes to live a good life, and will inspire
its readers to try.
A
Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé. In this wonderful novel, two bibliophiles meet by chance, one a mangy wanderer, and the other a beautiful aristocrat, and decide to open the perfect bookstore. But this novel is more than just a blueprint for what we all want in a bookstore. By twisting in a plot of star-crossed lovers, talented writers with hidden powers, mediocre writers gone mad, standardless publishers gone green, crummy bookshops gone empty, and witless critics gone ignored, Cossé makes her book an engaging love story and also a gripping story of deceit, revenge, and despair. Even more, it is an exploration of we find the meaning of life through the reading of good books. Great good comes from reading great books.
Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel. We first meet the main character of this wonderful debut novel when she is boating out to a house on Stilts on the banks of Biscayne Bay. Frances is twenty-six years old and about to meet her husband, move to Florida, and start her adult life. Through Daniels' words, we become as comfortable with Frances as we are with an old friend; we watch Frances mature into love and marriage and parenthood; we watch her grow older, marked by time, but also wiser, staked by experience. Frances is recognizable as a very real person leading a very normal life full of genuine drama and sadness, happiness and joys. She is a woman who changes over the years, as do all people around her, and yet Frances also stays true to the person she was when we first met her, the twenty-six year old sitting on the porch of a stilt house, shading her eyes from the sun, her heart as open and unmarked as the waters spreading out around her.
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli. This lush, painful, and beautiful novel about a photo-journalist and her addiction to the country of Vietnam during the Vietnam War covers everything important in life: love, commitment, responsibility, survival, and connection. At the end of the novel, the line "Hard to trust that after so much had been taken, so much could still be received", says it all; it is the simple truth and the only thing we need to guide us through suffering and loss. The Lotus Eaters is a great book, capable of changing forever anyone who reads it.
The Book of Right and Wrong by Matt Debenham. Debenham's brilliant stories are luminescent briefings of specific turning points in lives so real and so engaging that my own life felt transformed -- illuminated -- by the changes wrought in the lives of the characters. The turning-points are turn-on-a-dime moments when a startling realization is made -- the nature of a birdhouse, the message left behind on a blue piece of note paper, the reason for an invite to a party, the tugging down of a pair of jeans -- and a new path is followed, leading to a conclusion that is both surprising and completely believable, whether it be revenge, reversal, or acceptance.
The Vera Wright Trilogy by Elizabeth Jolley. In telling the story of Vera Wright, Jolley uses a circular rotation of memories, actions, and observations to create a forward-moving narrative that also looks backward. Vera's life mirrors that of Jolley herself, raised to go far through education, yet leaving school to become a nurse during World War II. She strikes up friendships and lovers in unexpected places and leaves England for a new life in Australia. Vera must also struggle with unwanted pregnancies, miserable jobs, desperate times, and parents that while loved, cannot not be tolerated for long (Jolley's acuity in portraying the cruelty of children and the ineptness of parental love is profound). Vera is a contradictory and very real person, unsure of her identity, coursing with ambition and feverish with need, capable of both calculation and complete naivete. She is vulnerable and wounding, pliable and yet selfish, needy and yet trying for independence, strong at her best, but weak when tired, worn out, or just cold and hungry. She is a woman caught up in the changes of the twentieth century, held by a past defined by her parents and determined to make her own future.
The Girl with the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer. In this deeply moving picaresque novella, a young woman is banished from her isolated island community for wanting more from life. She heads out on her own to the island's capital, determined to escape a fate mandated by the circumstances of her birth and to overcome any obstacles placed by others on the path towards self-determination. Estrella begins her journey as young, inexperienced, and trusting. By the end of the book, she has lost the innocence of her youth but her desire to build a better life is stronger than ever. She may be turned aside temporarily by circumstances but she will not be turned away, ever, from what she holds to be true and right: that she alone defines her destiny.
Rolling the Bones by Kyle Jarrard. To “roll the bones” is to gamble, to play a game of chance, to throw the dice and see where luck takes you. More than one of the characters in this wonderful novel uses the gamble as a mantra for life, giving up control over the future, disallowing the past to exert control, and giving in to the present. May uses losing control and living in the moment as a way to survive - and even enjoy - her peripatetic existence. For her husband Carl, he can't let go: being in control is a necessary element of his calling, the con of good people, but it does not help with living a satisfying life. Carl Blalock and Venus unwillingly lose control of their lives but once it’s gone, they go all the way in their unraveling, following the freed lines of fate and luck. To let life unwind or to hold it tightly in hand? That is the question.
One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The quest for meaning and understanding is both universal and individual: we all search for the reasons we are alive -- the meaning of life -- but each of us is motivated by unique circumstances in seeking our individual justification for living. Divakaruni portrays in beautiful prose, haunting characters, and a luminously and ominously developed plot, the universal and individual qualities of the search for meaning in life, as well as the search's timelessness. We have been looking for the meaning of life for centuries, and as long as humankind endures, the seeking will go on. Perhaps it is not the finding of meaning that we need to survive, but the seeking of it.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. A young girl already sick of life and a middle-aged woman who has worked out a compromise with her own state of existence, are on parallel paths of discovering the full beauty and meaning of life. The novel takes a bit of time to get going -- the first thirty pages or so are dense with ideas -- but then the novel becomes suddenly and awesomely human. This book should be read by everyone as a refresher course on how to live: fully open to those moments of truth and beauty that present themselves every day; willing to give a chance at connection with all those that pass through our lives; and free of prejudice and hypocrisy but instead taking every moment, every person, every idea, on its own merits of originality, truth, and beauty.
How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall. I loved this novel for the poetic clarity of its writing, the searing vision of its writer, and the absolute truth of its four intertwined characters -- but most of all for the underlying electric current of life that runs through the entire novel, the relentless forward movement of time and of creation, in all of its forms. The novel is completely life-affirming with its exploration of why is it we humans go on living, even when it causes us such pain to do so. It is our creativity -- our ability to create joy and beauty and hope -- that allows us to go on.
Spooner by Pete Dexter. Dexter held me from first page to last in this novel that makes big statements about life but hides them within a wonderfully looping plot that alternates between tragedy and comedy. This novel offers convincing proof that it is the effort to connect that saves us, even when connections sputter. It is a moving homage to under-paid school teachers; a devotional to dogs and the people who love them (and a condemnation of people who leave them); a guidebook on writing (with lots of attention paid to how to tell a story, the part we all play in a story, and the importance of caring about your story); and most of all, it is a darn good yarn.
Let the Great World Spinby Colum McCann. This novel is about memory and reality, connections and failures, mistakes and redemption; it is about life, about how human beings try to do the right thing and follow a good path but are struggling, thrown off by poverty, drugs, sorrow, or anger. McCann folds together stories, layering place and time into a stunning novel about the chance connections of lives, the magnitude of certain moments experienced and remembered, shared or hidden, and the wonder of life's sudden and unexpected offers of possibility, hope, awe, redemption, and grace
Hold Love Strongby Matthew Aaron Goodman This powerful novel about one boy's epic journey of survival against all odds presents Abraham Singleton and his family, living in a community of insidious hopelessness, nonexistent opportunities, and failed political and civic promises. But the novel is much more than a social commentary on failures of our society: it is a testament to the will to survive and to surpass. The book is fiction but every word of it rings true: in following its cycles of misery and possibility, of abandonment and connection, of loneliness and of brotherhood, we are all made witness to the enduring possibility -- and our shared responsibility to foster that possibility -- that any child borne can find wings and and fly.
Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar. This novel is realism
of the finest sort, realism that recognizes the beauty and the pain
within the every day lives of everyday people. Umrigar isn't writing
fables or fantasies, she is creating one day shared in the ordinary
lives of people whose struggles take on the quality of the heroic: they
are trying so hard, battling such pain. Plato said, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle"
and those words could apply to each of the characters here.
Cheeseby Willem Elsschot. This very funny novel (I laughed out loud throughout) is also very acute: while it blazes with truisms of middle-class aspirations and satisfactions, it also simmers with the universal condition of mankind: we all care about how we appear to others. In fact, this motivation to match up to others' expectations may be the primary motivation of humankind, while also its greatest contradiction, the desire to define oneself versus the desire to fit in with others' definitions. While Elsschot acknowledges the tragic aspects of this contradiction and exhorts the comic to great success, he also presents the striving itself -- the struggle of the contradiction -- as one I recognized, and understood, and celebrate.
Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This is superbly great book. It hits with the truth that can be only found in
fiction, where we become bound up with the characters -- we become one
with them -- and their fate becomes ours. This spectacular novel
affirms the very power of life, even in the face of unspeakable horror.
Little Bee is a refugee fleeing persecution in Nigeria: she is in
danger because she witnessed mass killings that the oil companies and
the government deny ever happened. She finds herself face to face with
a British couple at the height of her terror and she seeks them out
again, now, in England. This book does not end with everyone tucked safely and happily in their beds, but it ends with the power and the promise of hope.
Somewhere Towards the End by Dianna Athill. Athill is a woman who understands herself and strives to understand the people and the moments of her life that have shaped her. She shares her stories, thoughts, and conclusions freely, creating almost a manual for living. It is a manual that comes not with instructions but with illustrations of life's passage and its conclusion. "Passage" is the key word: Athill demonstrates that life flows inexorably forward and that the best we can do is to move with it, to continue on because even for the very old, new and unexpected events can occur. This wonderful memoir is a must-read, a thoroughly engaging and pleasurable account of a life fully-lived, with a generous sharing of vitality, insight, and advice through example.
The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal. Two brothers wrestle with the question of responsibility: Rachel, the older brother, believes that he is ultimately responsible for his father's SS past and for his father's compounding sin of running away from justice instead of admitting his crimes and paying the price: Rachel turns inward, taking punishment on himself. Malrich, the younger brother, turns outward as his reaction against what he learns about the holocaust (all new to him) and his own personal experience with how the Jihadists have turned his Muslim neighborhood into a scary and dangerous compound ruled by the local Iman. This is an enthralling novel, written not a tract of castigation but as a beautiful and truthful evocation of the foundation of human experience, the defining of self within the context of history.
The Servants' Quarters
by Lynn Freed. This is a beautiful and haunting novel: life's realities -- the burdens of circumstances -- are sharp and heavy, threatening and unavoidable, for the narrator Cressida, and only her neighbor's belief in her, offers the slightest relief, support, and refuge. Frustrated desires lead to bad choices -- hasty couplings, mistaken affections, harmful alliances -- but in the end, Cressida understands that the real luck in life is finding a lasting connection with another person. With that luck and that connection, all circumstances (except the only truly unavoidable one: death) can be overcome.
In the Meantime by Robin Lippincott. A beautifully written novel about time and friendship and hope, and the elasticity of them all, how they can stretch and snap back. About how we expect so much from all three, all of our dreams to come true and on the timelines we demand, and our friendships to endure, support, and enliven us. The book is about no matter how much time and friendship and dreams are valued, we never have enough, in the end. Through this compelling story of the lifelong friendship of three people, Lippincott illustrates the truths of what we are given in life, and the realities of what we do with all that we have: what we squander, what we hold dear, and what we cannot hold onto, no matter how hard we try.
The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa. Through the eyes of a lizard, we receive a primer on how to live life: with honesty to yourself and to others, and with passion, commitment, and steady love. Narrated by a chameleon who was Borges in a previous life, we are observers of a man who creates forged lives for those who must forget or leave behind their own past. When a new client appears who needs a new life to forget the hell of his old one, the forger becomes inexplicably shaken; we slowly learn the reason for his unease and for his wish to help the client recover what his past can still offer him, while helping him to leave the horror of that past behind. Beautifully written and compelling to the last sentence.
Seize the Dayby Saul Bellow. This deeply atmospheric book, oppressive, suffocating, and claustrophobic, tells the story of Tommy Wilhem. Wilhelm is stuck in a hole and can't get out; the hole is his life, past, present, and future, a place he inhabits all at once, and a place dictated and circumscribed by his bad choices, his "mistakes". Bellow writes of the human struggle, of being an individual, one with the crowd, "the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing around, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular essence -- I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want...."
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines. Two men fight for Jefferson, a man condemned to death for a murder he witnessed but did not commit. Grant Wiggins, local teacher, fights for Jefferson's last-minute education; he is pushed into his efforts by guilt, and by his own unacknowledged misery at not knowing how to be human in a society that believes blacks are subhuman. Reverend Ambrose fights for Jefferson's soul and is no longer interested in the young man's standing on earth. Underscoring the efforts of both men is Jefferson's grandmother: she wants her boy to be a man before he dies, to go as a man to the electric chair, to know "that he did not crawl to that white man, that he stood at that last moment and walked". The lessons of this book are disturbing but necessary, and so rich and deep that they stay with us long after we put the book down.
My House in Umbria by William Trevor. Four people are injured in a train-bombing and come to recover at a house in Umbria. Trevor creates a perfectly-rendered world with very human people who are vulnerable and yet not weak, and beaten but not down. He never offers false sympathy or lays out a promise that all will be well when it won't be, but he does always demonstrate the dignity and the tenacity of the human will, as when he as the proprietor of the house acknowledge: "Perhaps I will become old, perhaps not. Perhaps something else will happen in my life, but I doubt it. When the season's over I walk among the shrubs myself, making the most of the colours while they last and the fountain while it flows." No great miracle occurred at the house in Umbria, no one was healed, but the daily renewal of life is miracle enough.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. A couple with big dreams moves to the suburbs and finds their dreams fading away, to be replaced by resentment and misery. But the novel is not an indictment of the suburbs, it is instead a very specific story of two people who fail and although their circumstances do not help, it is their own actions and inactions that fail them. They fail for not having imagination and energy big enough to move (literally and figuratively) where they want to go. Having twisted themselves into false ideals of what they want, they cannot create a life and a space that allows for their full engagement with life. Brought down by the basic facts of life (again, literally and figuratively), they fail to anchor on what they have, and instead drown in disillusion and despair.
Ruins by Achy Obejas. This novel, offering compelling details, both incredible and quiet, about life in Cuba, is both historical mystery and the story of one man's spiritual conflict. Most of all, it is an affirmation of life, even amidst suffering. No matter what your politics, the book underscores both the brutality of life before Che and Castro (no romanticizing of the period when the Upper Classes lived like royalty and the lower classes were kept down like animals), and the sufferings and deprivations of life under Castro. Some choose to leave, others like the hero Usnavy, continue on with faith in the revolution and the smallest of pleasures taken in family, friends, and dreams.
Respected Sir by Naguib Mahfouz. A man of very humble origins rises through the civil service, blunting all emotions of affection and compassion and refusing any engagement that will not promote his career. The only mercy allowed to him is that he hangs onto his delusions that this is life as it is meant to be, and never realizes the full price he has paid for achieving what, in the end, is so very little.
Indignationby Philip Roth. Indignation is a perfect book, amazing and brilliant and true. The characters and the plot defy reader expectations, twisting along the narrative path and opening us to the wonder of life -- it is not what we expect! -- and so making the ending that much more heartbreaking. Roth is a writer who shows us both the folly and the wonder of living in his many novels (is there any living writer so prolific?). His characters are pushed around, buffeted between obligations and desire, and yet somehow they manage to find moments that takes them -- and us, the reader -- out of the struggle for survival long enough to make all the struggle worthwhile. But always with a caution of danger, misery, loneliness, and death ahead.
The Open Door by Elizabeth Maguire. This is a fictionalized biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, nineteenth century popular writer and close friend to Henry James. Woolson was an amazing woman with a great capacity for life, who lived largely on her own terms, and had a strong heart along with an open mind. This novel is inspiring and compelling, entertaining and enervating.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglas. Douglass' own story, written within years of his escape to the North. Deeply moving in both its details of his life as a slave and in his sympathetic but still condemning treatment of those who would enslave others, his autobiography is also inspirational in how he sought education and new ideas, and held onto hope against all odds, and got himself North. Not satisfied with laying low and getting on with his life, he then became an abolitionist and a voice for all those still impoverished in hope and enslaved in deed and soul, both in the North and the South. His autobiography is also a stirring indictment of religion, unforgivable in its support of second class status for all non-white men, and in its institutional defense of slavery.
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. Truly a captivating book on living truthfully, fully, and wholly committed to the life you've got, whether as a fisherman or a railroad baron. Read it as a homily against sloth and easy living, read it in praise of the honest working man, read it as a sea adventure or as a wonderful, living painting of the sea, or read it to understand the possibilities of friendship between boys and love between fathers and sons. Just make sure you do read this book.
The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. This novel is about the fate of a woman when she decides to become a mother. It is an experience shared across cultures, countries, and continents. The story of Nnu Ego explores that experience in all its facets: the expectations of what it means to be "feminine"; the desire for sexual fulfillment and also for fertility; the choices of motherhood and the duties associated with those choices; the need for cooperation and dependencies during pregnancy and motherhood; how one identifies oneself through the different stages of life; the separation between family (loyalty and duty) and friends (a necessary support system); and the ever present burden of care and worry, along with indeed the joys, of motherhood.
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Much of what Dillard shares in The Writing Life applies to any life that requires engagement, whether it be one of mothering, lawyering, teaching, building, temping, or trucking, and it applies to loving anyone who is in that life with you. In life and in love, be fully engaged, be exacting of yourself but also free with your impulses, and be open to sharing: "the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you."
On Kindness by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor. The premise of this book is that kindness as a trait and as a virtue has been denigrated and down-listed to weakness and passivity, to something that has no place in the competitive world of individual survival. The authors argue that on the contrary kindness is the necessary connection all humans crave and need: "History shows us the manifold expressions of humanity's desire to connect, from classical celebrations of friendship, to Christian teachings on love and charity, to twentieth-century philosophies of social welfare." Covering huge amounts of material produced through the centuries by philosophers, theorists, scientists, psychoanalysts, and historians, the authors demonstrate that humans are interdependent and that the bridge between humans is best expressed through kindness, through recognizing kinship, shared interests, and mutual needs and desires: "kindness....creates the kind of intimacy, the kind of involvement with other people that we both fear and crave....kindness, fundamentally, makes life worth living....everything that is against kindness is an assault on our hope."
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