Book Reviews

LitPicks™ are written with Book Clubs in mind. Every month we we publish three reviews—one in each category—to satisfy different styles for reading and discussing:

A Lighter Touch: books that can delight, offer hope, or inspire personal reflection.

Wonderfully Written: books that engage on a deeper level for personal or literary discussions.

Great Works: books that have stood the test of time and offer a more complex vision of humanity.

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LitPicks Book Reviews—May 2012

Theme—Good Books, Tough Subjects
Some books tackle difficult, painful subjects but do so with exceptional prose, wit and, most of all, compassion. They make for compelling reading. This month's works consider young people battling cancer, the brutal society in North Korea, and pedophilia.

Labels: Alternate History, A Lighter Touch

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green, 2012
336 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
May, 2012
This is a Young Adult book which, like The Book Thief before it, has migrated over to the adult market. Although it's a teenage romance, it offers such a beautiful rendering of teens-in-trouble that adults have found it riveting.

In this book, "teens-in-trouble" has a different meaning. Hazel, the 16-year-old narrator, drags a portable oxygen machine behind her wherever she goes. Augustus, her boyfriend, a former basketball player, wears a prosthetic leg, and their friend, Issac, misses an eye. This is the grim reality of three teens battling cancer.

Labels: Wonderfully Written

The Orphan Master's Son
Adam Johnson, 2012
464 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
May, 2012
Life inside North Korea—despite satellite technology, defector memoirs, and occasional state visits—remains shrouded in mystery. This is the world Adam Johnson's brilliant novel seeks to penetrate: North Korea in its surreal brutality.

Pak Jun Do begins life in an orphanage where children are left not just parentless but nameless, remaining outcasts for the rest of their lives. Jun Do is convinced he is different, that he has special status as the son of the Orphan Master, though we are left to think differently.

Labels: Great Works

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
377 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
May 2012
Lolita has achieved iconic status as a literary masterpiece, albeit a disturbing one, highly disturbing because of its subject matter—pedophilia. What's worse is that you find yourself taking the side of—rooting for, and identifying with—a pedophile. And you even find yourself laughing because the pedophile is a wickedly funny, sophisticated narrator.

How does Nabokov do it? He uses point of view—and turns it on its head. Point of view (see our free LitCourse 7) is how authors get us to identify with certain characters—we see the book's events through their eyes, and usually they're the good guys.