Books that captivate with their exquisite prose and unforgettable storytelling. Perfect for readers who appreciate the art of language.
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold, 2003
368 pp.
July 2008
Someone gave me this book when it came out in 2003. It's been five years, but I'm only now getting around to it.
The reason (I suspect for others, too) is that the subject was just too gruesome: the murder of a 14-year-old girl. Also, in 2003 my daughter was the very age as the murdered Suzie. I just couldn't get past the opening lines.
Loving Frank
Nancy Horan, 2007
400 pp.
April 2008
Though engrossing and beautifully imagined, this book is disturbing. When real-life Mamah Cheney leaves her husband and children to elope with Frank Lloyd Wright, she pays a price. Throughout, one wonders: is the price too high or not high enough?
Yet author Nancy Horan doesn't ask us to judge; she simply wants to reveal how people make complicated choices and how they manage to live with their decisions.
The Magicians
Lev Grossman, 2009
402 pp.
March 2010
While paying homage to Tolkein, Narnia and Harry Potter, Lev Grossman manages to carve out his own path. His book both plays with magic and explores its darker side, the emotional underpinnings of those drawn to its enchantments.
Quentin Coldwater suffers the slings and arrows of high school unpopularity. But on his way home one afternoon, he unwittingly slips through a portal and finds himself on the grounds of Brakesbill College for Magical Pedagogy.
The Martian
Andy Weir, 2014
387 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
January, 2015
You're screwed. You're alone...stranded millions of miles from earth...and everyone there thinks you're dead. But you're not, are you? At least, not yet—although unless you're really, really smart, you will be.
So how smart is "really smart"? Well, as smart as an astronaut or NASA ground operator. Those people are super smart, and if you're one of them, or in contact with one of them, your chances of survival are much improved.
Turns out, you're an astronaut!—which is how you landed (so to speak) in this mess to begin with, and which also means you might just survive till the next Mars landing in 4 years.
The Master
Colm Toibin, 2004
464 pp.
September 2009
A beautiful work! The title, by the way, refers to James's moniker. He became known as "The Master" due to the precision and elegance of his style and the complex, hidden depths of his characters—mysterious beings who are never quite knowable..not unlike we beings in real life.
Toibin has taken the many biographies of James and fashioned a poignant novel, a psychological study much like James's own novels. In doing so, Toibin permits us entry into the privileged lives of a very thin slice of American and British society—the rich and famous and accomplished, very much the people James wrote about.
Matrimony
Joshua Henkin, 2007
291 pp.
October 2008
My friend Eddie once said (we were on the cusp of middle age) that we run from our roots while young, only to run back to them as we mature. I think that's a lot of what this very fine book explores.
The story's main characters meet in college—all three determined to put family influences behind them, create their own identities, and set their own life paths.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris, 2000
272 pp.
November 2013
In honesty, I didn't "read" Me Talk Pretty; I listened to it. Even now, simply writing about it, I can hear Sedaris in my head—that voice, with its droll flatness and its slight nasal quality, has the power to make so many of us double over with laughter.
Not all of the essays are hilarious; some are tinged with nostalgia and some carry more than a hint of bitterness. But no matter the emotion conveyed, nearly all are engaging.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Kim Edwards, 2005
432 pp.
November 2006
Dark secrets that lie deep in the heart always find their way to the surface. That's the premise of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a painful but beautiful book about how lies corrode the human soul.
Two stories are told in tandem. The first is the story of Dr. David Henry who, unbeknownst to his wife, gives away their second twin, a baby girl with Down syndrome.
Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones, 2006
272 pp.
October 2009
Pop Eye is the village freak show. He sports a clown's nose and pulls his large, regal wife around with a rope tied to the end of a wooden trolly. Such a sight.
Civil war has erupted on this unnamed South Pacific Island. And when the entire white popularion flees to avoid bloodshed, the island is left without teachers. So village leaders turn to the single white man left who would have the background to educate their children—Pop Eye.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Tracy Kidder, 2003
336 pp.
April 2007
If you've never read anything by Tracy Kidder, start with this book.
Kidder is one of the finest non-fiction authors today. Whether he's writing about designing computers or building a house, he writes with the intricacy of a specialist and the intimacy of a novelist.
Mr. Golightly's Holiday
Salley Vickers, 2003
368 pp.
May 2010
A quiet, strange and intriguing book. Told lightly (pun intended), with a dose of whimsy, the novel explores profound themes—how do we choose between good and evil; what does love entail, and what does it demand of us?
An unassuming, rather unattractive little man, Mr. Golightly wrote a book, years ago, that achieved wide-ranging fame. Based on the book, Golightly built a large, powerful enterprise—which lately seems to be losing ground to the competition.
Netherland
Joseph O'Neill, 2008
272 pp.
January 2009
Many tout this as the top book of 2008—and it's easy to see why. Netherland is a stunning read, a 21st-century send-up of The Great Gatsby—the Gatsby figure, in this case, a charming, enigmatic immigrant from Trinidad, Chuck Ramkissoon.
The Nick Caraway narrator for the book is Hans van den Broek, a Dutch banker living in Manhattan, whose wife, in the aftermath of 9/11, leaves him for their home in Britain.
Nightwoods
Charles Frazier, 2011
272 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December, 2011
Yes, it's true. Charles Frazier, National Book Award winner for Cold Mountain, may have a bit of a shtick. Some critics—by no means all—accuse him of burdening his storylines with heavy-handed, florid prose. I disagree.
For me Frazier evokes William Faulkner, another king of verbiage who creates idiosyncratic worlds. Like Faulkner's, Frazier's are lost worlds—resplendent yet precarious, they no longer exist. Still, they're so complete it's hard to pull away, even when the book is closed.
Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult
464 pp.
September 2008
I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed with Picoult's book, but it contained enough that's very good to recommend it as a LitPick.
Part of what's disappointing is the gimmicky cliff-hangers. Picoult is too good a writer to fall back on chintzy tricks—though I admit she kept me turning pages till 3 a.m.
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie
Barbara Goldsmith, 2004
320 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
May, 2014
More than 100 years on, Marie Curie is still the preeminent woman of science, taking her place alongside the likes of Rutherford, Einstein, Ferme, and Bohr (her contemporaries). Her achievements are numerous—and all the more dazzling because they were accomplished in the face of near poverty and an oppressively sexist culture.
This is the struggle told by Barbara Goldsmith in her lucid, wonderfully written biography. The author digs beneath the standard legend—created by headlines, biographies, and history books—to present a more personal portrait of a woman driven by obsession and "melancholy."
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout, 2009
266 pp.
August 2009
It's hard to know what to make of Olive Kitteridge, the gruff, big-boned woman who dwells around the edges—and sometimes at the center—of the 13 stories in this gorgeous novel/story collection. Olive is hard to like—but she's impossible not to love.
Olive lives in Crosby, Maine, which author Elizabeth Strout has created as her "little postage stamp of native soil" (the term Faulkner used to describe his fictional home).
On Beauty
Zadie Smith, 2005
445 pp.
September 2007
Somewhere in the middle of this book, a character wonders "was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything?"
She hits on the problem readers may encounter: it's hard at first to feel "genuinely attached" to this book—because none of the characters seem to love anything or anyone, least of all themselves. Ironically, that question became the tipping point for me. From then on it was impossible to put On Beauty down.
Once Upon a River
Bonnie Jo Campbell, 1211
348 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
June, 2012
Margo Crane, the wonderful young heroine of Once Upon a River, is a throwback to the 19th century: she's Huck Finn in girls clothing (boy's clothing, too) ... and Annie Oakley in jeans and a hoodie. She's resourceful—a crack shooter who kills, guts, skins, and cleans, her own food.
She's on the river...and on the run.
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.
Out Stealing Horses
Per Petterson, 2003; English trans., 2005
250 pp.
November 2008
An elegy for a beloved father and youthful innocence, this story uses parallel time-frames, then and now—in which an older man comes face-to-face with events of his childhood.
Nearing his 70's, Trond Sander has retreated to an isolated Norwegian cottage only to find that his neighbor, another solitary soul, belonged to his long-ago childhood—the summer of 1948 which Trond and his father spent in a remote village near the Swedish border. Now haunted by memories both beautiful and painful, Trond comes to see that he is more his father's son than he had realized.
A Partial History of Lost Causes
Jennifer duBois, 2012
400 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
October, 2012
Jennifer duBois is simply too young to have written such a remarkable book—that's the buzz, what everyone's saying. And I'm saying it, too. A Partial History is sophisticated and brainy—yet packs a huge emotional wallop. All in all, it's a stunning piece of writing.
This is a modern quest story: a young woman, knowing she has a limited time left, sets out to find the secret to life, her life anyway—but also, as it turns out, the life of a famed Russian chess champion.
People of the Book
Geraldine Brooks, 2007
384 pp.
March 2008
I was with Salman Rushdie the other night (along with few others...maybe 2,000 or so) as he spoke about the power of the novel to change the world.
Novels, he said, enable us to see the world in a new way and offer the possibility of binding disparate cultures together in a common humanity. It was an inspiring evening for any literature lover. I'd been thinking about recommending Brooks's new novel—now I must!
The Perfume Collector
Kathleen Tessaro, 2013
464 pp.
June, 2013
Reading this lovely novel, it's hard not to think of The Language of Flowers. The similarities are thematic: both are coming-of-age stories—and where one uses flowers, the other uses perfume as a gateway to self-knowledge.
In 1955, Londoner Grace Munroe learns she has inherited a sizable estate from Eva D'Orsey, a Frenchwoman. Yet Grace has no idea who Eva is, let alone why she left Grace her money.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, 2009
320 pp.
March, 2012
Take two current crazes—our fetish for Everything-Jane and killer zombies—mash them together, and you get one of the absolute funniest send-ups ever.
Grahame-Smith channels a wonderful Jane Austen, who has written a good a quarter of his book. He uses her text, verbatim in places, then interjects his own text on zombies and the martial arts—the very practice in which Elizabeth Bennet, everyone's favorite literary heroine, excels.
The Radleys
Matt Haig, 2011
366 pp.
October 2011
Vampire walks into a pub. Pretty young barmaid says, "Can I get you something to eat?" Vampire looks at her and says, "Thanks, but I'm watching what I eat." Bada boom.
It's a line straight out of The Radleys, one of the newest in the vampire craze. By turns funny and serious, author Matt Haig has managed to freshen up what has become, for some, a stale genre.
Redeployment (Stories)
Phil Klay, 2014
400 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
March 2014
The twelve stories in this remarkable collection—about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan—vary in length, but the one thing they have in common are characters struggling to cope with their wounds—wounds that, for the most part, are psychic.
The stories explore the bonds of comradeship, the difficulty of religious faith in war, the unsettling linkage between sex and violence, and the ever presence in war of fear and anger. In one story, the men chant "kill, kill, kill," taking a perverse pride in their company's kill rate. When a fresh recruit makes his first combat hit, they celebrate his loss of "virginity."
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
256 pp.
January 2008
I know. This is sooo not cutting edge. Remains has been around for 20 years now, and it's been discussed ad nauseam. In fact, I wanted to write about Ishiguro's more recent Never Let Me Go—but this book is just so good.
Remains is an English teacher's dream: there's so much going on beneath the surface—and it's so carefully pieced together—that it makes the sparks fly out of our chalk. It's a modern classic.
A Reunion of Ghosts
Judith Claire Mitchell, 2015
400 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
June, 2015
Take three sisters on a mission to commit suicide, toss in guilt over an ancestor who perpetrated two of the 20th century's greatest miseries, and you have a ready-made comic novel. Seriously.
For the Alter family, bad luck is followed by more bad luck, the result of a family curse harkening back to the first world war. By 1999, the three middle-aged Alter sisters decide they've had enough—the buck stops with them. They will add their own names to the chart of family suicides that sister Delphine drew up and attached to the back of her bedroom door. So why are we laughing?
Saying Grace
Beth Gutcheon, 1995
320 pp.
May 2008
I recently got an email asking me to put up a Reading Guide on a work by Beth Gutcheon. Who's this, I wondered?...only to be surprised to find that she was born and raised in the small town I live in now.
I was more surprised to see the extent of Gutcheon's work (7 novels)...and even more surprised that she's not more widely talked about in book club circles. She's an extremely intelligent, gifted writer: perhaps, a writer's writer.
Shanghai Girls
Lisa See, 2009
314 pp.
January 2011
I confess: I've not always been a huge fan of Linda See; her novels, while engaging, have a tendency to spill over into bathos. Shanghai Girls is an exception—written with See's trademark readability, it has more restraint in the melodrama department.
Shanghai Girls, in fact, is a wonderful book, giving us two historical snapshots: first, of Chinese culture in the late 1930's, up to the onset of World War II; second, of the U.S. and what it looked and felt like to Chinese immigrants before and after the war. Neither offers a flattering picture—of China or America.
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert, 2013
512 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December, 2014
In this engaging historical novel, Elizabeth Gilbert combines a period romance with a slice of scientific history—similar to, but larger in scope than, Tracy Chavalier's Remarkable Creatures. And in Alma Whittaker, Gilbert gives us a fascinating—though unlikely—heroine: brainy, six feet tall, and plain in appearance.
Alma is a prodigy, mastering the rudiments of botany at an early age and eventually becoming a specialist in mosses. Unglamorous, overlooked, and doggedly persevering, mosses and Alma are a perfect match. Of course, like many a wallflower, Alma has her secrets—though none are to be revealed in this review.
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Ben Macintrye, 2014
384 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
April, 2014
A good deal of ink has been spilled over the years on Kim Philby, the British spy working all the while for the Soviet Union, so it's surprising to find yet one more book on him. But Ben Macintyre, who has penned some of the most exciting true-life spy stories written, takes a different approach.
Macintyre considers Philby in the light of his decades-long friendships within the old boys' club of British intelligence. Given the closeness and length of those friendships, Philby's secrecy, duplicity—and brazenness—boggle the mind. Yet his betrayal is part of cold war history, as are the countless lives lost because of him.
The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville
Clare Mulley, 2012
448 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December, 2014
It's a story straight out of Ian Flemming, except that Christine Granville was the real deal. Beautiful, clever, undaunted by danger, she was of Polish birth and one of Britain's top spies during World War II. Her exploits were so audacious she became a living legend.
Men and women alike found her irresistible; even ferocious Nazis dogs fell under her spell. Defying the odds—to say nothing of physical hardship—Granville survived the war only to be undone by a former lover. It was a sad and ignoble end to a glorious life.
State of Wonder
Ann Patchett, 2011
368 pp.
June, 2012
Once again, as in Bel Canto, Ann Patchett plucks individuals out of their natural element, drops them into an alien environment, then turns up the heat—in this case, quite literally, the suffocating heat of the Amazon River basin.
In doing so, Patchett turns in another exquisitely nuanced novel, combining horror, beauty, and romance.
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel, 2014
352 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
November, 2014
If we were to lose everything, if our entire civilization were to collapse, what would you miss most? And what would you come to value most? This hypothetical is explored with vivid poignancy in Mandel's debut novel.
Twenty years after a virulent flu has wiped out most of humanity, a troupe of traveling actors and musicians carries their art to the sparsely populated "towns" of upper Michigan. They're willing to face hardships and danger because they hold fast to one paramont belief: "survival is insufficient"—a slogan from a long-ago Star Trek show painted on their horse-drawn pick-up trucks.
The Stone Diaries
Carol Shields, 1994
400 pp.
May 2009
Canada has produced a number of fine prize-winning writers (Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje), and one of the finest was Carol Shields. I say "was" because Shields died of cancer in 2003. She was only 68.
The Stone Diaries—what Margaret Atwood called her "glory book"— brought Shields acclaim: it won the Canadian Governor General's Award and was short-listed for Britain's Booker Prize, both in 1994. In 1995 Diaries won the U.S. Pulitizer Prize.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
David Wroblewski, 2008
566 pp.
March 2009
Enough has been written and said about this book to...um, fill a book—and a book at least as long as this one is.
Sawtelle is an Oprah pick, and many were distressed that she chose a book ending on such a tragic note. But Edgar is a 20th-century retelling of Hamlet, and as you know Shakespeare's tragedies are...tragic.
Complaints have also been leveled about the overly detailed passages on the genetics of dog breeding. That's probably a fair criticism, but those sections needn't be overly burdensome. Just blow through them.
Suite Francaise
Irene Nemirovsky, 1941; published, 2004; Eng. trans., 2006
448 pp.
June 2008
Suite Francaise is especially poignant because of its legendary background: author Irene Nemirovsky died at Auschwitz in 1942; 60 years later, her manuscript was rediscovered by one of her daughters.
All this is set forth in the two appendices, which make for as gripping a story as Nemirovsky's fiction. It's hard to read Suite Francaise without that background knowledge breaking through.
The Ten-Year Nap
Meg Wolitzer, 2008
400 pp.
April 2009
Meg Wolitzer is a terrific writer. She's funny, wise and trenchant—a fine portraitist of the small gesture, the moments that make up our lives.
Here she considers women, a generation after the onset of feminism, who opted out of the Career-With-Kids-I-Can-Do-It-All path. But now their children are 10, in school till mid-afternoon, which leads moms wondering how to fill up their time?
Thank You for Your Service
David Finkel, 2013
272 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
March, 2014
About a third of the way into this book, we're taken into a Pentagon conference room where sit generals, a colonel or two, and Peter Chiraelli, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff. They're tying to get a handle on the high rate of military suicide, and so they talk about numbers, review cases and try, always, to arrive at a "lesson learned"—what have we learned from this one death that could help prevent others?
But it's the real lives beneath the statistics—men who return from two Mideast wars and find themselves unable to get on with their lives—that make up the heart of David Finkel's book. They're the men we follow throughout—and whom we come to care about, deeply.
That Old Cape Magic
Richard Russo, 2009
272 pp.
December 2009
Jack Griffin is spending more time with his father now that he's dead than when he was alive. Fact is, he's been carrying his father's ashes around in his car trunk for the past nine months...and can't seem to part with them. A nice piece of symbolism, funny, if a little obvious.
To make short order of the synopsis (because there's so much more to write about with this book): Griffin is in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis—dissatisfied in his career (college professor) and his once-perfect marriage. He's stuck in the doldrums and trying to figure a way out.
The City and the City
China Mieville, 2009
400 pp.
April 2010
Certainly one of the strangest and most intriguing books of 2009, The City and the City is also one of the most acclaimed. Although rooted in realism, Mieville's novel manages to skirt fantasy without slipping into the genre. It's devilishly clever—and a compelling read.
What begins as a typical police procedural—a murder investigation of a young woman—evolves into a surreal psychological, political thriller. Beszel and Ul Qoma—two separate cities somewhere in the Balkans—exist not merely side-by-side, but within, around, and on top of one another. Yet neither city recognizes the other.
The Soloist
Steve Lopez, 2008
304 pp.
July 2009
Schizophrenia is an equal opportunity disease, a fact never more evident than its attack on a once brilliant Julliard student turned street musician and homeless man. As author Steve Lopez says toward the end of his wonderful recounting: rich or poor, brilliant or not...
Mental illness...shows no mercy and often arrives like an unexpected storm, dropping an endless downpour on young dreams.
The Third Angel
Alice Hoffman, 2008
256pp.
May 2011
Alice Hoffman weaves her magic once again, this time in three interlocking stories about the inexorable power of love—and where, if we're not careful, love can lead us.
Set in London, the novel's central axis—around which the three stories spin—is the Lion Park Hotel. Every night at 10:30 a disembodied voice kicks up a ruckus, the ghost of a man who met a violent end in Room 707. The haunting permeates the other two stories but isn't resolved until the third.
A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley, 1991
384 pp.
December 2007
King Lear travels to Iowa, brought here in the late 20th century by Jane Smiley. This is Smiley's stunning tour de force, a Pulitzer Prize winner and many believe a contemporary classic.
A Thousand Acres is a modern re-telling of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, but told from the perspective of Ginny, a latter day Goneril (Lear's evil daughter in the original). In this version, Ginny/Goneril is the heroine.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell, 2010
496 pp.
July 2011
Critics—universally—consider David Mitchell one of the most versatile, talented authors around. Capable of fabulous, mind-bending pyrotechnics, he's dabbled in surrealism, post-modernism, and now, with this novel, he's given us a gorgeous old-fashioned 19th-century narrative in the vein of George Eliot.
Actually, A Thousand Autumns is a historical novel, suspense-thriller, and melodrama—steeped in historical veracity and charged with high-impact emotionalism. In other words, it's seat-of-your-pants reading with characters you care about.
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger, 2003
546 pp.
October 2006
Sounds like science fiction, but it's not...quite. Under the guise of literary realism, this novel takes on time travel as a genetic disorder. In a clever, sometimes funny story, time travel becomes a prism through which we view love.
The initial episodes are delightfully screwy. Henry DeTamble travels back in time to meet his future wife at seemingly random times.
Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington
Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves
Andrew Ross Sorkin, 2009
640 pp.
June 2011
Even at 600 pages, Too Big to Fail is too hard to put down. On the surface, it's about a very few—very rich—men, who talk on their cells incessantly, fly the world in their private jets, check balance sheets, and ante up a billion bucks when asked to do so.
But they happen to be saving the world from collapse. We all know the ending: the world was saved. But how close we came to the precipice makes for a riveting tale.
Truth in Advertising
John Kenney, 2013
320 pp.
November, 2013
Finbar Dolan is a 39-year old man working in diapers who needs a change. That's the symbolic gag underpinning (!!) John Kenney's often hilarious novel about the New York ad world. The diapers? They're Fin's big advertising account.
It's Fin's smart take on the ad business that makes this book so funny. Yet one of life's maxims is that witicisms and combacks too often mask a troubled soul. Jokers deflect pain under the guise of humor—so, yes, Fin is funny, but his humor goes down only so far.
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
Jenny Nordberg, 2014
368 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
October, 2014
With ISIS making such lurid headlines, it's hard to think there's anything left with the power to shock. Nonetheless, Nordberg's superb but chilling account of the treatment of women in Afghanistan has left me stunned.
Aside from female oppression, the real subject of her book has to be one of the oddest I've ever encountered: families passing daughters off as boys—a widespread but officially unacknowledged practice known as bacha posh. Strange, yes, but given the culture, it makes all the sense in the world, or at least the Afghan world.