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.
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.
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.
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.
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!