All in Fiction
What better time to tackle those huge tome-like books you have always meant to read than during an overlong quarantine? That was my thinking when I finally sank my teeth into Shantaram, which appears on many “all-time best books” lists and had been sitting on my shelf for years. After finishing that and recovering by reading several shorter books, I decided to take the plunge into The Pillars of The Earth, my first-ever Ken Follett book.
When I read (and reviewed) Americanahlast year, I knew I wanted to read more of Adichie’s work, and I was not disappointed by Half of a Yellow Sun. Once again Adichie creates a vivid world full of compelling and complicated characters, all of whom struggle to balance tradition and the hope for a more successful and just future.
In The Travelers, Regina Porter offers an epic tale of two families, one Black and one White, over several generations. With a cast of characters so elaborate that she includes a reference at the book’s beginning, the stories of the Vincents and the Christies overlap and intersect at strategic points. Although there are quite a few characters to keep track of, Porter does an amazing job of making each of them come alive.
This completely original and unforgettable book will captivate you from beginning to end. Edugyan opens the book with young Washington Black (Wash) who is enduring life as a young slave on a sugar cane plantation on Barbados in 1830. Under the dominion of the ruthlessly cruel plantation owner, Erasmus Wilde, Wash struggles to understand how so little value can be placed on the slaves’ lives.
When I read this book in March it felt painfully current. Sadly its relevance and timeliness have only grown over the past several months as we’ve seen police violence against Black Americans magnified a thousand-fold.
My first encounter with Pearl Cleage was as a playwright, when I took part in a pandemic play-reading group created and run by Northern Stage in Vermont. Her enchanting play, Blues for an Alabama Sky, set during the Harlem Renaissance, combined with hearing her speak about her work, made me immediately add several of her novels to my reading list. And I was not disappointed!
Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, The Wonder fascinates with the story of Lib Wright, a nurse who trained with Florence Nightingale. She has been hired for two weeks to observe 11-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who claims not to have eaten for four months. Her parents and the local priest and politicians believe that she is a living miracle. Her fame has spread so widely that believers make pilgrimages to meet her. Lib believes she will uncover with ease and efficiency the deceit in the little girl’s and her family’s claim. Instead, she finds herself pulled into Anna’s saint-like aura.
You don’t need me to tell you that this book is a masterpiece. The Pulitzer Prize committee did that a few weeks ago when they awarded Colson Whitehead his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Whitehead’s phenomenal writing style simultaneously draws you into the world of his story, while illuminating difficult truths about his characters and our society.
Afterlife is a beautifully written, sensitive and realistic exploration of one woman’s struggle to come to terms with her husband’s sudden and unexpected death. The novel begins one year after Sam’s death and Antonia is still fixated on her final days with her husband. She has conversations with him in her mind as a means of keeping him alive. Antonia is grappling as well with how and when she’ll feel able to interact with her three sisters again. They have always been very close, but she’s found them barely tolerable since becoming a widow.
As our first book, we decided to read The Alienist by Caleb Carr, a whodunit set in New York City at the end of the 19th century when both psychological analyses of criminals and forensics were in their infancy.
If magic, love stories and dramaturgy (the theory and practice of dramatic composition) excite you as much as they do me, this is the book for you. I had no idea what I was in for with this one, and I really loved it—a perfect escape book!
I’ve been reading a lot of books since the COVID-19 quarantine began and There There is by far the most memorable. Orange artfully constructs the book around 12 characters, each of whom has different feelings about his or her Native American roots. The setting is modern day Oakland, California. The characters are at once exotic in their differences and empathetic in their humanity.
I know I am late to the Sally Rooney party, but I am thrilled to have finally joined. (And I will read Normal People as soon as it comes off the library wait list!). Conversations with Friends is witty, sexy and intelligent without any heavy-handedness. I enjoyed reading it, but it did not feel fluffy or light.
What an absolutely lovely surprise I had reading this book! Although it had been recommended to me by one of my all-time favorite people (thank you, Diana), when I read the flap copy, I was skeptical. Set in a remote Polish mountain village, Drive Your Plow tells the story of recluse Janina Duszejko, part-time caretaker of houses, translator of William Blake, devoted astrologer and animal lover extraordinaire. Described as a thriller and a whodunit, I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly live up to its hype.
In recommending The Starless Sea, I struggled to name the genre of the book. I’ve decided it is fantasy – along the lines of Harry Potter but written for adults. The Starless Sea tells the story of Zachary Ezra Rollins who attends a small Vermont college, majors in Computer Games and keeps mostly to himself. One day, Ezra happens upon an old book in the library which, upon reading, he realizes tells the story of his life exactly up to that moment.
There is nothing small about a Ken Follett book, and the intimidating weight of A Column of Firekept me from picking it up for almost two years after purchasing it. But once again (like The Pillars of the Earth) the book flies by with characters and plot lines you’ll remember for years.
Normal People is the most poignant coming-of-age novel that I’ve read in years. Rooney’s beautiful, spare writing style and her ability to bring to life very real characters who interact in believable ways makes this story one I’ll remember for a very long time.
I’m going to come clean and admit that I did not know this book was fiction until two days into reading it. I decided I should listen to the music of the band I was reading about, but all I could find was a Spotify playlist made by Random House with music of other artists that they thought were similar to Daisy Jones & The Six.
I’m always up for a good Jodi Picoult book when I need something easy to read on vacation, or after reading something challenging. (This time it was Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow). Although this one fit the bill in terms of a gripping story told with her trademark flair, the subject matter made it much harder to digest than Picoult’s usual fare. (Which, by the way, is called “child peril lit.”)
Thirty-five years after writing her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has given us the ultimate gift of an absolutely fabulous sequel in The Testaments. Although I read The Handmaid’s Tale many years ago, I was able to jump right into The Testaments because I’ve been following the Hulu television series of The Handmaid’s Tale.
