My mom and I both read this book, and were both hesitant to review it. In the end I agreed to do it because this is an important book. That is my opinion, but obviously, also the opinion of the literary establishment.
THE WONDER
From the author of Room, you will not want to put this book down. The story follows an English nurse named Lib, who has been hired by a small town in Ireland to watch an 11-year-old girl who has reportedly been living without food for over four months. Most in the town believe this to be a miracle, but Lib is tasked with watching closely for any trickery, before the girl can be declared officially miraculous.
KITCHENS OF THE GREAT MIDWEST, A Novel
I didn’t know what to expect from this novel when I started reading it. But a good friend recommended it and she and I seem to have similar tastes in books. Would it be a novel that somehow incorporated recipes? A tour of kitchens in Minnesota and Indiana? What I got – and you will too – is a delightful and truly unique novel, constructed as a series of stories, about the memorable main character, Eva Thorvald.
A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING, A Novel
This amazing book has what is perhaps one of the most memorable and clever constructs of any novel that I’ve read. Ruth, a contemporary writer living on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, discovers a lunchbox among the trash that washes up on her local beach. Inside she finds the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao, who is contemplating suicide. Ruth believes the lunchbox and diary are debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
THE EXPATRIATES
Janice Lee is officially one of my favorite living authors. I loved The Piano Teacher (her debut novel) and I think The Expatriates is even better.
LAW OF SIMILARS
This is a throwback, classic Bohjalian from 1999 that I picked up at a library book sale. I always love his Northern Kingdom settings and the slow unraveling of the very human mysteries. This book follows a recently widowed state’s attorney raising his young daughter alone in rural Vermont.
THE FUTURES, A Novel
Anna Pitoniak’s first novel is gripping from the first page to the last. It is the story of a young couple that meet and fall in love while students at Yale. She’s from a privileged Massachusetts upbringing and he grew up in rural British Columbia and was recruited to play hockey at Yale. Upon graduating, they take an apartment together in New York City – he with a flashy job at a hedge fund and she uncertain what she will do.
THE JUST CITY
In one sentence, I would describe The Just City as a beach read for philosophy nerds. Set in ancient times (sort of) the premise is that the goddess Athena transports people from all over the world, and throughout history, who have studied Plato and wish to build the Just City as described in Plato’s Republic.
COMMONWEALTH, A Novel
Upfront confession: I think Ann Patchett consistently writes some of the best American novels of our time. She has not let me down with this, her newest novel: it may just be her best one yet!
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Ever since I read this New Yorker article last August, I have been dying to readThe Underground Railroad. Then last month it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it jumped to the top of my list. And I will candidly say, it lived up to the anticipation. Whitehead’s writing is masterful, evocative and brutal, as befits this story of a runaway slave from Georgia.
MILLER'S VALLEY
Anna Quindlen writes at her best in this brilliant novel about Mimi Miller and her family as they come to grips with the US government’s plan to re-direct a local dam, thereby reclaiming an entire neighborhood which includes the Miller family home.
CITY ON FIRE
First things first: this book is massive. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book this long and epic that wasn’t by Dickens or Dostoyevsky. But Hallberg knows what he is doing, and I never once found myself counting pages. He keeps the story moving, the mystery unraveling, and the cast of characters constantly changing. He even varies the format, inserting “interludes” with snippets of newspaper articles, journals and even a fan ‘zine.
OF BEES AND MIST
This book, at heart, is the story of an extended family over the course of five decades centering around the marriage of Meridia and Daniel. But both setting and style are unusual in the extreme, blending elements of fairy tale and magical realism to create a world like none I’ve ever experienced. If you are someone who needs to understand what is happening at every moment in a book—this is not the book for you. But if you are open to sinking into a metaphor and letting it wrap the story around you like, well, a mist—you’ve gotta read this!
TRANS: A MEMOIR
Jaques springboards off her Guardian blog, ‘A Transgender Journey,’ and brings to life her journey from a shy, unhappy boy in rural England, to a successfully transitioned woman, writer and transgender advocate (all labels she has issues using herself).
HAG-SEED
A compelling story of a down-on-his-luck theater director making the most of a bad situation by accepting the challenge of directing Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST in a local prison using an all-male cast of inmates.
THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET
Set in 1799, this is the captivating tale of a Dutchman who, in a quest to win his beloved’s hand in marriage, embarks on a five- year expedition with the Dutch East Indies Company to Nagasaki, Japan, that country’s only port open to trade with the west at that time.