Louise Erdrich is a prolific American writer who really hits her stride in The Night Watchman.There’s a reason that this gem won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Louise Erdrich has filled her novel with a cast of memorable characters who live on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota in 1953. Their stories will stay with you long after you finish the novel.
Homegoing is Ya Gyasi’s stunning debut novel which begins in Ghana in the 18th century and follows two Ghanian half-sisters and their descendants through seven generations up to the present in the United States. (The sisters don’t know of each other’s existence.) From this description, you would expect a very long novel. In fact, Gyasi has structured her book so that each chapter is almost a distinct short story.
If you’re a faithful reader of the L&L Review, then you know that crime novels and mysteries are not my go-to types of book. When the Stars Go Dark is both – and it is gripping. McLain’s novel reminded me of Northern Spy by Flynn Berry (reviewed June 17, 2021), perhaps because both books’ main characters work brilliantly to resolve the mystery of crimes, while dealing with the all-too-familiar, but very real, stresses of motherhood and family.
There is no question that Great Circle requires a commitment—at 589 pages. And I read it at a pace slower than any book I can remember reading in my recent past. But while I was reading it, I had five weeks of the delightful company of my L&L co-editor and her two small children. Quiet times for reading were few and far between. Despite the slowness with which I read it, however, I found myself consciously slowing down as I came to the end of the book. I simply didn’t want it to end.
I guess this is my month to review books published when I was too young to read them. Tatum’s classic study of the development of racial identity during adolescence was first published in 1997, although she updated it and added a 75-page introduction in 2017 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Celebrate might be the wrong word however since the intro takes the reader through the racial injustices of the last 20 years.
Growing up outside Boston, the Salem witch trials were a staple of history classes, and I was obsessed for many years. Even more so after I found out I was descended from one of the accused on my Dad’s side. So to discover this book that strongly connected the historical facts and my childhood memories, but somehow also made relevant observations about race in America today, was a complete thrill.
I initially bought this book for my son-in-law because grocery stores are in his realm of professional expertise. I am so glad that I asked to borrow it back from him after he had read it. I found Lorr’s non-fiction examination of the American supermarket fascinating on many levels.
If you read only one collection of short stories this year, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies should be the one. This group of nine stories is Philyaw’s debut publication and deserves all of the accolades that it has received, including winning the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
I have found in my limited reading of short story collections that when I find one I really enjoy, I tend to read them even faster than I would a novel. There is something about finishing a story and knowing that the next one holds an entirely new set of characters and problems that keeps me turning pages. Alexia Arthurs drew me in over and over, and I ended up reading the entire collection in about a day and a half.
I recently heard Erin French being interviewed on NPR and my ears perked up. I realized that she is the chef/owner of The Lost Kitchen, a tiny, impossible-to-get-into restaurant in Freedom, Maine. Ranked among the best restaurants in the United States, we live close enough to go there for dinner – if only we could get a reservation. But the restaurant’s immense success isn’t the only reason French was being interviewed. She recently released Finding Freedom in which she tells the back story to her success: how she worked long years at her father’s diner; broke away to go to college; and returned home after her second year, pregnant and determined to raise the child on her own.
From the description of this book, I was a bit hesitant to begin reading it. How could a book about an eight-year-old girl dealing with an imaginary friend have enough depth and plot to hold my interest? It sounded more like something I would read to Charlotte. My fears were truly unfounded, however, and I found The Icarus Girl suspenseful and full of emotional depth.
Spy novels and thrillers are not my go-to genres of book. But my trusted friend Jane recommended Northern Spy so I took the plunge. Set in modern- day Belfast, Northern Ireland, Northern Spy deftly lays out the story of Tessa, a single mother and producer at the BBC.
I learned about The Orchardist from one of our L&L Readers, Kathleen, who included it on a list of her top five books of the year that she emailed to us. (Shuggie Bain, reviewed in March 2021, was also on that list.) Thank goodness for reader recommendations or I may have missed this truly unforgettable book.
It is still an unusual event when I choose to read a book about history. Even with my conversion by Doris Kearns Goodwin, I do not find myself naturally drawn to this genre. So again, I must celebrate being a member of the Bates Boston Alumna Book Club for forcing me to read books I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise.
Raven Leilani writes with a brilliant blend of urgency and humor in Luster. Her protagonist Edie finds herself sexually entangled with an older male colleague, who himself is in an open marriage. Edie is a twenty-something, Black woman and the married couple is older and white. Leilani explores the dynamics of this threesome across race and class and propels Luster to a level far beyond what could sound like a soap opera trope.
In Breath from Salt, Bijal P. Trivedi takes what could have been a slog through scientific detail and creates a fascinating read by weaving the medical research together with the stories of real families desperate to find a cure for cystic fibrosis (CF), a congenital disease that kills most of its victims before they reach adulthood. The reader learns the details of how the cure was found through a combination of decades-long research looking for the causes of, and potential treatments for, the disease with the support of determined parents who fundraised hundreds of millions of dollars towards that research.
Given the title of this book and the subject matter, it is a wonder that I ever chose to read it. But, it appeared on a list of two “must-read” books for people anxious to understand what has brought the United States to the point where insurrectionists storm the Capital building in Washington D.C. and why Americans are so severely divided that they can no longer even talk to onr another.
Like many readers I suspect, my only Zora Neale Hurston experience was reading (and loving) Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school. Although I remember truly enjoying the book, I didn’t remember much about the author, and so was glad to find this short story collection comes with a lengthy intro. It reminded me about her rise to fame at a time when Black fiction was scarce and Black, female authors almost entirely unknown.
Yaa Gyasi has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I have never read her award-winning first novel Homegoing. (It won at least four major literary prizes.). But now that I have read her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, I cannot wait to read her first. Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Alabama and draws on those experiences in Transcendent Kingdom. With prose so succinct and beautiful it reads like poetry, Gyasi tells the story of Gifty, a sixth-year PhD candidate at Stanford University.
With an author as prolific as Margaret Atwood, it seems I can always find another of her books to read. I don’t remember how this 2015 novel made its way onto my reading list, but it is a fascinating story with plenty of psychological tricks and thrills, like so many of Atwood’s better-known works.
