World and Town by Gish Jen is a novel that tackles big subjects with tenderness and grace and humor. At the heart of the novel is Hattie Kong, a retired science teacher who is a descendant of Confucius. Now in her late 60’s and living in a small New England town, she gets a chance to start over-possibly with her long ago love that she hasn’t seen in over 30 years. Jen enters the tricky territory of science vs. religion,…
The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson is part historical fiction, part adventure story, part family saga, set in Jamaica during the late 40’s-70’s during turbulent times when Jamaica was trying to find it’s own identity as a newly independent nation. The starting point for the novel is Errol Flynn’s arrival in Jaimaca in 1946, where he fell in love with the place, bought an island, and stayed. Cezair-Thompson then imagines his affair with a beautiful local girl, who has his…
Alexandra Fuller’s first memoir that came out ten years ago, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, was a truly astonishing account of growing up in Africa. Her follow up is the recently published Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. This book goes back to tell the lives of her parents and how they came to be who they are. Fuller celebrates her parents eccentricities, their madness, generosity, courage and dignity in this book. We might not always agree…
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry is a wild ride of a mystery set in present day Salem, Massachusetts, full of witches, religious fanatics and other eccentric characters. The story is told by Towner, also named Sophya, who has come back home to Salem after 15 years away in California, escaping from her troubled youth. We learn about the mysterious death of her twin sister and try to unravel her memories, which are muddy at best, and told in an…
Sonata for Miriam is a slim, elegant novel by Linda Olsson, author of Astrid and Veronika. Sonata takes us on both a physical and emotional journey with Adam, who has just lost his daughter Miriam in an accident in New Zealand. He returns to Poland where he was born, in search of his past and then to Sweden where he was raised. Reading the novel is like listening to the different movements in a piece of music. Olsson’s writing is spare and…
Gail Tsukiyama is a wonderful and prolific author of such novels as The Samurai’s Garden and Women of the Silk, to mention just a couple. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms tells the story of Kenji and Hiroshi, who are orphaned as young boys and raised by their grandparents in a quiet neighborhood of Tokyo. The story spans almost 3 decades from the late 30’s-60’s. Hiroshi has always dreamed of someday becoming a sumo master, while Kenji is fascinated by the…
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is the best book I’ve read in a long time. An incredible debut, I just didn’t want it to end. Morgenstern creates an amazing and magical world inside the travelling circus called Le Cirque des Reves, that only opens from dusk until dawn. No matter how many times you enter that world, there are always more wonders to discover. The plot circles around a challenge between two young illusionists that are magnetically…
The White Garden, A Novel of Virginia Woolf, by Stephanie Barron is a reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s last days. There is a three week period between the time Woolf supposedly committed suicide by drowning herself in the river, and her body was found. During this time, Barron’s mystery unfolds, in which Woolf is very much alive, yet possibly in grave danger. The novel centers around American gardener Jo Bellamy, who has come to Sissinghurst Castle in England to view the…
Siam or The Woman Who Shot a Man is a slim, elegant novel by Lily Tuck. It takes place in Thailand in 1967 as the US begins bombing North Vietnam. Claire, a young newlywed has just moved to Thailand with her husband James, a government contractor. Shortly after arriving, she meets Jim Thompson, an American Millionaire who is the owner of the Thai Silk Company. Within weeks, he disappears in the jungle and Claire becomes obsessed with finding out what…
Julia’s Child by Sarah Pinneo is an entertaining, contemporary novel about a Mom of two small boys who quits the corporate world to start an organic food company for toddlers, called Julia’s Child. At times it made me laugh, yet I found it somewhat contrived and predictable, with nothing special about the writing or the characters. Some of it was simply hard to believe. However, Pinneo does capture the feeling of a harried Mom of young children trying to make…