Faithful by Alice Hoffman is a novel about a 17 year old girl who gets in a car crash that leaves her best friend almost dead and in a coma. Shelby, the one who walks away, is devestated and can’t forgive herself.Hoffman is one of my favorite writers; in this book, we travel with Shelby through her breakdown, grief, self destruction and eventual path back towards life, love and happiness. Beautifully written, a worthwhile read.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is a beautiful book about a very intelligent 12 year old girl and a 54 year old concierge in an apartment building in France that no one notices, because she seems unremarkable, although in truth, she is also quite brilliant. The chapters switch between these two characters as they observe life in the building around them, until a new tenant one day brings them all together. Beautifully written, full of observations about…
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Kyung-Sook Shin is a semi-autobiographical novel about a Korean girl who grows up poor in the countryside and is sent to Seoul when she is 16 to live in a single room with her older brother and cousin and work long hours in a factory. Eventually she continues school and becomes a writer. However, the four years spent working at the factory and living in that single room were so traumatic for her, she…
The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker is a novel about two female animators who meet in art school in NYC and set up a studio together to make adult animated films based on their lives. It is partly about their process, and what it means to be an artist, but mostly about their friendship and their raumatic childhoods, one in Florida, the other in Kentucky. Their decade long relationship is the strongest thing in both of their lives, but it…
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is a novel about the lifelong friendship between two girls growing up in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples in the 50’s where poverty and violence is the norm. Ferrante captures the feeling of the neighborhood, the struggles both girls face trying to educate themselves and rise above their circumstances. They each do so in different ways, yet remain bound to each other nonetheless. Beautifully written, Ferrante is a great storyteller and…
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett is a novel about two families whose lives are thrown together when a father of four kisses a woman, not his wife, at a christening party and suddenly two families are split up. The six step-siblings form an unexpected bond during Summers spent running free together away from their parents. There is a tragedy and a mystery at the core of the story which is revealed slowly, in parts, as the reader gets to know each…
The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai is a novel set at Laurelfield, a historic estate filled with secrets and ghosts, and once the home of a famous artists colony. Told from the end of the 20th century to the beginning, it is one of the most masterfully crafted novels I have ever read. It is like piecing together a puzzle, in reverse. Well written, funny and also tragic, full of wonderful characters and unexpected revelations at every turn, this is…
Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown, author of Weird Sisters, is a novel that moves back and forth from Paris 1924 to the States 1999. When Madeleine uncovers her grandmother’s letters and journals from her time in Paris when she was young, she forms a whole new opinion of the woman she hardly knew. Dealing with an oppressive marriage, the journals just might be the inspiration she needs to set off on an adventure of her own. I’ve read many…
Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genoa, author of Still Alice, is a look at little known neurological disease called Huntington’s. When Boston police officer Joe O’Brien begins dropping things, losing his temper, forgetting things and having involuntary spasms, his wife takes him to the doctor and he is diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. There is no cure, just a slow degeneration over a decade or two until death and a fifty percent chance that each of his four kids will get…
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst is a novel about a family with two daughters, one autistic, and a family searching for help understanding how to deal with it. The mother meets an educator who is starting a camp out in the woods in New Hampshire, free of modern technology where families can come with their special needs kids and live in a healthy, technology free, communal way. There are big red flags and it is clear from the start that something…