02 Monday May 2022
Posted in Fiction
Tags
brothers and sisters, Caribbean Americans, families, family secrets, mother's death, surfers, swimmers
Bereft at their mother’s death, Benny and Byron have the shock of their lives when the lawyer tells them their mother left a voice message revealing a heartbreaking story that they never knew. The instructions to them were to share the family traditional black cake when the time was right. A mother’s wisdom: we can’t choose what we inherit … but we can choose who we become?
01 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction
Tags
aristocracy (social classes), brothers and sisters, family secrets, illegitimate children, Japanese Americans, Kyoto (Japan), musical prodigy, racially mixed cildren
After she is abandoned by her mother, Noriko is taken in by her strict Japanese grandparents only to suffer stinging, chemical baths and regular confinement to the attic. Life takes a new twist when her older half-brother (unbeknownst to her) comes to live with them. The author’s new voice and storytelling won me over completely.
“Fifty Words for Rain is an impressive debut novel about a mixed-race girl growing up in post WWII Japan. Sensitive and bristling with closely-observed humanity, Asha Lemmie tells a story that we have not heard before with an ending that is as surprising as it is brutally honest.” —Mark Sullivan, bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky
“[An] epic, twisty debut… Sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful, Lemmie’s heartbreaking story of familial obligations packs an emotional wallop.” —Publishers Weekly
“Lemmie’s debut novel is a gripping historical tale that will transport readers through myriad emotions… Lemmie intimately draws the readers into every aspect of Noriko’s complex story, leading us through the decades and across the continents this adventure spans, bringing us to anger, tears, and small pockets of joy. A truly ambitious and remarkable debut.” —Booklist
31 Sunday May 2020
Posted in Fiction
This novel follows several members of an extended family living in New York’s Hudson Valley. The widowed matriarch of the family is in a surprising new relationship, her single daughter is expecting a baby, and her teenage granddaughter is living with her to escape troubles at her old school. These are just a few of the characters explored in this warm, charming story full of flawed but lovable people. This book is a nice mix of comedy and drama, and I loved the descriptions of the small town where they all live.
“The perfect book to read during quarantine if your family is driving you crazy . . . a layered love story that examines, and ultimately celebrates, the modern, multigenerational family dynamic.”—Parade
“‘Literary sunshine’ is a good way to think of Straub’s work. Her writing and tone are consistently bright and straightforward; her approach to character is warm and generous……..”—The New York Times
“Undeniably pleasing . . . a kind of thinking-person’s beach read that’s maybe all the better for arriving in these strange, landlocked times.”—Entertainment Weekly
28 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction
Tags
brothers and sisters, dysfunctional families, families, inheritance and succession, life changing events, Philadelphia (PA), poverty, stepmothers
Can a house/a childhood home dominate the grown-up lives of a brother and sister who grew up with a father and caring staff in a fairy-tale huge house in Pennsylvania? A quiet read, a re-examining of childhood loss and forgiveness, but two indelible characters you won’t forget long after the book is finished.
“Patchett’s splendid novel is a thoughtful, compassionate exploration of obsession and forgiveness, what people acquire, keep, lose or give away, and what they leave behind.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
“…you won’t want to put down this engrossing, warmhearted book even after you’ve read the last page.” (NPR)
15 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in Fiction
Tags
AIDS (disease) 1981-1990, art museums, brothers and sisters, Chicago Ill., families, France, mothers and daughters, sects
Yale is working at an art museum in 1980s Chicago when he is called to meet an elderly woman who claims to have a priceless collection of art to donate. At the same time, Yale, his boyfriend, and their group of male friends are feeling the devastating effects of the developing AIDS crisis. Years later, one of their friends reflects on this time period as she tries to track down her missing daughter in Paris. This is a beautiful, sad, engaging novel.
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION
WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler
As her intimately portrayed characters wrestle with painful pasts and fight to love one another and find joy in the present in spite of what is to come, Makkai carefully reconstructs 1980s Chicago, WWI-era and present day Paris, and scenes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. A tribute to the enduring forces of love and art, over everything.”—Booklist (starred review)
“To believe in something is to have faith, and Makkai dispenses it fiercely, in defiance of understandable nihilism and despair—faith in what’s right, in the good in others, in better outcomes, in time’s ability not to heal but to make something new.”—National Book Review
13 Saturday Apr 2019
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction
24 Friday Aug 2018
Posted in Fiction
Tags
aunts, brothers and sisters, children of the rich, coups d'etat, fathers and daughters, Nigeria, religious fanaticism, teenage girls
This is the first novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who went on to write the bestselling books Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists. Purple Hibiscus is the story of a religious family in Nigeria, narrated by teenage daughter Kambili. Kambili witnesses many changes in her country while also dealing with issues at home, particularly her abusive, overbearing father. This is a beautifully written, powerful coming-of-age story.
“Breathtaking . . . Adichie is very much the twenty-first-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The author’s straightforward prose captures the tragic riddle of a man who has made an unquestionably positive contribution to the lives of strangers while abandoning the needs of those who are closest to him.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes . . . Adichie’s understanding of a young girl’s heart is so acute that her story ultimately rises above its setting and makes her little part of Nigeria seem as close and vivid as Eudora Welty’s Mississippi.” —The Boston Globe
23 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Fiction
Tags
African American children, African American families, brothers and sisters, children of prisoners, drug addicts, grandparent and child, Gulf Coast, Mississippi, rural poor
Beautiful and sad, full of ghosts. Ward’s writing reminds me a little of Faulkner, a little of Eudora Welty, while at the same time being completely her own brilliance. Easy to see why she has earned so many awards.
“Sing, Unburied, Sing is many things: a road novel, a slender epic of three generations and the ghosts that haunt them, and a portrait of what ordinary folk in dire circumstances cleave to as well as what they — and perhaps we all — are trying to outrun.”—New York Times Book Review
18 Wednesday Oct 2017
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction
It was the cover that grabbed me first. But when I closed the book, I just had to know what really happened to this infamous Georgia Tann, director of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, South Carolina who made millions (in today’s dollars) kidnapping and selling children with fake papers so that families couldn’t ever find one another. Was she caught? Did she go to trial?
“Sure to be one of the most compelling books you pick up this year. . . . Wingate is a master-storyteller, and you’ll find yourself pulled along as she reveals the wake of terror and heartache that is Georgia Tann’s legacy.”—Parade
“One of the year’s best books . . . It is impossible not to get swept up in this near-perfect novel.”—The Huffington Post
“Lisa Wingate takes an almost unthinkable chapter in our nation’s history and weaves a tale of enduring power.”—Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of Circling the Sun
11 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted in Fiction
With remarkable wit and insight, Ann Leary pulls back the curtain on one blended family, as they are forced to grapple with the assets and liabilities – both material and psychological – left behind by their wonderfully flawed patriarch. Told from the perspective of the reclusive 29 year old daughter who has a secret life on the Internet.
“In this deeply satisfying novel about how unknowable people can be, intrigue builds with glass shards of dark humor toward an ending that is far from comic.” ―Kirkus, starred review
“Ann Leary’s latest novel, The Children, delivers the same page-turning story telling and complexity of characters as her last book, The Good House…As always, Leary makes dysfunction, pathology and even tragedy completely compelling.” ―The Huffington Post
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