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Tag Archives: brothers

Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

18 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction, murder, Uncategorized, United States

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brothers, Civil War 1861-1865, farmers, freed persons, gay military personnel, Georgia history

At the very end of the Civil War, two newly freed slave brothers have no way to make a living and no where to go.  Running parallel to this story is the forbidden romance of two Confederate soldiers.  When these two stories collide, chaos ensues.  Written so deliberately and well paced, it is hard to believe it is a debut novel!

“Harris’s lucid prose and vivid characterization illustrate a community at war with itself, poisoned by pride and mired in racial and sexual bigotry. Prentiss and Landry are technically free, but they remain trapped by a lifetime of blighted hopes and broken promises. Reconstruction will prove to be yet another lie. Harris’s first novel is an aching chronicle of loss, cruelty, and love in the wake of community devastation.”―Lesley Williams, Booklist (starred review)

“Deeply moving… Harris’s ambitious debut explores the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation in rural Georgia… Harris peoples the small community with well-developed characters… [He] writes in intelligent, down-to-earth prose and shows a keen understanding of his characters.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A timeless portrait of warring factions seeking peace… There is a shared longing at the heart of Harris’ novel… Harris draws readers into this sense of longing by exploring silences… Celebrating all manner of relationships that combat hate, this novel is a hopeful glimpse into the long legacy of American racial and civil tensions.”―Mari Carlson, Bookpage (starred review)

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The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

07 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in 20th century, action, adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction, United States

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brothers, coming of age, escapes, juvenile work farms, Nebraska, road fiction

“Welcome to the enormous pleasure that is The Lincoln Highway, a big book of camaraderie and adventure in which the miles fly by and the pages turn fast.  Set over the course of ten riveting days, the story of these four boys unfolds, refolds, tears, and is taped back together.  When you aren’t actually reading the book, you’ll be worrying about the characters, so you might as well stay in your chair and keep reading.” —Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

“[A] real joyride . . . hitch onto this delightful tour de force and you’ll be pulled straight through to the end, helpless against the inventive exuberance of Towles’ storytelling . . . The Lincoln Highway is elegantly constructed and compulsively readable . . . action-packed . . . There’s so much to enjoy in this generous novel packed with fantastic characters […] and filled with digressions, magic tricks, sorry sagas, retributions, and the messy business of balancing accounts.” —NPR.org

“Towles’ third novel is even more entertaining than his much-acclaimed A Gentleman in Moscow . . .A remarkable blend of sweetness and doom, [The Lincoln Highway] is packed with revelations about the American myth, the art of storytelling, and the unrelenting pull of history. An exhilarating ride through Americana.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“[A] playfully thought-provoking novel . . . [Towles] juggles the pieces of his plot deftly, shifting from voice to voice, skirting sentimentality and quirkiness with a touch of wistful regret, and leading up to an ending that is bound to provoke discussion.” —Booklist (starred)

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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

04 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in 20th century, Fiction

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brothers, California, death, depressed persons, faith, families, Ghanaians in U.S., grief, mentally ill mothers, psychiatry research, women medical students

Gifty is a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford. She studies addiction and depression in mice, but both exist in her family as well. Gifty is very much a contemporary, forward-looking character—a Ghanaian-American woman who is excelling in science at one of the best schools in the world—but she is also drawn by memories of faith and family in Alabama where she grew up.  Quite different from her first book, Homegoing.  A compelling read.

“Unforgettable… Transcendent Kingdom has an expansive scope that ranges into fresh, relevant territories—much like the title, which suggests a better world beyond the life we inhabit.”—BookPage [starred review]

“Gyasi’s wise second novel pivots toward intimacy… In precise prose, Gyasi creates an ache of recognition, especially for readers knowledgeable about the wreckage of addiction. Still, she leavens this nonlinear novel with sly humor… The author is astute about childhood grandiosity and a pious girl’s deep desire to be good; she conveys in brief strokes the notched, nodding hook of heroin’s oblivion…final chapter that gives readers a taste of hard-won deliverance.”—Kirkus Reviews [starred review]

“Yaa Gyasi’s profoundly moving second novel takes place in the vast, fragile landscape where the mysteries of God and the certainties of science collide. Through deliberate and precise prose, the book becomes an expansive meditation on grief, religion, and family.”—The Boston Globe

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Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Humor, London

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actors, brothers, Great Britain, historical fiction, London, Queen Elizabeth 1558-1603, thriller, William Shakespeare 1564-1616

Philippa Gregory describes this book perfectly: “With all the vivid history that is his trademark, Bernard Cornwell transports the readers to the playhouses, backstreets, and palaces of Shakespeare’s London with added depth and compassion, and a likeable hero.”  This is historical fiction at its best with a thriller element thrown in for sheer reading pleasure.

“In this delightful departure from his popular military historicals, Cornwell (The Flame Bearer, 2016) conducts a boisterous behind-the-scenes romp through the often sordid world of the Elizabethan theater…. Cornwell displays his usual masterful attention to detail…. Sumptuously entertaining.” (Booklist)

“Marvelous…. Full of drama, both on- and offstage, and with numerous delightful, laugh-out-loud moments, this novel is an absolute joy. A must-have for anyone who loves the theater, this is easily the best book this reviewer has read this year.” (Library Journal, starred review)

 

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Blankets: an Illustrated Novel by Craig Thompson

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, Graphic novel

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brothers, coming of age, families, first loves, sibling rivalry, teenage artists, teenage boys, winter, Wisconsin

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This lengthy but fast-moving graphic novel is a contemporary coming-of-age story set in the rural mid-west. The story centers on Craig, a lonely, sensitive boy growing up with his younger brother Phil in a Christian fundamentalist family. Craig’s childhood centers on home, school and church, and all are austere and forbidding places for him.  Cowed by his father’s harsh discipline, the strict teachings of his church and the bullies at school who target him because of his small frame and family’s modest circumstances, he matures into young adulthood undaunted by circumstance, drawing strength from his artistic talent and a first love.  Loosely based on the author’s life.

In telling his story, which includes beautifully rendered memories of the small brutalities that parents inflict upon their children and siblings upon each other, Thompson describes the ecstasy and ache of obsession (with a lover, with God) and is unafraid to suggest the ways that obsession can consume itself and evaporate. — The New York Times

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All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

20 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, mystery

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brothers, college teachers, detectives, families, murder, mystery, New York, thriller

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This was an unsettling page-turner that I couldn’t put down. Set in a small farm town in upstate New York, the story opens with the murder of a young woman, who is killed in her home. As the story unfolds, we learn more about why she and her family moved to this house, which has a dark history. This is suspenseful, creepy, and beautifully written.

“A dynamic portrait of a young woman coming into her own [and] of a marriage in free fall. . . . It rises to [great] literary heights and promises a soaring mix of mysticism.” —Booklist (starred review)

“All Things Cease to Appear is a riveting ghost story, psychological thriller, and literary page turner. It’s also the story of four women: Ella, Catherine, Justine, and Willis. With masterful skill and brilliant empathy, Brundage brings each of them to vivid and remarkable life. At its heart, this is a story about women’s grit and courage, will and intelligence. It’s a powerful and beautiful novel.” —Kate Christensen

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The Invisible Bridge: a novel by Julie Orringer

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Historical Fiction

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architecture students, brothers, Budapest (Hungary), Jews, love stories, Paris (France), persecution, World War II

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Historical fiction at its best.   Three brothers you won’t forget.  A love story so deep that even the one you have known seems somehow less.  I was ready to book a trip to Budapest after reading only half the book only to realize that this mesmerizing Budapest, alas, is never to be again.  The Hungarian Jewish WWII experience was so different than those of other countries.  Be thunderstruck!

“To bring an entire lost world—its sights, its smells, its heartaches, raptures and terrors—to vivid life between the covers of a novel is an accomplishment; to invest that world, and everyone who inhabits it, with a soul, as Julie Orringer does in The Invisible Bridge, takes something more like genius.” —Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“The word ‘epic’ seems inadequate to describe Julie Orringer’s phenomenal first novel, The Invisible Bridge. You don’t so much read it as live it. . . . Profoundly moving. . . . This is one that cries for you to linger over it, page by enthralling page.” —Financial Times

“Orringer avoids pathos and has a gift for re-creating distant times and places: a Paris suffused with the scent of paprikas and the sounds of American jazz, the camraderies and cruelties of the work camps. The ticking clock of history keeps it urgent and moving forward, and the result is, against all odds, a Holocaust page-turner.” —New York magazine

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The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction

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brothers, conflict of generations, Depression years, farm life, Ontario, sibling rivalry, World War II

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I found myself recommending this favorite book to a patron the other day after a conversation about siblings.  Tension travels from page to page as two brothers working the family farm in northern Canada virtually despise the other and his ways.  Each day one taunts the other, cries wolf, plans pranks, needles relentlessly.   We all probably have experienced all-in-good-fun-go-suddenly-wrong… in seconds.  Siblings never let you forget ….ever.  Crow Lake is also an excellent read.   My name is already on the Holds list for her new book coming out this summer!

“Lawson’s gifts are enormous, especially her ability to write a literary work in a popular style. Her dialogue has perfect pitch, yet I’ve never read anyone better at articulating silence. Best of all, Lawson creates the most quotable images in Canadian literature.” —Toronto Star

 “[Lawson] returns to several of the themes that marked her brilliantly successful first novel, Crow Lake. . . . Lawson’s cornucopia of novelistic gifts, even more bounteously on display in her second book, includes handsome, satisfying sentences, vivid descriptions of physical work and landscape and an almost fiendish efficiency in building the feeling that something very bad is about to happen.” —National Post

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The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Historical Fiction

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brothers, family secrets, India, Naxalite movement, Rhode Island

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s lastest book, The Lowland, tells the story of two brothers from Calcutta and how the decisions that they make and the secrets that they keep will affect the next three generations of their families in India and America.  I continue to be fascinated with her interpretation of two divergent societies, Indian and American, and how the cultural differences and similarities play out in the lives of her characters.

“Graceful and steady . . . devastatingly precise . . . Lahiri [writes with] ruthless clarity . . . The Lowland continues Lahiri’s career-long study of the tendrils that grow up in canyons [between characters], that intertwine and bind people to one another through responsibility and dependency, love and guilt. [Lahiri is] anchored firmly as a great American writer.” —Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune

“Lahiri’s finest work so far, at once unsettling and generous, bow-string taut . . . shattering and satisfying in equal measure. I expect The Lowland will prove her most controversial book to date, for its plot grows out of [a] Maoist-inspired uprising in the late 1960s. Though Lahiri has put [the] politics in, she also wants us to concentrate on the spectators instead of the struggle around the gun. This book is a determinedly apolitical writer’s attempt to deal with an explosive subject. And though she deals more fully here than ever before with a specifically Indian subject, though the book both begins and ends in Calcutta and what happens there will forever mark its characters’ lives, The Lowland is written in an American vein; she seamlessly inserts new people—new manners, mores, material—into a traditional American form. What counts in The Lowland isn’t the fate of society but the individual life and the chance or pursuit of individual happiness; Turgenev among others would recognize the problem she defines. The prose . . . provides something like a continuous present, pointillist and monumental at once, as though carved . . . Uncompromising and yet clear—carries a note of accessible distinction.” —Michael Gorra, The New York Review of Books

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Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction

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brothers, eccentrics, homeless, mansion, New York City, recluses

9780812975635_p0_v1_s114x166Inside a 5th Avenue mansion filled with early, loving childhood memories, Homer (soon to become blind) and brother, Langley, suddenly lose both their parents to the 1918 flu. Their world shrinks and they bar the doors. Exposed to mustard gas during the war, Langley in a somewhat altered state, cares for his brother but also extravagantly collects the detritus of the city that they have shut out. This is a fascinating story about eccentricity, aloofness, and a lifetime of collecting.

“A sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers…. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness. Doctorow’s achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It’s a feat of distillation, vision and sympathy.” «–Publishers Weekly

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