Tags
Chinese Americans, dystopian fiction, families, Government resistance to, mother and sons, racism against Asians
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
14 Wednesday Dec 2022
Posted in Fiction
Tag Archives: families
Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
02 Wednesday Nov 2022
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, United States
Tags
California, families, forced removal and internment, Japanese Americans, ranch life, ranches, United States, World War 1939-1945
A New Yorker Best Book of 2022
Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic..(Amazon). I never wanted this book to end. I just kept slowing down to forestall the inevitable. A stunner.
“A changing American landscape is beautifully portrayed in PROPERTIES OF THIRST, a moving and gripping new novel by Marianne Wiggins. At the start of World War II, while Japanese families are relocated to Manzanar, the Rhodes family, who live on a ranch near the camp are equally uprooted by memories and circumstances. What follows is a rich and powerful portrayal of love, loss, and the enduring strength of family. A novel to be read and savored.”—Gail Tsukiyama, bestselling author of Women of the Silk and The Samurai’s Garden
“A sweeping, cinematic story of love and family set against the dramatic backdrop of World War II and the American West…. What makes the novel soar is the way Wiggins can evoke landscapes both interior and exterior, especially the expansive valley that has come to exemplify America’s best qualities—and its worst. This majestic novel will satisfy those thirsting for an epic saga of love, family, and the complexities of the American way.”—Kirkus *Starred Review*
“Wiggins manages to capture a big swath of mid-century America by placing a blue-blooded family into a desert inland complete with adobe haciendas, desert blooms, and Hollywood movie sets, while throughout, the Rhodes hold out hope for Stryker’s survival. Wiggins’s masterpiece is one for the ages.”–Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*
“[a] grand novel of principled and creative individuals caught in the vise of history… Loss, desire, moral dilemmas, reflection, and zesty dialogue with the do-good energy of Frank Capra films generate a WWII home front tale of profound and far-ranging inquiry and imagination, scintillating humor, intrepid romance, and conscience.”—Booklist *Starred Review*
“Masterful…. Readers won’t be able to look away. Wiggins’ characters are raw and honest… [her] writing, which can be fragmented or polished depending on the page, opens up microscopic universes and sprawling landscapes alike. It’s a joy to read.”—Bookpage *Starred Review*
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? : a Memoir by Séamas O’Reilly
19 Friday Aug 2022
Posted in 20th century, Biography, memoir
Tags
authors, autobiography, biography, childhood and youth, families, Journalists, Northern Ireland, relationships, Seamas O'Reilly, social conditions
This memoir is narrated by Séamas O’Reilly, who was five when his mother died and left behind a husband and eleven children. While this tragic event is the focus of the book, it is also a really funny, uplifting story about how the siblings and their dad carried on, living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
“I laughed out loud reading Did Ye Hear Mammy Died, especially at the bits that recalled for me the way my own family laughs to keep from crying…It’s rare to read about good fathers in memoirs, and O’Reilly’s portrait…is hilarious and moving….It is this thread of refusal to be pitied, to have what happened to his family reduced to ‘a tawdry bit of sentimental fluff for people to tut along to and say how sad,’ that makes Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? so rousing. That it is also deadly funny is an extra treat.”―NPR
“Northern Ireland in the time of the Troubles is often cast into a narrative that doesn’t allow room for joy or delight…O’Reilly’s recollection is a splendid paradox, both cheery and heartbreaking.”―Booklist, Starred
“In this joyous, wildly unconventional memoir, Séamas O’Reilly tells the story of losing his mother as a child and growing up with ten siblings in Northern Ireland during the final years of the Troubles as a raucous comedy, a grand caper that is absolutely bursting with life.”―Patrick Radden Keefe, NYT bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain
Fault Lines by Emily Itami
12 Friday Aug 2022
Posted in 20th century, Fiction, Humor, romance
“Fault Lines is full of laugh-out-loud, irreverent humor, as well as heartstoppingly poignant, yet seemingly incidental, wisdom. All of the inner yearnings and tribulations of Mizuki are laid bare, offering one of the fullest, most thorough depictions of a character I have ever read. … Every line here is razor-sharp, chosen with precision, resulting in a deceptively clever, emotionally wise and truly heartbreaking novel.” — Bookreporter.com
“What’s intriguing about Fault Lines is its shrewd commentary on Japan’s societal expectations of women as either sex objects or dutiful mothers. As Mizuki eventually learns, it’s in striking a workable balance between these two dichotomies — her past life versus her present one, titillating desire versus familial obligations, who she wants to be versus who society dictates she should be — that the real work of living begins.” — Washington Post
“Mizuki is one of the most engaging adulteresses I’ve ever encountered, and a wonderfully witty guide to the morals and mores of contemporary Tokyo. I now know just how to behave while picking up children from school, or meeting strangers. Fault Lines is a moving and suspenseful novel full of the best kinds of incidental wisdom.” — Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
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?
“Fans of family dramas by Ann Patchett, Brit Bennett, and Karen Joy Fowler should take note. Black Cake marks the launch of a writer to watch, one who masterfully plumbs the unexpected depths of the human heart.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Wilkerson uses one Caribbean American family’s extraordinary tale to probe universal issues of identity and how the lives we live and the choices we make leave ‘a trail of potential consequences’ that pass down through generations.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Exquisite and expansive, Black Cake took ahold of me from the first page and didn’t let go. This is a novel about the formation and reformation of a family, and the many people, places, and events that can shape our inheritances without our knowing. A gripping, poignant debut from an important, new voice.”—Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours
Lady Sunshine by Amy Mason Doan
28 Monday Feb 2022
Posted in 20th century, detective, Fiction, mystery
Tags
The author does a great job of creating the atmosphere of the 1970’s – it felt nostalgic and like a trip back to a simpler time.
“Amy Mason Doan creates a whole world and mood with her exquisitely crafted novel, Lady Sunshine. It’s replete with late-’70s nostalgia, and Doan masterfully renders the lives of musicians and those who are drawn to them, no matter the price. A delicious daydream of a book.”
—Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers
“With a winning combination of lyrical writing and a page-turning plot, Amy Mason Doan chronicles the evolution and mysterious demise of the friendship between two young women at the California estate-cum-commune of a renowned musician. A tone-perfect evocation of the free-spirited late 1970s and a riveting coming-of-age story, Lady Sunshine captures the highs of artistic creation, the dangers of hero worship, and the costs of trying to outrun your past. This sun-dappled book has it all: heart, smarts, and an irresistible musical beat.”—Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
13 Wednesday Oct 2021
Tags
families, FBI, investigation, missing persons, Sausalito (CA), Secrecy, stepdaughters, thriller fiction
With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a riveting mystery, certain to shock you with its final, heartbreaking turn – Amazon. (Reese’s book club selection)
“Dave pulls off something that feels both new and familiar: a novel of domestic suspense that unnerves, then reassures. This is the antithesis of the way novels like Gone Girl or My Lovely Wife are constructed; in The Last Thing He Told Me, the surface is ugly, the situation disturbing, but almost everyone involved is basically good underneath it all. Dave has given readers what many people crave right now—a thoroughly engrossing yet comforting distraction.” — BookPage
“Dave’s neat trick is to unveil revelations at a brisk clip that does not overwhelm character development. The novel’s richness comes from the way Hannah and Bailey realize they need each other in the face of staggering loss; the mutual trust that grows between them is genuinely moving. As both daughter and stepmother come to realize, “That’s how you fill in the blanks — with stories and memories from the people who love you.” — The New York Times Book Review
Beneficence by Meredith Hall
17 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in 20th century, Fiction, United States
“A quiet gem of a first novel. The author’s lyrical prose and stark portrayal of grief and guilt…is conveyed so movingly this story is hard to put down. With language poetic in its cadence and capable of seamlessly transporting our minds and emotions to another place and time, this accomplished debut will be welcomed by readers of authors such as Willa Cather, Alice Munro, Amy Tan, or Lisa See.”―Library Journal
“Beneficence is amazing in its vision. Luminous. With wisdom and compassion, Meredith Hall writes about the capacity for atonement. Beneficence, then. Goodness. Generosity to see deeply, to live through fear and pain on your journey toward the awareness of splendor.”―Ursula Hegi
“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time, at a moment when many of us wonder whether we’ll lose the things that we consider blessings….Beneficence is a quiet but steady book, one that echoes ancient and important rhythms.”―Washington Post
“Spare but decked with moments of crystalline beauty…. A family flounders in grief, but finds their way home through forgiveness and acceptance, in Beneficence, Meredith Hall’s gorgeous and moving new novel.”―Foreword, starred review
Readers of Kent Haruf would like this book.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
21 Monday Jun 2021
Posted in 20th century, Fiction, murder and investigation, United States
Tags
coming of age, detective and mystery, drugs, families, Indians of North America, Michigan, Ojibwa Indians, racially-mixed people, undercover operations
“Boulley, herself an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, writes from a place of love for her community and shares some key teachings from her culture, even mixing languages within the context of the story. She doesn’t shy away from or sugar-coat the very real circumstances that plague reservations across the country, and she tackles these through her biracial hero who gets involved in the criminal investigation into the corruption that led to this pain. An incredible thriller, not to be missed.” ―Booklist, Starred Review
“A suspenseful tale filled with Ojibwe knowledge, hockey, and the politics of status.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Though Firekeeper’s Daughter contains gripping action sequences and gasp-inducing twists, it’s Daunis’ mission of self-discovery, which begins as a low and steady growl and grows to a fierce, proud roar, that has the most impact… Though it both shocks and thrills, in the end, what leaves you breathless is Firekeeper’s Daughter’s blazing heart.” ―BookPage, Starred Review
“Immersive and enthralling, Firekeeper’s Daughter plunges the reader into a community and a landscape enriched by a profound spiritual tradition. Full of huge characters and spellbinding scenes, it gives a fascinating insight into life on and off the reservation, with Daunis as a tough and resourceful heroine through every vicissitude.” ―Financial Times
**While this book may be classified as Young Adult in some libraries, I surely enjoyed reading it as an adult.
Everything Sad is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri
28 Sunday Mar 2021
Posted in Fiction
Tags
families, immigrants, Iran, Iranian American teenagers, middle school boys, Oklahoma, truthfulness and falsehood
“At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”) stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny… But Khosrou’s stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy….and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.”–Amazon. While this beautifully written novel is aimed at children and young adults, adult readers will be astounded by this true story.
A modern masterpiece – as epic as the Iliad and Shahnameh, and as heartwarming as Charlotte’s Web. It’s for the kids at the lunch table; the heroes of tomorrow, just looking to survive the battle of adolescence. – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Supple, sparkling and original. – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“A distinctive voice. A rare treasure of a book.” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)
“A journey as intimate as it is epic.”BOOKLIST (starred review)
“A story that soars. Readers will be transported.”- BCCB (starred review)
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