“The Trial”
Nearly 100 years ago, The Trial was written by Franz Kafka, a german language writer who was born in Prague in 1883 and died in Vienna in 1924 at age 40 from tuberculosis. Educated as a lawyer but destined to be a writer, Kafka’s works were not well-known until after his death when a friend had the author’s writings published. The Trial was originally known as Der Process and is the story of a young man who is accused of a crime he knows nothing about. Read more 
“Villages”
A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall.
At the center of our lives is where we have lived and where we live – not the geographic place per se but the people who inhabit the villages, towns, and cities that influence us and become a part of our history. Villages is the story of Owen Mackenzie who has spent his whole life in three villages: Willow, Pennsylvania where he grew up, Middle Falls, Connecticut where he spent most of his adult years married to his first wife, Phyllis, raising a family and building a computer company with his partner, Ed Mervine, and Haskell’s Crossing, Massachusetts, a community where he lives in his later years with his second wife, Julia. Each of these places is defined by happiness and heartache, great joy and deception and ultimately in the realization of failure and death in old age. Read more
“In One Person”
OH, THE WINDS OF change; they do not blow gently into the small towns of northern New England.
John Irving‘s newest novel In One Person is the fictional story of one man’s journey on a road less traveled. Written in the first person from the perspective of the main character – William (“Bill”) Francis Dean, Jr. – the story begins in late 2010. Bill is nearly 70 years old and looks back upon his life as a bisexual man trying to come to terms with who he is in a world reluctant to accept those that are different. Growing up in the 1950’s and early 1960’s in a small town in Vermont where conventional norms prevail, Bill struggles to understand his passions, his crushes, and his family. When he is introduced rather late – at age 13 – to literature by his newly acquired stepfather, Richard and the local town librarian, Miss Frost, he starts to better understand he is not alone. Read more
“Mortality”
Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic esophageal cancer in June of 2010 while on a book tour promoting his most recent memoir – Hitch 22 – (Hitch being his nickname). As Hitchens eloquently points out in one of his many essays on being a cancer patient, “there is no Stage 5” and so he set out to write as much as he could before he passed away. Read more
“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”
The story of a pilgrimage whether it be a hike up the Pacific Coast Trail as depicted in Cheryl Strayed’s book “Wild,” a bike ride through Spain (It’s Not About the Tapas by Polly Evans) or the infamous 500 mile walk from southern France to western Spain called the Camino de Santiago can be inspiring. These types of adventures are usually triggered by a crisis or life changing event (the Camino de Santiago is often called The European Divorcee Trail) and center around a person committing to a physically challenging adventure to find meaning, closure, or simply time to think. When I hear of a pilgrimage, the desire for personal enlightenment and a better understanding of self comes to mind and this is the overriding theme in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Read more
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette”
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple is a hilarious story about a family that lives in Seattle, Washington. Bernadette Fox is an architect who moves from Los Angeles, California with her husband, Elgin Branch whose animation company was acquired by Microsoft. Bernadette and Elgin didn’t have to leave sunny California but after she experiences a career crisis (which she refers to as the “hideous event“) and a strong recommendation to come north from Big Brother (the author’s affectionate name for Microsoft), the couple decide to pack up and relocate to “Rain City.” Read more
The Pen/O.Henry Prize Stories
The art of the great short story is well presented in “The Pen/O.Henry Prize Stories” – a collection of twenty short stories chosen annually by a Series Editor (Laura Furman has held the position since 2003). The criteria? All stories had to have been written originally in English and published in an American or Canadian periodical. Widely regarded as one of the most prestigious awards for short fiction, the Pen/O.Henry Prize Stories offer readers some of the finest examples of short fiction written in any given year. Read more
“The Colonel”
The Colonel was written by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, a Tehran-based writer and an Iranian professor of Literature who is a leading proponent of social and artistic freedom. Banned in Iran, the original version of The Colonel was written in Persian and published in Germany before being translated in English by Tom Patterdale. Recently released (April, 2012) in the United States, The Colonel is the story of a man who served in the Shah’s army and who condemns himself for committing two mortal sins in his life: killing his wife who committed adultery and refusing an army order to go to Dhofar (a province in southwest Oman) to “slaughter a bunch of hungry rebels on the grounds that they were a Soviet threat” (the Soviets had a substantial base there at the time) in 1973. Read more
The Short Sweet Life of Bessie
In Iowa most people are either growing food (corn, soybeans, wheat) or raising animals (cattle, pigs, chickens) or doing a bit of both on the farm. Russ and Beverly were both born and raised in central Iowa, marrying after high school and settling into a small place down the road from the farm where Russ spent his childhood. When Russ’s father passed away from cancer, Russ and Beverly moved back to the farm and took over the operation, allowing Russ’s mother to enjoy her grandchildren, bridge club, and church socials. Married nearly four decades, Russ and Beverly spent a lifetime growing corn and soybeans in the nutrient rich black soil and managing a small cattle operation on the remaining acreage. Read more
“Aliens In The Prime Of Their Lives”
When I first picked up “Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives,” I thought I was holding a book for young adults when in fact, the 12 short stories are about young people – an under-appreciated mother, a rebellious teen, an angry lover who has been abandoned, a divorced father, a sexually abused teen, a mother who looses a child, and a young boy’s family vacation. There are also the experiences of a father and son at “Bodies: The Exhibition” which showcases preserved human bodies dissected to display bodily functions, a young couple’s adventures in a car, the hunters that become the hunted, and a couple’s last moments on a doomed aircraft. This 263-page book reminded me of the “The Twilight Zone” – the American television series from the early 1960’s that depicted weekly singular episodes of disturbing, paranormal, or futuristic phenomena in seemingly normal day-to-day life. Read more
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