Never Let Me Go
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.
Never Let Me Go was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, the prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day. Nominated for several awards (Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award), Never Let Me Go is the story of three children – Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy – who were students at a prestigious and very exclusive boarding school in the English countryside called Hailsham. Read more 
Everybody’s Fool
I’m so tired of being everybody’s fool.
Twenty-three years ago, a wonderful book entitled Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo was published. Set in upstate New York in a small town called North Bath (thinly veiled and thought to be Schuylerville) adjacent to Schuyler Springs (again, thinly veiled and thought to be Saratoga Springs), the story revolved around Donald “Sully” Sullivan – a middle-aged, stubborn and cantankerous man who chose to be faithful only to his nature – independent and undependable – and yet Sully was a good guy. At the end of each day, his destination of choice was a bar stool in the local watering hole where he gave as good as he got. Although Sully was a neglectful husband and father, he had an abundance of charm and wit which endeared him to many, especially readers. Read more
The Good Lord Bird
It weren’t slavery that made me want to be free. It was my heart.
If the cover of The Good Lord Bird did not disclose the author to be James McBride, the reader would think that Mark Twain was the genius behind this novel. Winner of the National Book Award (2013), The Good Lord Bird is the story of the years leading up to the historic raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859 from the perspective of a young boy named Henry Shackleford, who is known throughout the book as Henrietta when he is mistaken as a girl and decides to play the part to save his hide. Read more
Bright Shards of Someplace Else
Twenty years ago, George Dawes Green wrote a book entitled The Juror about a young mother (Annie) chosen for jury duty for a high-profile murder trial of an organized crime mob boss. The story is filled with suspense and tension with the creepiest, most memorable part involving Annie’s best friend, Juliet – a strong, tough, and protective character – the type of person we all want watching our back. Read more
Florence Gordon
It was a joy to be alone. It was fun to play the social role, it was fun to play the old lion at Town Hall, but it was far, far better to be alone again.
Florence Gordon is a 75-year old feminist writer living in New York City when her family descends upon her quiet orderly life. Her son, Daniel and his wife, Janine along with their 19-year old daughter, Emily are visiting for a few months while Janine completes a fellowship at Columbia University. Nestled into a sublet close to Florence on the Upper West Side, Daniel (a Seattle police officer) and Janine (a psychologist) along with Emily, a college sophomore who has taken a semester off from Oberlin College embark upon a journey where the words spoken between them are as important as what’s not said. Read more
“The Bridge of Sighs”
In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice….To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy.
Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls wrote the Bridge of Sighs nearly a decade ago although the book is timeless in the classic Russo style of writing about life in a small town in upstate New York. A 640-page novel divided into 24 chapters (of which 23 are named), the Bridge of Sighs is primarily the story of Louis C. Lynch (also known as Lucy), a 60-year old business owner who has lived his whole life in Thomaston, New York – a small industrial town described as a trifecta of “stupidity, ignorance, and violence” and not unlike the real Johnston or Gloversville in New York which were known for their tanneries and glove making industries. Read more
The Light Between Oceans
The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point….
Using the two oceans – the Indian Ocean and the Great Southern Ocean – as a metaphor for two families whose lives blend and collide, M.L. Stedman tells the story of the Sherbourne’s and the Roennfeldt’s in a book entitled The Light Between Oceans.
Published in 2012, the 340 page novel is divided into three parts (Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3 ) and 37 chapters. A New York Times bestseller, The Light Between Oceans is also being made into a film that will be released in September, 2016. Read more
Imagine Me Gone
So like a cripple I long for what others don’t notice they have: ordinary meaning.
Imagine Me Gone is the very emotional story of a family living with mental illness during the later half of the 20th century (1960’s, 70’s. 80’s, and 90’s). The story begins in 1962 in London. A young American woman named Margaret is working at a library in the suburbs when she meets John – “a showman when he’s on, capable of great largesse” – at a a party. Eighteen months later, Margaret and John become engaged but after Margaret returns from visiting her family in Massachusetts over the holidays, she wonders whether they will marry after she learns that John is in a psychiatric hospital with what is described as an “imbalance.” Unsure of what this really means, Margaret remains committed to John and helps him return to his former self although in retrospect years later she realizes “we live among the dead until we join them.” Read more
“The Emerald Light In The Air”
I’m not of this world.
The Emerald Light In The Air is a collection of short stories written by Donald Antrim that were originally published in the New Yorker Magazine. If you’ve never read Antrim’s work before (and, even if you have), it’s helpful to know a few things about him because his stories often mirror parts of his life.
Born in 1958, Antrim was raised in the south by an alcoholic seamstress mother and a father (a scholar of TS Eliot) who married and divorced twice. Moved from place to place, Antrim’s childhood was anything but idealic although boarding school and college (he graduated from Brown) paved the way to a writing career. Read more
“My Name is Lucy Barton”
Elizabeth Strout – the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, recently published My Name is Lucy Barton, a novel that explores one person’s emotional quest to connect with her mother. Told from the perspective of Lucy Barton, the 188 page novel tells the story of a woman who longed to escape her childhood and become a writer in New York City. Along the way, she marries and has two daughters, embracing motherhood. When she enters a hospital to have a routine appendectomy, a complication arrises that results in a 9 week hospital stay. While her husband is busy working and her two young daughters cared for by an overzealous nanny, Lucy whiles away the days until her mother shows up to visit – a mother she hasn’t seen since she before she was married. Read more
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