nomadreader

narrated by Erin Bennett The backstory: I've never read Elin Hilderbrand, and I was in the mood for a Christmas book, so I started her Winter Street series when it was available at the library. The basics: The Winter Street series is centered on the Quinn family, who own the Winter Street Inn, a bed and breakfast on Nantucket island. When the first book begins, patriarch Kelly and his second wife, Mitzi, run the inn, while two of Kelly's adult children, Ava, who is a music teacher, and Kevin, a bartender, also live at the inn. His third child, Patrick, lives in Boston with his wife and kids. Kelly and Mitzi's son Bart is a Marine in Afghanistan. Kelly's first wife, Margaret, is a famous evening newscaster in New York City. My thoughts: Fun fact: Elin Hilderbrand is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. I learned this while listening to Winter Street , which I listened to a lot of as I drove to and from Iowa City for a meeting this month. I'm embarras...

The backstory: After loving both of Lauren Groff's other novels, Arcadia  and Fates and Furies , I finally made time to read her debut novel, which was a finalist for the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers . The basics: Willie Upton, a direct descendant of the founding family of Templeton, New York (based on Cooperstown, New York, where Groff grew up), returns home after having an affair with her married archaeology professor while on a digging trip. She's surprised to find her hippie mother, Vi, has become a conservative Christian. She's even more surprised to learn her mother has lied to her about her father's identity all her life, so she puts her academic research skills to the test to figure out his identity. My thoughts: I spent a magical summer in Cooperstown, New York in 2009 when I interned at the Baseball Hall of Fame's Research Library. The town remains one of my favorite places in the world, and while visiting for an all-intern reunion earlier thi...

The backstory: The Position  was longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize . I've previously read and enjoyed two of Wolitzer's other books: The Ten-Year Nap  and The Uncoupling . The basics: Roz and Paul Mellow, a happily married couple with four children, write a very famous book about sex. It features drawings of them in various positions, including one they create themselves. When their four children find a copy of the book, it impacts each of them a little differently. My thoughts: I expected The Position  to be wise, funny and perhaps awkward. As a new parent, I was fascinated by the perspectives of both parents and children. What I didn't expect was to see the action jump to the present (when written, so 2005) and have perspective to see where the six Mellows are now. This combination of past and present infuses The Position  with a much more ambitious premise, and it's a more powerful novel because of it. The four Mellow children were all different ages ...

The backstory: Last year, I read Maggie Shipstead's second novel, Astonish Me . I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to read her debut novel, Seating Arrangements,  too. Seating Arrangements  won the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize  and was shortlisted for the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan Prize . The basics: Set over one wedding weekend at their New England island house, Seating Arrangements is the story of the Van Meter family. Patriarch Winn is obsessed with joining a prestigious club on the island, his wife Biddy has planned the wedding with immense detail, his daughter Daphne is getting married while very pregnant, and his daughter Livia is still reeling from the break-up with her boyfriend Teddy, the son of Winn's college girlfriend and current nemesis. My thoughts: When I read Astonish Me , I called Shipstead's prose "astonishingly good" and having "so much interior insight." I can easily say the same about Seating Arrangements . In the early pages, this descripti...

narrated by Lorelei King The backstory: Some Luck  was longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award . The basics: Some Luck, the first in a new trilogy from Jane Smiley, stretches from 1920 to 1953 and tells the story of the Langdon family, who farm in the fictional town of Denby, Iowa. My thoughts: I'm thirty-four years old. This book covers thirty-three years. This synchronicity fascinated me as each chapter brought a new year for the Langdon family. Covering thirty-three years in just over four hundred pages means that there are many moments and events not told. As the Langdon family grows, there are more people to catch up with each year, and as the children begin to leave the home, there are more places to go to catch up with them. While the novel begins as a quiet, farm tale, covering fascinating times of transition in the 1920's and 1930's, I was surprised by how much Smiley tackles. Some Luck  spends a surprising amount of time away from the farm. While ...

The backstory: I've previously enjoyed Emma Straub's short story collection, Other People We Married , which apparently I never reviewed, but the story "Fly Over State" remains one of my all-time favorites. Her debut novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures , was a delightful audio experience , and I was eager to see what she would do next. Once again, it's something quite different from her previously published work. The basics: The Post family are off to spend two weeks in Mallorca. Franny and Jim are celebrating thirty-five years of marriage, but it may be coming to an end. Jim has also lost his job. Their daughter Sylvia is off to Brown in the fall. Their son, Bobby, and his older girlfriend, Carmen, live in Miami. Franny's best friend, Charles, and his husband, Lawrence, also join them. My thoughts: The Vacationers  is one of those books that enchanted me from its opening pages. It's the perfect combination of so many factors, and reading it g...

The basics: The Lobster Kings  is the story of the Kings family, who have lived and fished off of Loosewood Island, Maine for generations, beginning with Brumfitt King, a famous artist. The current generation of Kings, and the focus of most of the novel, are patriarch Woody and his three daughters, but mostly Cordelia, who loves the sea as much as her father. My thoughts: There's an ethereal quality to the writing and setting of this novel that captured me from the novel's first pages. Zentner's writing has a calm fluidity that perfectly matches the maritime setting and the novel's pace. Big moments happen in short, unassuming sentences, which I quite enjoyed, but it sets a specific tone for this novel. Despite the presence of many tragic and depressing events, the novel itself isn't marred by those emotions. Zentner's writing matches the demeanor of the Kings: there's an acceptance of how life is, which might be tragic by many standards, but is the no...

The backstory: After liking J. Courtney Sullivan's first novel, Commencement ( my review ), I finally got around to reading her second novel, Maine.  The basics: Maine  traces the story of the Kelleher family one summer at their Maine beachhouse. Four women share narration: Alice, the matriarch, whose husband Daniel, died ten years ago; Alice's daughter  Kathleen, who lives with her boyfriend and runs a worm farm in California; Alice's daughter-in-law Anne Marie, who has become obsessed with dollhouses; and Kathleen's daughter Maggie, who is thirty-two, unmarried and pregnant. My thoughts: In recent years I've realized how much I enjoy family sagas. I've always enjoyed multiple narrators, so Maine  was right up my alley. I love the way Sullivan writes, and she's grew as a writer between Commencement and Maine . There's a maturity to Maine  and its characters that I quite enjoyed. While Maine takes place over the span of a little over a month, the a...

The basics: Spanning three generations of the Porter family and fifty years of their relationships with their hired help, The End of the Point  focuses on the family at four different times in history, beginning in the 1940's. Much of the novel takes place at their summer home in Ashaunt, Massachusetts. My thoughts: Reading The End of the Point  made me realize how much I love present-future narrators. As the story of the Porter family unfolds, the reader gets hints of how things are now, even though the story is told in the moment: "If things had turned out differently, she would have begun the story here--or no, Smitty would have told it; unlike Bea, he loved an audience, he'd have made it funny, drawn it out." These moments aren't frequent, but as I encountered each one, it felt as though I was unwrapping a present. We don't have the certainty of the future in our own lives, but literature can provide us with one for these characters. It's a testa...

The basics: The Year We Left Home  is the story of the Erickson family in Iowa. It stretches from oldest sibling Anita's wedding in the 1970's to present day. My thoughts: I was eager to read The Year We Left Home for two reasons: I've been intending to read Jean Thompson for years and it takes place in Iowa (where I live.) My perceptions of this novel changed mightily as I read it. Over the course of the first one hundred pages, I was convinced it wasn't a novel at all but rather a set of very loosely connected stories. There were gems of gorgeous writing like this sentence: "Ryan had meant something else, though now his meaning escaped him, what was it like, to travel across an ocean, to be in a war, to be afraid for your life, to kill someone or think about killing them, to buy a woman." Still, I yearned for character development. Although the action shifted to different characters, I felt Thompson kept all of them an arm's length away from the reader...