nomadreader

The backstory: After adoring Tatjana Soli's debut novel, The Lotus Eaters  ( my review ), I was eager to read her next novel. The basics: Claire and her husband Forster have lived on Forster's family citrus farm in Southern California since they were married. They now have three children. When their farm is attacked, the family is torn apart. My thoughts: Tatjana Soli does not shy away from the sadness of the human condition. Her writing is beautiful, but it's the way her characters come alive on the pages that most impresses me. I admit the description of this novel likely would not have convinced me to read this novel, but after loving The Lotus Eaters , I would gladly read anything else Soli writes, and Soli immediately pulled me into The Forgetting Tree . I read it compulsively as if it were a thriller rather than a grief-filled family saga. Claire is the heart and soul of this novel, and I appreciated each moment I spent with her. I remain fascinated by her pri...

The backstory: The Flying Man, Roopa Farooki's fifth novel, was on the 2012 Orange Prize longlist. The basics: The novel opens in 2012 with Maquil composing a letter shortly before his death, then jumps back to his childhood and moves chronologically through his life. My thoughts: It's a bold move to begin a novel at the end, and Roopa Farooki mostly succeeds. Maquil is an intriguing character. As he moved around the world, the reader gets a taste of New York, Paris, Cairo, Lahore, Hong Kong and more. At the crux of Maquil is a particularly fascinating notion: few could pinpoint his ethnicity or origin. Were he a blond-haired blue-eyed man, his story would be quite different. His complexion and hair allowed him to be both insider and outsider. His gift for language allowed him to fool most anyone. My favorite aspect of this novel, however, was seeing Maquil's failures. In stories of grifters, they are so often shown in a dazzling light. Although somewhat light over...

The backstory: Originally written in 1998 and rejected by publishers, Lionel Shriver's The New Republic  still feels like a modern, contemporary novel. The basics: The New Republic  is a satire of terrorism, which sounds preposterous, but Shriver manages to be witty, evocative, informative and engaging. Corporate lawyer Edgar Kellogg decides he wants to become a journalist. With little experience, he lands an interview at a national newspaper. Against the odds, he gets a job covering Barta, an invented peninsula off of Portugal that has a newly active homegrown terrorist group. The reporter who had been covering it, Barrington Sadler, has gone missing. The job is Edgar's until Barrington returns. My thoughts: Despite having read and enjoyed two of Shriver's earlier novels, We Need to Talk About Kevin and So Much for That -- which made my top 10 of 2010 , I was somewhat apprehensive about The New Republic . Would it really be good enough to publish now when it wasn'...

The basics: Arcadia is the story of a central New York commune. It begins in the 1960's, but it stretches into 2018. It's also the story of Bit, the narrator. He was the first child born to Arcadia. My thoughts: As I sat down to read Arcadia , I expected the story of an Ithaca, New York-inspired commune in the 1960's. I got that, but Groff delivered much more too. Although this novel is firmly grounded in realism, it exhibited many of the traits of a dystopian novel. There was a sense of world-building among the Arcadians. They shared the ideals, but they had to find ways to made ideals reality. I also didn't expect the novel to be narrated by Bit, who is five years old when it begins. I didn't particularly like Bit as a character, but I didn't dislike him either. His narration worked. I enjoyed seeing the world through Bit's eyes and mind. The open nature of Arcadia ensures there are not doors closed to him because of his age. While he does not understa...

The basics: In the late night hours after the wedding reception of Matt and Carmen, who is pregnant, a car full of high guests leaves the rural house where the reception was held to return to the hotel. Olivia, a mail carrier dating Carmen's brother Nick, drives. Also in the car are Alice, Carmen's sister; Maude, Nick's sister; and Tom. The car strikes and kills a ten-year-old girl. My thoughts: While I expected this novel to be dark given its subject matter, I was pleased Anshaw focuses more on the characters first and the effects this night had on them rather than the direct aftermath. This novel is not a story of grief; it's a story of how that night changed the course of three siblings. From the early pages Anshaw shows she can write both about the characters and about all of us at once: "Some of the time when she talked to Matt, she felt like she was in a movie scripted by lazy screenwriters. The two of them were still generic characters in each other’s ...

Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachen . The backstory:   The Last Brother  is a finalist in the 2012 Tournament of Books . The basics:  This story of Mauritius during World War II is the story of Raj, who was nine years old in 1944, and his unlikely friend David, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia who was imprisoned on the island after being turned away from Palestine. My thoughts:  This novel has so many things working in its favor. The setting of Mauritius was captivating, and I learned about the island's history. It's a lost story of World War II few are aware of, and the imprisonment of European Jewish refugees was fascinating and harrowing. Unfortunately, all of these positive attributes were undone by the way Appanah chose to tell the story. The novel opens with Raj, who is seventy years old. He is retelling the story of his childhood, but the narration was an awkward blend of present tense and past tense. I wish Appanah wou...

Translated from the Spanish by Carol and Thomas Christensen. The backstory:  Like Water for Chocolate , Laura Esquivel's first novel, is one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die . The basics: Told in monthly installments interspersed with recipes, Like Water for Chocolate , is the story of the De la Garza family in the Mexican revolution and filled with magical realism of love and cooking. The narrator is the great-niece of Tita, and the novel's focus is the life of Tita, the family's youngest daughter. My thoughts: I first read Like Water for Chocolate  in high school and utterly adored it. Re-reading it fifteen years later, I still enjoyed it, but the magical realism of love's positive and negative effects lacked the dramatic resonance it held for me as a teenager. It is the tradition of Tita's family that the youngest daughter may not marry and must spend her life serving her mother. Tita is enraged, angry and in utter agony when she learns her fate wil...

The backstory: When I interviewed Amy for Book Blogger Appreciation Week this year, I let her pick one book for me to read before the end of 2011. She chose You Are My Only  by Beth Kephart, which thrilled me because I knew both she and Wendy from Caribou's Mom adored it . The other Beth Kephart title I've read, The Heart Is Not a Size , I really enjoyed. The basics: You Are My Only  is the story of Emmy and Sophie. Emmy married young and had a baby young. One day, Emmy's baby goes missing, leaving only a yellow sock. Sophie, a teenage girl who is homeschooled and forced to be reclusive, has spent her life moving around from what her mother eerily calls the "No Good." Once Sophie discovers a cute neighbor, Joey, she begins to question her mother. My thoughts:  The narrative alternates between Emmy and Sophie. It's clear from the beginning that Sophie is Emmy's daughter, yet this connection lacked intrigue. I know I mostly read adult fiction and read ...

The backstory: I've been eagerly awaiting Caroline Preston's latest novel since I first heard about it. The basics: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt  is, aptly, a scrapbook Frankie Pratt has made of her life. It's a novel in pictures, but not quite a graphic novel. Preston's words are as illuminating as the objects she pairs them with. Amazon allows you to download a sample , and it is worth seeing for yourself. My thoughts: I've enjoyed all of Caroline Preston's previous books, which are all so different, and this one is certainly no exception. I devoured this historical scrapbook even as I savored it. I could not wait to see where Frankie's adventures would take us, yet I hesitated to turn the pages because there was so much visual treasure to explore. In many ways it's a difficult novel to write about because the writing, which is quite strong, is not the star of the novel. It's a visual delight with remarkable depth and character development. ...

The backstory: The Soujourn, Andrew Krivak's debut novel, is a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award  and won the 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize . The basics: This novel opens in Pueblo, Colorado in June of 1899 when Jozef Vinich is an infant. The next section announces a location of Dardan, Pennsylvania in 1972, but the novel is really the story of Vinich's life, and in between his infanthood in Colorado and his time in Pennsylvania, he lives in his father's native Austria and fights in World War I. My thoughts: The opening chapter of The Sojourn  is among the most haunting I have read. It's beautifully written, undeniably tragic and a fascinating beginning to a life story. As the action shifts to Pennsylvania, I continued to be intrigued. How did Jozef's journey lead him here? Why 1972? The road is a winding one, and unfortunately it was often a boring one. It was unabashedly dark, and ultimately honest, about the horrors of war: "For the first ...

The backstory: The Memory of Love was shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize My thoughts: Fresh off my experience of loving Tea Obreht's writing in The Tiger's Wife  but being somewhat disenchanted with the novel itself, I started The Memory of Love and had a remarkably similar experience. The Memory of Love  features several main characters: Adrian, a British psychologist; Kai, a young surgeon; and Elias, an elderly man who once was a professor enamored with Saffia, who was married to Julius. The book is set in Sierra Leone just after its civil war.  Reading The Memory of Love, I realized that despite how much I love multiple narrators, when I'm much more interested in one part of the story, it makes the rest of it drag somewhat. I thoroughly enjoyed the tales of Elias, but Adrian and Kai bored me somewhat. All the characters benefited from Forna's beautiful writing also being filled with rich metaphors and truth. I ...

The backstory:   The Sweet Relief of Missing Children  was one of the National Book Award's 5 Under 35 selections in 2010. The basics: I really like the description I found in my library's catalog: "Two seemingly separate stories from different points in time interconnect and provide clues to the disappearance of a missing New York City girl." My thoughts: If you read my tumblr , then you were privy to my love fest  of quotations as I was reading this novel. It's certainly the best novel I've read in 2011 (yes, I adored One Day , which is a lovely novel, but this one is better, and I enjoyed it just as much.) This novel begs to be re-read and re-appreciated as more layers come out. It won't appeal to all readers, but it's original, ambitious and lyrical. Watch out Jennifer Egan, Sarah Braunstein is coming for your readers. Although the novel jumps around among characters, I was always enthralled. Typically, I'll enjoy one aspect of a split ...

The backstory: Fugitive Pieces  won the Orange Prize in 1997. The basics:  My library catalog had a better summary than I could write: "It is the story of World War II as remembered and imagined by one of its survivors: a poet named Jakob Beer, traumatically orphaned as a young child and smuggled out of Poland, first to a Greek island (where he will return as an adult), and later to Toronto. It is the story of how, over his lifetime, Jakob learns the power of language--to destroy, to omit, to obliterate, but also to restore and to conjure, witness and tell--as he comes to understand and experience what was lost to him and of what is possible for him to regain." My thoughts: Fugitive Pieces  is the tale of two reading experiences for me. While I was reading it, I was captivated by the language. It's clear Anne Michaels is a poet: "a place so empty it was not even haunted." (p. 61) I wrote down pages and pages of passages. I would mutter "wow," freq...

The backstory: One Day  was one of Entertainment Weekly 's 10 Best Novels of 2010. The basics: Beginning with one shared night in 1998, One Day  follows Dex and Emma for twenty years. On June 15 each year, we peek in on their lives and see where they are. My thoughts: I sat down to read the first chapter of One Day  before bed. Instead, I read the first 40% of it, saying, "just one more year" at the end of each chapter. When I woke up, I finished it. This book consumed me for the 18 hours I spent with it (seven of those were sleeping). Something about Dex and Emma transfixed me. They graduated from college fourteen years before I did, but their experiences felt like mine. I saw so much of my 22-year-old self (or rather the apartment I had at that age): "She had that arty girl's passion for photomontage too; flash-lit snaps of college friends and family jumbled in amongst the Chagalls and Vermeers and Kandinskys, the Che Guevaras and Woody Allens and Samuel ...

The backstory: Larry's Party  won the Orange Prize in 1998. The basics: At its simplest, it is the story of Larry Weller's life, from 1977-1997. Each chapter is a different year; there are fifteen chapters for twenty years. My thoughts:  I read The Stone Diaries years ago and didn't love it (clearly I was in the minority as it won the Pulitzer Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), so I was curious to experience Carol Shields again. From the very first pages, I loved this novel. It's a powerful, character-driven narrative filled with wisdom. The first chapter would make a wonderful short story (and I'm one who doesn't enjoy short stories very much.) As time moves on, there are a few mentions of the future, a narrative tool I was wild about in Stiltsville (my second favorite book of 2010 ).  Although I wouldn't call Larry's Party a comedic novel, it was certainly laugh-out loud funny, particularly in the first half. Shields writes with ...