Tuesday, December 2, 2014

October-November



*Lila by Marilynne  Robinson is a “powerful, profound, and positively radiant… depiction of a child reared by drifters who finds a kindred soul in 'a big, silvery old man,' the Rev. John Ames  whom she is afraid to love”. . and still does. Robinson deals with the big issues: existence, faith,  abject poverty, life, death, joy, fear, doubt, love, violence, kindness and more. “A book…already for the ages” but not always easy going for rapid reading.

Best Brothers by Daniel MacIvor is “a bittersweet comedy from one of Canada's most beloved playwrights”  that explores the ways people grieve and  find love in unexpected places. Bunny’s  two sons, Kyle and Hamilton, have the task of arranging her funeral and caring for her most beloved companion, a troublesome Italian greyhound named Enzo. The obituary-writing, eulogy-giving, dog-sitting, and sibling rivalry quickly  unearths years of buried contentions.

*Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove imagines what might happen if a band of white supremacists traveled back through time to alter the outcome of the Civil War by providing AK-47s to the CSA. A  master storyteller with the scrupulous accuracy of a trained historian, Turtledove creates a believable, meticulously detailed world inhabited by plausible  characters both historical and fictional.

*The Son by Philipp Meyer is “part Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power.”  Kidnapped by  Comanche after seeing his mother and sister brutally murdered,  13-year-old Eli McCullough adapts to Comanche life until the tribe is decimated by armed Americans whereupon he marries and founds a family and financial dynasty.  The novel traces the legacy of violence in the American West through three generations of  McCulloughs with  Intertwined narratives from his son, Peter, who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and  Eli's great-granddaughter who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world.

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