April-May Books

*The Perfect Nanny by Lila Slimani  won France's prestigious Prix Goncourt and is her first book to be published in the U.S--  “a devastating, entrancing, literary psychological drama supported by absorbing character studies.” A working French-Moroccan couple finds a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ nanny, whose devotion to their children spirals into a psychologically charged cycle of jealousies, resentments and eventual violence.

* Manhattan Beach by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jennifer Egan, is “Immensely satisfying…an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer” (NYTimes)   Years after accompanying her father to a meeting with Dexter Styles, nineteen-year-old Anna, who now works as one of the first women divers  at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, encounters Dexter and begins to understand her father's complex life and why he disappeared.

A Passage to India by E. M. Forester is an insightful critique of British imperialism during the early 20^th Century.  This once controversial novel focuses on two Englishwomen who experience misunderstanding and cultural conflict after they travel to India and provides insight into the perceptions and biases of the British and Indian people whom they meet. Historically significant, but dated and slow.

*Educated by Tara Westover is an insightful memoir about a young Mormon girl who, despite being kept away from public schools, medical care and TV, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University. Her ability to make the transformation with so little guidance is only slightly less impressive than her skill in describing the difficulty of consciously ‘changing her mind.”

Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Spend Among the Oldest of the Old by John Leland of the NYT who reports on his assignment to study the fastest growing segment of our population. Probably a collection of columns with lessons that emphasize the extraordinary influence we wield over the quality of our lives. Brilliant and insightful at times, it is also simplistic and superficial at others.

The Immortalists by Benjamin Chloe is ““A captivating family saga.”  After sneaking out to get readings from a psychic who tells customers when they will die, four young siblings from NYC's Lower East Side experience decades of experiences shaped by their determination to control fate. Generally engaging, “The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion.”