February Books

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny has recently retired Quebec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, seeking balm in the picturesque town of Three Pines. His neighbor Clara Morrow’s artist husband has failed show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache to help find him, so a trusty band of friends set out to solve the mystery. The writing starts out almost lyrically, but gets a bit bogged down in the middle.  The NYT  found “ elements of the police procedural with a deep-delving psychology,…a sorrowful sense of the precarious nature of human goodness, and the persistence of its opposite, even in rural Edens.” Maybe, but maybe it tries a little too hard.

**Prague Summer by Jeffrey Condran is an insightful, beautifully written story of a happily-married State Department employee and her rare-books-dealer husband  who enjoy a good life in Prague.  Their routine is thrown into chaos by the arrival of an old friend whose  own husband has been mysteriously imprisoned.  She hides a sinister agenda that is gradually revealed in a tantalizing and ingeniously constructed study of relationships and human character. “"Like the city itself, Prague Summer is romantic and mysterious, with a refined literary bent.”

*City of Thieves by David Benioff is based on his grandfather's stories about surviving WWII in Russia. Alone in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting a German paratrooper's corpse. To avoid execution, he and his cocky side-kick are given the challenge of finding  a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. The touching Quixotic buddy story blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age tail,  an oddly touching quest with  humor blended with the grisly absurdities of war.

*Children Act by Ian McEwen probes the dread beneath the surface of most post-middle-age lives in his best book since Atonement. Through the perspective of Fiona Maye,  a leading High Court judge who is renowned for her intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity, McEwen examines legal, medical and religious issues,  while exploring  the human experiences of  anger, sorrow, shame, impulse, regret and yearning. He rejects religious dogma that lacks compassion, but also questions secular morality as well. “Few will deny McEwan his place among the best of Britain’s living novelists."

The Hundred Year House by Rebecca “Makkai  is a “ twisty, maximalist story with…a natural ear for satire”. Partially  screwball comedy, intellectual sex farce, historical drama and fashioned ghost story told backwards in time and with an impressive array of colorful, yet forgettable, characters. The Hundred-Year House  unfolds the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate and sometime artist colony .. “ feels like the precocious love child of John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire and a rousing game of Clue.”

January Books

*Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard  Ford has four connected novellas, almost an afterword to his highly praised Frank Bascome trilogy.  This book has the retired realtor confronting his 70ls, a lonely life,  and, at the same time, dealing with the impact  of ravages associated with  Hurricane Sandy, aging, and failed marriages. This isn’t Ford’s best book, but it shows that why still he is considered one of the best of contemporary novelists. 

The Wives of Los  Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit is the collective story of the women who were silent partners of  one of the strangest and most important  research projects in modern history. It's a testament to the remarkable  women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war, isolation  and the smothering impact of intense secrecy.  Despite excellent reviews, I found this debut novel’s collective voice to be a bit strained.

 Intimate Apparel by Lynn Notage is the script for February’s production of the Ensemble Theater. Esther is a black seamstress in New York City in 1905  who sews intimate apparel for clients from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Despite lacking beauty, she still  longs to find a husband and start a beauty parlor. After corresponding with George, a worker on the Panama Canal, they decide to marry, sight unseen, but he betrays Esther and fritters away her money. While the plot is predictable and a bit sexist, I am confident that the cast will make the script come alive.

Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychologist Gilbert Daniel describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Drawing from research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert discusses what has been discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, the capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there and why we fail to understand ourselves. Although witty and accessible, I still found the book a bit pedantic in places.

 Gray Mountain by John Grisham is another of his enjoyable, formulaic “David and Goliath” novels wherein a young attorney takes on an evil adversary.  After losing her job at New York City's largest law firm after the economic crisis,  Samantha becomes an unpaid intern in a small Appalachian community, where she stumbles upon dangerous secrets, does battle again nefarious coal companies who will do anything (including murder) to hide their abuses of workers and the environment. Grisham keeps even jaded readers interested with colorful background data, well-drawn characters and a touch of suspense and romance.

World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler is set “a few decades into the future  after global catastrophes  have destroyed industrial civilization." The inhabitants of Union Grove  struggle to deal with a new way of life over the course of an eventful summer and  plays out against a panorama of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses mowing in the hayfields, and neighbors working shoulder-to-shoulder to survive. “A powerful tale of love, loss, violence, and desperation…(Kunstler) depicts a surprisingly lyrical, tender, and hopeful new America struggling to be born.”

**The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion is a much anticipated sequel to The Rosie Project (my favorite book of 2013). Don Tillman (think a slightly more adaptable Sheldon Cooper of  “Big Bang Theory) and Rosie are now living in New York and unexpectedly expecting their first child.  As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting his friends to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave save his business and marriage while staying on the right side of his social worker, he almost misses the biggest challenge  until he realizes that his compulsive helpfulness might cause actually him to lose Rosie.

December Books

*A History of the Future: A World Made by Hand Novel  by James Howard Kunstler depicts a simpler post-apocalyptic United States after oil, after pandemics, after environmental disaster.  Yet, in little Union Grove, the townspeople are preparing for Christmas without the consumerist shopping frenzy of an earlier era when they are shocked by a double murder and news of a new civil war in the South. Adaptable folks or those with practical skills face numerous challenges but seem doing well  in isolated pockets. Kunstler has an engaging way of presenting  potential unanticipated consequences and challenge.

 *The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution bt Walter Isaacson tells the story of the people who created  computer hardware, software   and the Internet. “It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens.” The litany of names is sometimes mind numbing, but the slog is well worthwhile. 

The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life by Ira Byock is built around the thesis that it is now much harder to die than ever and palliative care should be given a higher priority. Because of tremendous  advances in keeping people alive,   many Americans suffer needlessly and die badly.  Byock provides good illustrations of  best practices in “end of life” medicine but is weak on policy or personal recommendations.

*Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel  a  meditation by  a young man haunted by a great loss and about his dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around him. Tsukuru makes  journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. “It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak “ that is uniquely Japanese and also universal.

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.