The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

So reading a Mitchell book is pretty much entering an alternate reality.  In this one we follow the strange experiences of run away British school girl, Holly Sykes who hears voices and may have witnessed a murder.  Then Holly Sykes the waitress at a Swiss resort who may have fallen in love with a man who will never age.  Then Holly Sykes the famous author who has drawn the attention of the Horologists who may have discovered a way to cheat death.  Then Holly Sykes the observer of an apocalyptic future.  The writing is so smart and I would like to think I was hip enough to get all the literary, political and historical references but probably not.  All the critics refer to Mitchell's writing as the "future of fiction".  We better gear up.

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd is born in 1910 but dies before she can draw a first breath.  In 1910, Ursula Todd is born and her life is miraculously saved.  Over the next five decades she dies and lives again multiple times.  At a very young age she learns that each time she is given a chance to rewrite the future.  Unfortunately there is no way of knowing whether the consequences of the path you don't know are better or worse than the one you have already traveled or what will happen to the individuals that are traveling with you.  Should she alter her fate at the expense of others?  Does she sacrifice the one for the good of the many?  These are choices she must make through two world wars.  These are the choices that can alter the lives of her own family and in one case, maybe change the course of history.  But if it is history that makes the man instead of the other way around, maybe there is little that can be done.  There is constant traveling back and forth in time although it is mainly two war stories.  The literary quotes sprinkled throughout the conversations provide a sense of the timeless circular nature of human experience.  Can we accurately identify points in our life where the a choice would make a difference?

Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Life in the Allegheny Valley was wonderful until Jack and Mabel's only child was born dead.  To escape the pitying looks of their families, they decide to try a new life in the frozen farmlands of 1920's Alaska.  Life is more difficult than they expect and just when they are ready to give up and go home, they decide to have some fun in the snow of their last winter.  They build a "snowgirl" and dress her with a scarf and hat that Mabel made.  In the morning the snowgirl is gone and so are the scarf and hat.  Things begin to look brighter when a neighboring family arrives with some help to get through the winter.  Even more intriguing is the fact that they are visited by a young girl who seems to live in the wild but is always seen wearing the hat and scarf.  Mysterious discoveries are made in the woods, Jack and Mabel find skills they never knew they had, and a new sense of community grows in the frozen North.  Although the story brings to mind an old Russian folktale, this is a very Alaskan story complete with a wilderness worthy of it's strong hero.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

I wished I knew more about the history of the Balkans so I could completely understand this allegorical tale of life and death in that area. Natalia is a doctor like her grandfather before her. He dies while she is on her way to inoculate children in a distant village. In her head are the stories her grandfather told her about escaped tigers who haunt a village and befriend a deaf-mute woman he knew. These magical tales seem somehow possible in the superstitious atmosphere surrounding the village. Along with the tales of the tiger are her grandfather's encounters with the "deathless" man and the mystery surrounding his death and the worn copy of Kipling's Jungle Book he carried everywhere. Throughout are references to a geographical area divided and reorganized by so many wars that nationality may be as much about which of these stories you carry inside as the name of the country on your passport.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The book is described as haunting and mesmerizing but I found it to be really just odd. At the age of nine Rose Edelstein realizes that she can sense, in the food she eats, the feeling of the person who made it. Her discovery begins with the sense of emptiness and sadness in her mother's lemon cake. It turns out that her family is dysfunctional in all the regular silent, disloyal, dishonest ways and a few very mysterious ones. The impossibility of the story doesn't keep the reader from wondering if there aren't just a few things in our real world that are just as difficult to explain as the mysteries in Rose's world.

Replay by Ken Grimwood

The main character dies on the first page pondering his sad life. Then he wakes up as a college freshman and gets to live his life again. Can he stop the assassination of Kennedy, find his true love, live rich and well? He gets the chance not once, not twice but many times. The author presents one idea of how that might play out but the book group discussion for one group was ... if you could go back, would you? When would you want to start? What would you do differently? Are you willing to admit what you would do differently? Would the level of truth telling be directly proportional to amount of wine consumed during the book discussion?

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Like most of Gaiman's work, this is a little spooky, a little funny and sometimes just weird. But for all the quirkiness, it is the incredible writing that keeps you most amazed. Most of us are familiar with the African trickster tales of Anansi the spider. Imagine then that he is alive in the world as a drunken musician with a son who early in his life really splits to become 2 people - one the the magical and marginally moral Spider and the other an English accountant named Charlie. Charlie is on the verge of marrying the wrong woman when his father "dies" (as in some confusing transformation that involves many other funky magical characters in Florida) and he meets Spider for the first time. Spider's ability to be perceived as Charlie causes the kind of disruption that would make Anansi proud particularly when Charlie's crooked boss attempts to steal money from the company. Is there a moral to this trickster tale? Who cares?