Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is a letter that Coates has written to his son to help him understand how he is to understand his place in contemporary America.  It is spectacular writing. I had twenty passages identified for book group discussion in the first 44 pages.  I am not sure what I could say that would be a worthy commentary so I will just quote Toni Morrison from the back of the book jacket, "The language of (this book), like Coates journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."  I agree.

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

The writing in this Pulitzer Prize winning novel is what makes it worth the read.  Two American professors spend a few months researching and writing in London.  Vinnie is a 54 year old expert in children's nursery rhymes.  Plain looking and feeling unappreciated in her field, she loves all things British.  Fred is an much younger and anxious to make a name for himself  with his research on an 18th century English author.  Movie star handsome, his other reason for being in London is to escape embarrassing photos taken by his wife and shared in a photography exhibition.  Both Vinnie and Fred find romantic connections in London and their paths cross in Noel Cowardian ways.  By the end of the book, both have used their London experience to resolve some of the baggage they carry.  There is supposed to be a kind of sophisticated humor here but I never warmed to either of the main characters so I may have missed some of it.  Made for interesting book group conversation anyway.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

This was the perfect book to read on our trip to New Zealand.  Kerewin is a disillusioned artist living in a self constructed tower on the coast of New Zealand.  Part Maori and part European, she is isolated from both cultures.  One day she discovers a five year old boy huddled in the tower. Blond, slight Simon is unable to speak and tends to violence.  He is however well known in town and eventually his Maori father, Joe arrives to claim him.  The three are mysteriously drawn to each other at the same time they fight to remain indifferent.  Each has a mysterious past and a slowly developing love for each other.  Their journey together is not without problems and even violence.  It is about the clash of cultures and the fear of failure.  It is full of contemporary cultural conflict and Maori legend.  Much of the turmoil is shared through internal dialog which is often tricky to assign to a specific character which makes reading tricky until you get into the rhythm of it.  It is everything you have come to expect from a winner of the Man Booker Prize.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

This memoir is on everyone's Best of 2015 list and has won numerous awards. I couldn't imagine why.  Macdonald is a writer and naturalist at Cambridge University. As a child, she became fascinated with falconry which set her apart from most of her peers.  Her father was her primary supporter for her unusual preference.  When he dies, the floor falls out of her life.  She fights her way back by training a goshawk named Mabel.  During her training she returns to a book about falconry by T.H. White (the Arthurian author) which she had read as a child.  She sees many parallels between  White's struggles with isolation and her own.  None of this is of any interest to me but I was drawn into this book by the language and the insightful connections between the two lives and the falcons.  Unusual and oddly excellent.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Francis and her mother find themselves is desperate financial straits following WWI and are forced to rent out the 2nd floor of their London home to "paying guests" - a term designed to keep them from having to admit they are taking in borders.  Leo and Lily, the renters, seem to be an interesting young couple.  Assuredly they are of a lower class but Francis still feels a strong attraction to Lily.  As the two women explore their strong sexual attraction, with almost no detail left to the readers imagination, lies and deceptions pile one on top of another.  Ultimately a line is crossed that puts both women in jeopardy.  This was on the Bookbub's "10 best books of 2014" list. 

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Although this novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, I had a hard time with the style.  It is essentially one long letter written by 76 year old John Ames to his very young son who Ames imagines will read it when he is long gone.  As a third generation member of the clergy who has lived almost his entire life in Gilead, Iowa, his story is sprinkled with biblical references and life affirming observations.  It is also a story of poverty and personal struggle that leads from the Civil War to the depression to the 1950's.  Although it is one long telling, it sometimes rambles as one memory leads to another through different times and places.  It is a great deal about the relationships of fathers and sons and the hope that the son who reads this will learn from the experiences of the men who have come before.  It is a book that lends itself to pondering, questioning, and personal reflection.  I just found myself wanting another voice - even more than I wanted chapters or even logical places to stop.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

I had heard so much about this book and couldn't wait to read it.  The beginning - gripping.  Thirteen year old Theodore Decker miraculously survives an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  As he searches for his mother , he encounters an older gentleman he had noticed earlier accompanying an attractive young girl.   Just before the man dies, he whispers instructions to Theo to save a rare small painting of a Goldfinch.  With his mother killed in the explosion and his father having long ago deserted him, Theo begins a difficult journey often pulled by the destiny of the  painting he feels compelled to keep hidden.  The ending - unsuspected, thought provoking and often beautifully written.  The middle -  a tale of drunken, drug induced debauchery about 100 pages too long which almost completely spoiled the book for me.  I loved the NYC setting.  I enjoyed the art discussion - even the parts I didn't understand.  The plot twist at the end was brilliant.   There was so much that was good about this book but there is only so much alcohol induced barfing and dysfunctional family abuse that I need to read to get the point.  I guess the Pulitzer Prize folks didn't mind it.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I was looking forward to one of my favorite historical intrigues - the court of Henry VIII - More, Cromwell (the central figure in this trilogy), Wolsey, Boleyn - the whole crew.  They are all here but after the first 300 pages or so, it all just seemed incestuous, narcissistic, nasty and repetitive. And  I was barely half way though the book.  In the end, Henry was still married to Anne, More was history and everyone was still whining about the Church.  I guess all the good stuff happens in the next book, Bringing up the Bodies.  The really annoying thing about the book was that after a sentence referencing about three people (all either named Tom or Henry), the next sentence starts with "he".  He who?   It did win the Man Booker prize and received a lot of hoopla - whatever.

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

The body of a French voyageur has been found brutally murdered in his cabin outside the small isolated town of Dove River in eastern Canada around 1866.  It was discovered by a local farmer's wife with a secret past and a new found passion.  Was the murderer her son who is also missing and has been hiding a forbidden relationship with the French man?  Is it her angry withdrawn husband?  Is it the strange American who came to claim an ancient bone tablet that contained markings he believes could change they way we view Native Americans?  Is it the wild rugged looking tracker whose stoic silence belies all that he knows. The narrator alternates among many of the main characters but the frozen landscape is a vivid constant. This was the 2006 COSTA book of the year winner and her first novel.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Another book repeatedly pushed to the "later" part of my reading shelves.  Now I can finally rent the movie.  Dismal, foggy, frozen Newfoundland.  Quoyle leaves a shattered marriage in New York for his Canadian homeland. A strong but secretive aunt and two very young daughters in tow.  Finally he lands a job with a small town newspaper writing a column on the shipping news.  His family home, a worn wreck of a place braced against wind and ocean tides by bolts and wires.  The newspaper office full of quirky  characters both life and weather worn.  The feeling that their harsh existence places them on the edge of a daily abyss but always they are pulled back from the edge by survival lessons honed in such a isolated environment.  Are you getting a feeling for the style?  Proulx of course does it sooooo much better. Those with a grammatical compulsion may struggle but think narrative poetry.  It was enough to convince the 1993 Pulitzer committee that this book should win the prize for fiction.

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Amberson family ruled a small empire in the Midwest.  The Amberson Addition had wide boulevards where elegantly attired families drove there horse drawn carts between their stately mansions.  From the day he was born, George Amberson the third is treated as the worthy heir apparent.  He grows up believing that in spite of his expensive education he is to spend his life "being" and not "doing".  That would be the role of the "riffraff".  But as the city grows to meet the Amberson Addition, life is irrevocably altered and George struggles to acknowledge the new reality.  This was the winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize.

Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

To escape the Jim Crow South, thousands of African Americans left for the cities of the north and west.  It was a migration from one world to another and changed both the life style of the South and the look of cities in the North.  Wilkerson follows the life of three of these individuals: Ida Mae left the cotton fields of Mississippi in the 1930's for Chicago, George left the orange groves of Florida in the 40's to escape possible death for his role as a labor organizer, and Robert, a trained physician and a member of the black elite of Louisiana and Atlanta, still dreamed of real freedom beyond Jim Crow in L.A. in the 50's.  Their stories are interspersed with a more general history of the times and events.  It is powerful, passionate, troubling writing and definitely worth reading all 700+ pages.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

If I could tell my family story like this I would consider the demanding life of an author.  This is the story of Ruby and three generations of her family.  It begins at the moment of her conception, a rather unpleasant experience for her mother Bunty whose frivolous name, Ruby fears, portends the hilarious and tragic lives that follow.  Much of Ruby's story happens in The Rooms Above the pet store her parents own in the town of York, England.  Every other chapter takes us back to the lives of Bunty,  Bunty's mother Nell and various brothers, sisters, cousins and one conniving Frenchman.  It is a very English telling with a twist at the end that makes you wonder if you should have been paying better attention.  I am not surprised that it was the Whitbread book of the year in 1995.

a visit from the goon squad by Jennifer Egan

Eloquent, sarcastic, humorous, over the top - I hardly know what words to use to explain this 2011 Pulitzer prize winner for fiction. The story begins in the middle - with Bennie, a past punk rocker and present record executive and Sasha, his assistant and recovering kleptomanic. The story proceeds back and forth in time as if you are playing the wikipedia linked version of six degrees of separation. The story is slowly peeled away as we learn the past and future of these two characters and their companions. The writing is brilliantly out of the box - insightful and witty. One of the futuristic chapters is shared in a format that is vaguely power point. I'm not sure if the Pulitzer committee really liked this book or didn't want to admit that Egan had moved beyond their ability to evaluate it. I'm sure it baffled me. It might be that this is where the novel is headed but I just can't think of many authors who could pull this off. The "goon" in the title refers to "time" . I have no idea what the "good squad" referred to but I loved her writing enough to be willingly confused.

Nothing by Janne Teller

Think a dark and brooding Henrik Ibsen. Think the chilling psychological possibilities of Lord of the Flies. Think searching for meaning in life and finding Nothing.

Agnes, the story’s narrator, is a seventh grade student in a small town in Denmark. Her class is thrown into an existential dilemma when Pierre, a fellow classmate, takes to the plum tree in his yard declaring that life has no meaning. Anxious to prove him wrong, the class decides to create a “heap of meaning” in an abandon sawmill and start collecting things that mean something to someone. It all begins innocently as they gather broken teacups and odd stuffed animals from neighbors and friends. Then, realizing that Pierre will never acknowledge these as meaningful, the first of the students is forced to give up a treasured collection of "Dungeons and Dragons" books. He is then given the responsibility of naming what is to be surrendered by another classmate. As the process continues through the class, the demands escalate in cruelty. A Muslim boy must give up his prayer rug knowing he will receive a beating at home. A deeply religious student is required to steal a crucifix from the front of the church. A tiny casket is unearthed. Ultimately the demands lead to unexpected acts of personal violence. First published in Denmark in 2001, Nothing won the Danish Cultural Ministry Prize for best children’s book and was described by one reviewer in Sweden as “a youth novel in Nobel Prize class”. The 2008 French translation earned Le Prix Libbylit. The American Library Association named the English translation a Printz Honor book. For all its recognition, this is a disturbing story in much the same way that Lord of the Flies is disturbing and readers of that earlier book will relish this one for all the same reasons.

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

Winner of the 2010 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. In this, her first novel, Rakha explores the capacity to forgive. Irene Stanley's son is killed and the murderer sits on death row in the Oregon State Penitentiary for nineteen years. For many of those years Irene empties herself of all feeling except hate and anger as she waits for his execution. And then a letter causes her to question the waste of her life and the truth about the man who is finally scheduled to die. This book will play devil's advocate with your notion of capital punishment no matter where you stand on the issue.

Th Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

Oh those southern dysfunctional families. Years ago Laurel McKelva Hand escaped the hometown sludge that is part of being a member of an influential family. But when she is called back due to her father's illness, the eventual funeral and step-mother conflict lead her right back into the thick of it. This won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.

When you Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

In 1978, twelve year old Miranda moves freely in her neighborhood but not so easily through this time in her life. Her best friend now prefers his basketball; all of a sudden issues of race and class and acceptance matter in ways they didn't before; and to top it all off she is receiving strange notes which seem to look into the future. This coming of age mystery draws parallels with Miranda's favorite book A Wrinkle in Time. Is it possible that the 1963 Newbery Award winner predicted the 2010 winner?