Jacob de Zoet arrives in Japan in 1799 on the small artificial island created for the Dutch traders, the only barbarians the Japanese allow near their country. Only a few of them can leave Dejima for the city of Nagasaki and only on rare occasions. Even on the island they are severely restricted and closely watched. Of great concern to the Japanese was the contamination of...
When I began reading, I realized Thomas Cromwell, the main character in this fictional work, was not based on that best known British Cromwell, Oliver. Thomas was associated with Henry VIII, and lived some generations before Oliver. Thomas began life as the much abused son of a blacksmith, so often beaten that he ran away at a young age, looking for an army to join. Eventually he...
As expected, this Paul Auster tale is mesmerizing; I always find myself pleased to fall into his stories. The main character, Miles, is a mysterious fellow, full of promise even after spending years in an aimless life after he dropped out of college. The tragedy of the death of his stepbrother at a young age marked Miles too, as he might bear some responsibility for his death. One...
It was a real pleasure to read a memoir by a well-known person with well-known relatives and a stunningly dramatic life written with such restraint. She began learning to be a songwriter as soon as she graduated from high school when she went on the road with her father, so words have been her stock in trade for many years. She bravely brings us to the indescribable world of the...
Recommended by Jewell-Ann. Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of her aspiration to be an Episcopal priest, achieving the goal of serving her own church in a small town in north Georgia, and finally, leaving the ministry. She had misgivings from the outset about being the priest in a church that professes to believe in the priesthood of all believers, a reasonable concern...
Recommended by Corinne. This book was written in 1896 and is more accurately viewed as a series of sketches than a novel. It describes an idyllic life on the coast of Maine among the fishermen and farmers inland, and the tone reminds me very much of the Irish writer John McGahern's By the Lake (reviewed here). The language is wonderfully calming and the connections...
Once again it's lovely to be in the hands of such a capable story teller even if the facts of story itself are not clear to us. Most of the story is set in the momentous year of 1967; as I just finished the book about the Smothers Brothers, that time is much on my mind. The main character, narrator of the first part, is Adam Walker, a student at Columbia. Adam tells about...
The impetus for reading this was to attend Kathy's book club while we are visiting Seattle next week. The story is told through three different voices: Aibileen, the wise, literate, loving caretaker; Skeeter, the misfit white writer; and Minny, the rebellious difficult worker, who could get work because she was such a wonderful cook. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson...
Highly recommended by Mary Susan and I concur. There's just nothing like a wonderfully complex story in the hands of a great storyteller. I love it when you are not in a hurry to learn the end, but read happily all along the way. The narrator is Marlowe, a psychiatrist whose newest patient won't speak after having tried to attack a painting in the National Gallery of Art...
This is a warm and loving account of a year in the life of a village in Ireland set at a time I can't clearly identify, probably the 1960s. The central characters are a couple who moved to the country years before, leaving their successful careers in London behind. They are sensible and reasonable, the most conventional of the zany characters we meet. There's Jamesie...