This novella is a gem of a book with beautiful, insightful writing and a unique premise for the story. Ed Carnes is a tenor saxophone player and composer who has drunk himself into bad health in Sweden at the age of 59. The National Endowment for the Arts offers him a sweet deal as part of the American Music Recovery Program: if he comes back to the States and agrees to be recorded 24...
I was enthusiastic about the previous book of hers that I read, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, so was excited at the prospect of reading Maggie O’Farrell’s new one. I learned about it from the review by Tony”s Book World. The story unpacks the family of Gretta and Robert and their three adult children and reaches back to Robert’s brother in Ireland. This Irish family...
Jessica Anderson is an Australian writer (1916-2010), best known for Tirra Lirra by the River, a book I truly loved. She won Miles Franklin awards for it and for this book. Before the first chapter begins we are given a family tree for that relatively new phenomenon in Australia in 1977 of the "complicated family." The main characters are the dying Jack Cornock and his...
This short novel is best described through its characters: Joe, the philandering famous poet, was sent off to England as a child so that he escaped the holocaust; his wife Isabel, so eager to escape her family that she goes off to war zones as a correspondent; Nina, their 14 year-old daughter; Mitchell and Laura, friends about to lose their business, who are along for the family vacation in...
When the book begins Ifemelu is preparing to return to Nigeria after living in the US for 13 years, where she will be known as an Americanah, a Nigerian who returns after living in the US. She grew up in modest circumstances, but had sufficient connections to make her way to the US. After living through terrible money troubles, she becomes successful and is able to send money home and eventually...
Snapper was recommended by Nancy Pearl who disagreed with the NPR reviewer who said Indiana was a major character in the novel. The NPR reviewer was right. It is set in southern Indiana, particularly in Evansville, but the countryside, rivers in the area, and Bloomington make it into the story. The narrator is Nathan Lochmueller who observes and records detailed information about birds around the...
Recently I learned that Mariflo's sister dated David Huddle in high school and this revelation, along with the fact that I loved another book of his, Nothing Can Make Me Do This, moved me to read this one. Each chapter is in the voice of a different character, or about a different time in the character's life. So we begin with the teenage Marcy who has an affair with the husband of...
This was reviewed favorably by Tony; the comment I recall was that the author’s writing was so good that he often read beyond the spot where he intended to stop. That was what I liked so much about this book too. I listened to it over a long period of time as family was visiting for the month of June, including a highly entertaining 2 1/2 half year old grandson. On the occasions when I...
I really loved Fernanda Eberstad's non-fiction book Little Money Street about her connection with gypsies in Perpignon, a city in southwest France that is very close to Spain. I especially liked the message that you can form a connection with people wildly different from you, whose approach to life is in some ways unappealing, even unpleasant to you. Rat is the nickname Vanessa calls her...
I've thought of reading Arthur Phillips' Prague several times, but just hadn't gotten to it. I came across Jennifer's recommendation to read The Egyptologist recently, so I picked that up at the library. What an unusual book it is, told in letters and a journal by two unreliable sources. It didn't help that I read a section near the end at 4:00 am when I couldn't sleep...