Review: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, by Danielle Evans, is a very good collection of short stories which focus predominantly on young African-American or mixed-race men and women as they navigate intimate relationships with their families, friends, and lovers.  Of the eight stories, there were probably three that were stand-outs, though all of them are well-written, fresh, and insightful.  To get a sense of Evans' writing, she states, "We are all walking around on eggshells, waiting for a death the way people wait on rainstorms when the sky promises bad weather, but so far nobody has talked to me about it, and nobody has asked me to do anything more than make potato salad."  Her writing is simple, with zing and emotional punch.  Evans published her first story at the age of 23, is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and currently teaches literature at American University.  I'm sensing that she is an up and coming literary star to watch out for, though we have yet to see what she can do in the realm of novels.

You really can't judge a book by its cover, after all

It has been a while since I have posted, but not for lack of trying.  Here are three books with alluring covers that I did not finish, simply because there are so many books on my "to read" list and I was disappointed with these so much so that I didn't want to invest the time to finish them.

Freedom - I remember really liking The Corrections, by Franzen, so I was excited to take on the mammoth Freedom.  I figured, the more Franzen, the better.  Plus, the New York Times Book Review raved about it.  After 226 pages, I could not continue.  I found the book to be without plot, the characters without redemption, and the editing completely lacking.  Perhaps the tides turned in the latter half of the book.

West of Here - A truly beautiful cover, plus, it is all about the Pacific Northwest, an area I love.  Alas, I made it through only about 20 pages of what I found to be an uninteresting and inauspicious beginning.  Again, I probably could have given this one more of a chance, but there are just too many books on my list, and it did not capture my interest.

Swamplandia! - I was intrigued by Swamplandia!  With its fairy tale-like, yet menacing cover, I was enticed.  Plus, Karen Russell was voted this past year as one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40."  Furthermore, the plot sounded quite original - a family of alligator wrestlers living in the swamps of the Everglades, and a coming of age story with a female protagonist.  I read the first half of the book which I found inventive, but at the same time it dragged on and on.

Luckily, I think I have stumbled on a few books in the last week that have redeemed my appreciation and awe for good writing.  Soon to post!  

Review: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

With only three books under her belt, Yiyun Li has already received many accolades - she was voted one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40," was selected as a 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellow, and was chosen as one of Granta's "21 Best Young American Novelists."  Impressive! 

Li was born in Beijing in 1972 and moved to the U.S. (currently an Oakland resident!) in 1996.  She was trained as an immunologist and came to the U.S. to study medicine.  She ultimately decided to pursue writing and got her MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  Gold Boy, Emerald Girl is a collection of short stories written with sensitivity and gravitas.  Li's work provides insight into Chinese culture, and while her stories are contemporary, events of the past often shape them.  Yiyun Li is undoubtedly a talented writer.  I can't say that I immensely enjoyed reading these stories, but I learned from them and appreciated their subtlety and power.

Review: Lives of Girls and Women

Alice Munro is a wonderful writer, and, I imagine, a great short storyteller, but a novelist she does not seem to be.  Munro is known for her short stories, but being in the mood for a novel, I chose to read her only one to date, Lives of Girls and Women.  The book tells the story of Del Jordan, who comes of age in rural Ontario in the 1940s. 

Many of the sentences crafted by Munro I read more than once, they were that good.  For example, Munro writes,"...I felt remorse, that kind of tender remorse which has on its other side a brutal, unblemished satisfaction."  And also, "I had not had a friend before.  It interfered with freedom and made me deceitful in some ways, but it also extended and gave resonance to life."  The book didn't work as a cohesive novel, and is more of a series of disjointed vignettes.  I would recommend reading Alice Munro, but I would suggest you start with one of her short story collections.

Review: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is an autobiography written by William Kamkwamba. Kamkwamba tells the story of his childhood in Malawi, growing up hungry and poor.  Since his family was not able to afford the school fees necessary to keep him enrolled in school, he began visiting a small library in his town and stumbled upon books about energy and physics.  The books inspired him to build a windmill.  With his resourcefulness and determination, Kamkwamba was able to build a windmill out of scrap metal and bicycle parts.  His hope was to bring electricity and running water to his town.  Having survived famine, Kamkwamba realized that a windmill could rotate a water pump which would allow for irrigation.  In addition, only 2% of Malawians have electricity, meaning that most Malawians are not able to be work or study after dark. Kamkwamba knew that if he could help to bring electricity to his town, it would increase productivity.

Kamkwamba's first windmill was able to light four light bulbs and power two radios in his home.  Soon, word spread of his invention, and Kamkwamba was invited to attend the annual TED (Technology, Environment, Design) conference, which brings together innovators from all over the world.  

This is a well-written, unflinching account of the power of innovation even in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances.  Kamkwamba now attends Dartmouth College.  His inspiring book reminds us that one person's ideas have the power to transform the world. 

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay: Full of Heart

Beverly Jensen's The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay is a poignant, old-fashioned tale of two sisters, Idella and Avis, who grow up on a windswept, rocky bay in New Brunswick, and then move to Maine and Boston in early adulthood.  The book is a novel but each chapter could be a stand-alone short story.  The novel follows the more serious and dutiful Idella and the fiery and irreverent Avis through the course of their lives, starting with scenes from their childhood in 1916.  In the first chapter, "Gone," the girls lose their mother due to a mistake on the part of the country doctor who had given her the wrong pills for her pregnancy.  Their father Bill is left to figure out how to raise two girls amidst the toil of farm life.  Both Idella and Avis eventually leave the farm to forge independent lives.  The reader is so endeared by the two women that one finds oneself rooting for them, even as life still presents them with many challenges and hardships.  Throughout their lives, they are never quite dealt the hand we hope for them, but there is just enough humor and hope to make this book uplifting.  This is a book about loss and resilience, family and the landscapes that shape our lives.  It was an easy and absorbing read - a really good novel.  Beverly Jensen died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, and this is her only published work.

The Mountain Lion: A Coming of Age Classic

Jean Stafford, an award-winning short story writer and novelist,  wrote The Mountain Lion in 1947.  Stafford's work has been published in The New Yorker and she won a Pulitzer Prize for her collected short stories.  Yet, her work has been under the radar for many years.  The Mountain Lion was published again by the New York Review Books in 2010, and as a result, Stafford is once again garnering the attention her writing so clearly deserves.

The Mountain Lion tells the story of Ralph and Molly, siblings who grow up in a stodgy, genteel suburb with their prim and proper older sisters and mother.  But these two are not interested in the confines and routines of their daily life.  When they have the opportunity to start spending summers with their Uncle Claude who lives a rugged, wilder life on a ranch in Colorado, they are thrilled at the adventures that they believe await them.  As Ralph and Molly enter adolescence their strong bond becomes threatened as their innocence gives way to brooding and their individual searches for happiness, which seem to be elusive as the mountain lion that lives in the woods near the ranch.  Stafford has written a brilliant bildungsroman, complete with wit, sharpness, memorable characters, and a shocking ending.  So consider curling up with The Mountain Lion and a hot chocolate on this wintry day!

Bookseller by day, Writer by Night: Introducing Deborah Willis

Vanishing and Other Stories is a great debut from young Canadian author Deborah Willis.  Her short stories are written in simple, beautiful language and explore intimate relationships among friends, between lovers, and within families.  The two stand-out stories for me were "sky theatre," a story about a beautiful teenage girl who seems invincible but then falls from grace when an accident occurs, and a more ordinary girl who shares a pivotal moment with her.  The other stand-out story is "the separation," a story about two sisters with hippie parents ("raised on lentils, brown rice, Neil Young, and solstice celebrations") who decide to separate.  This was a very funny ("It was one thing to smoke weed that the neighbours grew.  But to support the big tobacco companies was out of the question."), tender, brilliantly written story.  In an addendum included in this print version, Willis writes an account of her double life as a bookseller and writer, and describes the moment when she sold the first copy of her book.  Her humility, as evidenced by all of her story titles written in lower case and her apparent wonderment at finding her writing in print, makes her a winsome author of whom I expect more great work to come.

Vida, true to its name, is full of life

Patricia Engel's debut Vida is a collection of short stories that all center around one character named Sabina.  These straight shooting stories tell it like it is about love, lust, friendship, and family.  In each of her stories, there are descriptions and interactions between the characters that are pitch-perfect, fresh, and blunt.  Engel writes, "The boyfriend grew up on a dusty patch of land where chickens became dinner," and, in a different story, "We tuck into each other like origami, fall asleep like captive hamsters, our lips touching, pretending we're each other's reason for surviving the cataclysm."  Engel also writes about Sabina's experience as a daughter of Colombian immigrants, writing, for example, that while "gringas" don't know of their heritage, "...my parents know our family lines five generations wide and ten generations back, down to the last conquistador."  Engel brings a distinctive, edgy new voice to fiction.  While these stories may not make you look at the world in a totally new light, they'll entertain you with their sharpness and impress you with their intelligence.

Review: I Curse the River of Time

This was the first book I have read by Per Petterson.  It was a quiet, moody novel with little dialogue and a lot of gray sky.  Ironically, East of Eden is highlighted as one of a few works on one of the main character's bookshelf.  I can't say I sympathized with the protagonist, Arvid. a 37-year old soon to be divorced man who hopes to reconcile with his dying mother.  The book takes place in Norway in 1989.  Unlike the honorable men in Steinbeck's classic, Arvid can at times barely walk across the room without falling to his knees in sadness and he forgets gloves in sub-zero weather.  He can hardly take care of himself.  While Petterson writes some great passages in simple language and creates a starkly atmospheric backdrop, I didn't feel any emotional connection to the characters.  There were a few sentences and passages I re-read, as they were very well-crafted, perhaps my favorite being the phrase, "...my head filled with shapeless, wild thoughts."  And yet, sometimes we want our protagonist to shape those thoughts into something palpable, so that we can reach in and feel what he is feeling.  On the continuum, this would be about a 7.5 out of 10.

Re-Visiting Steinbeck: An early contender for best book read in 2011!

Whatever your weekend plans are, you might want to strongly consider canceling them and getting your hands on a copy of East of Eden.  Recently recommended to me by a colleague, I remembered reading Of Mice and Men in school (was it Mr. Schneider's class?).  I don't remember being particularly fond of that book, but East of Eden is a very early contender for one of the best books I will read in 2011 (and possibly of all time).  


My copy was exactly 600 pages, and I would have kept reading had Steinbeck kept going.  East of Eden is the epic tale of the Trask family and the Hamilton family at the turn of the 20th century in Salinas Valley, California, not so very far from where I sit here writing this post.  The characters are beautifully rendered, the dialogue smart and gritty and achingly honest at times.  The reader comes to know the characters intimately, through both their words and their silences.  This is, ultimately, the story of brothers growing up and growing differently.  There are so many memorable scenes in this novel, particularly between the Trask brothers.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes:


"Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!"


"Don't you want our rabbit?"


"It is probable that Adam did not even know he did it, but the caress brought such a raging flood of emotion to the boy that he saved this special joy and used it only when he needed it.  It was a magic to be depended upon."


I will let you discover your own favorite passages.  I will be reading more Steinbeck very soon, though I may have to space it out over time so as to have his wonderful, luminous writing to look forward to for a long time to come.

The 5 Best Books I Read in 2010!

And the winners are...


1.  Bloodroot, by Amy Greene

This debut novel by Appalachian writer Amy Greene is an epic, incandescent, hard-hitting story that moved me more than any other book I read this year.  The violence is shattering, as is the experience of reading the book, but alongside the harshness is beautiful writing and an unforgettable story.

2.  Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie

Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun explodes off the page with the passion of its characters and the anguish of the Biafran War in Nigeria.  Adichie excels at capturing the emotional landscape of the country as well as the nuances between the characters.  

3.  Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates

Please see my recent post.  Bottom line - I couldn't put it down.  

4.  Invisible, by Paul Auster

Of the four Auster novels that I read this year, Invisible was my favorite.  Some words that come to mind - disturbing, shocking, intriguing, and full of surprises.  I read it in two sittings.  Auster may be too, well, austere for some readers, but his lack of warmth is made up for the sheer pleasure of never knowing what path the story will take.

5.  Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder

I've been a long-time fan of Tracy Kidder.  Strength in What Remains tells the true story of a young man named Deo from Burundi who flees the genocide in his country and lands in NYC with $200 in his pocket and little else.  Through his determination and persistence, as well as the kindness of strangers, Deo gets a degree at Columbia University and goes on to medical school.  Other great books by Kidder include Mountains Beyond Mountains (which tells the story of Paul Farmer) and Hometown (about Northampton, MA).  

Man vs. The Mundane

Sometimes I read two books back to back at random, not expecting to draw any particular parallels.  I was surprised and intrigued by the similar struggles that the protagonists in Yates' Revolutionary Road and Percy's The Moviegoer face.  Published within a year of each other (1961 and 1960 respectively), both works deal with what Yates calls the "hopeless emptiness of everything in this country" and what Percy calls being "sunk in the everydayness."  Both protagonists, men at the beginning of their careers, are successful and lead a prescribed life, yet both rage against this normalcy and ease and search for something more meaningful.

In Revolutionary Road, April and Frank Wheeler seem to be on the way to having it all - two kids, success, and a nice house.  April having tried her hand at acting, and Frank being an intellectual with big ideas when they first met, they give up their big ambitions and settle into day-to-day family life.  April comes up with the idea that the family up and move to Paris so that Frank can do some soul searching while she gets an embassy job.  The arguing is incessant, the characters unlikeable, and the end is utterly depressing, yet I truly loved this book - one of the top 5 best books I've read this year, because every sentence crafted by Yates is perfection in its vivid imagery and smart, impassioned dialogue.  Also, while this book takes place in the 1950s, substitute a "swell" and a "sore" for more current language and the novel would be just as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.  Don't be dissuaded by the movie - this is an amazing book.  Hard to put down.

In The Moveigoer, Binx Bolling is a successful stockbroker with a nice house in Gentilly, a suburb of New Orleans.  He lives a life of working, dating, and moviegoing.  He attempts to be "Gregory Peck-ish" so as to charm women who have, for example, "Sarah Lawrence solemnity."  While this book is considered a classic, I found the writing too flat, and it dragged toward the end.

Both book raise the question of how we can live a rich life - do we need to search beyond what we already have?  Should we prescribe to what society says is "the good life" or should we follow our desires and throw caution to the wind (if we have the means and the risk tolerance to do so)?  How do we find meaning in the "everydayness?"  Onward, we ponder.

2010 Holiday Gift Guide!

There is something about giving a book as a gift - the intention that went behind it as the selection was carefully tailored to please the recipient, the heft of a new book in one's hands, the pleasure of discovering a new author or topic of interest. Thus, I present to you the 2010 Holiday Gift Guide:

For the escapist:  The beloved Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl has recently released Book Lust to Go, with books recommended for "travelers, vagabonds, and dreamers."  This would be a great reference guide for any book lover, with both fiction and non-fiction categories.  The Atlas of Remote Islands, by Judith Schalansky, is a beautiful book I stumbled upon recently.  Featuring fifty islands, you learn a bit about the history of each island, just enough to awaken the romantic in each of us.  Rebecca Solnit's colorful Infinite City is a must for any lover of maps, urban history, or San Francisco.  It strikes me as the perfect coffee table book that you would want to flip through again and again.  It features all different kinds of maps of San Francisco with different themes, and tells you the history about the city's many neighborhoods.  

For the chef:  What better wintertime activity is there than eating a hot loaf of bread that you've made with your own bare hands?  I present to you two bread making books - one old, one new.  I recently had a friend visit and, a San Francisco local said to her, "have you been to Tartine at 5 o'clock yet?"  The reason, of course, is that this is the hour that Tartine's breads are ready.  I remember a cold night in San Francisco in which I had Tartine bread in a paper bag, clutched to my chest, and it kept me warm all the way home.


Tartine Bread, written by Chad Robertson (co-owner of the famous Tartine Bakery and Bar Tartine), is a book featuring many different types of bread for both the home chef and the professional bread-maker. An old-school option is A World of Breads, by Dolores Casella.  I've had both the corn bread and the country wheat bread and they are not only impossible to screw up, but also very delicious.  No need for a bread-making machine any more - this is the real deal!

For the budding Buddhist:  Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and teacher.  The Pocket Pema Chodron features short passages from her best-selling titles, and is designed for when you need that bit of extra inspiration or inner quietness to get you through the day.  Taking the Leap explores the patterns that we find ourselves in, and provides tools for breaking them.  While some of Chodron's books go heavily into explanations of Buddhist concepts and practices, these two are easily accessible to those with no knowledge of Buddhism.  These are not to be labeled as "self-help."  Rather, these are wise writings from one of the foremost Buddhist thinkers today, helping us navigate through our fears, challenges, and destructive patterns.

For the magazine reader:  The Sun, published in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, features essays, short stories, photography, interviews, poetry, and my favorite section, one in which readers write in each month about a different topic.  The Sun is also independent and free of ads.  What I like most about this magazine is that the stories are raw, intimate, and powerful.  

Orion explores the intersection of nature, culture and place,  It is published in Great Barrington, MA, and is also free of ads.  Orion has an impressive list of advisors, including Wendell Berry, Jane Goodall, Van Jones, Winona LaDuke, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Bill McKibben, and Terry Tempett Williams.  It is a beautiful magazine, in both its design and its contents.  Orion was the winner of the 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for General Excellence.  


I recently visited my local magazine store and asked for some suggestions.  In this way, I learned of Cultural Survival Quarterly (CSQ), published in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a satellite office in Guatemala.  CSQ was founded in 1972 and covers indigenous rights issues. All of the writers are indigenous or work closely with indigenous groups.  CSQ features essays, interviews, and photographs.  

  

For the classicist:  I've recently taken to reading more classics, and what a treasure they are.  While friends or family may have read these titles long ago, they may enjoy having a fresh copy or getting a chance to finally re-read one of their favorite books of yesteryear.  For classics, consider consulting the Modern Library website for their list of the "100 Best Novels" (which is not to say that I agree with this list, but it is a good starting point), or visit the NYRB Classics website, to see a list of classics that may be more obscure but nonetheless important and good reads.  Some author ideas - McCullers, Capote, Yates, Baldwin, London, and Maugham. 


http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
http://www.nybooks.com/books/

  

For the anthology enthusiast:  The Poets Laureate Anthology, the first anthology every published that features all forty-three American poet laureates, would be a great gift for anyone who loves poetry or has been curious to read poetry but doesn't know where to start.  Featuring a sampling of our great poets, this book pays homage to some of the finest poets not only in the U.S., but in the world.  New Stories from the South (2010) features stories from some of the best Southern writers today - Ron Rash, Rick Bass, Tim Gautreaux, and Dorothy Allison, to name a few.  There is something wonderful about Southern writing, going back to such classic Southern writers as Faulkner, O'Connor, Capote, and McCullers.  This anthology follows in that tradition, and allows the reader to be exposed to writers both prominent and lesser known.

For the crafter:  I'm not a crafter, but I think Amy Sedaris is one of the funniest people around.  Her ideas are off-the-wall, and with her new book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People, she combines frugality, kitsch, and DIY home projects bound to keep you entertained for hours on end.  

  

For those seeking rays of light in dark times:  Tracy Kidder is one of my absolute favorite authors of non-fiction.  I particularly enjoyed Hometown (about an eccentric array of people living in Northampton) and Mountains Beyond Mountains (about Paul Farmer's work in health care around the world), and his newest book, which is entitled Strength in What Remains.  This book tells the true story of Deo, who fled Burundi in 1994 due to genocide in his country and landed in New York City with $200 in his pocket and no contacts.  From sleeping on park benches to becoming a student at both Columbia University and then medical school at Dartmouth, this is a story of triumph against the odds, the kindness of strangers, and one young man's humility and persistence.  A deeply inspiring and moving book.  I haven't yet read Edwidge Danticat's Create Dangerously, but it has been getting rave reviews.  Danticat, a Haitian American known for her evocative novels (and one of this year's New Yorker's "20 under 40"), has written a non-fiction work about Haiti.  For a review by Julia Alvarez on NPR's website, please visit:  


http://www.npr.org/2010/09/15/129880022/-create-dangerously-the-heart-and-healing-of-haiti

Happy reading, and happy holidays!

Two Brooklyn Backdrops, Two Different Eras

Brooklyn is one of my favorite places.  I can't resist the tree-lined streets, brownstones, and charming neighborhoods.  For me, it is a place to enjoy a vacation, but for the characters that inhabit these books, it is a place fraught with struggle and facing the unknown, but also of expansive possibility.


In Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, we follow Eilis Lacey on her journey across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1950s from Ireland to Brooklyn to forge a new life for herself, independent of her sister and mother whom she left behind.  Working in a department store by day and taking bookkeeping classes at night, she starts to carve out a life for herself and becomes further rooted in Brooklyn when she meets the love of her life there.  But a tragic event pulls her back home, raising the question of whether her new life in Brooklyn was the start of something new and permanent, or just a short-lived attempt to redefine herself.  This was a very readable book that can be read in just a few sittings, and the love story and the theme of the pull our past has over our future make for an intriguing story.


Paul Auster's Oracle Night is classic Auster - story lines within story lines, a very normal day quickly turning into a sinister or extraordinary one, the power of the imagination to help shape one's everyday life, and a sense of never knowing where the story might end up.  Oracle Night takes place in the 1980s and tells the story of Sidney Orr, who is recovering from a mysterious illness and nursing himself back to health by writing, though a quick trip to the neighborhood stationery store sets into motion a series of unnerving events.  Now that I have read three Auster novels, I can say that his inventive and engaging writing is among the best I have read in a long time.  Furthermore, his books are concise but not sparse. Rather, they are rich with emotion, intensity, and downright great storytelling.  

Paying it forward

Last weekend I was in a bookstore and saw a free book, a new novel called Rut, by Scott Phillips.  I immediately assumed there was a catch.  I went home and googled the Concord Free Press (CFP), and was intrigued with their concept, which they call their "generosity-based approach to publishing."  CFP publishes one book at a time, which can be obtained at participating bookstores or sending a request via their website.  


There is a catch, but a good one.  CFP asks that rather than paying money toward the book, that you instead make a donation or give to someone in need and that you subsequently chart that donation on their website, and then pass the book along so that the next reader can do the same.


To read more about their business model or order Rut, check out their website:
http://www.concordfreepress.com/

Finally, a bildungsroman!

 

Truman Capote published Other Voices Other Rooms in 1948, at the age of 23.   A classic bildungsroman (aka "coming of age story"), Capote tells the story of Joel Knox, a boy who is sent to live with his father in Noon City, a small town in the American South.  While Joel tells his friend that he and his father "will hunt possum and eat possum stew" come wintertime, Joel finds out shortly after arriving that his father is severely disabled.  Watched over by the ambiguously gendered Randolph, in cahoots with Zoo, the hired help, and befriended by rowdy Idabel, Joel is left to his own devices and takes to exploring the world around him.

Capote was a true literary talent, with an ability to write boldly and pen some very beautiful passages such as this one:  "Before birth; yes, what time was it then?  A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now:  these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned heart, change only."  This is a classic book that deserves its place in the canon of great American literature.  While not as dense and gripping as In Cold Blood, the fact that it was written by a young prodigy makes it ever the more impressive.

I am left with one question - why have both Southern books I have read this past month had possum references?! 

Review: How to Read the Air

This past July, Mengestu was chosen as one of The New Yorker's "20 under 40" writers.  Mengestu, born in Ethiopia and raised in Illinois, tells the story of four main characters in their search for a sense of ease and comfort though their histories make this difficult to attain.  Jonas Woldemariam lives in Brooklyn and teaches at an Upper West Side private school.  He is faced with his own troubled marriage which is intertwined with the story line of his parents' even more troubled and violent union. A passage that I feel captures Mengestu's voice as well as the rootlessness and isolation that it seems to me many of us feel but don't want to expose for fear of appearing vulnerable or weak is as follows:  "...I had begun to sense that my place in the world was rapidly shrinking, that this was not an age for idle drifters or starry-eyed dreamers who spoke wonderfully but did little.  A time would come soon, I was convinced, when I would be politely asked to step off board the ship that was ferrying the rest of the population, and in particular my generation, forward.  If I didn't latch on to something soon, I'd find myself thrown overboard, completely adrift, bobbing out to sea with nothing, not even so much as a life vest of companionship to hold onto."  

Mengestu captures life as it often really is, for example by featuring characters who feel numbness when society expects us to be wracked with emotion, and by not shying away from the messiness of marriage and the difficulty in finding a space in the world that one can occupy comfortably.  Really wonderful writing which will leave you unmoored, like the characters in the novel.

Auster this World: Another Great Read

"Reading was my escape, my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head," writes Auster in The Brooklyn Follies.  What I realized about Auster is that you ever know what to expect in his stories from one page to the next, or whose backstory he will choose to focus on as he tends to shift protagonists.  This is what makes his books nearly impossible to put down.  There are so many interesting characters and subplots in this book.  So as not to give anything away, I'll just say that this is a story about an ordinary man named Nathan Glass who decides to live out his retirement years in Brooklyn.  Yet, everything that happens to Nathan once he makes this decision is far from ordinary, from the people he meets, to the places he travels, to the range of emotions he feels and the memories he conjures up.  I highly recommend Auster, and The Brooklyn Follies in particular.