The Book of Unknown Americans

Cristina Henriquez's The Book of Unknown Americans weaves together the interlocking stories of a group of Latino immigrants living in the same run down apartment complex in Delaware.  Through the eyes of these characters, we come to feel what it would be like, for example, to be dropped off in a less than idyllic setting (with thoughts of the "American Dream" quickly pushed aside), with hardly any possessions and no knowledge of English.  The book centers around the story of Alma and Arturo Rivera, who come to the United States seeking medical help for their impaired daughter who had an accident in Mexico.  Despite Arturo's efforts at work and Alma's efforts to protect her daughter and create a feeling of home, there are no simple answers or quick fixes, and in fact, some of these characters face even more tragedy in the U.S. than they did at home.  Henriquez doesn't sugar coat the lives of her characters, and in avoiding doing so, she brings the reader face to face with the realities of many "Unknown Americans," in all of their heartbreaks and struggles.

Kaui Hart Hemmings - master of hilarity and heartbreak

Hemmings' The Descendants finds the perfect balance between hilarity and heartbreak, and she does it again in The Possibilities. The novel follows Sarah St. John's grieving the loss of her 22 year old son, Cully, who died in an avalanche near Breckenridge, CO. Hemmings takes us into the inner workings of Sarah as she comes to grips with this devastation in her life, as she navigates her relationship with her own father, Cully's father who comes back into her life, and a young woman who holds a secret that links her to Cully and therefore to Sarah.  Set over the course of just a few days, this novel explores the messiness and beauty of familial ties and love.  Hemmings is a brilliant talent - I recommend starting with The Descendants, as I think this is her stronger of the two!

A Mouthful of Murakami

Murakami is one of those rare authors with a cult following, and I've read all of his works and wait in anticipation of his next book (I hear there is a new one coming not too long from now)!  I was thrilled to go to the library to pick up Murakami's new book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  The novel tells the story of Tsukuru and his group of friends in high school, all who have a color in his last name except for him.  Feeling the most colorless and bland of the bunch (similar to other Murakami protagonists), Tsukuru goes off to college to study engineering and while there, learns that his friends want nothing to do with him anymore and cut him off completely.  Tsukuru, now 36, is hoping to form a serious relationship with a girl he has recently met, but she encourages him to find out why his friends cut him off as this seems to be preventing Tuskuru from forming a deep, trusting relationship with her.  Tsukuru decides to meet up with his friends to discover why they cut him off years ago.  This is classic Murakami - impossible to put down but I couldn't really tell you why.  On the one hand, Murakami often pays attention to very small seemingly bland details (we hear all about characters daily rituals and ablutions), but also writes in somewhat of a dreamlike manner.  All in all, I love Murakami's writing.  This wasn't my absolute favorite of his, but it was interesting and engaging.   

Two Great First Novels

Ron Rash is one of my favorite contemporary Southern writers.  His novel Serena and his short stories Burning Bright, are very memorable and readable.  One Foot in Eden, Rash's first novel, is an atmospheric tale of love, loyalty, and family ties that takes place in rural Appalachia in the 1950s.  It was totally riveting - couldn't put it down!  Billy and Amy Holcombe, a young married couple, try to get pregnant, but after failing to do so, Amy makes a decision that yields her a son, Isaac, but ultimately costs her more than she could have imagined.  

Tobias Wolff is one of those authors where each of his works must be savored, as he is spare in words and not as prolific as some of his contemporaries.  His first novel, The Barracks Thief, explores the relationships between three young paratroopers before being sent off to the Vietnam War.  While narrow in breadth and short in length, Wolff shows off his ability to create flawed characters that we root for and with whom we sympathize.

I highly recommend Rash and Wolff!

Library Love

Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House is a story of romantic love that transcends the boundaries of age and physicality.  Misanthropic and lonely Peggy Cort is the local librarian in a small town on Cape Cod.  She comes to befriend a boy named James who visits the library and who has one literally fatal flaw - he can't stop growing due to a problem with his pituitary gland, and literally becomes the gentle giant of the town, as well as a tourist attraction and spectacle.  Forced to live on his own in a large house made just for him, Peggy tends to his every need and is attuned to his soul.  The love story is quite compelling, though the ancillary characters didn't seem to have much to add to the story.  A good, though sad, summer read.

A Female Cormac McCarthy?!

Courtney Collins' debut novel, The Untold, has the grit, realism, brutality, and beauty similarly captured in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy novels.  While the writing and setting is stylistically similar, Collins has a distinctive voice.  In this novel, she tells the story of real-life Jessie Hickman, a horse thief living in the Australian outback in the 1920s, on the run from her law.  It's a beautiful read that moves at a quick pace.  However, given the austerity of the novel, I'm not sure it will stick with me for a long time.  Just as I was getting to know the characters more intimately, the book ended, but perhaps this was intentionally.  Jessie Hickman was elusive to those around her, and while she stays in our grasp while we are reading, she slips away in the end.  Recommended!

An Oldie, A Goodie

Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, is classic Americana at its best.  I enjoyed all three stories in this collection.  There is a serenity and simplicity to the stories, but also a subtle complexity to the characters and their internal worlds.  Plus, the back drop of the stories is described in beautiful but not overly flowery language.  And, Maclean is funny too.  All in all, its worth taking a few sunny afternoons and settling into these novels, in which the waters flow smoothly on the surface but rumble with depth just under the surface.

More on Marfa

Tony Cano's The Other Side of the Tracks is a book I learned of when I visited Marfa, TX for the first time last year.  Cano's book follows the coming of age of a Mexican teenage boy in the 1950s in Marfa, when he and his friends, who call themselves The Chinglers, begin to challenge the unspoken racial divide between Mexicans and whites living in small-town Marfa.  Cano writes of dynamics on school sports teams, local establishments, and young love between Mexicans and "Anglos."  While the writing isn't beautiful, the pace is good and Cano's voice is authentic and draws the reader in to day to day life at that time, and to the protagonist's thoughts about being treated as lesser by many whites in the town.  I'm fascinated with all things Marfa, so this book provided a new lens through which to see this unique place.

The Sound of Things Falling

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez hits it out of the ballpark with his novel The Sound of Things Falling.  From the first page to the last, this book had me absolutely riveted.  Its a quiet, almost sleeper sort of book, and the translation is gorgeous.  The narrator is a young law professor named Antonio Yammara, who meets Ricardo Leverde at the local pool hall.  As he slowly learns about Leverde's life, and in particular, the love of his life Elaine Fritts who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, he becomes more intrigued and intertwined with Leverde's story, eventually leading him to meet Leverde's daughter who lives a reclusive life as a beekeeper outside of Bogota.  A really beautiful, captivating book, ultimately about how we can become intertwined in each other's life stories, which can both wound us and heal us deeply.  Read this one!

Still Crying Wolff

It's a shame Tobias Wolff only wrote a few books, because his writing is fantastic.  Old School is the story of a boy in prep school who is a young aspiring writer.  With guest appearances by Robert Frost and Ayn Rand!  Wolff writes in a gritty but very poetic way - a rare combination.  He is a must read.

The Very Best Kind of Dysfunctional Family

Matt King's wife lies in a coma, and his daughters, Scottie and Alex are suddenly under his full charge.  Thus begins Kaui Hart Hemmings' The Descendants, a really good novel which captures the true messiness of families with unflinching dialogue and total resistance to tying any scene with a neat bow.  It's wonderfully caustic and immensely readable.  Can't wait to read The Possibilities, coming out soon!

Perla

Carolina De Robertis' Perla is a fascinating book that explores the life of a young Argentine woman living in Buenos Aires, as she comes to face the reality of her own family history.  Perla's father is a naval officer who was involved in the military dictatorship in which thousands of Argentinian citizens disappeared, yet she is drawn to a young man who is a journalist who reports on the disappeared, creating a significant tension in her life.  A ghostly figure appears in Perla's living room, who holds the key to Perla's understanding where she has come from.  Blending sensuality with brutality, realism and surrealism, De Robertis' has crafted an interesting tale.  However, the language was overly flowery for me and the element of the ghostly figure was a bit overdone.  Nonetheless, a good read. 

A Trip to Turkey

A friend recently recommended Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul.  Shafak is one of the most outspoken and acclaimed Turkish female writers.  This novel focuses on the women in an Armenian American family and in a Turkish family.  While the novel deals with very serious subject matter (for which the author may have landed herself in prison in Turkey though the charges were eventually dismissed), it also is filled with wacky characters and a good dose of wit and humor.  Spanning topics from genocide, repression, tattoos, and Johnny Cash, this book weaves together both Western and Eastern storytelling and characters, and made for a very illuminating and fascinating read, and exposed me to a slice of history I knew nothing about prior to picking up this book.  I definitely look forward to reading Shafak's other novels.

The People in the Trees

Every now and then I pick up a book and literally cannot put it down.  I read Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel The People in the Trees in two days, despite it being nearly 500 pages long.  It is a tale so absorbing, fantastical, and shocking, that it captured me from the get go.  Dr. Norton Perina visits a Micronesian island where he makes a game changing discovery about a native tribe that has found a way to maintain immortality.  We learn from the very beginning that Perina has been convicted of terrible crimes, but it isn't until the end of the novel that all is revealed.  Perina, as antihero, keeps us riveted as the story unfolds though we want to look away at the same time.  Totally fascinating read - highly recommended. 

Hello again, Columbus

I recently re-read Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, and loved it all over again.  So much wit, complicated relationships, and just great storytelling.  It is a must read!

Crying Wolff

Tobias Wolff's short story collection The Night in Question is simple in design but subtly and beautifully crafted.  Each story grabs the reader right away, due to Wolff's ability to convey a scene in a manner that is so realistic that you can imagine his characters as your own neighbors.  I'm officially a fan of Wolff, having also really enjoyed his memoir This Boy's Life.  Next, time to read Old School!

Seeking Shelter

I have had The Sheltering Sky on my "to read" list for many years.  I finally got around to reading it and found it utterly fascinating.  It tells the story of three American travelers to North Africa after WWII, and focuses on their alienation, isolation, and ultimately, despair as they navigate life in a different culture of which they have little knowledge and much naivete.  The novel takes a shocking turn at the end, highly unexpected.  Definitely a classic and well worth the read, despite somewhat of a slow start. 

Love Actually

In her unflinching and heartbreaking memoir First Comes Love, Marion Winik tackles one of the most intimate subjects - romantic love.  Winik recounts the story of falling in love with her husband Tony, a gay man.  Despite this challenge, their love is fierce, volatile, and deep.  After building a family together and having two sons, Tony passes away due to AIDS.  This book proves that love has no boundaries, and that it can be infinitely beautiful and equally devastating.  Very moving and emotional read. 

Wow! Ozeki

I didn't know much about A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, before I opened the book, other than that it is a nominated for the 2013 National Book Critic's Circle Award.  And wow!  It was such an inventive, readable, heartbreaking, intelligent, funny novel.  The story links together the lives and voices of a 16-year old girl named Nao who lives in Tokyo, after moving to Japan after her father loses a good tech job in Sunnyvale, CA, with Ruth, a writer in Canada.  Picked on mercilessly in school and dealing with her overworked mother and suicidal father, Nao takes to journaling to express herself, and to try and tell the story of her 104-year old great grandmother Jiko, a Buddhist zun.  Nao's diary is found on the shore by Ruth, a writer living on an island in British Columbia after the Japanese tsunami in 2011.  I found myself more considerably more interested in the parts of the novel told by Nao's perspective, but overall, this was like nothing I've read before.  Refreshing - read it!

Rags and Riches

There are many Doctorow books that I really enjoyed (my most favorite being World's Fair), and while Ragtime was filled with interesting characters and sub-plots, it felt overly peopled and without focus.  Doctorow employs an interesting technique of including both real people (Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, etc.), with fictional characters.  While he captures the excitement of New York City in the early 1900s before WWI and focuses on ideas and events critical to that era in American history, there was no one story line that truly engaged me.