The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The setting of this powerful novel is Czechoslovakia in the years prior to (and following) WWII. Next door in Germany, things are brewing, but in the Glass Room, the setting of much of this novel, the world is modern, clear and cool.  The Glass Room is as much a character in this book as the people themselves.  Viktor Landauer, a very wealthy car manufacturer, builds his dream house, using the most modern and respected architect. The house represents the future; it's not fussy and adorned like their old house with tapestries, heavy furniture and brocades. This house is simple, clean, austere.  Viktor does sense that events in neighboring Germany are looming large and will change his world. His wife, Liesel, is less concerned, but she is not Jewish as her husband is. There is so much going on in this novel, politically, intellectually, socially, that it is hard to write a concise summary of the plot.  The characters are interesting, especially Hana, Liesel's best friend, and Stahl, the Nazi who occupies and works in the house during the war. The house in this novel is modeled on the real Villa Tugendhat, in the Czech city of Brno, but the author claims the characters are all fictional. Most of them are so well drawn that they are very real for the reader.
I highly recommend this book. It was one of my favorites of 2010!

The Doctor and the Diva by Adrienne McDonnell

This was a fast and easy read which I needed after "The Lotus Eaters." Of course, it was also disappointing after such an amazing book as "The Lotus Eaters," but I did enjoy it nevertheless.
The story takes place in the early part of the 20th century. Erica, who is a talented singer, and her husband have fertility problems and seek the help of Dr. Ravell. From the onset, the reader understands that there is electricity between the doctor and the diva. The doctor finds out that Peter, the diva's husband, has no sperm so fathering a child will not be possible. But Peter refuses to have his sperm tested; Dr. Ravell does it without Peter's knowledge and finds out that he can never father a child.
Erica, the diva, does conceive, because Dr. Ravell substitutes his own sperm for Peter's in order to continue the doctor/patient relationship.
The story moves from Boston to Trinidad and to Italy.
The struggle of Erica's desire to be an opera diva and a mother and wife run throughout the book. She does persue her singing career in Italy, sacrificing family.
I took this book out the library based on the cover reviews from favorite authors such as Sara Gruen. It was a fun read. It was the novelist's first book as well.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

This is probably one of the best books I have read this year. At first, I was a bit intimidated by it and was reluctant to delve in. But once I did, I was hooked. The novel tells the story of a female photographer during the Vietnam War.  She has lost a brother in the war and is drawn to the locale to make sense of what happened.
Helen must deal with the attitudes of male journalists who dominate and are dismissive of a woman covering the war. And then there are the soldiers and their superiors who refuse to have a woman with them as they prepare for their assignments. But still, Helen persists and handles the situations courageously, at least on the outside.
The book gets its title from Homer's Odyssey about a country of lotus eaters, a race that eats the lotus flower, and gives it to Homer's men to eat as well - but not to kill them but to make them wish to stay where they are and not return home with news or any desire to return home.  This theme runs throughout the book. Helen and some of her fellow photographers, especially Darrow, a Pulitzer prize winning photojournalist, are drawn to Vietnam and to war in general. Helen and Darrow's desire actually seduces them to danger.  When she returns home to California she is lost, and yearns to return to Vietnam, which she does, much to her family's consternation.  She needs to get that one last shot, be there when the war ends, capture the images.
There are so many themes running through this rich novel. One recurrent theme involves morality; do the reporters and photographers who cover this gruesome war promulgate the violence and immorality of the war in their depiction of it? Is this just war porn? Or do they do the public a service by exposing the gritty and horrible details?
The last 20 pages of the book were so intense; I had to read them very slowing, savoring every word. I didn't want the book to end, but I was dying to find out the outcome. I won't give anything away.