🌟 Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

This is a brilliant book by a brilliant mind.  I finished it and wanted to start all over at the beginning because it's full of so many ideas that challenge the intellect.  Kirkus says,  "A profound and provocative inquiry into an artist’s complex American identity."

Listening to so many people discuss this "novel", they question whether it really can be considered a novel because so much of the author's story is in this book.  I loved his novel, American Dervish and this was very different in many respects but had some of the same theme: being Muslim in America.

I really can't say enough about this.....

Pretty Things by Janelle Brown

Interesting read about a grifter, her mom (who she learned from) and her boyfriend, a real fiend. Quick fun read with some unpredictable events. Enjoyed it!

🌟 Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

 

Interesting paragraph from NYTimes review:

This novel is at once about the transfiguration of life into art — it is O’Farrell’s extended speculation on how Hamnet’s death might have fueled the creation of one of his father’s greatest plays — and at the same time, it is a master class in how she, herself, does it.

This is a remarkable work of fiction. The last 20 pages are so beautifully written and so powerful.  Highly recommended! 

All Adults Here by Emma Straub

This book reminded me of an Anne Tyler novel - not a specific one, but the "feeling" of the novel itself was reminiscent of that author. And it's interesting because I think this has to do with Emma Straub's maturity as a novelist.  I used to think of her as a novelist for younger adults (Not YA, but maybe millennials?) Anyway, the characters are older in this book and more drawn, I thought. And I enjoyed it!

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

 

Loved this book! Such a powerful story.

A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.

The Voyage of the Morning Light by Marina Endicott

 

It took me a really long time to get through this book.  It was enjoyable but very slow for me.  

From Good Reads:

This sweeping story is set aboard the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the South Pacific in 1912.

Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea travels to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing journey to the other side of the world.

Inspired by a true story, Marina Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay’s examination of the idea of “difference”—between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species.

The Lying LIfe of Adults by Elena Ferrante

 

While I did not love this as much as My Brilliant Friend and the rest of the Neopolitan Quartet, I did enjoy it immensely.  Her writing and her ability to capture the feelings and thoughts of adolescent females is outstanding.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

 

Enjoyed this immensely. A quick read but with serious undertones.

A black babysitter works for a rich white bitch.....that pretty much sums it up, but the characters are drawn well, the relationship with the child is deep and interesting. Again Kirkus says it well:

Blogger/role model/inspirational speaker Alix Chamberlain is none too happy about moving from Manhattan to Philadelphia for her husband Peter's job as a TV newscaster. With no friends or in-laws around to help out with her almost-3-year-old, Briar, and infant, Catherine, she’ll never get anywhere on the book she’s writing unless she hires a sitter. She strikes gold when she finds Emira Tucker. Twenty-five-year-old Emira’s family and friends expect her to get going on a career, but outside the fact that she’s about to get kicked off her parents’ health insurance, she’s happy with her part-time gigs—and Briar is her "favorite little human." Then one day a double-header of racist events topples the apple cart—Emira is stopped by a security guard who thinks she's kidnapped Briar, and when Peter's program shows a segment on the unusual ways teenagers ask their dates to the prom, he blurts out "Let's hope that last one asked her father first" about a black boy hoping to go with a white girl. Alix’s combination of awkwardness and obsession with regard to Emira spins out of control and then is complicated by the reappearance of someone from her past (coincidence alert), where lies yet another racist event. Reid’s debut sparkles with sharp observations and perfect details—food, décor, clothes, social media, etc.—and she’s a dialogue genius, effortlessly incorporating toddler-ese, witty boyfriend–speak, and African American Vernacular English. For about two-thirds of the book, her evenhandedness with her varied cast of characters is impressive, but there’s a point at which any possible empathy for Alix disappears. Not only is she shallow, entitled, unknowingly racist, and a bad mother, but she has not progressed one millimeter since high school, and even then she was worse than we thought. Maybe this was intentional, but it does make things—ha ha—very black and white.

Charming, challenging, and so interesting you can hardly put it down.

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

I am a fan of Sittenfeld, especially her fictionalized account of Laura Bush's life, American Wife.  This book was not as great, in my estimation, but I did really enjoy it.

She tells the story that may have happened if Hillary did NOT marry Bill. And if they became opponents in the Democratic Primary.

It really was a fascinating read.  Here is a good synopsis from Kirkus:

In American Wife (2008), Sittenfeld imagined her way into Laura Bush’s head in the guise of a character named Alice Blackwell. In her new novel, she doesn’t bother to change the protagonists’ names, and we’re introduced to Hillary Rodham as she’s about to give her famous Wellesley College graduation speech and has an intimation of her “own singular future.” She goes to Yale, meets a charismatic former Rhodes Scholar, falls in love, catches him cheating on her, and follows him to Arkansas anyway. They try to come up with ways to tame Bill’s libido: “Maybe—what if—if I wanted it and you didn’t,” he asks her, “would you think it was disgusting if I laid next to you and touched myself?” That works for her. “Mapping out the future, coming up with strategies and plans—these were things we were good at,” she thinks. But then she decides not to marry him, and the history of the United States goes off in a different direction. The captivating thing about American Wife was imagining an inner life for Laura Bush, a First Lady who was something of a cipher, and in particular imagining that her politics were different from her husband’s. Sittenfeld sets herself an opposite task in this book, creating an interior world for a woman everyone thinks they know. This Hillary tracks with the real person who’s been living in public all these years, and it’s enjoyable to hear her think about her own desires, her strengths and weaknesses, her vulnerabilities and self-justifications; it’s also fun to see how familiar events would still occur under different circumstances. (Watch what happens when Bill Clinton appears on 60 Minutes with a less-astute wife at his side.) But there isn't much here that will surprise you.

Pleasurable wish fulfillment for Hillary fans.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

I just loved this book! Had heard lots about it and hear the author interviewed several times.  Deals with twin sisters, black. who are very light skinned. One decides to "pass" and live as a white woman, the other marries a very dark man and has a daughter who is "blue black." Very dark.  Follows their lives and how they connect in time.  The story really turns to the two daughters at some point, who come to realize that they are cousins. Very different cousins. 

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

 

So much controversy around this compelling book. I did read it quickly and it was a great story.  Gave a good (I think) picture of migrants escaping terrible circumstances south of the border.

The author got a lot of flack for not being "authentic" but I am not sure that is justified. I don't think she was portraying it as based on her own personal experience. It was a story told about a woman and her son who experienced this horror.

From the LA Times: 

“American Dirt,” according to the author’s note, was shaped by four years of research and a concern for the plight of undocumented immigrants."

More from LA Times: 

 Indeed, it is Luca who surmises that, “though they all come from different places and different circumstances, some urban, some rural, some middle-class, some poor, some well educated, some illiterate, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, Indian, each of them carries some story of suffering on top of that train and into el norte beyond.”

As I got further into the book, my interest waned a bit. Maybe it dragged on too long. But then I think, Wow, what if that was me? It would drag on and on and on.

Heartbreaking story, but with a good ending. Thank God! 

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

 

A fast, fun read, even though it has some depressing themes. Dannie, a corporate lawyer on a fast track, engaged to her "perfect" boyfriend, has a five year plan.  It gets shattered one day. The author tells the story in an interesting way: Dannie jumps ahead five years one evening so that she knows what is to become of her life in five years. Not what she expected.

This is a fun read, but does deal with cancer and death, so not all that light. I enjoyed it somewhat, but it does not go on my "you have to read this" list.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Another good read that didn't hook me.  Interesting story and characters, but I felt like I knew how it would end way before it ended!

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

I have never read Stegner so checked this out.  I started out with keen interest, but I have to say, my interest waned as I went along. Not sure why. The writing is fabulous, the locale was Madison, WI, so that was a plus, too.
Maybe I just was not in the mood. But I will also read Angle of Repose soon, since that was my goal.

🌟 Writers and Lovers by Lily King

Another great book about writers and writing. I just loved this and breezed through it quickly.   The writing is great the story engrossing and the main character, so real! I didn't know this author and want to read more!

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

Wow, did this book just suck me in. First for its wit and humor, but then for its thoughtful and sentimental depth.  I loved the characters, I loved the structure.  The ending threw me for a loop.  Very emotional. I highly recommend this book!
Excerpt from the NY Times review (they like the book but not as much as I did!)

"...at the novel’s heart lies a profound philosophical question about the nature of the self, as Daphne and Laurel struggle to figure out who they are on their own and in relation to each other. Who gets to be the subject of their story and who is the object? Where does one person end and the other begin? When the sisters were babies, their mother worried that they were, perhaps too much, “each other.” Their father disagreed: “They were alike, two peas in a pod, but each had its own circumference. Daphne followed Laurel, a tiny acolyte. He wondered if Daphne would ever turn around and walk away. He wondered if Laurel would follow.” Their parents fear the girls will never evolve independently and also worry that they inevitably will."

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

His second Pulitzer! What a powerful book. Different in its power from The Underground Railroad, I thought. Much more spare in its detail. The detail was between the lines. I can't quite explain that, but I felt it strongly.  He said a lot with few words. The atrocities were alluded to but not described in detail. And the reader was glad!
Definitely worth reading and a real twist in the end.
Highly recommended.  Read this right at the time of the George Floyd shooting which made it even more powerful

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

What a fast read, but delightful. I really enjoyed it!
Here's what Kirkus says:

Micah’s existence is entirely organized to his liking. Each morning he goes for a run at 7:15; starts his work as a freelance tech consultant around 10; and in the afternoons deals with tasks in the apartment building where he is the live-in super. He’s the kind of person, brother-in-law Dave mockingly notes, who has an assigned chore for each day: “vacuuming day…dusting day….Your kitchen has a day all its own” (Thursday). Dave’s comments are uttered at a hilarious, chaotic family get-together that demonstrates the origins of Micah’s persnickety behavior and offers a welcome note of comedy in what is otherwise quite a sad tale. Micah thinks of himself as a good guy with a good life. It’s something of a shock when the son of his college girlfriend turns up wondering if Micah might be his father (not possible, it’s quickly established), and it’s really a shock when his casual agreement to let 18-year-old Brink crash in his apartment for a night leads Micah’s “woman friend,” Cass, to break up with him. “There I was, on the verge of losing my apartment,” she says. “What did you do? Quickly invite the nearest stranger into your spare room.” Indignant at first, Micah slowly begins to see the pattern that has kept him warily distant from other people, particularly the girlfriends who were only briefly good enough for him. (They were always the ones who left, once they figured it out.) The title flags a lovely metaphor for Micah’s lifelong ability to delude himself about the nature of his relationships. Once he realizes it, agonizing examples of the human connections he has unconsciously avoided are everywhere visible, his loneliness palpable. These chapters are painfully poignant—thank goodness Tyler is too warmhearted an artist not to give her sad-sack hero at least the possibility of a happy ending.
Suffused with feeling and very moving.

Real Live by Brandon Taylor

I read about this book when my Univ of Wisconsin magazine came. It was reviewed as a new novel by an alumnus.  It sounded interesting and then I also saw it listed on Emma Straub's "best list" on her bookstore website. So I checked for it on Libby and it was available.
At first I was not sure I was going to get through it. At the start it is all about Wallace's life in the Bio Lab at his school (never mentioned, but obviously UW Madison!). There is a lot of technical science stuff that turned me off, but I continued with the book, being drawn in by Wallace's character and the theme of racism (so in the news right now!)
It's a first novel for the author, who truly DID go to UW Madison for a PhD in biochemistry.  He then pursued his interest in writing and got into the esteemed Iowa Writers' Program. I liked the book a lot even though there were passages that I wanted to skip over (the science stuff.) I kept waiting for that to mean something more in the novel - metaphor or symbolism or something, But I never got that.  The book resonated most because of when I read it, I think. Right in the middle of the protests and rallies surrounding racism in the US, after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis.  And Madison and Minneapolis are not far apart - not just geographically, it seems. 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

This book has gotten so much press, of course, in the #MeToo era.  Interesting that it took the author 18 years to write it!  As I ponder that, it makes me believe that there is a lot of autobiography in this book. Russell helps the reader understand sexual abuse from the point of view of the victim who does NOT want to come forward. This is appalling at first but the author helps us understand why Vanessa wants to hold onto the belief that it was romantic love, not abuse, that was going on for those years.
Although it was a difficult book to read, and at times it seemed gratuitous, in the end I have only the highest respect for this author. From the NPR review:

Pearl-clutchers, take note: When it comes to sexuality and complex power dynamics, Russell pulls no punches. What you get is a raw, unflinching look at the ways we hold young girls responsible for the criminal actions of grown men and, even worse, how victims come to blame themselves.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

I loved this book but probably never would have read it if not for my book club. It was slow starting out - so many characters with crazy names, but once you get to know them, and their neighborhood, you are hooked.
McBride tackles really deep racial issues but in a way that is not too "lecturey" (I made that word up). He just tells it like it is for these people living in a neighborhood that is changing.  The drug scene is destroying their Brooklyn community and their youth.  There were passages that I had to read twice because they were so moving, and so true.
But at the heart of this book, it's the story of a seemingly wacky drunk, Deacon King Kong (everyone has a nickname, which made it hard to follow sometimes.) The story revolves around Sportcoat (that is his real nickname) shooting a young man (drug dealer) who used to be his student in Sunday school. Sportcoat has no recollection of this shooting (he's always drunk) but there are those out to get revenge.  The story meanders around this neighborhood, introduces all kinds of sympathetic characters (who are sometimes mobsters.) It all takes place in the late '60s when these neighborhoods were so impacted by the drug scene.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

This was a great read. Engrossing, page-turner with truly interesting and diverse characters.  It strays all over the place and I don't mean that in a bad way. The story starts in Toronto and crisscrosses all over the world over many decades, in a plot that is engrossing. This is a story involving "money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

All I can say is, wow.
Roth is a writer extraordinaire. This book took me a long time to read, and there were times when I was going to give up, actually. I felt like I was not "getting" all of it. But then these passages would pull me in and captivate me. His writing is so good, so deep, so philosophical and thoughtful, insightful.
Those are pretty redundant adjectives, but I can't say enough about the writing. I can't forget a passage about a Vietnam Vet, Les, nor can I forget pages and pages of descriptions of crows. Yes, crows! And then 50 pages later you realize why he elaborated on and on about crows.
Here is a synopsis of the book from ebooks.com:

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past--a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it's not the secret of Coleman's alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman's secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I Married a Communist.

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Waited a long time for this book at the library. Really enjoyed.
I agree with this assessment from NPR:

Carve out some reading time before you pick up Laila Lalami's new novel The Other Americans. You won't want to get up from your chair for some time, maybe even until you've reached the last page. You're in the hands of a maestra of literary fiction, someone who has combined a riveting police procedural with a sensitive examination of contemporary life in California's Mojave Desert region.

It did take me a while to read, however, becuase I am in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and working MANY hours with teachers helping with distance learning.

But every chance I got, I sunk into my green chair to visit these vivid characters.Now I am going to read another of her books, The Moor's Account

Ghosted by Rosie Walsh

Just the kind of book I needed to read this week.  Not heavy, not political, not depressing. Just a fast read, a little suspense, some romance, some interesting characters. I actually got the audio book out of the library AND the digital version. Mostly I listened to it as I walked. The narrator and narration were good. Here's the Kirkus review:

In Walsh’s American debut, a woman desperately tries to find out why the man she spent a whirlwind week with never called.
Sarah has just separated from her American husband and is visiting her hometown in England when she meets Eddie. He’s kind and charming, and although they only spend one week together, she falls in love. When he has to leave for a trip, she knows they’ll keep in touch—they’re already making plans for the rest of their lives. But then Eddie never calls, and Sarah’s increasingly frantic efforts to contact him are fruitless. Is he hurt? Is he dead? As her friends tell her, there’s a far greater likelihood that he’s just blowing her off—she’s been ghosted. After trying to track Eddie down at a football game, Sarah starts to become ashamed of herself—after all, she’s almost 40 years old and she’s essentially stalking a man who never called her. But as Sarah slowly learns, she and Eddie didn’t actually meet randomly—they both have a connection to an accident that happened years ago, and it may have something to do with why he disappeared. The tension quickly amps up as the secrets of Eddie’s and Sarah’s pasts are revealed, and the truth behind their connection is genuinely surprising and heartbreaking. The barriers between Sarah and Eddie seem insurmountable at times, and although their issues are resolved in a tidy manner, the emotions behind their actions are always believable. Walsh has created a deeply moving romance with an intriguing mystery and a touching portrait of grief at its heart.
A romantic, sad, and ultimately hopeful book that’s perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes.

Interesting that Jojo Moyes is mentioned. I have never read any of her books, but one of my friends has highly recommended Me Before You. Maybe I'll try it. The kind of read that is warranted right now.

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

This is the 3rd book I've read by this author and I really like her style. This one deals with cheer leading....a topic I don't really relate to at all, but Abbot captures the grit of it so well.
From the NYTimes:

At its core, “Dare Me” reveals something very true about the consuming, sometimes ugly, nature of female friendships. But Abbott is also on to something bigger. Addy describes a girl making out with a boy in the hall, “practicing the telling of the moment even as the moment slips from her.” It is this moment of adolescence that “Dare Me” captures so beautifully, the in-­betweenness, “like a thing arrested between coming and going. Like the second before a crouch becomes a bound.” The story of girls old enough for sex but young enough that time still goes by at a crawl. “That was a long time ago,” Addy says about an event at camp. “That was last summer.”

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

A Pulitzer Prize winner....this was my second try at reading it. It's for one of my book clubs. I did enjoy it and really appreciated the writing but in the end, not really my cup of tea. Not enough story or plot for me.  But I certainly got into his writing, characterization, etc.

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg

This seemed like a very different book for this author.  I recall the Middlesteins being funny. This book was not! But it was powerful.  The reader REALLY hates Victor, the husband who cheats (in many ways), hurts, abuses and doesn't even seem to care!

Love this final paragraph from the NPR review:

Attenberg brings air into this potentially suffocating story with wit, and with occasional digressions into some of the peripheral people the Tuchmans encounter without a thought as they move around post-Katrina New Orleans — a trolley conductor, ferry worker, EMT, and coroner. Initially jarring, these reminders that the people who make the city run have their own histories and troubles underscore the fact that life can be challenging. But they also reassure us of the possibility of not just good in this world but decency.

There There by Tommy Orange

Read this for my book club (#1) and it was powerful! We all agreed about a few things, however.  The ending? Very abrupt.  But I think that was his intent.
Reading this right after Trevor Noah's book was interesting. Many parallels, even though they are VERY different books!
From Westchester Library System, here's a description of what this book is about:

Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle's memory. Edwin Black has come to find his true father. Thomas Frank has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I learned a lot from this book and was totally engrossed in it. I didn't really know that much about Trevor Noah and I don't watch the show, but it gave me so much insight into apartheid and living in South Africa during that period of time, and beyond.
The book is funny, of course, but really disturbing at the same time. One incredible thing about his life, is his mother and her influence on him. At the start,  you think she's kind of a bitch....too stern and strict.
But in the end, the last chapter is devoted to her and it's so touching. This was well worth reading.

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I truly enjoyed this book and was surprised by it.  It didn't follow any "formulas" as a rock and roll story.  Yes, there is sex, drugs and rock n roll, and some of the characters are stereotypical, but when you expect certain things to happen....they don't necessarily happen!  Which is refreshing.

The structure of the book is really interesting and it's not until the very end that you realize who the narrator is.  (Well, I didn't realize until the end...)

I can see this being a Netflix series and guess what! I think Amazon has picked it up and is producing. I will watch!

You can't help thinking Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac as you are reading, but apparently, the author does like the band but the book is not a fictionalized account of their time together.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Wonderful book!  Read for book club and then had the privelege of discussing with two young women from Ghana who are home health care aides for one of the book club members.  They even made and shared some authentic Ghanan food delicacies with us. A fantastic night.

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation"