Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Oh, what an amazing book. You start out and get familiar with these interesting characters and then the next chapter starts and you see no relationship, until BAM! These characters are related (not necessarily by genetic relationships) to each other.
I must say that I was really into this book but was most captivated at the end when I got to know Gloria. What an amazing chapter. I can say no more other than
YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!!

Invisible by Paul Auster

I loved this book until the ending and then I was like, "WHAT?"

My favorite Paul Auster book is the first one I read, Leviathan. I have read many others since then.  I am really not sure how I feel about this book. I will leave it at that.

Maybe I didn't get it?

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I so looked forward to reading this book after the accolades bestowed upon it in the New York Times. I did enjoy its amazing prose, the clever and amusing writing and the story line. But I was not overwhelmed. And, of course, the fact that the author is a professor at my alma mater, U of Wisconsin, Madison made the book appealing. 

This is a coming of age story and a poignant and sad one. The main character, Tassie, is the daughter of a farmer. She is a student at the university in Troy, but I couldn't help but think it was really Madison. She gets a job as a nanny for a couple who is adopting a biracial baby. The story takes place very soon after 9/11, but the author does not really get around to that until late in the story, although it is alluded to earlier.

Her brother enlists in the army. His tragic end is crucial to the story. Tassie gets involved with a "Brazilian" who turns out to be not what she thought he was. There is a lot of that in this story. I won't give away more, but will just say that it's an engaging and very poignant story with long passages of beautiful prose, sometimes difficult to get through.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

As a liberal Democrat, would you expect me to read a fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bush????
This book was fabulous!!!! I really felt like I got to know this woman, Laura Bush, who in the book is Alice Lindgren, who marries Charles Blackwell (aka George W. Bush).
The writing is just wonderful. It's a page-turner and thoughtful and deep and rich in character development. And toward the end of the book, when she deals with being "the President's wife," Ms. Sittenfeld really writes from the heart and soul and you SWEAR that she IS the president's wife. It's so personal and real. I can't convey how I felt reading this part. I really liked this woman...wanted to meet her and get to know her.

I really would love to know how much of the character is based on the truth about Mrs. Bush. If she is really like the person in the book, I have to feel bad that I judged her because of who she is married to.So much of this last section of the book deals with being famous and what people expect of you, how they treat you, what they think of you, just because you ARE famous. It's such a great account of that facet life in the political limelight, or any limelight for that matter.

When this book came out, I read about it and was fascinated by the whole idea of it. I am so glad that I finally got to read it. It was just great. I want to read Ms. Sittenfeld's other books now, too!

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

I have always liked Joyce Maynard's books. Baby Love and To Die For, both of which I read several years ago, are still pretty fresh in my mind as books I really enjoyed. More recently I read The Usual Rules, a young adult novel dealing with 9/11. Although the subject matter in all of these books is disturbing, they are terrific and interesting reads and approach difficult subjects with frankness, honestly and sensitivity.

Maynard's a good writer - and has an interesting story.  She dropped out of Yale to live with J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye) when he was in his 50's and she just barely 20.  She wrote about that relationship in her memoir, At Home in the World, which I have not read, but plan to at some point.  

Like her other novels I have read, Labor Day deals with disturbing subject matter - a description of "what happens" in the book sounds implausible, but in Maynard's talented hands, the story is  believeable, very touching and poignant. She really develops these characters so skillfully for the reader that you feel you know and understand them and what they do and how they react to the situations described.

This is really a coming of age story - the story of Henry, a 13 year old boy living with his agoraphobic mother in a small town in New Hampshire (where Maynard grew up, by the way). When they venture out into the world right before Labor Day to buy new school clothes for Henry, they meet and are "abducted" by an escpaped convict. He turns out to be very different from what you would expect.

This is a page-turner, for sure, but also a very touching story about love.

Highly recommended!

One more interesting thing- for me anyway - is the fact that Danielle, my son's fiance, went to school with Maynard's children!

Strangers by Anita Brookner

One of my favorite authors....

But I found this kind of slow....tedious.....

The writing is incredible. I cannot undermine the writing. But I did find the story a bit ponderous.

The female characters are interesting....I enjoyed hearing about Vicky, who the main protagonist meets on a plane to Venice, but the other female characters....

Not so sure

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

A beautifully written and very disturbing novel that takes place in India in the mid-1980's amidst terrorist violence. The novel is pre 9/11 but "feels" very much like a post 9/11 novel.
There are four major characters: Sai, the judge, the cook and his son. Sai is the granddaughter of the judge and the cook is the judge's cook. Biju, the cook's son, manages to get to America to find the "charmed life," only to find it alienating, difficult and degrading.
Injustice is a major theme of the novel and we are exposed, again and again, on how the west exploited the east and how even within India, people exploit each other in so many ways every day.
This was a powerful book; at times, it was lyrical and "light" and at other times, dark and quite disturbing. Her writing is really incredible. Not an easy read, but an enlightening tale of lives and settings that are unfamiliar to me.