🌟 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.