A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I just finished the Neapolitan Novels and loved them, but I must say......A Gentleman in Moscow is the BEST book I have read in a really long time.  Now, it doesn't hurt that it's about Russia and that Russia plays a HUGE part in the story - at least for me, but beyond that the story, the writing, the ambiance, the wit, the suspense...it's got it all. I couldn't stop reading and I didn't' want it to end.

The story starts with Count Rostov's trial, where he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel (where he happens to reside anyway!), but his quarters are now much more sparse and hidden up in the belfry. That doesn't stop this man from assimilating to the new life and making the most of it.  

His friendships with various hotel staff and his relationship with Nina, a young girl he meets at the beginning, are told with wit and intelligence.  He maintains a friendship with a writer he met in his university days, who has since become a dissident writer.  Count Rostov dines each evening with good wine and excellent food, despite the shortages and lace of good ingredients.  The novel presents such a great image of what life was like in the early days of the Soviet rule and how over time there is an easing of the ways of Marxism and Socialism.  

On the New York Times Book Podcast I heard this referred to as a Russian spy novel. That could not be further from the truth in my eyes.  Yes, at the end there is some intrigue and covert goings-on, but they have little to do with politics and more to do with the Count getting his way!

READ THIS BOOK!

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrente

Wow, I finished the four books. AMAZING. I do really want to go back and read the first one again.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

This is the third novel in the Neopolitan Diaries and I loved it....for the most part. There were sections that were a bit slow for me, but overall, you get a great sense of how Lina and Lenu evolve over time and become themselves.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

I have Ferrante Fever!  Just finished Book #2 and now MUST read Book #3. I think I liked the second book more than the first, but it also made me want to go back and re-read My Brilliant Friend. I had no idea on how dependent the books are on each other. Usually in a series, the author doesn't require the reader to know much about the prior books and will fill in the details of the story. Not true here!
In the first book I got so many of the characters, other than Lila and Lenu mixed up. That continued for a point in in this book, but it started becoming more and more clear who the "important" characters are and how they are all interconnected and interrelated.

This paragraph from the New York Times defines the special realationship of these two characters very well:

The novel begins with Elena throwing Lila’s notebooks into the Arno after Lila has entrusted her lifetime of writing to her best friend. About to publish a novel and graduate from Pisa’s prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, 22-year-old Elena can’t bear to read of Lila’s love affair with Nino Sarratore, the young man she believes Lila stole from her. But the act of sabotage has deeper, darker roots. Elena has always feared that Lila, although poorly educated and stuck in Naples, is more brilliant than she, that Lila is the real writer. These two love each other ferociously, but each burns with a desire to outdo the other, sometimes killing what is best in her soul mate.

"Eligible" by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld has updated "Pride and Prejudice" into an entirely enjoyable and humorous escape novel that I LOVED reading! She brings in timely topics such as health care, transgender and interracial relationships, CrossFit,  artificial insemination,  and reality TV.  The characters are sometimes comic-book like, but weren't Jane Austen's as well?
I really like this author and was so excited when the book came out. I wasted no time in requesting it from the Library and couldn't wait to get it.
I was inclined to re-read Pride and Prejudice right after but now that I finished Sittenfeld's book, I don't want to spoil the experience by diving into the original right away.
If you like Jane Austen, read this book. If you like Curtis Sittenfeld, read this book! And if you haven't read Pride and Prejudice, I am not sure you should read it!

The Girls by Emma Cline

This was an enjoyable, but difficult book. It's a fictional retelling of what it was like to be one of Charles Manson's girls during the Summer of Love. Some of the characters are drawn upon real people and I am assuming, Evie, the main character, is too. Here is a piece of the review in the New Yorker:

Evie Boyd, an only child whose upper-middle-class parents have recently divorced, wants to be older than her fourteen years, and is drawn to the free-spirited, rebellious young women she sees one day in a Petaluma park. They are looking for food to take back to the ranch where they live. The novel charts Evie’s accelerated sentimental education, as she is inducted into the imprisoning liberties of free love, drugs, and eventual violence, all of it under the sway of the cult’s magus, Russell Hadrick. In another way, though, Cline’s novel is itself a complicated mixture of freshness and worldly sophistication. Finely intelligent, often superbly written, with flashingly brilliant sentences, “The Girls” is also a symptomatic product not of the sixties but of our own age: a nicely paced literary-commercial début whose brilliant style, in the end, seems to restrict its reach and depth.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

This was a great page-turner that I read in about 3 days.  It would have been faster if it weren't for work!
The NYTimes summarizes it well: 

“Before the Fall” is a complex, compulsively readable thrill ride of a novel. On the other, it is an exploration of the human condition, a meditation on the vagaries of human nature, the dark side of celebrity, the nature of art, the power of hope and the danger of an unchecked media.

I was disappointed in certain aspects of the plot/story, but it didn't stop me from poring through this at a fast pace!