The Great Believers is a two part story that alternates between Chicago in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and Paris in 2015.  The Chicago part focuses on Yale Tishman, a gay young man-his job, his friends and how he and his community were affected by the AIDS epidemic.  The main character in the Paris sections is Fiona Marcus.  Her brother was one of the first of Yale’s friends to die from AIDS, and because of this, she becomes a champion for gay equality.  She is in Paris searching for her daughter and granddaughter.

It took me about fifty pages to get into The Great Believers.  There are a lot of male characters, and, in the beginning, I kept mixing them up.  However, once I was clear about who was who, I couldn’t stop reading.  Stay with it; it’s well worth it.  The Great Believers artistically depicts important issues and memorable characters.

A sparse, beautifully written novel about a different kind of love triangle.  Ellis, Michael and Annie form a threesome.  Ellis and Annie are married, Michael is gay and loves Annie platonically and Michael erotically.  Ellis loves Annie and Michael while Annie understands what is going on and approves wholeheartedly.  The action takes place in Oxford, England, Provence and Venice with an appreciation of Van Gogh thrown into the mix. Most of Tin Man takes place in the 1980’s and 90’s when the AIDS virus was at its peak.

This is a terrific little book that lovingly yet tragically describes different types of love from mother love to true friendship.

The High Season was listed on a few articles about good summer reads.  It’s a quick, engaging read with good guys, bad guys and a lovely setting on the coast of Long Island.

Ruthie Beamish is curator of a small history museum in Orient, New York.  She lives with her husband(they’ve been contemplating a divorce for three years) and their fifteen year old daughter.  Every summer they rent out their home and move to a smaller, less attractive place in order to be able to afford the life they live in Orient.  However, this summer, Ruthie and her daughter have been invited to stay at the home of a wealthy board member of the museum while her family is in Europe.  The High Season follows Ruthie and her friends, family and enemies throughout the summer.

For me the perfect summer read-light, but not silly.

 

 

 

 

 

Mirza’s debut novel is slow paced with wonderful prose and a captivating story.  It is about a devout Muslim family originally from India who settle in California.  The father, Rafiq, travels often for business, loves his wife and three children but has high expectations for all of them.  The mother, Layla, devotes herself to her family and never regrets it.  The two daughters are obedient and hard working.  The youngest member, a son, Amar, is the challenge.  He does not do well in school,  leaves the mosque when it is time to pray and is always arguing with his father.

The novel begins at the eldest sister’s wedding, but soon after jumps to Amar’s difficulty in first grade.  At first it is a bit disconcerting that the years change so quickly, but soon the reader learns to go with the flow.  Fatima Farheen Mirza is an excellent writer who has given us five unforgettable characters.

Gabriel is a ten year old boy living in Burundi in 1992.  He has a happy life-a French father, a Rwandan mother, a seven year old sister, a warm, loving extended family, and four close friends who do everything together.  However, when the genocide in Rwanda spills over into Gaby’s country, his happy childhood becomes a nightmare.  Neighbors, relatives and friends are murdered for no reason and and the perpetrators face no consequences.

Faye, who experienced much of what his fictitious character faced,  does a wonderful job of quickly taking Gaby from a somewhat idyllic life to one of unadulterated horror.  Small Country is a novel I will not soon forget.

The author of The English Patient has written a very fine novel about a secret side of London after World War II.  Warlight begins in 1945. Fourteen year old Nathaniel and his sixteen year old sister, Rachel, learn that their parents are leaving for Singapore for an indefinite amount of time.  They will be taken care of by a man they have never met who they nickname The Moth.  The Moth brings many intriguing, mysterious visitors into their home.  These characters, the siblings’ parents’ whereabouts and the secret war being carried out after World War II, are part of what makes Ondaatje’s novel so fascinating.

When I read The English Patient, I felt the prose was fog-like, hard to penetrate.  Warlight has some foggy patches, but it is easier to decipher than The English Patient.

This debut novel has been getting a lot of hype for its subject matter and the interesting way that it is written.  All of the characters are Native Americans living in Oakland, California.  All the chapters are short(2-8 pages) and center around one of about a dozen of these characters.  The focal point is a pow wow that will take place in the Oakland Coliseum, and all of these twelve individuals will be participating in the pow wow in one way or another.  Although the plot line is fairly predictable, the conclusion is shocking.

There There is a great work of prose.  Orange’s writing is simple, yet emotionally charged.  In just a few pages he gets his reader into the heart and mind of each of these Native Americans.  I would suggest reading this novel quickly.  When I didn’t pick it up for several days, I had to go back and reread about some of the main characters.

If you are a David Sedaris fan-and I am-you must read his newest book of essays.  The focal point is his home on Emerald Isle, North Carolina that he named The Sea Section.  The past few Thanksgivings Sedaris, his partner, his father, and his three sisters as well as his brother, his brother’s wife and their daughter celebrate there.  From something one of these individuals says or does, he segues into such topics as Fitbits, a fox named Carol, and what it must be like to be on an airplane with stomach flu.  Even the family tragedies that he describes are interspersed with humorous anecdotes about himself and the human condition.  Many paragraphs in Calypso are laugh out loud funny! I promise.

 

 

Kevin Powers,  winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, has written a powerful novel spanning over 100 years in rural Virginia.  A Shout in the Ruins is actually two stories with the character George Seldom holding them both together.  It is the 1950’s and George, a light-skinned Black man over ninety years old, is ready to die, but first he wants to return to the town he came to when he was three years old.  The second story is about George’s life before he is three year old when slavery was the way of life in Virginia.

Going back and forth in time is a bit confusing until the reader can grasp who all the main characters are.  However, that is its only flaw.  For the most part, A Shout in the Ruins is an intense, riveting, sometimes violent depiction of The Civil War and its repercussions almost a century later.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Lawrence Wright has lived in Texas almost his entire life.  While he feels drawn to Texas, there are political, cultural and historical events which make him less than proud of The Lone Star State.  When I think of Texas, images of gun-toting conservatives come to mind; however, it is also the state that gave us Whole Foods and Janis Joplin.  Wright introduces his readers to politicians, writers, musicians and oil barons .  From this composite picture, Texas is seen with all of its beauty and blemishes.

Lawrence Wright has a straight-forward, easy to read style with some self-effacing humor thrown in.  Does he make a good case for his home state?  After reading God Save Texas, I still would never want to live there.