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.

I started to read That Kind of Mother because I was intrigued that a book about motherhood was written by a man.  Rebecca Stone has it made.  She has a loving husband, an adorable young son and a caring, efficient nanny who she believes is her good friend.  When her nanny, Priscilla, dies in childbirth, Rebecca decides with the consent of her husband and Priscilla’s family to adopt the infant.  Rebecca is a poet who goes through life not thinking of consequences or other people’s lives beyond her purview.  She doesn’t think of the problems involved in raising a Black child in a white world.

I ran hot and cold with That Kind of Mother.  Some chapters were poignant and/or insightful; others were vapid and didn’t seem to serve any purpose.

Rachel Kushner, two time finalist for The National Book Award, has written a gritty, shocking and sad third novel.  Romy Hall was doing drugs and having sex when she was twelve years old.  Before she is put in prison after receiving two consecutive life sentences, she was a lap dancer at The Mars Room in San Francisco.  Through her musings and the narrations of several other characters, including her teacher in prison and the man she murdered, we learn about Romy’s life before, during and after her incarceration.  Her narrative voice, although undramatic, describes a life of hardship, danger, and poverty.  Yet Romy doesn’t want to be pitied; she just wants to tell her story.

Kushner is a fine writer, but her descriptions of life in and out of prison are not pleasant.  The Mars Room depicts the seamy side of life in the rawest way.

Tara Westover was born in rural Idaho, the youngest of seven children.  Her family was Mormon, but radically different from most practicing Mormons.  Her father was strict to the point of being dictatorial.  He did not believe in any government institutions, nor any schools, hospitals or doctors.  Her mother was a self-taught midwife who concocted oils and salves that she believed cured all diseases.  Tara, like all of her siblings, was taught by her mother to read, but that was the end of her schooling.   She knew only simple math, no history, science or literature, yet through much perseverance as well as innate intelligence, she was admitted to Brigham Young University when she was seventeen and went on to earn a Masters and PhD from Cambridge University in England.  How she went from being an isolated youngster who spent her days collecting, sorting and cutting scrap metal to a very accomplished young woman and how this affected her relationship with her family. is the plot of this remarkable memoir.