A Word About Awards

FOREIGN BODIES by Cynthia Ozick   Nomination: Women's Prize Finalist 2012   Date Read: March 30, 2021   Loosely based on The Ambassadors by Henry James, a novel I have never read, Ozick presents the Nachtigall clan. Marvin, the overbearing father, is ineffectively trying to exert his will over his adult children. His son, Julian, a ne’er-do-well wanderer has fled to Paris and shacked up with a Romanian expat named Lilly, who is ten years older than Julian. Marvin enlists his sister, Bea, to go to Paris to fetch him home but Bea sends Marvin’s sister instead. Iris is also bristling under her father’s thumb, goes to Paris under the pretense of fetching her brother but ultimately with the goal of staying.   Through various devices, including letters, flashbacks and razor-sharp observations, Ozick presents this family’s misery primarily at the hand of Marvin, who cannot let go of his need for control. None of these lives ultimately achieve happiness or personal fulfillment.   I found t

ALL IN THE FAMILY by Edwin O’Connor   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1967   Date Read: March 29, 2021   All In The Family details the coming together and the falling apart of the Kinsella family through the eyes of their cousin, Jack. Beautifully written and subtly insightful, O’Connor artfully shows that even the closest knit family can come undone.    The three privileged sons of Jimmy Kinsella, James, Charles and Phil, are largely raised in idyllic Ireland by a demanding and rich father who expects great things from his progeny. After tragically losing his mother and brother to a freak drowning (or was it?), Jack spends the summer with his cousins in Ireland and forms a lifelong bond that carries into adulthood.   Charles becomes the golden-boy of the family, running for mayor and then Governor, while James becomes a much-lauded priest and Phil an accomplished lawyer and eventually Charles’s advisor. Through Charles’s political maneuverings, Phil becomes disenchanted at the mere

MAY WE BE FORGIVEN by A.M. Homes   Award: Women's Prize Winner 2013 Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2014   Date Read: March 23, 2021   This dark, comedic novel has just about everything all crammed into one. From one absurdity to the next, I continually wondered if there was an actual point to all the shenanigans and characters that wandered through and Homes, I am so glad to say, pulled it off. Not only did she pull it off, but she created a new and more fulfilled family in the process.   At a family Thanksgiving, the entire Silver family is about to irreparably change. George, his wife Jane and their kids Nate and Ashley will come apart at the seems. Harold and his barely-there wife will come undone. And a precious boy, Ricardo, who is still trying to find out who he is will become orphaned. No one can see these events coming and yet no one is completely surprised.   George, the pater familias, is a violent and erratic soul, albeit who has found professional success. One fateful nigh

A CHILDREN’S BIBLE by Lydia Millet   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, James Tait Black Finalist 2020, National Book Finalist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020   Date Read: March 22, 2021   The premise of this unique take on the Bible tells of a not-so-distant future where environmental collapse is closer than we think. Twelve children are taken to a large lakeside mansion by their families, which appears as more of a hostage situation than a vacation. The parents are so distracted and aloof that the kids play a game of hiding which kids belong to which parents.   Part Lord Of The Flies, part The Road, the children ultimately end up the mature ones as they ride out a storm, deal with a hostile occupation and prepare for the collapse of civilization.    In a bizarre and clever twist on the Bible, these organized and precocious kids survive a flood, survive in an “ark” of treehouses, a birth in a barn complete with donkeys, the arrival of three magi and assist during a plague. On the fa

AMERICAN WIFE by Curtis Sittenfeld   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2010, Women's Prize Longlist 2009   Date Read: March 19, 2021   Although I knew American Wife was based on an actual first lady’s life, I had no idea who it actually was until Alice’s husband, Charlie, buys a baseball team. Then – BINGO! Of course, it’s Laura Bush. This revelation then made me review everything I had read and wonder if the likability I had experienced until then would continue toward a figure that I do not, in fact, like.   For all the juicy tidbits of sex, class and political maneuverings, Sittenfeld treats this subject matter with care and nuance. Alice is not merely a Stepford wife-type figure but a woman who wants to have an impact and maintain her own integrity in light of her husband’s bright and rising star. For the most part, Alice is able to live with integrity and stay true to the values she has held all her life, even when those values are in opposition to her husband’s official positions.

THE VELVET HORN by Andrew Lytle   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1958   Date Read: March 12, 2021   The Velvet Horn is not what I had thought it would be about based on the cover. I had assumed it would be an idyllic tome about nature and how nature makes humanity whole, but I would have been completely wrong. This work is indeed about man’s search for wholeness through all devices available to mankind – marriage, incest, statutory rape, lying, you name it.   Mankind’s desire to merge with what we feel in our bones completes us, apparently, knows no shame. While I in no way condone incest, my inner wisdom allows that all things are possible within the realm of human experience, including being in love with your sister. Should Duncan and Julia act upon it? No. Is their love for each other any less real than other love? No. Is it gross? Definitely.   The reigning voice of wisdom through these pages is Jack Cropleigh, the only character not striving to complete himself but seems to be

LOVE by Toni Morrison   Award: Nobel Prize Winner 2004 Nomination: Women's Prize Longlist 2004   Date Read: March 3, 2021   While not one of her more lauded novels, Morrison’s Love tells the story of three generations of black women living, loving and surviving in a small coastal town. Gossamer tales of women clawing and fighting over the same man’s attention and affection weave together to form a picture of love that is not necessarily positive. Is there love? Yes. Is it beautiful? No.   Morrison’s work here has been compared to Faulkner and I couldn’t agree more. This was a challenging read, not only in subject, but in structure and content. These stories unfold in a disjointed and non-consecutive vignettes that left me uncomfortable, yet rapt with attention.   Bill Cosey is an aloof hotel owner and why all these women are fighting over his favor is beyond me. The women surrounding him reveal their tales of abuse, manipulation and violence at his and one another’s hands. Once aga