A Word About Awards

THE HOLY SINNER by Thomas Mann   Award: Nobel Prize Winner 1952 Nomination: National Book Finalist 1952   Date Read: July 29, 2021   After adjusting to the language of this work, I was completely enraptured. The Holy Sinner reads more like a fairy tale – well, a fairy tale with multiple hits of incest. Mann re-creates the Middle Ages well with knights, duels, mistaken identity, redemption and yes, profound love, of sorts.   A prince and princess, with eyes only for each other, do the unthinkable and give birth to a son. Knowing that the son’s life is precarious and inexplicable, Gregorius is sent off in a tiny boat with money, silks and a tablet that describes his origins, a relic to haunt him all of his days. He is subsequently found by a an Abbott on an island and raised within the church. Gregorius’ birth is kept from him until he accidentally discovers the truth when he is around 17.   Knowing he is born of sin, he departs the comforts of the monastery to discover the truth about h

1959 by Thulani Davis   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1992   Date Read: July 26, 2021   “You know our problem?” asked Murfree. “We always expect a moral response to an immoral situation.” In some way, 1959 can be summed up by this quote. 1959 was a time of racial unrest, the black community still denied basic civil rights and the Civil Rights Amendment not even on the horizon. Still, not much has changed.   Willie Tarrant is 12 and growing up witnessing the vast changes around her. Bright and an excellent student, she is being considered as one of the guinea pigs to begin desegregating the schools. I cannot imagine being one of six students to integrate a school at such a young age. The hostility, prejudice, bullying and potential violence she would have faced is unimaginable.   As moderately sheltered as Willie is by her college-educated father, she begins to see the changes happening in her community of Turner, Virginia. The first sit-ins begin at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, a pea

ATTICUS by Ron Hansen   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 1998, National Book Finalist 1996, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 1997   Date Read: July 25, 2021   Atticus is essentially the story of a father’s boundless ability to forgive his wayward son. It’s a modern-day rework of the biblical Prodigal Son and just as heart-warming. While some see emotional manipulation, I see an ideal to strive for – that of never reaching a limit to how much we can love our children.   Atticus is the father of two sons, Frank and Scott. While Frank moves effortlessly through life and hits all the milestones one would expect, Scott is a completely different animal. Scott is an artist with an artist’s approach to the world. While on the one hand he experiences and explores beauty, on the other he fights the demons in his head. His mental illness is treated through a hospital stay and medication but Scott is not always consistent with his medication.   Atticus is a good father, loving both his sons and doing his best by

ACTRESS by Anne Enright   Nomination: Women's Longlist 2020   Date Read: July 19, 2021   While Actress does focus on a famous personality and her years on the stage, this is ultimately a novel about a daughter coming to terms with her famous mother and their loving, but often fraught relationship. Norah is the only daughter of Katherine O’Dell, a personality that is part phantom, part blood and bone and Norah sifts through her memories trying to separate fact from fiction.   Katherine’s entire persona is crafted for her public life – her name, her nationality, her striving – all concocted for the benefit of her career. The product of theater parents, her life as an actress is almost inevitable. After an interview in which an author is seeking details for a biography she is writing about the famous Katherine O’Dell, Norah’s partner encourages her to write it herself.   Norah retraces Katherine’s life, from her early years in England to her move to Dublin. She looks at the content he

THE ELEMENT OF WATER by Stevie Davies   Nominations: Booker Longlist 2001, Women's Prize Longlist 2002   Date Read: July 14, 2021   I have read so many novels that explore the misery of WWII, novels that explore the lead-up to the war and the devastation of turning your loved ones over to an uncertain future. But how does a country and its people recover from a war that laid bare all the atrocity that humanity is capable of. No one is immune and everyone is suspect.   The Element Of Water was an incredible look into the blame and suspicion that follow the German people, everyone giving the side-eye to see who has blood on their hands, who still holds anti-Semitic beliefs and who might still harbor Nazi sympathy. Add in the English Allied Forces still occupying Germany and the resentment that comes with it and you have a tumultuous recovery from the unimaginable.   Davies takes us to 13 years after the Germans have surrendered to a small English school in Germany. This school is for

SPARTINA by John Casey   Award: National Book Winner 1989   Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1989   Date Read: July 11, 2021   Dick Pierce is a fisherman. Before being a husband, father or long-standing member of his community, he is first and foremost a fisherman. Not able to hold down a job working for someone else, Dick knows his long-term financial survival depends on completing his own boat which lies half-finished in his backyard. He simply lacks the funds to finish it.   As hard as money is to come by for Dick, his corner of Rhode Island is flush with it as new money keeps washing in with every tide. A resort is being built on a point of land that was once owned by Dick’s family and a locally iconic building, the Wedding Cake, also once owned by Dick’s family, has also fallen into the hands of new money. These developments highlight the class resentment Dick carries deep. He still bristles at having to sell all that land to pay his dying father’s medical bills.

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides   Award: Pulitzer Winner 2003   Nominations: Dublin Finalist 2004, James Tait Black Finalist 2003, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2002, NY Times Finalist 2002, Oprah Book Club 2007   Dates Read: April 8, 2006 & July 10, 2021   So beautiful I read it twice, Middlesex delves into the debate about sexual identity, gender identity, and what makes us men and women. Is it genetic? Cultural? Biological? I think the answer is all of the above. This is a debate that is ongoing in the U.S. as some political factions seek to forever identify humans by the gender on their birth certificates while others are embracing they/them pronouns and can comprehend how some humans can be non-binary. I am in the latter camp.    On an aside, I am mystified why some cannot understand that not everyone fits into neatly defined, black and white categories. In the beautiful diversity and vastness of human experience, of course there will be those who are too unique to fit

ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2019, Goodreads Finalist 2017, Women's Prize Longlist 2018   Date Read: July 2, 2021   Upon diving into this unexpected novel, I began thinking that Eleanor was most likely on the spectrum. And weird? Most definitely. As the story unfolds, not only do I respect her way of understanding the world and herself but I am in awe of her ability to function at such a high level as she does. She has managed to create and hold together a life better than most normal people can.   The way her personality has developed allows her a freedom others of us just don’t have. For example, how many women wished they could say: “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.” Brilliant!   As with most things in life, her carefully constructed life begins to unravel with a