A Word About Awards

THE DRIEST SEASON by Meghan Kenny   Nomination: PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2019   Date Read: January 29, 2022   In a quiet and rural Boaz, Wisconsin, fifteen year old Cielle Jacobson is searching for answers as to why her father committed suicide. The adults around her are either lying about the cause or covering up the extent of her father’s despair. Lee clearly suffered from chronic and debilitating migraines and a clear case of depression. During this time of drought and WWII, depression was not a topic commonly talked about and depression medication had yet to be invented. For me, it seemed no wonder he wanted to die.   Only days after burying him, a tornado rips through their tiny town and flattens their barn. The financial future is uncertain as their farm was still under contract from the Olsen family up the street. Their long-term neighbor and closest friends, the Mitchell’s son is heading off to war. Too much is changing in too short a time. The world refuses to sit still for one

DARK PLACES by Kate Grenville   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1995   Date Read: January 28, 2022   Dark Places follows the rise and fall of sociopath Albion Gidley Singer. From a very early age, he recognized within himself a hollowness, a vacancy, an absence of feeling that those around him came to easily. His greatest success was learning how to mimic being a human that cared and leading a life that appeared relatively normal.   He hit all the milestones a man of his time and age should – graduating from university, marrying, popping out a few kids. He assumed the helm of his father’s business right after his death, ruling with fear and an iron fist. After ruthlessly thinning the “chaff”, he achieved great success with an even leaner staff.    His marriage to Norah was shallow at best and his methods of making love leave me terrified and shocked there weren’t more broken bones. Some around him were able to see through his façade and found the face of a heartless and soulless man. Oth

THE SECRET SCRIPTURE by Sebastian Barry   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2008, Dublin Longlist 2010, LA Times Finalist 2008   Date Read: January 28, 2022   What a rich and nuanced novel from Sebastian Barry, exploring madness, religion, and family. Taking place during Ireland’s upheaval with the IRA and then into World War II, The Secret Scripture follows Roseanne, a young girl that finds her life nearly over at the age of 18 yet manages to survive until a centenarian. This novel shows how the brutal application of religion without mercy can render a life nearly meaningless.   We meet Roseanne through an accounting of her own life from a mental institution that is about to be shut down. She has been there so long, the doctor in charge is unsure whether she has any family and the circumstances of her commitment are all too vague. Through her self-accounting of her own life and Dr. Grene’s research into Roseanne’s past, the reader is able to piece together a picture of the injustice that R

PICTURES FROM AN INSTITUTION by Randall Jarrell   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: January 23, 2022   Randall Jarrell seems to have perfected the art of campus satire, however, I wish I had enjoyed it more. At fictitious Benson College, an all-female institution, visiting novelist and lecturer Gertrude Johnson arrives with her husband/lap-dog Sydney Bacon and rattles the windows of all the faculty from the president down to the secretaries.   Gertrude from the first moment she steps foot on the Benson campus is a force to be reckoned with. She has no verbal filter and literally blurts out exactly what’s on her mind, regardless of repercussions, other’s perceptions of her and injurious or not.   The unnamed narrator, an anonymous member of the English department, walks us through the semester she upends all the pretentions and self-descriptions often insidious in institutions of higher learning. For example, it is early noted that Americans have a high regard for col

THE DEAN’S DECEMBER by Saul Bellow   Award: Nobel Prize Winner 1982   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1982   Date Read: January 19, 2022   While exploring very rich content – death in families, death of the American city, death of character – Bellow embarks on this dry and often slow novel. Arthur Corde is married to Minna, an accomplished astronomer in her own right who hails from Belarus. Her mother Valeria, who is on the verge of death, causes them to travel to this Communist enclave as interlopers rather than celebrated returnees.   The hospitals are run by the government and they lord visitation over visitors like treasures to be bargained for. Corde and Minna, therefore, are only able to see Valeria twice before she passes away. Valeria was also an accomplished doctor and played a key role in sending her daughter out of Romania to achieve a brighter future.   Corde, meanwhile, has left Chicago at a very precarious time. He is Dean of Students at a university there and one of his st

THE LONG SONG by Andrea Levy   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2010, Dublin Longlist 2012, Women's Prize Longlist 2010   Date Read: January 14, 2022   The Long Song is a historical novel set in the sugar cane fields of Jamaica. Told from the perspective of July, a slave on the Amity plantation, she experiences enough trauma to last multiple lifetimes. She survives the societal upheaval that marked the ending of slavery in Jamaica and her story remarkably concludes in a satisfying ending. If anyone deserves some rest, it is Miss July. She is writing her story for her son to have as a remembrance of her.   July is born a child of rape (but what slave technically isn’t?), her mother Kitty having been raped by their white overseer. From the very beginning, July was loud and made her presence known. She was such a precocious and adorable child that her mistress, Caroline, took her at the age of 9 to be a house slave and her personal servant. Over the years, July (called Marguerite by Carol

SAY SAY SAY by Lila Savage   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 2019   Date Read: January 12, 2022   Say Say Say really touched home because I take care of a mentally disabled family member. Jill’s odd behavior (stirring a hair brush in a glass of water, playing in the sink, folding and refolding towels) is as pointless and mysterious and my family member’s odd, but different, behavior. What Savage so clearly conveys is the intimacy that occurs when a stranger comes to take care of a loved one. Wanted or not, they become like family, shouldering your burden right along beside you.   Jill, a once fresh-eyed and active social worker, now spends her days muttering incoherently, crying and amusing herself in various mildly destructive ways. A car accident, the details of which are never fully disclosed, rendered her alive but severely impaired. Her husband, Bryn, has remained by her side throughout but the toll this is taking is clear to see. Jill requires constant supervision, meaning Bryn has

THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2015, Dublin Longlist 2016   Date Read: January 11, 2022   Fiona is a Family Division court judge, overseeing some of the worst cases that England has to offer – bitter divorces, vicious custody hearings, determining the uncertain futures of virtual strangers with a meager amount of information. Yet, Fiona is known in the judicial world as being fair and level-headed, her opinions much discussed among her peers.   Fiona is going through a family upset of her own. After decades of marriage, her husband, Jack, is having a mid-life crisis of sorts and seeks Fiona’s permission to have an affair. Their sex life has come to a stand-still and Jack is trying to be as honest and respectful as a partner can who wants once again to feel passion and heat before he is no longer able to. I actually liked his approach. Of course, Fiona is hurt and livid. After all the years they have dedicated to each other this seems like a complete bet

REAL LIFE by Brandon Taylor   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, Booker Finalist 2020, Center For Fiction Longlist 2020, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2020   Date Read: January 8, 2022   Real Life gripped me from the first page to the last. It’s been a while since I felt so deeply for a character as I did for Wallace. He is so wounded but trying. Rising above, while still sinking under. Wanting love but holding back. I resonate with all of this so much, even if I am a straight, white girl and Wallace is a gay, black boy.    Wallace has risen above his inauspicious beginnings in Alabama poverty and landed in graduate school studying biology in a large, midwestern city. He is the only black person in his graduate program and he feels this fact starkly in how he is treated and side-eye looks from just about everyone. Still, Wallace is grinding, head down, catching up on the knowledge he is supposed to know but is behind on.   With such a small coterie of biology graduate stud

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER by Davis Grubb   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: January 6, 2022   “I declare, this Goddamned depression has turned up the undersides of some mighty respectable folks, Bart!”   And so begins the tale of a family besieged by the serial killer Harry Powell. Desperation and the Depression cause Ben Harper to rob a bank. Being a complete novice, Harper ends up shooting two bank employees. He is able to flee before his arrest and brings hope the fateful $10,000 and has John and Pearl, his two children, help him to hide it before he is arrested. Ben is housed with Harry Powell “The Preacher” in prison and Harry is unrelenting in trying to find out what Ben did with the money. Ben, lock-lipped, is ultimately hung.   Once Harry is released from prison, he heads to Virginia, where Ben’s widow, Willa, and his two children are. He romances Willa with his sermonizing and promises of redemption. John, however, knows what Harry is really about, being gril

THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS by Karan Mahajan   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2018, National Book Finalist 2016, NY Times Finalist 2016   Date Read: January 6, 2022   The Association of Small Bombs begins with just that – a bomb in a marketplace in Delhi. This event, while localized to one market area and therefore insignificant in the wider world of Delhi – has a profound effect on those who experienced it. The Khuranas, a Hindu family, lose two young sons, while the Ahmeds, a Muslim family, almost lose their son, Mansoor.   Mansoor’s wrists are injured in the explosion and become nearly unusable during his Computer Science studies at a university in the U.S. (Santa Clara University no less!). With his degree unfinished, Mansoor’s carpel tunnel causes him to return to India, unknowingly never to return. He is not particularly religious but throughout his life and return to India, Mansoor is exposed to the prejudice many Indians have about Muslims, a perspective that became more prono

TROUBLES by J.G. Farrell   Award: Booker Winner 1970   Date Read: January 3, 2022   While Ireland falls around their ears, the occupants of the Majestic are in a similar bind. The Majestic once lived up to its name but has become in dangerous disrepair after its new owner, Edward and children, purchased the building some years back. The description of this hotel’s magnificence – 300 rooms, ballrooms, tennis courts, swimming pools, game rooms, etc. – conjure a past of luxury and exclusivity. Not any more. Now, one is lucky to find clean sheets and not get struck by falling plaster.   This is the condition the Major finds when he checks into the Majestic to visit his fiancé, Angela, one of Edward’s daughters. The Major doesn’t recall proposing but in their exchange of letters, Angela would sign off as “Your Fiance,” so the Major assumed they were engaged. He arrives with the intent of breaking things off so he can move on to Italy, however, once he crosses the Majestic’s threshold, he is

SPINSTERS by Pagan Kennedy   Nomination: Orange Finalist 1996   Date Read: January 1, 2022   Falling in love and falling apart are very much the same thing, muses Frances. For all of her reserved nature, Frances is the only sister who has ever been in love. Doris seems to flee from it like love is going to murder her soul. Until this point in their lives, both Frances’ and Doris’ hearts have been in hibernation as they watched both of their parents slowly wither away.   The girls felt it was their duty to nurse their dad after he fell ill after their mother died/ committed suicide. Her death was never black and white. But for all the pain their family had been through with a mentally ill mother, a Conscientious Objector father who was treated horribly during WWII and nearly broken, the daughters never even questioned their implicit duty to care.   And now they find themselves in the bizarre position of having no one and nothing to answer to. They are no longer tied to doctor’s visits a

SCHINDLER’S LIST by Thomas Keneally   Awards: Booker Winner 1982, LA Times Winner 1983   Date Read: April 14, 1999   From Kirkus Reviews: “Like Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler was one of those precious few "righteous gentiles" personally responsible for the saving of Jewish lives (estimated at about 1300) during the Holocaust. But what makes Schindler's story of compelling interest to novelist Keneally--who terms this book a "nonfiction novel," an act of reconstruction and homage prompted by meeting one of the Schindlerjuden survivors in a Los Angeles store--seems to be Schindler's moral stance, a more equivocal one than that of brave, heedless Nordic-knight Wallenberg. Schindler owned and operated Nazi-sponsored factories--first one producing enamel-ware in Cracow; then a munitions plant in Brinnlitz, near Auschwitz. And the Jews whom he put on his list worked for him under S.S. guard, providing material for the Reich. Still, hardly anyone died while work

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann   Awards: Dublin Winner 2011, National Book Winner 2009 Nominations: Dayton Literary Peace Longlist 2010   Date Read: May 12, 2011   From Kirkus Reviews: “The famous 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers is a central motif in this unwieldy paean to the adopted city of Dublin-born McCann (Zoli, 2007, etc.).   Told by a succession of narrators representing diverse social strata, the novel recalls Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), except that where Bonfire was deeply cynical about Reagan-era New York, McCann’s take on the grittier, 1970s city is deadly earnest. On the day that “the tightrope walker” (never named, but obviously modeled on Philippe Petit) strolls between the Twin Towers, other New Yorkers are performing quieter acts of courage. Ciaran has come from Dublin to the Bronx to rescue his brother Corrigan, a monk whose ministry involves providing shelter and respite to an impromptu congregation of freeway u