A Word About Awards

O MY AMERICA by Johanna Kaplan   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1981   Date Read: February 26, 2022   In the beginning, getting Ezra Slavin’s family tree understood was a feat unto itself. He was not only a man prolific in ideas but a man prolific in wives, affairs and many children and subsequent grandchildren. When Ez dies suddenly at 64 of a heart attack, he leaves behind a coterie of uncertain relations and many people uncertain of how to feel about their relationship with him.   Ez was famous for his ideas, youth leadership, rebelliousness and marvel at the modern world around him. He was a writer, public speaker and professor. He was surly and often unjustifiably cantankerous. Merry, one of his daughters, seems to be the only child who could actually communicate in any real way with him, sparring with him idea for idea. And for this, I suspect Ez had a certain respect for Merry, although he wasn’t the type to ever display overt emotion.   In an attempt to understand Ex’s fami

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM by Yaa Gyasi   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Longlist 2022, Orange Finalist 2021, PEN/Faulkner Longlist 2021   Date Read: February 22, 2022   Gifty’s family is from Ghana but all she’s ever known is Alabama. Much like her name, Gifty has many gifts that help her survive a chaotic upbringing, full of loss and a reserved love when she longed for open affection. We are able to see Gifty as the vulnerable child she was, growing up in a racist south, and the woman she has become – an intelligent, searching scientist, looking for answers where there are likely to be none.   Gifty’s first loss is that of her father, the Chin Chin Man, who is unable to take the otherness of his black skin in Alabama and retreats back to Ghana with promises to return. Of course, his presence never materializes and he starts another family in Ghana, leaving Gifty, her mother and her brother, Nana, to fend for themselves. What was a meager two-income family dwindles down to one

THE VIEW FROM POMPEY’S HEAD by Hamilton Basso   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: February 19, 2022   Basso has created a world in Pompey’s Head, a fictional southern town, where he explores the uniqueness of southern values and the “Shintoism” of the South, a somewhat flawed but compelling analogy. Anson, having escaped Pompey’s Head some 15 years prior, arguing heartbreak and humiliation, is forced to return to resolve a rather complicated client matter. With his long absence, he is able to see the social mores, taxing relationships and social climbing with fresh eyes.   Anson has created a comfortable life for himself in New York. He has is an up-and-coming young attorney, has a wife Meg and the requisite two children. He often counts himself lucky to have escaped the insularity of Pompey’s Head when he did. So many of his old friends were not as lucky.   One uneventful day, Anson is summoned to a partner’s conference where he is made aware that one of the authors

COMFORT WOMAN by Nora Okja Keller   Nomination: Women's Prize Longlist 1999   Date Read: February 12, 2022   Perhaps now, more so than in the 90’s, it has become common knowledge of the Comfort Women who were supplied to the Japanese who occupied Korea. With brutal tenderness, Keller brings to vivid reckoning what those women endured – the fear, the suffering, the complete loss of humanity, even the loss of their names and speech.   Akiko, a typical Korean young girl, is one of the women who is forced into these recreation camps, having been left exposed and somewhat dispossessed after her mother’s death. At the impossible age of 12, her virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder and then she was “open for business.” Pregnancy was a mere inconvenience that was quickly ripped out of any woman.  A woman’s viability to continue being useful was determined by a quick fuck from the attending doctor. Those who were “all used up” were left stranded in the woods to die or shot.   Aki

MOON TIGER by Penelope Lively   Award: Booker Winner 1987   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1988   Date Read: February 12, 2022   Claudia Hampton is dying. And in one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a while, Lively explores the life she lived, the love she gave and the shortcomings of her existence. Treating her with a tenderness and mercy that we all hope will someday apply to us, Lively gives breath to a flawed creature that simply did her best in the circumstances she found herself in.   “We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes – our language is the language of everything we have not read.”   Claudia and Gordon, her brother, are rivals from the very beginning. Always trying to outdo one another, they also have a p

REINHARDT’S GARDEN by Mark Haber   Nomination: PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2020   Date Read: February 10, 2022   Reinhardt’s Garden began dubiously, with me thinking this was a pseudo-intellectual novel exploring the intricacies and nuances of melancholy. I was immediately turned off. But as I kept reading, I realized how hilarious this novel was with a tongue-in-cheek attitude about a pursuit to locate his hero Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who is rumored to be hiding out in the jungles of Uruguay. Of course, this quest is more about the journey than the actual destination.   Jacov Reinhardt, fortified with an endless fortune from Reinhardt Tobacco money and copious quantities of cocaine, has claimed a treatise on melancholy as his life’s work. In tow on this quest is Jacov’s adoring protégé, whose name we never learn. This protégé transcribes all of Jacov’s cocaine-addled admissions, opinions and acts in a serious and non-judgmental way, regardless of how bizarre.    Jacov is a fantastic l

SWEET THURSDAY by John Steinbeck   Award: Nobel Prize 1955   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1955   Date Read: February 8, 2022   Doc has returned to Cannery Row from the war but everyone in Cannery Row agrees that he’s just not his old self. Most of his old friends think he needs a wife and they devise ways of finding him one. With Suzy being a newcomer to Cannery Row, she becomes the one and only candidate.   As far as Doc’s work is concerned, he’s absolutely stuck. He realizes that to write the kind of paper that could be presented at the Academy of Sciences, he needs a $400 microscope, an unobtainable fortune at that time. The members of the flop house, however, get together to raffle off their building, fixing the raffle so that Doc wins. They know that Doc is too involved in his research to worry about collecting rent and paying property taxes on the building and the money they raise will all be put towards the microscope.   Fauna, who does everyone’s horoscopes on the row, be

THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS by Robert Lewis Taylor   Award: Pulitzer Winner 1959   Date Read: February 6, 2022   The Travels Of Jaimie McPheeters is a fabulous adventure story of the McPheeter father and son making their way west to join the California Gold Rush. The father, Sardius McPheeters, is a well-intentioned doctor, but a dreamer, an adventurer and a ne’er-do-well in the best sense. Jaimie is allowed to accompany his father on his journey at the age of 13 and as a curious and fearless teenager, finds himself in many precarious situations that would cow any adult.   In a nutshell: Jaimie falls overboard on a ferry but manages to hang onto a gold pouch of a man who had died on the ferry. He stumbles onto a farmhouse where the occupants plot to sell him as an indentured servant. He is then found by a terrifying trio of highwaymen, with a kidnapped girl in tow. When commenting on Jennie’s sour mood, one of the men reply, “She’s likely got something in the oven. They mostly do

BLACK WATER RISING by Attica Locke   Nomination: Women's Prize Finalist 2010   Date Read: February 1, 2022   Jay Porter is a black attorney that didn’t come by his current life easily. Part of the Civil Rights movement in college, he has seen how ugly being on the opposing side can be, particularly in the South. He was falsely accused of killing a federal agent and, during his trial, spent several months in jail but was narrowly acquitted. He knows how high the stakes can be. Now, armed with his law degree, barely any money in the bank, a pregnant wife by his side, and his precarious solo practice drying up, his entire future is back on the line.   In an attempt to surprise his wife on her birthday, he arranges a candlelit dinner for two aboard a private boat on the bayou. Of course, “private boat” conjures images of luxury but Jay is utterly disappointed by the shabbiness when they arrive. Once they are out on the water, they hear gun shots and a woman’s screams beyond in the dark