A Word About Awards

DURING THE REIGN OF THE QUEEN OF PERSIA by Joan Chase   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 1984   Nominations: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1983, NY Times Finalist 1983   Date Read: February 25, 2023   Told from the perspective of the daughters of a large, multi-generational family, these daughters convey the history of the Krauss family, led by Gram, the matriarch. Gram is nicknamed the Queen of Persia and she reigns over the house and farm, having inherited a great deal of money from her brother. She never fails to lord her ownership over Grandad, a man she had always been ill-matched with.   Gram is the mother of five daughters and her house has 14 bedrooms, which allows the daughters and their kids to move in and out with ease, only needing to sidestep the glare of their mother’s watchful eyes. Gram is prickly, sour and finally at the stage of life where she can put her own desires first, going out every night to bingo or the movies or bizarres – whatever tickles her fancy.   She

THE MAID by Nita Prose   Award: Goodreads Winner 2022   Date Read: February 23, 2023   The Maid is a detective novel with an unlikely heroine. Molly is a maid at a hotel, which is her entire life’s ambition. She loves the opulence, the uniform, the routine and returning rooms to a state of perfection. She is, most likely, somewhere on the spectrum. Molly has a hard time reading facial expressions and with personal interaction. But she has carved out a life for herself that she enjoys and provides her purpose.   She was raised for her Gran, Flora, since Molly’s mother had died of an overdose. Her Gran gave her the tools to figure out how to live and how to navigate the world. She did not help, however, with figuring out whom to trust. Molly’s once and only boyfriend, Wilbur, ended up stealing all their savings and running off with it. While her Gran was dying, she could never fess up and tell Gran what had happened.   Molly lives off her wages and her tips. The richer the client, typica

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF by Beryl Bainbridge   Nominations: Booker Finalist 1996, LA Times Finalist 1996, Women’s Prize Longlist 1997   Date Read: February 19, 2023   Morgan is a 22-year old orphan, the nephew of the infamous J.P. Morgan. Having been raised by his aunt and cousin. Morgan sails on the Titanic, a ship he is intimately familiar with as he served as an apprentice draftsman, designing the washrooms. Being young, wealthy and vibrant, the Titanic is a playground for the senses.   Morgan spends his time on the ship with his mates, enjoying the gym, exploring where he shouldn’t, swimming laps, drinking (sometimes excessively), and becoming infatuated with a female passenger named Wallis. While Morgan pines for Wallis, he ponders how to make his feelings known to her without embarrassing himself or giving himself away to his mates for merciless teasing.   He devises a letter and slips it under Wallis’ door. After he bumps into her in a corridor and she brutally rebuffs him, he real

CARRIE SOTO IS BACK by Taylor Jenkins Reid   Award: Goodreads Winner 2022 Nominations: BookTube Longlist 2023   Date Read: February 18, 2023   Carrie Soto, once the world record holder of the most Grand Slams won in women’s tennis, cannot stand that a new crop of players are overriding her record. Already in retirement, she vows to train and reclaim the dominant title. The only problem staring her in the face but she refuses to see – no matter whether she wins or loses, someone will always come up behind her and outdo her record.    The other challenge Carrie faces is that she is a bitch. She is demanding, ungrateful and the tennis world rues her because she is the least friendly player. Yet, I still found myself cheering her on more due to Reid’s talents than the likeability of the character she has created. Although she softens somewhat towards the end, I overall found her loathsome and wish everyone in her life would turn their backs on her.   Carrie has several things against her b

THE EASTER PARADE by Richard Yates   Nominations: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1976, NY Times Finalist 1976   Date Read: February 17, 2023   Two bright, young sisters, Sarah and Emily Grimes, are set for a life of misery. How do we know? The very first line of The Easter Parade states, “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life." Although Yates gives up the ghost even before getting going, I was still compelled to continue to figure out how these bright and hopeful young women would end up so miserable.     Although I haven’t read Yates previously, his resounding themes of loneliness and the middle class struggle for fulfillment are indeed witnessed in the Grimes’ struggle for happiness and lives of meaning.    Sarah takes a conventional path in her life, marrying early and punching out three boys in quick succession. Yates doesn’t linger on the joys of life – the initial ecstasy of young love, the highs and lows of motherhood, the connections one finds in rel

A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by Jose Eduardo Agualusa   Award: Dublin Winner 2017   Nomination: Booker Finalist 2016   Date Read: February 15, 2023   Ludo, a reclusive woman, lives with her sister and brother-in-law in Angola, a long way from their native Brazil. She rarely leaves their two-story apartment. When the country embarks on a chaotic political revolution and her sister and brother-in-law go missing, she is terrified of the thugs that arrive on her doorstep in search of non-existent diamonds, she vows to never be threatened like that again.   She builds a wall with some remaining building materials and seals herself off from the world and the political upheaval outside her door. For the next 30 years, her only contact with people are a child who steals from her but then saves her life. She reads, busies herself with the tasks of daily living and as the food diminishes, she eats fruit and vegetables from her garden, the occasionally caught pigeon and eggs from two chickens she

CARIBOU ISLAND by David Vann   Nominations: Center For Fiction Finalist 2011, Dublin Longlist 2013   Date Read: February 12, 2023   Irene and Gary’s marriage is in shambles. They have slowly grown apart over the last several decades and with their children now grown, they grate against each other like metal on concrete. Making things worse is that they don’t have the kind of relationship where they can be real with each other, admit their failings and figure out if they should split or work on it. The entire situation is exhausting.   Their children, Rhoda and Mark, aren’t doing much better for themselves. Rhoda is in a loveless relationship, living with her dentist boyfriend Jim and waiting for his proposal. What she doesn’t realize is that Jim has discovered he has a wandering eye and doesn’t care who he hurts in the process. He actively plots how he can meet new women and how to keep his affairs a secret from Rhoda. To make himself more desirable, he buys gym equipment and works out

TRUMPET by Jackie Kay   Nominations: Dublin Finalist 2000, Women’s Prize Longlist 1999   Date Read: February 10, 2023    Millie is a beautiful girl who meets the love of her life in a jazz club – the musician, Joss Moody. When we meet Millie, Joss has just died and she is at sea. Their courtship was strange in that Joss didn’t make a move on Millie until several months after they started dating. When they slowly became intimate, she realized Joss had taken his time because he was trans. By this point Millie was so in love with him that it didn’t faze her at all.   Millie’s family rejected Joss, not because he was trans since no one ever had a clue, but because he was black. Because they were unable to have children of their own, they adopted Coleman, a black kid from their native Scotland. When Coleman was about 6, the family moved to London. Around this time, Joss began gaining in popularity for his trumpet playing and ultimately became famous. Would this have happened had Joss been a

BEING DEAD by Jim Crace   Award: National Book Critics Circle Winner 2000   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2001, NY Times Finalist 2000   Date Read: February 8, 2023   Being Dead is about exactly that – being dead. Joseph and Celice have been a couple since college and revisit the dunes where they first consummated their relationship. Both are professors and have their PhDs in Zoology. They have one daughter – Syl – who is somewhat estranged from them. Overall, they live a relatively normal life.   On the same day they had consummated their relationship, they were interrupted by their fellow PhD candidates to verify their whereabouts. Joseph and Celice had sneaked off early to check the tide and while they were frolicking, the house had caught fire and killed Freya, a friend and fellow student. Celice has never been able to reconcile the guilt she holds for Freya’s death (was it her fault?) and the joy she experienced at her new relationship.   For nostalgia, Joseph wakes up on this pres

THE SWIMMERS by Julie Otsuka   Award: Carnegie Winner 2023   Date Read: February 6, 2023   Once again, as I was reading the first couple of pages, I found myself thinking how much the voice here sounds so much like The Buddha In The Attic. And, you know, derp. Of course, they are the same author. I need to pay more attention to that when I pick up a book. As with The Buddha, I loved this novel almost as much.    Similarly to her previous novel, The Swimmers focuses on the collective “we” and what drives each of them to seek out time at an underground pool. The observations about society, taking time for oneself and the ultimate demise of their favorite exercise and pastime seem so intimate without ever focusing on one single individual. As the obsession with swimming laps seems to finally sink in, the swimmers observe a crack in the bottom of the pool that occupies their minds while they swim. Everyone seems to understand this is the beginning of the end.   The second half of the novel

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett   Award: Goodreads Winner 2020   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, BookTube Finalist 2021, Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Longlist 2021, National Book Longlist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020, Women’s Prize Finalist 2021   Date Read: February 3, 2023   Two Black twins with aspirations for a bigger life decide to leave the small town of Mallard for the big city of New Orleans. Although this had been Desiree’s dream forever, once they had actually left home, Stella was the one who was determined to make it. The harsh realities of city life began to wear down Desiree’s dream, but Stella adopted her sisters’ dream and ran with it.   Keeping in mind this story began in the 1950s, the difference between black and white lives were still profoundly different. Not much has changed now except Americans love to say racism is dead while it still happens all around us. I would think it was almost easier back then because you knew what it was you were dealing wi

BLACK DOGS by Ian McEwan   Nomination: Booker Finalist 1992   Date Read: February 1, 2023   The gist of this novella is that a honeymoon couple travels through rural France and when they encounter residues of Nazi sentiment, question their own beliefs about Communism they held during WWII. Essentially, this novel is about ideas as they apply to individuals and society. While not so much occurs plot-wise, the philosophical arc is what ultimately drives this novel.   Underlying all of the events and ideas McEwan presents here is the tacit belief that cruelty resides in all humankind and it is up to the individual to overcome it. No society or political ideology will rid the world of cruelty unless each individual finds it within themselves to overcome this latent human tendency. This cruelty is what propelled the Nazi machine, the tragic fallout of the war, the failed Communist experiment and continues trickles down into personal relationships.   I would have to agree with Michiko Kakuta