A Word About Awards

A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO GRACEFUL LIVING by Michael Dahlie   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 2009   Date Read: October 29, 2023   Arthur is a laissez-faire kind of guy. He goes with the flow and has life happen to him instead of making life happen. Most recently, his import/export business has imploded and his wife, Rebecca, has left him. Arthur doesn’t know which way is up anymore.   Keeping him grounded are his sons, Patrick and David, and his fly-fishing fraternity that is exclusive, member’s only and a legacy from Arthur’s father. Some day he will pass his membership on to his sons, just as he had hoped to pass along the family business. Yet, being the disaster that he is, Arthur manages to lose even his membership.   Arthur has stuck his big toe into the dating pool and managed to meet Rixa, a woman who convinces him that she absolutely must tour Maidenhead Grange, the name for the fly-fishing camp in the Catskills. Against his better judgement, Arthur agrees, knowing that outsiders are

CHAIN GANG ALL STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2024, Carnegie Longlist 2024, Center For Fiction Longlist 2023, Dublin longlist 2024, National Book Finalist 2023, NY Times Finalist 2023   Date Read: October 27, 2023   As much as I don’t like the dystopian future genre, this book might be favorite book of 2023. The dystopian future isn’t that far in the future and it portrays something I could actually believe might happen – turning convicts into gladiators who kill each other. A chain gang is like a team and links in the chain are players.    So richly imagined and full of awful facts about the atrocity that is mass incarceration in America, Adjei-Brenyah has created a work that is so unique, so fresh and so very necessary. We can all agree that murder and rape are atrocious. And of course there are people who need a time out or a permanent time out but does that mean society should stoop so low as to torture these individuals every day for the rest

PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN by Jennifer Clement   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2016, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2015   Date Read: October 25, 2023   The Mexican drug wars have spurred the abduction of thousands of girls, all poor and all beautiful. Ladydi Garcia Martinez and her mother are doing their best to avoid becoming involved. But it seems that everyone, in one way or another, is touched by the atrocities that occur every day.   The women on the rural mountain where the Martinez family lives have done everything they can think of to prevent their daughters from being stolen. They have dug holes for their daughters to hide in. They blacken their daughter’s teeth and rub dirt on them to make them less beautiful. They try their best to hide but word somehow gets out about the beautiful ones. And Paula from Ladydi’s village is stolen. Once a woman is taken, they scar themselves on their wrists so if their bodies are ever found, people will know they were stolen.   Ladydi is a normal girl, try

THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ by Anne Enright   Award: Carnegie Winner 2012   Nomination: Women’s Award Finalist 2012   Date Read: October 22, 2023   This beautiful novel and my favorite so far by Enright, follows a love affair between Gina and Sean. When I say love affair, I mean affair. Both are married to other people – Gina to Conor and Sean to Aileen. They make a spectacular mess of their lives when the fallout of their affair comes due. But Gina believes she is truly in love with Sean.   All of this drama ensues during a financial recession of Ireland and Gina needs to get out from under two properties that just won’t sell – her mother’s house who has recently passed away and the house she purchased with Conor which she can no longer afford. Until the uncertainty becomes certain, Gina is living, somewhat occasionally with Sean, in her mother’s home she co-owns with her sister.   Sean, Gina discovers, has never left his wife. While Conor and Gina have split, Sean keeps one foot in the door

LANDLINE by Rainbow Rowell   Award: Goodreads Winner 2014   Date Read: October 21, 2023   I read this on a flight from Barcelona to DC to give some context on the level of difficulty of this one. In summary, a husband and wife’s marriage is on the rocks. When he leaves town at Christmas without her, an old magic rotary phone in her parent’s house gives her access to her husband from when they were falling in love. She subsequently falls in love all over again. A Christmas reunion ensues. You get the idea.   What I liked about this novel was the power the wife had in her career, which was handled well and believably. I like that instead of turning elsewhere, the plot was them recommitting to each other again. I was also pleased that Georgie (the wife), didn’t need to give up her powerful career to reach a resolution with her husband.   What I didn’t like is first and foremost the main character’s name – Georgie McCool. I didn’t swallow it then and I don’t swallow it now. I also didn’t l

SEA MONSTERS by Chloe Aridjis   Award: PEN/Faulkner Winner 2020   Date Read: October 19, 2023   Luisa is a girl of 17 living in Mexico with her parents. She is about to graduate from high school but her life is yet to begin. When she meets an intriguing stranger, Tomas, she becomes enamored with him and upon their third meeting, she begins to believe a relationship is possible. Luisa is also fixated on a troupe of Ukrainian dwarves who have escaped from a Soviet circus touring in Mexico and she wants to go and find them. The last she had heard they were in Oaxaca.   Luisa is able to convince Tomas that running away to Oaxaca is a good idea. Essentially running away from home, she and Tomas board a bus for the seaside town of Zipolite. I’m never quite sure if she believes she and Tomas have a future or if she knows the only thing they share is a taste in alternative music (e.g. Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, etc.) of the late 80s. On the bus down, they hardly speak t

BARKSKINS by E. Annie Proulx   Nominations: Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist 2017, Dublin Longlist 2018, Kirkus Finalist 2016, Women’s Prize Longlist 2017   Date Read: October 14, 2023   Barkskins is Proulx’s homage to the intersection between the precious balance of ecosystems with naked greed. Too early in the drive for timber, which was equated with expansion and growth, there was no concept that forests could be decimated. Everyone believed forests were self-replenishing. That is, until all the forests of eastern U.S. were logged and didn’t regenerate as they had thought.   Coming as indentured servants, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet were tasked with enriching their benefactor Claude Trepagny, a disgusting brute of a man focused only on his own interests. While Rene held on to the terms of his contract, probably longer than he should have, Charles ran off, never completing his contract. These two lives take dramatically different, but interconnecting turns.   Rene begins a family

MR. PENUMBRA’S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE by Robin Sloan   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2014, LA Times Finalist 2012   Date Read: October 5, 2023   Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is part mystery, part treasure hunt and partly a glimpse into the mind of its author, Robin Sloan. After reading much more dense novels lately, this was a breath of fresh air. Out of whole cloth, Sloan creates a secret society that is both believable and very cult-like.   The Unbroken Spine is a secret society of scholars that are attempting to decode an ancient book by Manutius. They believe that within this book lies unimaginable secret, including but not limited to the secret of eternal life. The book is written in such difficult code that scholars need to have a foundation in code breaking through the Founder’s Puzzle before they can even attempt to crack Manutius.   All of this is discovered by happenstance when Clay, an out of work graphic designer, is desperately looking for a job that pays the rent. He wander

NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER by Kevin Barry   Nominations: Booker Longlist 2019, NY Times Finalist 2019   Date Read: October 3, 2023   Two men are waiting in a ferry terminal, looking for Maurice’s daughter named Dilly. As they recount their exploits and harass fellow travelers, readers get a glimpse into these characters’ history of drug dealing and violence, loves and losses and hopes for their future.    Maurice and Charles have just about seen it all and at the ripe age of 50, have almost lived past the useful life of an Irish gangster. They have been tipped off that Dilly may be traveling through the terminal at Algeciras on her way to Tangiers and they hope to intercept her.   At one time, Maurice and Charles were wealthy, high-rollers having made a small fortune importing hash from Morocco. As they sit in present time, however, they have just about lost it all, including some of their modest investments. Their lives have been intertwined for decades and they speak in the shorthand of l

DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Golding   Awards: James Tait Black Winner 1979, Nobel Winner 1979   Nominations: LA Times Finalist 1980   Date Read: October 1, 2023   Based on the premise that some people just want to be “…weird, to be on the other side,” Golding creates a bizarre intersection between morally bankrupt twins, a disfigured nut, two men seeking something missing from their lives and a middle aged pedophile. Sticking to the darkness so prevalent in most of his work, Golding’s take on the motivations of humans to a very dark place indeed.   While I agree that most humans have dark thoughts, it’s only a very small minority who actually act on those thoughts. Few people are willing to actually go through with attempting to kidnap a child for ransom. Few people would actually molest small children again and again and again. Yet we find Golding going down that road as if it’s quite natural.   I didn’t quite understand the role of Matty, the disfigured religious nut. He was horrific