A Word About Awards

CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD by Gabriel Garcia Marquez   Award: Nobel Prize 1983   Nominations: LA Times Finalist 1983, NY Times Finalist 1983   Date Read: February 8, 2025   From Kirkus Reviews: “ In this new novella by the Nobel Prize-winner, a Colombian-village murder 20 years in the past is raked over, brooded upon, made into a parable: how an Arab living in the town was assassinated by the loutish twin Vicario brothers when their sister, a new bride, was rejected by her bridegroom—who discovered the girl's unchastity. Cast off, beaten, grilled, the girl eventually revealed the name of her corrupter—Santiago Nassar. And, though no one really believed her (Nassar was the least likely villain), the Arab was indeed killed: the drunken brothers broadcasted their intentions casually; they went so far as to sharpen their murder weapons—old pig-sticking knives—in the town market; and the town, universal witness to the intention, reacted with epic ambivalence—sure, at f...

BIRDY by William Wharton   Award: National Book Winner 1980   Nomination: Pulitzer Finalist 1980   Date Read: July 27, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Some books—some of the best—defy description. But we'll try. On one level, this is a novel about a boy named Birdy, who with his friend Al Ambrogio grows up in a Philadelphia suburb before World War II, and is fascinated by pigeons. High school deflects Al's attention toward girls, but Birdy moves from pigeons to canaries, eventually raising an entire aviary. Level number two: Birdy's fascination with canaries—their habits, songs, and, above all, their flight—completely captures his imagination: "I know I want to fly at least as much as any canary. I don't have to fly anything as well as a canary; gliding down from high places with arm control might be enough." Level number three: this is a book about a boy who becomes a bird in every way but physically. To fly like, act like, be like a bird becomes less and less ...

PERFUME by Patrick Suskind   Award: PEN/Translation Winner 1987   Date Read: December 11, 2023   From Kirkus Reviews: “Fr om a West German playwright: an elaborate historical fable about smell, set in 18th-century France--obsessive, showy, heavily (if rather murkily) metaphorical, with a fair amount of black-comic dazzle but only a glimmer or two of genuine narrative magic. Suskind's monster--hero is Jean. Baptise Grenouille, born in stench-ridden Paris in 1738, an instant orphan (his fishwife-mother is beheaded for multiple infanticide), rejected by society, barely allowed to live. But, though ugly, deformed, and hateful, Grenouille has been born with a double-miracle when it comes to odor: he himself is odorless. . .and he has super-powers of smell for the odors around him! And soon, inspired by the glorious aroma of a luscious maiden (whom he kills), young Grenouille vows to become history's greatest perfumer, to ""revolutionize the odoriferous world."" H...

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 r...

SISTER WOLF by Ann Arensberg   Award: National Book Winner 1981   Date Read: July 23, 2023   Marit is the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, Vladimir and Luba, who were well-off and left her a great inheritance. Marit has never married and allows only a few people close, namely her best friend Lola. With nothing but time and money on her hands, Marit decides to turn the land adjacent to her mansion into a wildlife preserve.   Initially, she has permission to house non-threatening indigenous wildlife that used to live in that area but were hunted off or otherwise removed. What the town does not know is that Marit has arranged to have four wolves on her property, a move she knows will get her into trouble if it were found out.   Next door to her property is a school for the blind and one of their teachers, Gabriel, becomes romantically entangled with Marit. As their relationship progresses, a picture emerges of Marit as incredibly jealous and very much unhinged. Sh...

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 ...

ANNIE JOHN by Jamaica Kincaid   Nomination: LA Times Finalist 1985   Date Read: January 8, 2023   Annie John is a beautiful, quiet and slow-paced novella about a girl coming of age and the conflicts she is forced to navigate as she comes into her own. If I told someone that not much happens in this book, it wouldn’t be a lie, however, so much of it is relatable to the teenage experience. Whether male or female, Antiguan or not, the process of becoming an adult resonates beyond any boundaries.   Annie John is the apple of her parents’ eye. Her father is a carpenter who makes all her furniture and adores his daughter. Her relationship with her mother is more complicated and she often finds herself in conflict with her mother’s methods of doing things, beliefs about clothing and nuances of behavior. Not all of her mother’s reprimands are unfounded as Annie tests the boundaries of her mother’s affection and plays marbles, lies and steals as all kids are bound to do at so...

THE LOVER by Marguerite Duras   Award: PEN/Translation Winner 1986   Date Read: April 4, 2022   The Lover is a beautiful novella about a first love that’s mistaken as business and a family in turmoil. The no-name nymph is fifteen and experimenting with her own style that she is aware sets her apart from other girls. Her white skin in Vietnam also makes her stand apart. While crossing the Mekong River to her boarding school one day, a rich Chinese man sees her on the ferry and is besotted. He is instantly in love with her.   While he is aware she is very young, he cannot help but have her. The girl, aware of the depths of his longing, sees an opportunity to help her family. With no feeling on her part, she offers him her virginity, her body, her time and without her quite realizing it, her heart. Of course, their love affair is not to last as his family will never permit him to marry a white girl and the girl’s family is intent on moving back to France.   All of ...

RITES OF PASSAGE by William Golding   Awards: Booker Winner 1980, Nobel Winner 1980   Date Read: April 2, 2022   Imagine being trapped in a floating cesspool for months with nothing to occupy your time but a handful of the same books and the other passengers. In Rites Of Passage, you don’t have to imagine. Golding has painted that all too vivid picture for us.  Through Edmund Talbot, an up-and-comer whose godfather has bestowed a position of privilege on, we can see the operation of a very old ship and the drama of his fellow passengers, one of whom comes to a tragic end, partially at his own hand.   Reverend Colley is also aboard and from the instant, everyone sees a single-minded, gullible man. This weakness is exploited for the pure amusement of the other passengers and crew and results in his tragic death. The reader becomes privy to the inner-workings of Colley that reveal a gentle and earnest soul that is continually striving to do the Lord’s work. Yet, th...

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez   Awards: LA Times Winner 1988, Nobel Prize Winner 1998 Nominations: NY Times Finalist 1988, Oprah Book Club 2007   Date Read: March 16, 2022   Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master. His writing is so seductive, sensual and beguiling. I want more, more, more. Every time. Always. His Nobel Prize is well-deserved.   Love In The Time Of Cholera is about longing. It is about love that doesn’t waver and that is everlasting. As a young boy, Florentino Ariza is captivated by the even younger Fermina Daza. She inspires in him a love so passionate that flows from his pen in pages and pages of love letters that leave Fermina breathless. She is slowly won over by his ardor and they begin an exchange of love letters - sometimes through acquaintances, others by hiding them throughout the city – that would leave seasoned lovers heaving.   But Florentino is not the man Lorenzo Daza, Fermina’s wayward father, has in mind for he...

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...

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 on...

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 unive...

SCHINDLER’S LIST by Thomas Keneally   Awards: Booker Winner 1982, LA Times Winner 1983 Nomination: NY Times Finalist 1982   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. S...

MOM KILLS KIDS & SELF by Alan Saperstein   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 1980   Nomination: National Book Finalist 1980   Date Read: December 31, 2021   I will never understand why people hide from each other, particularly spouses. Wouldn’t you want someone to hear your doubts, frustrations, truths? You are, after all, allegedly spending a lifetime together. Acting like strangers is maybe easier, but so much more lonely.   This is essentially at the heart of Mom Kills Kids & Self. Only after the Wife (do we ever really learn her name or is she every wife?) is dead does the Husband fully understand her desires, frustrations, struggles, and losses. Through such a desperate act, he can acknowledge all she had given up and how little she had gained in assuming the role of wife and mother, in particular a stay at home wife and the mother of a developmentally challenged child with gender dysphoria.   They never talk about the violation by the Sophomore, who...

AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD by Kazuo Ishiguro   Award: Nobel Prize Winner 1986   Nomination: Booker Finalist 1986   Date Read: October 24, 2021   Ono, an officially retired painter, is middle-aged and has renounced the work he has produced over the course of his career. Although relatively well-known in the art world, he still craves attention and appreciation for his contributions over the years. The question remains, what drove Ono to put down his brushes at such an early age? We learn there is no single reason but a multitude of reasons, each of which show the character of Ono.   Put off by his student’s blind submission to his instruction and a tendency to copy his style rather than develop their own, Ono cannot abide the inherent submission that teaching produces. Ono, in his early years was guilty of this as well and chastised by his teacher for leaving his instruction to work on his own style. Further, Ono was afraid his art could be co-opted into pro...

WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo   Award: National Book Winner 1985   Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1985   Dates Read: February 11, 2005 & September 15, 2021   Jack Gladney, the founder of Hitler studies at an unnamed college in the U.S., is in a blended family and feeling content. Kids from his previous marriages and his current-wife’s previous marriages swirl around them in chaos, plus one wee they share between them. In the midst of all this noise and animation, Jack and Babette seem happy.   The one haunting fear for them both is death. While death is a common fear among all humans, death is particularly haunting to both Jack and Babette. They have countless conversations about who should die first. Or who they hope will die first. But what Jack doesn’t realize is that Babette’s fear is so profound that she answered a questionable add in a tabloid to participate in a study about the fear of death. She even went so far as to take an unapprov...

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 ...