A Word About Awards

THE BOOK OF ARON by Jim Shepard   Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2016, Dublin Longlist 2017, Kirkus Finalist 2015   Date Read: March 12, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ An understated and devastating novel of the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation, as seen through the eyes of a street-wise boy.   Shepard has recently earned more renown for his short stories ( You Think That’s Bad ,   2011, etc.), but here he presents an exhaustively researched, pitch-perfect novel exploring the moral ambiguities of survival through a narrator who's just 9 years old when the tale begins. He's a Jewish boy living in the Polish countryside with his family and an odd sense of his place in the world. “It was terrible to have to be the person I was,” he despairs, matter-of-factly describing himself as basically friendless, a poor student, and an enigma to his loving mother: “She said that too often my tongue worked but not my head, or my head worked but not my heart.” Yet Aro...

LET US DESCEND by Jesmyn Ward   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2024, Carnegie Finalist 2024, Kirkus Finalist 2023, Oprah Book Club 2023   Date Read: December 1, 2023   Annis is living the nightmare of slavery – where humans are not treated as human and are faced with impossible choices. Her reprieve is her mother until her mother is marched off one day by the Georgia Man. Alone and terrified, Annis is comforted by a fellow slave named Safi and that comfort turns to love.   In the midst of their chores, Annis and Safi are discovered and they too are marched off by the Georgia Man, although marched is too kind a word. Taken on foot through a torturous path from North Carolina to New Orleans, the journey is unimaginable in its brutality. Then again, Annis’ entire reality is unimaginable brutality, although Ward is incredibly gifted at giving voice to the unimaginable.   On this journey, Annis discovers Mama Aza who embodies her long-lost grandmother who was a wa...

MOONGLOW by Michael Chabon   Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2017, Dublin Longlist 2018, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2016   Date Read: September 25, 2023   Moonglow is the fictional account of Chabon’s grandfather in all his real and imagined glory. Having lived an unconventional and eventful life, Chabon attempts to discover his grandfather’s secrets and motivations for his decisions.   Grandfather married a French woman he met during WWII. He helped to raise this woman’s daughter, who wasn’t his biological child. He stayed by his wife’s side when she literally lost her mind and was in and out of a mental hospital. He served time in prison for attempted murder when he attacked his boss after he was informed he was being let go. He began an entirely new career in his retirement making models of spacecraft for NASA. And in his widowhood he fell in love with a neighbor, giving her his whole heart.   These accounts are presented as a deathbed confession of...

A BURNING by Megha Majumdar   Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2021, National Book Longlist 2020, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2020   Date Read: May 18, 2022   A Burning follows the travails of three people in the cut-throat survival world of India. Jivan, from a Muslim family, has dropped out of school to get a job to support her parents. Her father broke his back in a police altercation and now cannot work. Lovely is a trans woman who has her heart set on an acting career and would do just about anything to get on the screen. Finally, PT Sir is a schoolteacher with loftier ambitions as he falls in with a new political party that is slowly gaining steam.   These are the characters Majumdar presents us with as she grapples with religion, identity and class. What launches these three into each others’ orbits is a bomb that goes off near Jivan’s house. She later posts on Facebook that the police, with their do-nothing attitude, might as well be terrorists. Not l...

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN by Russell Banks   Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2012, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2012   Date Read: October 23, 2020   Lost Memory Of Skin is an interesting meditation on how society handles sexual deviants. Frankly, society doesn’t’ so much handle it as relegates those who have been churned through the penal system into an ill-defined purgatory.    The Kid lives on the margins of society, having been convicted of soliciting sex from a minor. The Kid is socially awkward, has no real family to speak of and is, shockingly, still a virgin. After completing his 6 months in jail, he now has to navigate a path into society with impossible burdens – an ankle monitor he has to wear for 10 years, keeping his National Sex Offender Registry information up to date and staying 2500 feet away from any place where he might encounter minors.   I understand these requirements. I really do. Sex offenders are the worst of the worst but I only really believe th...

THERE THERE by Tommy Orange Award: National Book Critics Circle Winner 2018, PEN/Hemingway Winner 2019 Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2019, LA Times Finalist 2018, National Book Longlist 2018, Pulitzer Finalist 2019 Date Read: June 27, 2020 While I've read some Native American history and have always been appalled, Orange's opening history, while only a snapshot, puts into stark relief how egregious the treatment of Native American's has been. And it's not as if all that is in the past. We are still trying to rape the land that we sequestered them to, thinking it worthless, only to discover it rich in oil. History continues to repeat itself. There There follows a wide cast of Native American characters living in Oakland. Their stories, their experiences, are all interconnected and lead them to a single fateful day at a pow-wow in Oakland. Their struggles are familiar and common among native populations - alcoholism, violence, rape, mental disorders, poverty, discriminat...

SING, UNBURIED, SING by Jesmyn Ward Award: National Book Winner 2017 Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2018, Carnegie Finalist 2018, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2018, Dublin Longlist 2019, Kirkus Finalist 2017, LA Times Finalist 2017, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2017, NY Times Finalist 2017, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2018,  Women's Prize Finalist 2018 Date Read: May 29, 2020 This novel came up in a timely fashion as cities across America rise up in protest against the senseless killing of George Floyd. I am simultaneously in awe of how fragile life is and how disgustingly dispensable black life is. The video of this killing is nothing short of a snuff film by a smug, self-satisfied white man drunk on his own power. Sing, Unburied, Sing follows three main characters - Leonie, Jojo and Richie, each having their own voice throughout. Of course, Jojo captured my attention as a child working his way to becoming a man. Jojo has just turned 13 and is trying to hold hi...

A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara Award: Kirkus Winner 2015 Nominations: Booker Finalist 2015, Carnegie Finalist 2016, Dublin Finalist 2017, Goodreads Finalist 2015, National Book Finalist 2015, Women's Prize Finalist 2016 Date Read: May 24, 2020 I just finished this tome and I cannot recall the last time a book made me cry so much at the end. It's been a minute. But I do love when I care so much about the characters that what happens to them matters and this is definitely a character driven novel where the characters absolutely matter. A Little Life is fascinating for many reasons, but the two that stand out for me are the range of human experience and self love. This novel centers on four friends who have just graduated from college and are trying to make it in their respective professions in New York City. The fact that all four find professional success seems wildly unrealistic to me, but I digress. JB is an artist, Malcolm is an architect, Jude is an at...

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders Award: Booker Winner 2017 Nomination: Carnegie Finalist 2018, Center For Fiction Longlist 2017, Dublin Finalist 2019, Goodreads Finalist 2017 Date Read: March 7, 2020 Lincoln In The Bardo is written in a unique style, with a multitude of voices pondering the significance of death. Based on a historical fact, President Lincoln loses his son Willie to an illness, Saunders uses this historical moment to convey the varying responses to the permanence of losing someone dear to you. Instead of wandering away after the funeral, Lincoln returns to the crypt to hold his boy again and again, unable to let go. These scenes are heart wrenching. Behind the scenes, the cemetery is made up of a host of characters, some good, some bad, that are forced to co-exist (yes, I understand the humor in this word choice) for eternity. These souls believe they are sent to this place to recuperate from their varying illnesses and must live i...

THE ROUND HOUSE by Louise Erdrich Award: National Book Winner 2012 Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2013, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2013, Dublin Longlist 2014 Dates Read: December 23, 2012 & September 16, 2019 I don't know where to begin with this novel but to say that Erdrich takes my breath away. So much ground is covered here - loss of innocence, injustice, the depths of friendship, the roots of tradition - all come mixing together to form a beautiful symphony. Erdrich is truly a master and I am thrilled I have so much of her work ahead of me. The prejudice experienced by Native Americans in this book is staggered yet these characters let it wash over them sometimes with a shrug, often with a joke and yet forever with the understanding that the laws foisted upon them over the centuries are altogether unjust. The violence visited upon Joe's mom, Geraldine, is horrific and only slowly do we learn how violent and inhuman her experience was. With this assau...

AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Award: National Book Critics Circle Winner 2013 Nominations:  Carnegie Finalist 2014, Dublin Finalist 2015, NY Times Finalist 2013, Women's Prize Finalist 2014 Date Read: December 24, 2014 Ah, where to begin with this one? I loved this novel with all my heart from the beginning to the end. Americanah is the story of a Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who travels from Nigeria to the US to attend university. She subsequently falls in love with classmate Obinze, a man she knew in Nigeria. Obinze is denied a visa renewal and is forced to return, where he becomes a successful businessman. The aspect of this novel that I found most compelling is the commentary Adichie provides on race in America through Ifemelu's blog with the impossible title, "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black." In this blog Ifemelu discusses the unique experience of learning what i...

SWAMPLANDIA by Karen Russell Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2012, Orange Prize Longlist 2011, Pulitzer Finalist 2012 Date Read: April 8, 2011 I initially read Swamplandia as part of a book group I used to belong to. Set in an island chain off the southwest coast of Florida, this novel follows a family of alligator wrestlers that run an alligator theme park. As the park struggles to attract tourists, the family struggles over the fate of this park, some suggest selling it and others suggesting investing in upgrades. The father finally opts to shut the park down and leaves for the mainland. The two central children of this novel, Osceola and Ava, are largely left to their own devices since their passed away from cancer and their father off for an undetermined time to the mainland. Osceola disappears after finding an abandoned boat, convinced she is in love with the ghost that once piloted it. Ava then recruits the "Bird Man" to help her find her sister. After a long ...