A Word About Awards

BURNT SUGAR by Avni Doshi   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2022, Women’s Prize Longlist 2021   Date Read: June 27, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Dark emotions color a daughter’s complex connection to her mother in a striking first novel that delves deep into family bonds. “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” This is the devastating opening sentence of American writer Doshi’s provocative debut, which offers a fierce, compelling depiction of the painfully intertwined lives of a mother and daughter in Pune, India. Tara, the mother, was neglectful and careless; Antara, the daughter, will become her unwilling but affixed life companion. Abandoning a gloomy marriage to join an ashram and become the lover of Baba, its leader, Tara exhibits a pattern of inadequate parenting that continues, four years later, when Baba replaces her with a younger model. Tara and Antara, now 7, are next to be found begging outside th...

BLACK RIVER by S.M. Hulse   Nominations: Center For Fiction Longlist 2015, Dublin Longlist 2017,  PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2016   Date Read: December 27, 2023   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Hulse debuts with a stark, tender tale about one man’s quest for faith and forgiveness.   The initial question is whether Wes Carver can forgive Bobby Williams, the inmate who tortured him during a prison riot that left two of his fellow corrections officers dead. He gets a letter informing him Williams is up for parole just days before his beloved wife, Claire, dies of leukemia, so Wes is in shaky condition when he returns to Black River, Montana, site of the prison and home to his stepson, Dennis. It’s been 20 years since the riot, 18 since Wes and Claire moved to Spokane, leaving behind her 16-year-old son after a violent altercation between the two men. Hulse unpacks this back story slowly, reproducing the way past traumas shape the present. We grow to realize that Wes too needs ...

SEVERANCE by Ling Ma   Award: Kirkus Winner 2018   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2019, Dublin Longlist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2019   Date Read: November 8, 2023   In this apocalyptic debut, Ma explores the impact of a spore pandemic on cities, work life and survival culture. This is a stunning novel, with the feeling of a frog being boiled and not realizing it’s screwed until it’s too late.   Candace is living the dream, in a sense. She has a decent job with upward potential, living in New York and has a boyfriend she loves. Jonathan, the boyfriend, has decided he wants to drop out and not live in the capitalist rat-race and is moving to Washington. Candace isn’t willing to let her life go to follow him, even though she loves him.   She has put in for a promotion that she’s likely to get, and has one other massive complication. She’s pregnant with Jonathan’s baby. Wrestling with whether to tell him or not, she decides not to tell. And then he’s go...

DEAR MISS METROPOLITAN by Carolyn Ferrell   Nominations: PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2022, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2022   Date Read: July 10, 2023   Incredibly evocative of the real-life story of the Cleveland kidnappings, Ferrell explores the world that is created among three girls whose lives are stolen for 10 years. Gwin and Fern both come from challenging homes but find refuge, solidarity and family in each other through the tragic circumstances they find themselves in.   Gwin and Fern are held captive for 10 very long years in which they are tortured, kept in chains, starved and raped. Their entire lives are to serve Boss Man (aka Nestor), who looms over every aspect of their lives. After an unknowable amount of time, a third girl, Jesenia, is added to the house and she eventually has Boss Man’s baby.    The novel shifts between each girl’s life before the kidnapping and their lives after, as they attempt to recover from such lengthy and unimaginable trauma. ...

DODGERS by Bill Beverly   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2017, Center For Fiction Longlist 2017, LA Times Finalist 2016, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2017   Date Read: April 2, 2023   Dodgers is not quite a coming-of-age story, not quite a road trip adventure, and not quite any eye opening for inner-city street kids. While all three of those components come into play here, Dodgers is all those plot points, yet none of those plot points. Told through the vantage of Easy, a 16-year old kid from inner city Los Angeles, Easy has been working the streets as a drug lookout since he was 10. He has slowly worked his way up until he managed the outside team of lookouts for a high-volume drug house.   One slightly strange day, his world came crumbling down when the police raided the house and the early and a neighborhood girl who was visiting from Jackson was killed right in front of her. Easy is haunted by her memory. Although Easy has been living on the streets for most of his lif...

ALL THE LIVING by C.E. Morgan   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2011, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2010   Date Read: November 26, 2021   All The Living is essentially a love story about two very flawed people (who isn’t?), trying to identify love amidst pain and uncertainty. Orren meeting Aloma while she’s living at a boarding school, having lost her parents at a very young age. Orren, young and cocksure, looks at her as if he is going to have her and have her he does.   Their affair continues for quite a while, he traveling across three counties on the weekends to be with her. Suddenly, his entire family is killed in a car accident (mother, father, brother) and he is left the family farm and his love for Aloma. She moves onto the farm with him in short order. But is what they share really love? Does Orren love the land more than her?   Just as Orren loves his farm, Aloma loves the piano. A gifted player, she seeks to play, her fingers aching to make music. She is finall...

SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stuart   Award: Booker Winner 2020   Nominations: BookTube Finalist 2021, Carnegie Longlist 2021, Center For Fiction Finalist 2020, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2021, Kirkus Finalist 2020, LA Times Finalist 2020, National Book Finalist 2020, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2021, Rathbones Folio Longlist 2021    Date Read: September 11, 2021   Shuggie Bain is a heartbreaking novel about a child growing up in Scotland with a raging alcoholic as a mother. Shuggie’s father is long-gone and there is no one really to rescue him from the daily uncertainties an alcoholic can create, including his two siblings. Caroline has fled through marriage to South Africa. Leek was thrown out of the house in one of Agnes’ drunken rages, leaving Shuggie to care for his mother and take on tasks far above his years. In fact, Shuggie never had a childhood. All his years, his mother has come first.   Shuggie’s problems ar...

LUSTER by Raven Leilani   Awards: Center For Fiction Winner 2020, Kirkus Winner 2020, National Book Critics Circle Winner 2020   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2021, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2021, PEN/Jean Stein Longlist 2021,  Women's Prize Longlist 2021   Date Read: June 22, 2021   Edie is in her mid-twenties and at sea in her own life. She drifts from job to job, relationship to relationship with nothing to tether her to the world. She is black, poor, and suffering from IBS but she’s beautiful, infinitely capable and artistic. Over the course of several months, she flirts and then meets in real life Eric Walker, a married man over twice her age.   There are rules, though. His wife, Rebecca, is aware of Eric’s proclivities and has drafted a set of rules to ensure their relationship doesn’t infringe on her turf. Yet, the rules keep changing until Rebecca changes them completely by having Edie deliver soup and a bone saw to her work, a medical examiner specia...

CUTTING FOR STONE by Abraham Verghese   Nominations: Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2010, Dublin Longlist 2011, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2010   Date Read: May 15, 2010   “Many readers will tell you that Cutting for Stone is the epic story of two conjoined twins fathered by a brilliant British Surgeon and an Indian Nun. And it technically is. Narrated by Marion the first born twin we are told of every influence on his and his brother’s existence. More than the story being told however, the novel is an accurate portrayal of life in all its cruelty and wonder.   The twin’s mother dies in childbirth and their father abandons them minutes later. They are raised in a missionary medical hospital in Ethiopia. As they grow up they are forced to face their past and futures re-defining the meanings of destiny, love and family.   While reading you will notice the fine points are painstakingly researched as the story is and packed full of medical jargon and situations along wi...