A Word About Awards

THE TIGER’S WIFE by Tea Obreht   Award: Women’s Prize Winner 2011   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2012, Dublin Longlist 2013, National Book Finalist 2011, NY Times Finalist 2011   Date Read: August 25, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “Young physician navigating postwar chaos in the Balkans tries to make sense of the mysterious death of her beloved grandfather.   En route to a rural orphanage with plans on inoculating a group of motherless local kids, 28-year-old Natalia gets the sudden, sad news that her grandfather, a well-respected doctor, has passed away. That he died far from home, in a village that appears on no map, raises several questions, in spite of the fact that the old man had been suffering from cancer. Natalia takes it upon herself to investigate the clinic he was last seen in, and collect his affects, while trying to fulfill her medical obligations to the orphans. A clear-eyed realist who came of age during the bloody dissolution of the former Yugosl...

A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS by Joyce Carol Oates   Award: LA Times Winner 2017   Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2019   Date Read: August 20, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Wounded families survive two men’s martyrdom. Once again drawn to America’s heart of darkness, Oates ( The Man Without a Shadow , 2016, etc.) takes on the incendiary issue of abortion in a long, contorted, and ultimately unsatisfying tale focused on the killing of Gus Voorhees, an abortion provider, by Luther Dunphy, an evangelical. The shooting itself interests Oates less than the aftermath, as each man acquires “a mythic-heroic reputation” and each man’s family is plagued by grief “that is not pure but mixed with fury. Murderous grief, that no amount of tears can placate.” It feels, says Voorhees’ daughter, like “an autoimmune disease.” Both Voorhees and Dunphy emerge as stereotypes: idealistic Voorhees was radicalized in “the sour aftermath of the Vietnam War” when he was a pre-med student at the Uni...

GUN DEALERS’ DAUGHTER by Gina Apostol   Award: PEN/Open Book Winner 2013   Date Read: August 12, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ The stilted reminiscences of a daughter of privilege from the Philippines whose naïve acts of rebellion teach her a tough life lesson. In her third novel, award-winning, Manila-born Apostol delivers a sketchy history of her country’s politics from the solipsistic perspective of a “spoiled brat,” Soledad Soliman, now recovering from a mental breakdown in her family’s luxurious New York mansion. The child of arms dealers, Sol spent the 1970s in the U.S., avoiding the violence at home. Returning to Manila, to a life lived among the elite, she had plans for a foreign education, but illness intervened and instead she attended a local college where she met a political crowd including another Soledad (this one a Maoist) and her wealthy boyfriend Jed. Sol’s attraction to Jed leads to an affair conducted during evening graffiti raids, but her wish to join ...

CHARMING BILLY by Alice McDermott   Award: National Book Winner 1998   Nominations: Dublin Finalist 2000, Women’s Prize Longlist 2000   Date Read: August 7, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ McDermott (At Weddings and Wakes, 1992, etc.) extends her view of Irish-American life with this gentle portrait of an alcoholic freshly dead from drink, and of the family he leaves behind to reveal and remember. Everyone at the wake agreed that Billy Lynch was a fine man--when sober. But they also knew something of his pain, born from the long-ago death of his fiancée just before she was to come back to Brooklyn after a trip to Ireland. Only his cousin and best friend Dennis, though, knew the whole story: Eva didn't die, but she did marry her Irish love--a fact he concealed from Billy for 30 years, not knowing that Billy would mourn what might have been for the rest of his life, even after he met and married the gentle, love-struck Maeve. Then, in Ireland in 1975, to take The Pledge ...

THE SPANISH LOVE DECEPTION by Elena Armas   Award: Goodreads Winner 2021   Date Read: July 31, 2024   Seeing as I’ve been into the romance genre a lot lately, this one was the perfect balance between smut and sweet. Aaron is pure heart and already knows what he wants: Lina. And Lina only knows what she doesn’t want: Aaron and to open herself up to ridicule again.   When a family wedding in Spain threatens to expose Lina’s lies of having a boyfriend, Aaron eagerly jumps at the chance, convincing her he’s her only choice. And you almost wonder why he’s so eager to take on such a tedious task. But subtle hints here and there show he has feelings for Lina.   Of course, during the magic of their Spain adventure, Lina and Aaron are able to overcome their differences and discover they have amazing chemistry, heat and feelings for each other. The only thing standing in their way is Lina’s fear of being ridiculed for sleeping with the boss, which Aaron is poised to becom...

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 ...

THE CHANGELING by Victor LaValle   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2019, LA Times Finalist 2017, PEN/Jean Stein Finalist 2018   Date Read: July 21, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “A  tragedy thrusts a mourning father into peculiar, otherworldly corners of New York City. When Apollo and Emma have their baby, Brian, it feels like both reward and challenge for the new dad. Apollo, the son of a single mother, had been scraping by as a bookseller who hunts estate and garage sales for rare first editions, so even the unusual circumstance of Brian's birth (in a stalled subway train) seems like a blessing, as does the way Apollo stumbles across a first edition of  To Kill a Mockingbird  (inscribed by Harper Lee to Truman Capote, no less) shortly after. But after some young-parent squabbles and inexplicable images on their smartphones foreshadow trouble, the story turns nightmarish: Apollo finds himself tied up and beaten by Emma, then forced to listen to the sounds of Br...