Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

In a series of letters to Richard Gere, Bartholomew Neil tells us his story of what happened after the death of his mother. He was her primary caretaker during her life, and now his life feels a bit empty. He has few friends, most prominently Father McNamee the local priest. With his therapist he has made a few goals including having a beer with a friend at a bar, and more privately talking to the Girlbrarian who he watches work at the library.

While working towards his own new normal, things quickly spiral out of control when Father McNamee renounces his priesthood and moves in with Bartholomew. As his mother told him, one persons bad luck is another person's good luck, and he sees no reason not to let Father McNamee move in. In another therapy session Bartholomew meets Max, and Max just might be the key to Bartholomew meeting some of his goals.

Matthew Quick is a master of quirky characters dealing with dark issues. Bartholomew is an insightful, unintentionally hysterical and slightly unreliable narrator who looks at the world a bit differently than expected. Like his other adult novel, Silver Linings Playbook, The Good Luck of Right Now is going to be made into a movie, so pick up the book before it hits the big screen!

Check out The Good Luck of Right Now @ the library

Love, Loss and What I Wore by Ilene Beckerman

Love, Loss and What I Wore, is an unusual memoir in which Ilene Beckerman examines her life in the context of her wardrobe. Growing up in New York City, she was a girl in the 1940’s, a teen in the 1950’s and a wife, mother, grandmother and career woman during the next four decades. On each page of the book, the author draws a picture of a dress and writes a short essay about her life when she (or her sister, mother, grandmother, or friend) wore it. The very first drawing is her Brownie uniform. She was a Brownie, her mother a Brownie leader, and her older sister was a Girl Scout. With each new page comes a new item of clothing and a memory to go with it. Her mother made most of her clothes but occasionally she draws a store-bought item such as a winter coat with leggings. Through the forties we read about many home-made dresses and skirts for school, for dance class, for parties, for family weddings. In the 1950’s we see dresses she and her friends wore to school and parties and weekend trips. Included are shoes, underwear, makeup and her wedding dress. She details her wardrobe for over five decades and readers get so caught up in the “What I Wore” aspect of the book that the “loss” (mentioned off-handedly) takes us by surprise. References to death, separation and divorce are few but shocking when the fact is unexpectedly snuck into a description of a dress or coat or shoes. Love, Loss and What I Wore may appear to be a superficial book at first glance, but it is a good social history, recounting the life of an ordinary person with ordinary experiences. We all experience love and loss but life goes on, just as it has for Ilene Beckerman. 

Check out Love, Loss and What I Wore @ the library!

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler

In Butler’s debut novel, we find the tale of a small town called Little Wing in rural Wisconsin.  The story is told by a group of life-long friends and alternates between five points of view: Hank (the nice guy who stayed to take over the family farm), Lee (the now ridiculously successful rock star who always comes back to Wisconsin to recharge), Kip (the friend who never really felt at home in Little Wing who has now moved back from Chicago in an attempt to resurrect a decrepit local business), Ronny (a former professional rodeo who is now a bit slower than normal after an unfortunate alcohol induced accident) and Beth (Hank’s wife and friend to Lee, Kip and Ronny).  As the book unfolds, we find that Lee has returned home early from an international tour in order to sing at Kip’s wedding.  But old habits die hard and soon the group of friends is wondering why they were ever close to begin with. 

Shotgun Lovesongs is as much a love song in honor of Wisconsin as it is a tale of friends who struggle to stay close years after they go their separate ways in life.  Descriptions of the land and seasons connect all of the stories in a way that almost makes the thread appear stronger than the fabric it is sewn onto.  Butler’s love for Wisconsin is clearly channeled through that of Lee’s character; his prose lush and inviting.  A longtime fan of Kent Haruf’s depictions of small town life in the Colorado plains, this book invoked for me a similar heartfelt ode to Wisconsin in its treatment of people and place.  Those looking for a book about life in a small Midwestern town or even a story about life-long friends will find plenty to enjoy in Wisconsin novelist Nickolas Butler’s Shotgun Lovesongs.

Uganda Be Kidding Me by Chelsea Handler

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel the world thanks to a benevolent benefactor who wants nothing more than your company, and for you to experience new things? Comedian Chelsea Handler might be a friend you want to make. In Uganda Be Kidding Me Chelsea shares her adventures on an African Safari, European ski trip, state-side ski trip among other stories. She always takes along with her family and friends to both be there for her, and to have the experience whether they want to or not.

Fans familiar with Chelsea's brand of comedy will not be disappointed in the things she does, forces others to do, and in all honesty her generosity. This is a fun fast read that might just have you booking your next trip somewhere a bit more exotic. Adding a bit of extra fun are travel tips as only Chelsea Handler give. This may not be the travelogue you are used to, but you will be laughing.

Check out Uganda Be Kidding Me @ the library!

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

An older book and a well-written classic, So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell paints a picture of life in the Midwest in the 1920s. It is the story of two thirteen-year old boys who become friends when each is drawn to spend time at a home-construction site after school. Each boy is experiencing upheaval in his life and seeks a release from family distress at the half-built home.  The house is to be the home of the story’s narrator, a middle-class town boy.  He had lost his mother to the flu epidemic of 1919. His father, after remarrying, wanted a new home for his new wife and so contracts for the building of the new house. The other boy, Cletus, is the son of a tenant farmer. He spends time at the house to escape the palpable tension between his mother and father. Every afternoon the boys meet and climb on the frame of the house. They become friends although they scarcely exchange a word. Then Cletus’s world is destroyed by a murder and he disappears from the narrator’s life. The power of this book lies in the author’s ability to create a sympathetic inner life for each of his characters. Although the book is peopled with stoic, taciturn Midwesterners, the reader is easily able to empathize with everyone in this book as they deal with pain, confusion and loss, even the family dog. 

Check out So Long, See You Tomorrow @ the library!

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. A historical novel set in an extremely difficult and violent period in our nation’s past, it tells the story of abolitionist John Brown and his single-handed, single-minded effort to end slavery in the United States. In the late 1850’s John Brown led a small band of armed raiders into Kansas, intent on kidnapping slaves and freeing them. The narrator of this book is Henry Shackleford, a young slave boy taken by Brown after a gun fight kills both his father and master. Because Henry is dressed in a sack, common attire for slave children, Brown believes him to be a girl and no amount of argument can dissuade him. This delusion symbolizes Brown’s fatal flaw: “He never remembered nothing but what he wanted to, and didn't tell himself nothing but what he only really wanted to believe.” Eventually Henry (Henrietta) embraces his girlhood because it keeps him out of the violence and battles Brown seeks out. For nearly four years, Henry travels with Brown and his group of abolitionists. He grows to know Brown well. He sees him clearly for who he is— a sincere, deeply religious, self-righteous, well-intentioned, dangerous man who had no doubt about his mission. He listened to the counsel of no man, only that of his God. And his God always told him what he wanted to hear. Eventually Brown abandons his raids to free slaves and plans instead to start a war for this cause. He tries to raise an army of Negroes. Blind to the fact that most of the Negroes, slave and free, have too much common sense to follow a mad man’s folly, he persists with his plan. His first move is to raid the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry to secure rifles and ammunition for his troops. This is also his last move. His delusions finally catch up with him. Out manned and outgunned, most of his “army” is killed and Brown is captured. Henry, still disguised as a girl, manages to escape and lives to tell his tale many years later. John Brown was imprisoned and hung but the fear he inspired among Southern whites is believed to have been a cause for the later secession and Civil War in the United States.  It is not easy to write a humorous book about tragedy and suffering, but James McBride manages the right ironic tone to successfully tell John Brown’s story. 

Check out The Good Lord Bird @ the library!

(Or over at the Morning News Tournament of the Books...)

Middle C by William H. Gass

Middle C is unlike any other novel I have ever read.  The storytelling doesn’t unfold in typical linear fashion and because of this the reader becomes increasingly curious about how our narrator, Joseph Skizzen, gets from point A to point Z.  Joseph’s tale begins before he is even born, with his parents and sister living in their native Graz, Austria just before the dawn of World War II.  Sensing that the Nazis will soon be creating more than their fair share of problems in his homeland, Rudi Skizzen flees to London with his family by pretending that they are Jewish refugees.  Joseph is born shortly after their arrival and the Skizzen (now called Fixel) family manages to survive the Blitz.  Joseph’s father “reinvents” or renames himself several more times and then disappears mysteriously after the war.  After desperately searching for her husband, Joseph’s mother Miriam then manages to relocate herself and her two children to a small town in rural Ohio. 

And here is where Joseph’s story takes off.  We can see the two Skizzen children grow into their new lives as Americans.  Joseph is quiet and not particularly book-smart while his sister Debbie becomes a cheerleader and wants to be a part of all things fashionable.  Joseph begins to enjoy his piano lessons with a local teacher, but it is apparent that he is self-taught in playing popular tunes than anything else.  We are then shown a look at Joseph as an older man, one who has used the entire attic of his large home to house what he calls his “Inhumanity Museum” which is host to countless newspaper clippings spotlighting all manner of man’s terrible acts.  We bounce back and forth in time to see Joseph working as a high schooler in a music store, then as a college professor, then a college student, then as an assistant in a small town library.  Each sector of Joseph’s life creates another layer of lies he tells himself to continue on his way. 

I began this book thinking (due to the title) that it was about music.  And in many ways, music plays a big role in Joseph’s life.  But the result of Gass’s novel is so unlike any story I’ve seen told that it is hard to place my finger on what the biggest point of the narrative truly is.  Middle C  is a fascinating, careening tour through the mind of a seemingly ordinary man who lives a seemingly ordinary life but it is certainly an extraordinary novel.