God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

Lula Ann Bridewell’s problems began at birth when her blue-black skin shocked and horrified her light-skinned parents. Ultimately her father deserted the family and her mother, while providing basic care, could hardly bear to touch or even look at her. Lula Ann survived her tough childhood and grew into a strikingly beautiful woman whose black skin and eyes were her most admired features. Renaming herself Bride, she became a successful business woman. However, personal happiness still eluded her. She remained estranged from her mother. Her efforts to make amends for a childhood offense ended in pain and violence. Her closest friend was after her job. And most painfully, her true love, Booker, disappeared from her life, giving her only the mysterious explanation of, “You not the woman I want.” However, Bride does not give up so easily. Using the slightest of clues, she traces the whereabouts of someone, Q. Olive, who might know where Booker is. On a road trip to find Q. Olive (and perhaps Booker), Bride runs into some trouble and, consequently, meets some salt-of-the-earth people who assist her on her journey. God Help the Child by Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison, pits violence and the wide-spread damage of child abuse against the resilience and decency of human beings.

Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

It takes a very talented writer with a light touch to write a comic novel based on an actual tragedy. J.G. Farrell was such a writer and his Booker Award-winning book, The Siege of Krishnapur gives a witty account of a mutiny staged against a British garrison by sepoys (native soldiers).  In mid-nineteenth century India, the fictional Krishnapur, an outpost of the British East India Company, is cut off for months from supplies of food, medicine and other commodities by a native revolt. Eventually disease and starvation cause great suffering and many deaths.  Within the walls of the garrison, Farrell creates a microcosm of all that is admirable and despicable in Victorian society. The British react to this attack in the best way they know—stoically maintaining their British way of life. Hence, they keep class stratification strictly in place throughout the siege, particularly in the division of food, clothing and shelter, and even in the process of burying their dead. And there are many dead, so many bodies awaiting burial that the vultures become too fat to fly. The story revolves around several main characters, well-known Victorian types—stern paternal figures, beautiful self-absorbed daughters and wives and even a fallen woman. There are men of business who cannot agree on the management of the crisis; men of the cloth who cannot agree on the spiritual decisions that must be made; and men of science, who cannot agree on the treatment of cholera and  other diseases and injuries.  They are all forced to struggle for survival in the small, poorly stocked garrison and their hide-bound sense of superiority does not serve them well.  

Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

After its army captured Burma from the British during World War II, Japan identified a need for an overland route in order to safely supply its troops. For this purpose, the army’s High Command decided that a railroad line through Burma was necessary. It was to be built with limited plans, primitive tools, slave labor, impossible orders and unfailing devotion to the emperor. Many of the laborers were Australian prisoners-of-war who had surrendered at the fall of Singapore.  In Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan tells the story of some of these Australians. Dorrigo Evans was a doctor who tried his best to protect his men from the worst cruelties of the Japanese deprivations. But the men who were forced to work on this railroad, surviving on starvation rations, without proper tools, without adequate clothing, shelter, rest and medicine, could not be protected. They died by the thousands. Every man was missed but one unnecessary death seemed to affect this tightly-knit group more than any other—that of Sergeant Darky Gardiner, a man of inner strength, a steady demeanor and common sense. After the war, Gardiner’s death haunted the survivors, both war hero Evans and the rank-and-file enlisted men as they struggled to put the horrors of the war behind them. In this Man Booker Prize winning book, Flanagan writes moving depictions of men suffering from hunger, exhaustion and disease. He creates characters the reader comes to deeply care about. Perhaps this is because the book is dedicated to Prisoner san byaku san ju go (335), his own father. 

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes weaves the tale of two stories together to create a captivating book. The first story, set in World War I France follows a young woman named Sophie, the owner of a hotel. When the Germans make their way into France, Sophie and her sister are forced into using their hotel restaurant to feed the German soldiers and their Kommandant. With her husband gone to war, the Kommandant and Sophie begin to chat about art, particularly the piece entitled The Girl You Left Behind which was painted by Sophie's husband. Not hearing from her husband for several months has Sophie desperate to do just about anything to ensure that he is safe, even if it means sleeping with the enemy. When things don't go according to plan, Sophie is sent to a prison camp in Germany and little is known about after that.

Fast forward to the year 2000 in London, where Liv is still grieving her architect husband. On a whim one night, Liv decides to go out on the town where she meets Paul, a former cop. The two strike up a relationship only to have that relationship go awry when Liv finds out that Paul is working for a firm that recovers stolen art work. When Paul realizes that Liv is now the owner of the once looted, now sought after painting of The Girl You Left Behind things get far more complicated.

Moyes does an amazing job of weaving together two captivating stories so different from one another. Who will keep the painting? What happened to Sophie? Can Paul and Liv work things out? All of these questions come down to the final few pages. Using beautiful language, Moyes once again wrote a book that's unable to be put down.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

In Department of Speculation, author Jenny Offill employs an unusual style to tell the story of a marriage. In this book, the wife (all characters are unnamed) records thoughts and experiences about her life in New York City.  She ruminates about earlier suitors, how her husband wooed and won her, the birth of their child, the stress of living with bedbugs and, eventually, the strain of infidelity on a marriage, even a marriage with what seems to be an ideal partner. With small observations about Buddhism, stars, Antarctic exploration, space travel and other diverse subjects, Jenny Offill tells a modern day love story in lyrical, poetic language. 

Check out Dept. of Speculation at the library today!

Margot by Jillian Cantor

At some point in life, whether it be in school or based on personal interests, chances are you've read the classic, The Diary of Anne Frank. Thanks to Anne's diary quite a bit is known about the Franks and the Annex they hid out in to avoid Nazi persecution during World War II, yet not much is known about Anne's older sister Margot.

Margot, a work of fiction by Jillian Cantor, is written from Margot Frank's perspective had she survived and not died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945 along with her sister Anne. Margot follows Margie Franklin (Margot Frank's Americanized name) as she's a typist for a law firm in the United States during the 1950s. Settling on Philadelphia after the war, Margie struggles to find her true love Peter van Pelt, who lived alongside the Franks during hiding in the Annex. Margie does everything she can to keep her former identity hidden including lying to her friends, wearing a sweater even in the hottest weather to cover up the tattooed number on her arm, saying Shabbat in secrecy on Friday nights and even denying any Jewishness. When The Diary of Anne Frank comes to theaters, Margie's life is turned upside down. Will she reveal her true identity or do everything she can to avoid embracing who she once was?

Much of the book reflects on Margot's life during hiding while also focusing on the overwhelming guilt she would feel, as many did feel as a Holocaust survivor. Cantor has woven a wonderful story around the classic Diary of Anne Frank and such a tragic historical event while shining light on the stories of survival and never forgetting where one comes from.

Check out Margot @ the library!

Beauty Poetry: She Walks in Beauty and Nature Poetry: Make Me a Picture of the Sun by Sheila Griffin Llanas

Two slender volumes filled with information about poets and poetry, Beauty Poetry: She Walks in Beauty and Nature Poetry: Make Me a Picture of the Sun by Sheila Griffin Llanas will be of interest to readers who like words, rhyme, rhythm and history. Each volume contains eight poems with a chapter devoted to each poem. Each chapter provides a biography of the poet, a short discussion of the poem in its historical context, an analysis of the rhyme and rhythm scheme and a discussion of the meaning of the poem. The writers are well-known poets of the English language, such as William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare and Lord Byron. Many of the poems, but perhaps not all, will also be familiar. The explanations of all elements of each poem are easily understood and, just as an art expert can point out the importance of brush strokes or tints in a famous painting, Ms. Llanas isolates particular words and phrases that add to the understanding of a poem. These books are a good introduction or a good refresher to poetry.