The Cold Song by Linn Ullman

Traveling to Honduras with Dr. Seuss

Last week, I travelled with my daughter and 16 others to serve some of the poorest school children in Honduras through a Cleveland, Ohio based organization called Hope for Honduran Children. Lovingly run by Karen and John Godt, Hope for Honduran Children sponsors more than a half dozen service trips throughout the year. Since my daughter had gone on one of these trips as a high school senior, she convinced me my teaching life would be changed forever if I came along on a trip with her this spring. And she was very, very right! An average day of the eight day trip was spent visiting a remote mountain school in the morning and spending time with the boys who live at Flor Azul in Neuvo Paraiso In the afternoons.  Each person in our group came to Honduras prepared to teach a lesson or share a craft. Of course, I wanted to combine literature with a craft that the children would enjoy.  Before we left, I zeroed in on Dr. Seuss, and after scouring Amazon for options, I found an a English/Spanish version of The Cat in the Hat to take along. A little bit of time spent on Pinterest and I located a template for making large red and white striped hats.  Card stock was printed, red stripes were traced, blue head bands were precut and red duct tape was packed in my carry on!

Karen suggested I save my activity for the day we were to visit Neguara, a remote mountain  village several hours east of Tegucigalpa.  Hope for Honduran Children takes every one of its service groups to visit this school, unless there has been recent rain, which makes the steep, rocky road to the school impassible.  We had a very long, bumpy bus ride and in addition to bringing lessons for the children, we had suitcases full of donated clothing, oatmeal, pasta, children’s vitamins and CANDY!

We were told the teacher at this school walks more than an hour each way from his home to the school.  Although he was offered a teaching job nearer to his home, he continues the daily walk to Neguara because if he didn’t teach there, he says no one else would.  And what a fine teacher!  He had the children lined up and ready to greet us as we got off the bus – smallest to tallest with boys on one side and girls on the other.  It brought tears to my eyes.

The children hugged each of us and then hurried into their school, taking their seats to wait for the lessons to start. I paired up with my daughter’s friend Sammie, who is minoring in Spanish in college, to read the book first in Spanish and then in English.

They listened with intent, and enjoyed when I passed the pictures around and acted it out a bit for them.
Reading Cat in the Hat – Neguara video

The book is really quite long for the attention span of a small child, especially when it is being read twice. We decided to cut it short and move quickly on to the craft.
They loved making the hats, and with some assistance, we soon had a room full of Cats in Hats!


Video – Showing off Hats
It was a moving sight to see the whole school posing for a picture in their hats, and I was so tempted to leave the book behind as a donation, but my daughter had promised we had more kids to share Dr. Seuss with at Neuvo Paraiso. These boys go to school each morning and the return to the complex of buildings where they live, sleep and eat their meals. We had several afternoons to spend with them, playing games, making beautiful silk screened logo shirt thanks to the donations of an artist on our trip, and reading The Cat in the Hat. I was tickled to see 14, 15 and 16 year old boys working through the English text – sometimes laughing at the story and practicing their pronunciation in rhyme!
Video – Group Reading
Video of Christopher
Our very last day was spent with boys who live together at Casa Noble in Santa  Lucia.  They are mostly older boys – some attend classes at the university.  Their English is pretty good but The Cat in the Hat still presented a challenge.
Video – Alex Reading
One of my lasting memories of the week will always be of the group of us – moms, kids, new Honduran family members – huddled on the couch taking turns reading together with the a English speakers reading Spanish and vice versa.
Video – Group Read featuring Jimmy
I ended up leaving the book at Casa Noble. I explained to them that the Dr. Seuss was commissioned by his publisher to write a primer using 225 “new reader” sight words. Ironically, I had come to Honduras with almost no words in my word bank. My teaching life was enriched forever by watching the story magically draw its own audience. That Cat in the Hat brings “Good fun that is funny” even when his name is El Gato Ensombrerato.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Word Exchange by Alena Raedon

Rarely do a close a book I just finished and begin my review, but this dystopian account of the Word Flu that sweeps American in 2016 infected me with a (hopefully false) sense that my time to write this  may be short.  I put my iPad and iPhone down.  I must write and let the words speak for themselves.  

In some obvious ways, Alena Graedon's premise is not unique.  Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story and recently Egger's The Circle, have carried variations of the same warning - words and the stories we use them to tell - make us human.  Mostly, it brought to mind Chris Van Allsburg's The Wretched Stone.  Graedon wraps her narrative in an entirely fresh and mildly gimmicky format.  Following epigraphs by Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carrol and Jorge Luis Borges, the table of contents show chapters titled every letter of the alphabet and divided into three sections - Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.  The main narrator, Anana Johnson daughter of Douglas Johnson, is given the coded nickname Alice (think Through the Looking Glass)  before her father disappears from his job while racing to finish NADEL (North American Dictionary of the English Language).  The secondary narrator, Bart, (think Melville's Bartleby) tells his portion of the story through journal entries he writes as he tries to stave off the infection.

The first two or three chapters had me doubting the infectious pull of the narrative, but I was quickly hooked.  The pace is fast, the characters and the devices on which they depend are contemporary, and the suggested techniques for reversing their damage are music to any English teacher's ears - Cessation of contact with meaningless data, Reading, Conversation and Composition Therapy.  Part mystery, part love letter to language, the back flap of the cover describes it as "a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology".  I would suggest this as the perfect summer read - preferably on a beach with no cell service.

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book by Diane Muldrow

For Mother’s Day I purchased 5 of these and gave them to some of the finest mothers I know! I only wish I had thought of this idea first! Muldrow pairs illustrations from some of the best loved Little Golden Books with a litany of life instructions. Like this -

Each illustrations is labeled with the title of the book, year of publication and illustrator’s name. For more of a sneak peek, here is a link to the Pinterest page for the book When I got the books, I flipped through the pages with a nostalgic smile on my face. Of course the pictures struck a deep chord. I LOVED the Pokey Little Puppy! Each of the ladies I gave a book to thought it had been written just for her. This book makes a great gift and serves as a special reminder of life’s simple lessons. Following all of the lovely suggestions is the refrain – “And if you do, your life will be golden.”

Congratulations by the Way by George Saunders

Graduation season is upon us again, and a tiny part of me misses sharing in the exuberance and optimism of graduating seniors. The last several years, I would leave my seniors with a reading of protagonist Blue Vermeer’s fictitious commencement address from Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, in which she advises her classmates to “Live like a Goldfish”. If I were teaching today, I would be excited to use this slender new book, Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness by George Saunders. Saunders is an acclaimed author – one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the world, a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow – best known for his numerous short story collections. This new book contains the text of his 2013 Syracuse University commencement address, which is not the usual patronizing sort, but more of a humble recognition that most of his regrets in life have to do with “failures of kindness.” Since it came out in April, this book has been getting quite a bit of attention – from Brainpickings to Salon. This short video includes an excerpt from the book about a girl Sauders knew in school who he wishes now he had shown more kindness. The speech is endearing and the book would make the perfect graduation gift!

Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen

I was really excited to pick up this new foodie novel from the library.  I enjoy reading fiction and watching movies set in restaurants, and with Michelle Wildgen's background in food writing, I thought it would be a great book.  Instead, I found myself skimming chapters and skipping ahead.  On the positive side, the food writing is pretty great.  Her descriptions of dishes are mouthwateringly delicious and I could picture the inside of the restaurants from her visual descriptions.  But the plot is luke warm. Two brothers who are restaurant partners are challenged when the third brother decides to open a new restaurant across town.  There is an undercurrent of sibling rivalry, a few forbidden romance scenes, and day-to-day patter of restaurant business stress.  I kept waiting for something big to happen, and it did not.  I would say Bread and Butter is an appropriate title.  It was certainly no Lamb's neck with Jerulasem artichokes, broccoli rate and gremolata, even if that is the new restaurant's signature dish.  

The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

I did not read The Silver Lining Play Book by Matthew Quick, but loved the quirky movie characters enough to order this new novel from the library after reading a little bit about it.  The first chapter is  a letter to Richard Gere written by  thirty-eight year old protagonist Bartholomew Neil, and I almost quit when I paged ahead and realized that all of the chapters are written as letters to Richard Gere.  But I stuck with Bartholomew because something sweet and innocent and troubled about him reminded me of the protagonist Christopher in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Bartholomew is trying to heal following the loss of his mother, who he cared for, from cancer.  Following her death, the priest who has been visiting the family for years moves in, complicating Bartholomew's life, which has already been complicated enough by the grief counseling sessions he has to attend.  At counseling he meets "F-bombing" Max, the brother of the Girlibrarian that Bartholomew has already fallen for.  The novel ends with a zany road trip and an awkward, fragile sense of closure for all of the characters.  The layers of Catholicism, Jungian psychology, philosophy of Dalai Lama, fear of alien invasion and feline worship make for a much smarter book than I anticipated.  In the end, Bartholomew's mother's advice, that we must believe in the good luck of right now, rings true.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This is our book club selection for April, and I think there will be plenty to talk about.  I was glad that I knew nothing about the novel when I began it, and maybe even a little glad that - once again - I had accidentally ordered a large print edition with a different cover from the one above from the library.  So, I hadn't noticed the chimpanzee hanging from the tree.  I hate to spoil things!  Suffice it to say, Fowler's novel is about separate family members attempting to heal from a great loss.  The protagonist and narrator, Rosemary, is in college in the opening chapter of the novel when she promises the reader that she is beginning at the middle of the story.  She flashes back to her early life with her "sister" was taken away without explanation when Rosemary was six years old, and the time shortly afterward, when her brother disappears.  Her father is a psychology professor, and the passages of the novel that deal with Noam Chomsky, the psychology of happiness and solipsism make it a very smart book, indeed.  One passage I bookmarked would be enough to keep a book club going all night - "And so we constantly infer someone else's intentions, thoughts, knowledge, lack of knowledge, doubts, desires, beliefs, guesses, promises, preferences, purposes and many, many more things in order to behave as social creatures in the world."  I didn't love the book, but it kept me thinking.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

I received a digital review copy of this fascinating novel and will admit to being unable to put it down for about a week.  The opening line is, “Nobody ever warned me about mirrors so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy.” Boy Novak is a teenager who has just fled from her abusive father when the narrative opens.  She lands in a small Massachusetts town where she meets and eventually marries a widower named Arturo who has a daughter named Snow.  Didn’t take much for THIS intelligent reader to assume that a character named Bird would be forthcoming.  Sure enough, Bird is the name that Boy gives to the daughter she and Arturo have.  But the novel is much, much more complex than this simple synopsis suggests.  It is full of magical realism details and borrow heavily from fairy tales, especially Snow White.  It tackles race and what qualified as “passing” in the late fifties and early sixties.  It unmasks gender issues.  Helen Oyeyemi is gifted, and this complex novel left me wanting to have a reading buddy to dissect its hall of mirrors with as soon as I put the book down.

The Rosie Project by Graeme C. Simsion

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a review of the quirkiest and most refreshing love story I have fallen for in a while. Don Tillman is a genetics professor with autistic behaviors that have made it difficult for him to find a mate. He has developed The Wife Project, a multi-page questionnaire which should help those like him to filter out incompatible companions – ones who drink, smoke, show up late, mess the place up and bring chaos into calm spaces. Along comes Rosie Jarman, a disorganized bartender full of flaws who is searching for her biological father. Rosie and Don should be oil and water but she is able to switch his focus from finding a wife to finding her father, which results in The Father Project. One thing leads to another in this mad-cap, love-affirming novel. Simsion is an Australian author and I first saw this book on display in England where I learned that it was first written as a screenplay and the movie is set to film next year. You can even take the online quiz to see whether you are a Rosie or a Don. I was lucky enough to get an advance readers copy and I have already given it away. Give yourself a Valentine’s Day reading gift – it will delight!

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is a book I chose to read on my iPad this winter because its glowing screen can be read against the sparkly backdrop of the the Christmas tree in the corner of the room with no other lights on – if I get up the read when everyone else is asleep. A perfect book for a long winter’s night – 832 pages. Even the title suggests illumination.
The Luminaries is a saga – a story told and repeatedly retold by the myriad characters who lives criss-cross in the 19th century gold rush mining town of Hokitika, in New Zealand. One stormy night, a newcomer named Walter Moody stumbles into the first hotel he sees after suffering through a mind-jarring sea voyage that may have even caused him to see a ghost. Inside the warm hotel, he begins to overhear the secret conversations of 12 men who have come together on that particular night to unravel the secret that joins them. The reader learns a hermit is dead, a whore has overdosed, a young man and a significant fortune is missing and – the resolution to this tale is very, very far away.
The opening chapters of the book are ridiculously long – 40 pages plus. I almost gave up within the first 100 pages. Each chapter begins with a sort of old school italics chapter abstract. Skimming ahead to read a few of these, I quickly realized each of the twelve players would be recounting his own version of the mystery before any plot resolution got underway. I knew before beginning the book that that would be the case. I had read – and agree with the New York Times review that asserts, “It’s a lot of fun, like doing a Charlotte Brontë-themed crossword puzzle while playing chess and Dance Dance Revolution on a Bongo Board. Some readers will delight in the challenge, others may despair.” That, and the fact that the cover of the book, and the zodiac graphics between sections of the book, suggest that the phases of the moon and astrological shifts are Catton’s clever framework for the novel. Let’s just say – that was too much of a challenge for me. Although the chapters get shorter as the book wears on (the final chapters are each just a page), I was eager to see it end. I should have heeded my own promise not to get mixed up in books that require a character chart inside the front cover.
But I pressed on for a number of reasons, and in the end was glad that I did. One – I had read Catton’s first novel, The Rehearsal in 2010 and enjoyed it very much. Two – Eleanor Catton is just 28 years old, the winner of the Man Booker Prize and a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. And three – when we were in England this fall, the coolest bookstore we visited , Daunt Books, had a full window display of The Luminaries.

In the end, the luminary construct of the novel was too confusing for me and somehow the literary quilt of the novel was a bit too heavy for comfort. But for a long winter’s night, Catton is an old school story teller and formidable young writer very worthy of your time.

• 
  

The Best Bookshop in England and a Review of Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

Before we travel, I always research the best independent bookstores in the areas we will be visiting. I figured that the Cotswolds in England would be so dotted with charming little book shops that it would be difficult to see them all. All of my research seemed to point me in the direction of Jaffe and Neale Bookshop and Cafe in charming Chipping Norton. We had no difficulty finding the place, as cafe tables sat in front of the building where large Books are my Bag banners hung in the front windows. The bookstore felt homey, with many nooks for reading throughout and even some comfy chairs scattered around. I would have gladly spent all day there, but we had an agenda for the day that involved visiting the nearby Hook Norton brewery in time for lunch.

I had been reading Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a perfectly appropriate novel to read while driving around the British countryside. I saw Joyce’s new novel, Perfect, on a shelf and carried it over to the cashier to ask if this new book lived up to the delight of Harold Fry. The woman I spoke with assured me that it did, but after I explained that I was an American on vacation who really did NOT need another book in her suitcase – that if I bought a book in England at all, I could only buy one – she took it as a challenge and recommended that perhaps I should consider Diane Setterfield’s Bellman and Black instead.

Now I was tempted. A signed copy of a book not yet available in the U.S. was worth considering, so I took the two novels to one of those inviting book nooks for comparison and consideration. I was zeroing in on a choice when I noticed that my husband was engaged in a conversation with a gentleman who he was leading my way. Alerted by his wife at the cashier’s station, Patrick Neale wondered if David was with the American woman who could only buy one book in the UK. He was personally interested in the choice I was about to make since, in addition to being the proprietor of the shop, he is the current president of the British Booksellers Association – and a fascinating person to talk with about books.

David and I chatted with him about his shop and recommended some of our favorite bookstores in American. We told him about our experiences as English teachers, how we were in England for the wedding of a former student, and our favorite books in general. When he finally got around to recommending my one book for purchase, he picked up a copy of Julian Barnes’ Levels of Life. I knew Barnes from his slim novel The Sense of an Ending , which I had read and reviewed in 2012. Neale described the novel as one with no single word out of place. He was suggesting Barnes new book – which was also thankfully slim for my suitcase.
Levels of Life is a three part memoir of sorts that begins with a section about hot air ballooning, moves into a consideration of the nuances of historical photography, and finishes with Barnes own grief suffered at the loss of his wife in from a brain tumor in 2008. It is a difficult book to recommend to friends because the last section sounds like it would be so depressing. However, the overarching premise of all three parts is “You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.” I was personally delighted to find mention of Dame Ellen Terry in the second section, which describes photographs of actress Sarah Bernhardt taken by the 19th-century photographer and inventor Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (later known simply as Nadar). Terry was Bernhardt’s acting contemporary and the subject of my undergraduate Independent Study thesis at The College of Wooster. The book’s pacing and its weaving of historical details and naturalistic descriptions reminded me of Annie Dillard and Terry Tempest Williams – two of my favorite essayists. In the end, it is life affirming rather than deflating. The metaphor of the hot air balloon and the precariousness of its flight carries the reader to consider many levels of living and loving. I put off reading the book – and writing this review – because I knew the experience would be difficult to describe for my readers. One day in my life several things were put together – the coincidence of finding the perfect Brisith bookstore, meeting the most charming British bookseller and being handed a deeply moving book that will resonate with me for as long as my photographs of my matchless vacation with my husband remain – and my reading life was changed.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My favorite book of the year!  Amazon's Book of the Year!  One of the New York Times five top works of fiction for 2013!  What else to I have to say to get you to put this book at the top of your Christmas list.  

Thirteen year old Theo Decker and his mother have just finished admiring The Goldfinch, a legendary painting by Carel Fabritius, in a New York art museum when a bomb blast rocks the building.  Theo's mother is killed, and although Theo escapes, he does so with two items that will change his life forever - an heirloom ring given to him by the dying grandfather of a girl who had caught Theo's eye AND the Fabritius painting.   The rest of the novel follows Theo through repeated moves and losses, friendships and relationships, adventures and drug-induced skirmishes.  There is something in this book for everyone.  

I agree with Stephen King, who likened the scope of the narrative to Dickens when he reviewed the book for the New York Times .  He also called it the sort of book that comes along only a few times per decade.  Such is the pattern of Donna Tartt.  I first read The Little Friend in 2002, when I received it as a Christmas gift from my, then, new husband David.  He gave me the book and an Amish rocker that Christmas, and I sat in the rocker and rarely left it until I finished the book.  I went back and read her earlier novel, The Secret History, so I guess that puts me among the Tartt fans who have been waiting over a decade for her next work.  Tartt labors over her story telling, immersing herself in writing, rarely granting interviews and never apologizing for the time that passes between masterpieces.  

I decided not to wait for the book from the library, and downloaded the Kindle version to my iPad and also ordered the Audible audio book so could enjoy listening to the book while I walked and while I worked in the sewing room.  It helped to get me through the nearly 800 pages more quickly, because once I got in to the narrative, I wanted to stay in.  In fact, although it is one of those rare books that I didn't want to finish reading, I pressed through til the end, staying up late on the night before Thanksgiving.  And as soon as I finished the book, I wanted to start re-reading.  The last several pages struck me as a love song to art, in all its forms, and were so lovely that it would do a disservice to the whole book to quote anything out of context.  

I LOVED THIS BOOK!  Final comment.  You be the judge.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Before our road trip through England, I searched for the perfect book to take along on the iPad. I wanted a book set in England that would compliment our travel route and Harold Fry was the perfect companion. At the beginning of the novel, Harold receives a note from a woman named Queenie, a brewery co-worker from his distant past. She has dictated her note to a worker at the hospice where she has presumably gone to die. Harold writes back and tells his insecure and cloying wife that he is walking to the post office with his note. But when he gets there, he decides to walk to the next post office, and then the next – believing somehow that his walking is keeping Queenie alive. His unlikely pilgrimage becomes a sort of “Forrest Gump” mission, where he is joined by other unlikely pilgrims. As we motored along on the wrong side of the road through the English countryside, we passed towns that I had seen through Harold’s eyes already on the trip. Harold Fry’s story was touching, life affirming and perfect for this trip.

(See my next review for Rachel Joyce’s Perfect)

Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt

Funny, funny social satire of the South complete with Faulkner references! When I first brought this book home from the library, I wasn’t sure it would be worth the time commitment – more than 360 pages. But when I met Jerene Jarvis Johnston, the central character of the opening chapter, and her old money approach to the challenges and demons she encounters, I was hooked. The book is set in Charlotte, NC (my son lives there) and Jerene works for the Mint Museum which we have visited, so there was a point of personal connection for me. Then the book’s “Southern Discomfort” was highlighted in The New York Times Book Review on August 30. Although the alternating focus on individual characters in each chapter makes the job of piecing the family saga together the reader’s task, I enjoyed the wild ride through post-Civil War Southern politics, contemporary race and gender issues and even current campus Greek living debauchery. A holiday dinner scene in the middle of the novel includes so much physical comedy that I could see this book being adapted for the screen. On the page – three thumbs up from this reviewer!

Fin and Lady by Cathleen Schine

The main character of this “coming of age at an early age” novel is eleven year old Fin, who is orphaned in the opening chapter of this touching and sweet story. Fin must go to live with his worldly, and much older half-sister, Lady who is indulgent, careless and living in Greenwich Village. In 1963, when the novel is set, Greenwich Village is a alien landscape for young boy used to rural Connecticut. Although he hasn’t seen Lady for a few years, Fin is lovingly embraced by her and her social circle which includes a revolving set of suitors. Like Auntie Mame, Lady opens Fin’s eye to both opulence and disappointment. The strength of this novel lies in its fully drawn complex and quirky characters.

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

 

I loved Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin and was really looking forward to TransAtlantic, which has the same sort of interconnected story lines - this time about three memorable journeys in three distinctly different time periods.  Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown flew the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic carrying mail in 1919.  Frederick Douglass visited Dublin in 1845 to rally people around the Abolitionist cause.  And George Mitchell traveled to Belfast in 1998 to participate in peace talks in bitter Northern Ireland.  Interlaced with the stories of these men are the women whose secondary roles become primary in the latter portion of the book.  An Irish housemaid from the Douglass section becomes the mother of Emily and grandmother of Lottie who write about and photograph the Alcock and Brown flight and supply a piece of iconic mail that is the focus of the final section of the novel.  The symbolic unopened letter is passed from on generation to the next.  McCann writes, "We seldom know what echo our actions will find, but our stories will most certainly outlast us." TransAtlantic is a lushly poetic novel and McCann a master of spinning an engaging historical novel.

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

I love it when my reading prescience is spot on!  Instructions for a Heatwave showed up in the New York Times Book Review as I was reading it.  Gretta Riordan's husband, Robert, has walked off - gone missing - in the midst of the English drought and heatwave of 1976.  In the opening section of the novel she calls each of her three children home - two from England and one from New York City - to help her deal with the disappearance.  The novel is a character study of sibling rivalry and buried secrets.  I thoroughly enjoyed O'Farrell's storytelling.  That the novel ends in Ireland with the family sitting down to eat freshly baked soda bread makes it even more appealing to me.  Back when I was teaching AP English, we used to talk about novels with central characters who appeared only briefly or not at all.  Robert Riordan is one such character who appears (spoiler) just when I expected him to - on the last page.

How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu

How to Read the Air was reviewed as one of several recommended summer “road trip” novels, but I remember becoming interested in Dinaw Mengestu back when he was chosen by the New Yorker in 2010 as one of the 20 Under 40 authors to read. This is no ordinary road trip novel and Mengestu is an extraordinary storyteller. The book traces two trips – one taken by Ethiopian immigrants Yosef and Mariam to Nashville and one taken by their adult son, Josef who is anxious to retrace his parents’s tragic travel so that he might learn what truth it can shed on his own his own trouble marriage. Alternating between chapters set in the past and the present, the reader is gradually given a glimpse of the strife of acclimation – to a new land, a new language, a new job, a new relationship, and even the promise of a new life. Lush with contemplative passages about how to read the signs of life, I found myself wanting to take the journey of this novel slow.

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver

Hardly a spoiler, Noa P. Singleton is awaiting her execution for the murder she committed ten years earlier as this crime novel opens.  In sections labeled Six Months Before Execution, Five Months Before Execution, and so on, the circumstances leading up to Noa’s incarceration are revealed.  Her crime has suddenly become of interest to a young lawyer who, working with the mother of her victim, thinks he can build a case to prevent her execution.  Her victim’s mother has aligned herself with an organization called MAD, Mothers Against Death.  Little by little the reader learns about Noa’s past and her tortured relationship all of the individuals involved in her case.  Little by little, this reader tired of her as a protagonist and was secretly hoping the ending would match the title – Sorry!

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

I have stuck with Meg Wolitzer through several novels, although I did not care for her last one, The Uncoupling.  But my AP grading comrade and trusted reading friend, Paris, recommended it recently, so I dove in.  The novel is a sweeping book covering four decades in 468 pages, and it deals with large issues of life - friendship and family, marriage and fidelity, money and success.  It opens with a scene that suggested I was entering a Wes Anderson-style-Moonrise-Kingdom of a novel, set in a summer arts camp in Massachusetts called Spirit-in-the-Woods, where lifelong friendships are forged during an eight week season in a humid tepee full of teens who deem themselves, The Interestings.  Here protagonist Julie Jacobson becomes Jules, a far more interesting name, and meets Ash and Goodman Wolf, Ethan Figman and Jonah Bay - four characters whose lives will knit and unravel in the decades to come, against the backdrop of Vietnam, the sexual revolution, AIDS, off-shore manufacturing, 9/11 and TED talks.  I ended up liking the book very much in the way that I enjoy Jonathan Franzen or Tom Perrota who grapple with essential questions in their fiction.  The essential question of this book seems to be "What does it take to live an interesting life?"  The answer is summed up near the end of the book, when Ethan Figman, creator of a highly successful network cartoon, claims, "Everyone basically has one aria to sing over their entire life."   The book reminded me of my guarded wariness for the futures of all of the "interesting" teenagers I taught over the years - kids right out of the fictitious camp bible The Drama of the Gifted Child - who graduated from high school certain they were destined for greatness.

The Lion is In by Delia Ephron

The cover of this novel says it all.  Delia Ephron is out to entertain in this interrupted road trip novel.  Tracee, Lana and Rita are all running away from something.  Tracee is a kleptomaniac in a stolen wedding gown; Lana is an alcoholic with a keen eye for trouble; and Rita, who the two others pick up hitchhiking, is escaping a harsh minister husband.  Their car crashes just in front of The Lion, a tired bar that houses a jukebox, a few regular customers and a real lion in a cage.  Short chapters, crazy convergences, lion tricks and colorful characters make this a perfect summer chick read.

Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende

I am a huge Isabel Allende fan and have read almost everything she has ever written, including essays and interviews.  Back in the days when Borders was in town, I once hastily pre-ordered a copy of one her books, and when it arrived, it was in Spanish.  The English edition wasn’t even available yet.  My love affair began with House of Spirits, a book full of magical realism.  Finally, after a few historical novels, Allende is back to story telling in the style of House of Spirits.
Maya is a nineteen year old in a heap of contemporary trouble.  She has been raised in Berkeley, California by her grandparents and hasn’t been herself since the death of her Popo.  Drugs, porn, violence, and a string of the wrong friends propel her grandmother to send Maya far, far away – to the remote Chilean island of Chiloe.  There her grandmother’s friend, Manuel Arias, an introvert more than twice Maya’s age, has promised to oversee Maya’s removal from society.  No internet, no contact with her past – only notebooks to record her past and recovery.  Told as first person journal entries, the story of Maya’s troubled past is revealed, along Allende’s most complete assessment of Chilean political history.  Allende’s uncle, Salvador Allende was killed in the bloody aftermath of the military coup that created a harsh military dictatorship, lead by General Augusto Pinochet.  This history is interwoven with revelations of character relationships near the novel’s end.
This may not be Allende’s best, but the book is dedicated to the “teenagers of my tribe” and is best read as a cautionary tale.  In recent interviews, Allende has shared just how autobiographic some of the events in this novel really are.   Two of her husband’s adult children have died of drug related causes.  Maya may be a mess in the beginning, as the Spanish cover of the novel clearly shows, but she pulls through with determination.