John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
Kathy
Middlemarch, George Eliot - CLASSIC
Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight paper-bound instalments from December 1871 to December 1872, with a book version in four volumes published in parallel (the first volume is dated 1871 and the other three are dated 1872).
Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, from 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Leavened with comic elements, Middlemarch approaches significant historical events in a realist mode: the Reform Act 1832, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed but, seventy years later, it was considered as her best work and one of the great English novels.
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
The novel explores the life of Hannah Coulter as she reflects on her community of Port William, Kentucky, the impact of World War II, and the passage of time.
Adam Bede, George Eliot - CLASSIC
Adam Bede was the first novel by English author George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, first published in 1859. Eliot described the novel as "a country story full of the breath of cows and scent of hay".
The novel follows the lives of four characters in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral, and close-knit community—in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" among the beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel; Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her; Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor; and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher.
The Memory of Old Jack, Wendell Berry
Old Jack, born just after the American Civil War and dying in contemporary times, spends one beautiful September day in Port William, his home since birth, remembering.
The story tells of the most searing moments of Old Jack’s life, particularly his debt to his sister Nancy and her husband Ben Feltner, Old Jack’s model of what an honorable manhood and strength might be.
"Few novelists treat both their characters and their readers with the kind of respect that Wendell Berry displays in this deeply moving account . . . The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana." ― The New York Times Book Review
Kerry
Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri
- Winner Michael J. Printz Award (2021)
- Winner Christopher Award (2021)
- Winner Middle East Book Award (2021)
- Walter Dean Myers Award Honor (2021)
- BEST OF THE YEAR (2021): NPR • New York Times • Amazon • Booklist • BookPage • Publishers Weekly • Wall Street Journal • Today.com
From national bestselling author Daniel Nayeri comes a sprawling, evocative, and groundbreaking autobiographical novel told in the unforgettable and hilarious voice of a young Iranian refugee. It is a powerfully layered novel that poses the questions: Who owns the truth? Who speaks it? Who believes it?
“A patchwork story is the shame of the refugee,” Nayeri writes early in the novel. In an Oklahoman middle school, Khosrou (whom everyone calls Daniel) stands in front of a skeptical audience of classmates, telling the tales of his family’s history, stretching back years, decades, and centuries. At the core is Daniel’s story of how they became refugees—starting with his mother’s vocal embrace of Christianity in a country that made such a thing a capital offense, and continuing through their midnight flight from the secret police, bribing their way onto a plane-to-anywhere. Anywhere becomes the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy, and then finally asylum in the U.S.
Implementing a distinct literary style and challenging western narrative structures, Nayeri deftly weaves through stories of the long and beautiful history of his family in Iran, adding a richness of ancient tales and Persian folklore. Like Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, Daniel spins a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth.
A tale of heartbreak and resilience and urges readers to speak their truth and be heard.
Anxious People, Fredrick Backman
Soon to be a major motion picture.
This instant #1 New York Times bestseller about a crime that never takes place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined is a “wry, wise, and often laugh-out-loud funny” (People).
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. In short, they are the worst group of hostages in the world.
As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.
Proving once again that Backman is “a master of writing delightful, insightful, soulful, character-driven narratives” (USA TODAY), Anxious People “captures the messy essence of being human….It’s clever and affecting, as likely to make you laugh out loud as it is to make you cry” (The Washington Post). This “endlessly entertaining mood-booster” (Real Simple) is proof that the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope can save us—even in the most anxious of times.
Deacon King Kong, James McBride
- Winner Andrew Carnegie Excellence in Fiction (2021)
- Winner Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction (2021)
- Winner Gotham Book Prize (2021)
- Winner Thurber Prize for American Humor (2021)
- One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" (2021)
- Oprah's Book Club Pick (2021)
- New York Times Readers Pick 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
- Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year (2020) by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine
- A Washington Post Notable Novel (2020)
From the author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year.
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.
The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.
As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters-caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York-overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.
Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.
Ruth
The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai
A moving story of friendship, art, grief, and the AIDS crisis, with the emotional depth of The Heart's Invisible Furies and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
- Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2018)
- National Book Award Finalist (2018)
- New York Times Top 10 Book of 2018
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner (2018)
- ALA Carnegie Medal Winner (2018)
- Stonewall Book Award Winner (2018)
- One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
- Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library Read Less
- Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler
"A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." -The New York Times Book Review
A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris.
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
A beautifully atmospheric, centuries-spanning story about memory, identity, art, and the desire to be remembered.
Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine
#1 Library Reads Pick—October 2020
#1 Indie Next Pick—October 2020
BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST—Book of The Month Club
A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot * Library Reads Voter Favorite *
In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force.
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, Jamie Ford
A multigenerational story of Chinese American women, inherited trauma, and healing across time.
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living.
As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.
As the painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period—a stranger who’s loved her through all of her inherited memories.
Can Dorothy break the cycle of generational trauma and abandonment to finally find peace for her daughter and love for herself? Or will she end up paying the ultimate price?
“For Jamie Ford fans both old and new, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an unmitigated pleasure” (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and a lyrical Asian American family saga unlike any other.
The Paris Library, Janet Skeslien Charles
A dual-timeline novel about librarians, resistance, friendship, and betrayal during World War II.
An instant New York Times, Washington Post, and USA TODAY bestseller—based on the true story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II—The Paris Library is a moving and unforgettable “ode to the importance of libraries, books, and the human connections we find within both” (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author).
Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet seems to have the perfect life with her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into the city, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.
Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them.
“A love letter to Paris, the power of books, and the beauty of intergenerational friendship” (Booklist), The Paris Library shows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest places.
The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd
A richly imagined historical novel about a woman seeking intellectual and spiritual independence in the ancient world.
“An extraordinary novel . . . a triumph of insight and storytelling.” —Associated Press
“A true masterpiece.” —Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed
An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything.
Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history
Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan - see Katherine's list for details
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, G.B. Edwards - see Steph's list for details
Steph
Silence, Shusaku Endo (Maybe Classic - published in 1966)
Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs. Shusaku Endo is one of the most celebrated and well-known Japanese fiction writers of the twentieth century, and Silence is widely considered to be his great masterpiece.
Explores themes about:
- the silence of God: The central emotional and spiritual question is why God remains silent while innocent people suffer terribly for their faith.
- Apostasy vs. True Compassion: Endō explores whether outwardly denying one's faith under duress is a cowardly betrayal or a supreme act of love and sacrifice for one's fellow human beings.
- The Cultural Soil of Japan: The novel reflects Endō's lifelong exploration of whether Western Christianity can take root in Japanese culture, or if the "swamp" of Japanese soil fundamentally alters or rejects it.
Made into a motion picture in 2016, directed by Martin Scorsese, and starring Adam Driver, Liam Neesan, and Andrew Garfield.
A Heart So White, Javier Marias
- Premio de la Critica de Narrative Castellana (1992)
- Dublin Literary Award (1997)
Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know.
Secrecy—its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility—hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence.
Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into the shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence. ("My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white"—Shakespeare's Macbeth.)
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, G. B. Edwards
G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously in 1981, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.
Renowned authors John Fowles and William Golding hailed it as a twentieth-century masterpiece for its authentic, powerful narrative voice.
Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost.
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island.
- Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024
- Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Atlantic, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, HuffPost, Medium, Library Journal
“[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize
“Compulsively readable, universally relevant, and deeply resonant . . . in equal parts beautiful and urgent.”—The New York Times Book Review
Amid a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.
The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre.
From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury - CLASSIC
The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.
Not science fiction! Here's a sample of the text:
Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.
