While You Wait for Cloud Atlas

I fell in love with Cloud Atlas when I saw the new movie adaptation. So of course, being a Ravenous Reader, I greedily devoured the book it was based on, by David Mitchell. I'll admit, I had some trouble getting into it on my first try, but this time around, it had the best of both worlds, with all the cleverness of literary fiction, and all the fun of genre fiction. While you're waiting for your hold to come in, you might want to check out some similar books and movies, or peruse the list of recommended background reading to catch its literary allusions.

When I walked out of the theater, I thought: "This is the movie of A Swiftly Tilting Planet I've always wanted!" That classic by Madeleine L'Engle, part of the series that begins with A Wrinkle in Time, also spans millennia, showing through telepathy and, yeah, okay, a magic unicorn, that people's actions and obsessions have repercussions that echo across centuries in surprising ways. Although it's written for a younger audience, many adults (including myself!) still count this series among their favorites. Like Cloud Atlas, it has a lot of layers that rereading can reveal.

Read on for more:

A Country Called Home

Welcome to Fife, Idaho, a tight-knit, rural community and compelling character in Kim Barnes' novel, A Country Called Home. For years, pharmacist Burt Kalinosky - or Dr. K as the locals call him - managed the medical needs of that small community from "menstruation, childbirth through menopause" and he is a bit bemused to hear that Tom and Helen Deracotte, a New England doctor and his pregnant wife, bought the old Bateman place - sight unseen. The news also causes quite a stir among the area old-timers who know better than to buy a farm without walking the fence line and weighing the soil.

I Married You for Happiness

Casting about for reading inspiration, I consulted the Publisher's Weekly  "Top Ten Books of 2011" and opted for Lily Tuck's I Married You for Happiness -- what serendipity!

Tuck's short (193-page), poignant novel takes place over the course of a single night, during the vigil that Nina keeps at the side of her husband who has died, quite unexpectedly. It sounds like a tragic scenario, but in the expert hands of this award-winning novelist it is a lyrical and absorbing portrait of a 42-year marriage.

When Nina discovers that Philip has suffered cardiac arrest during a pre-dinner nap, she settles in by his side for a last night with him. Weaving a dreamlike tapestry of their years together she randomly revisits the events of a closely-shared lifetime, holding at bay the need for arrangements, phone calls and the inevitable onslaught of grief that will arrive with the dawn.

Flash back to the sidewalk cafe where young Philip, a gifted mathematician and academic, meets artistic Nina, whose job in a Parisian art gallery pays just enough to keep her in painting supplies.

Down and Out

I enjoy character driven novels, especially when those characters live hardscrabble lives. The more "down and out" a character or situation is, the more involved I become. My interest is always piqued when a character's environment - or even his or her internal makeup - presents barriers to that character's advancement. After all conflict is the fuel for storytelling and, to be honest, fuels this schadenfreude reading tendency of mine. So I present three novels with characters that encounter seemingly insurmountable odds.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is the most engaging of the three. Oscar de Leon takes center stage but the story mostly concerns the lives of the people who surround him: his mother and sister, the woman with whom he falls in love, his college roommate and his very estranged father. The story stretches across time and place - from Oscar's mother's youth in the Dominican Republic to his family's modern day immigrant struggles in New Jersey. Oscar is hapless and, while we may cringe at that, very endearing.

So Long, See You Tomorrow

First, I want to emphatically state that I never pick reading material to complement my geographical location. Yet before heading to farmland in the Heartland, I grabbed this drama played out between tenant farmers in the 1920's and then it grabbed me while I lazed away an afternoon on the porch of a 1910 Sears Roebuck Modern Home.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell is a telescopic look into a tragedy that claimed the lives of two neighboring farmers. Fifty years after the incident a townie, connected to the deaths through his friendship with the killer's son, reflects on the events that unfolded to culminate in murder and the families' fragmentation.

Last Night at the Lobster

Stewart O'Nan makes the work-a-day world a compelling place in his bijou of a novel, Last Night at the Lobster. This keen-eyed view of life in a blue collar begins at the ending, as "The Lobster," a failing Red Lobster restaurant in working class New Britain, Connecticut, prepares for a final day serving up chain eatery seafood before closing its doors forever.

The Lobster is an unlovely place, with shellacked fish mounted on seedy paneling and tattered holiday decorations; its closing will pass largely unnoticed except by manager Manny DeLeon, for whom The Lobster is his world. Manny is determined to make this last day count, despite obstacles imposed by his soon-to-be-unemployed, rebellious staff, his horrible customers worn out from Christmas shopping, and an impending blizzard. After tonight, he will move on to a lesser position at another corporate restaurant in another town; his future is filled with uncertainty and his present marked by regrets, including an unresolved relationship with a former lover and his ambivalence towards his current, pregnant girlfriend.

GLBT Favorites

Our GLBT Services Committee is hosting a great author event in April, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk it up and recommend some other favorite books, too! Sister Spit is a dynamic audio/visual performance headlined by Dorothy Allison and Michelle Tea, plus other special guests. They will be performing with two free shows at Fluxx Gallery, 414 E. 9th St., on Saturday, April 7th, at 4 and 9pm. (Dorothy Allison will be at the first show only.) Read on for more GLBT books...

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Eleanor Brown’s debut novel, The Weird Sisters, is nothing less than a gift to lovers of witty, domestic literary fiction.

The Andreas sisters are not weird in the conventional sense: think Shakespeare, rather than "strange." Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia--see what I mean?--are the offspring of a renowned Shakespeare expert and his loveable, distracted wife. The sisters grew up in a small, Midwestern University town, generally getting on each others' nerves (in the way of sisters) and flinging Shakespeare quotes at each other (not a normal sisterly activity, but Brown makes it work).

As adults the Andreas girls have gone their separate ways but as the novel opens they are about to be reunited, without warning. Bianca and Cordelia are returning home, individually and unannounced, on the pretext of helping the way-too-responsible Rosalind care for their ailing mother. In reality they harbor their own secrets and are seeking refuge while they figure out what to do next. They are not overjoyed to see one another.

The Olive in all of us

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout  is a novel in short stories.  The anchoring character is Olive Kitteridge, a school teacher in a small town on the coast of Maine. The stories take place over a lifetime of years.  Each story features Olive, her family or a resident of the town.  The author magically weaves these stories together so that by the end of the book the reader truly knows Olive.

Now the frightening part, Olive is us.  Olive is occasionally funny, often cruel, at times sensitive and sometimes extremely vulnerable. Her husband, Henry, who can only be described as long suffering, loves Olive despite her flaws. Her only child, Christopher, is smothered by Olive’s possessiveness, dependence and also her love.  I found that when I disliked Olive the most, I saw a part of me.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

It's hard to imagine a character more luckless than Sam Pulsifer, the antihero of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. As a teenager he unwittingly sets fire to the Amherst home of poet Emily Dickinson, reducing it to ashes and snuffing out the landmark's docent and her husband in the process. He does ten years for his crime and returns home to find, to his utter amazement, hundreds of letters from people suggesting other famous authors' homes that deserve torching.

But Sam only wants to extinguish his fiery past and move on. With a new family, a career, and a life that's back on-track he keeps his incendiary history a secret until the unlucky day a stranger appears, introducing himself as the only child of the couple who died in the Dickinson House blaze. "You ruined my life," he tells Sam, "and now I'm going to ruin yours."

In short order the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville and other New England writers suffer suspicious blazes very much like Sam's trademark crime. His attempts to prove his innocence make for a darkly humorous story that will please any reader drawn to quirky characters, unlikely scenarios and a plot that twists and turns. At 305 pages  it's a quick and satisfying read.

--Helene

Haigh is for Jennifer

If you've missed reading any of Jennifer Haigh's 4 novels, you'll delight in discovering a new author for your literary fiction list. Hallmarks of Haigh's novels include beautiful language, unique multifaceted characters and the author's compassionate understanding of the complexities of family dynamics. Family in different shapes and guises forms the core of Haigh's fiction.

The Condition You'll first meet the McKotches, a large patrician Boston family, at The Captain's House, their usual summer gathering spot on Cape Cod. But this summer, the usual becomes anything but as family members watch Gwen, on the verge of adolescence, enter the water. Comparisons are inevitable between Gwen and her younger cousin but Gwen definitely looks younger. In fact, Gwen is diagnosed with Turner's Syndrome, a condition that will forever hold her in the body of a child. Gwen's condition is obvious but over the next twenty years other family conditions - less obvious but equally significant - financial, emotional and spiritual are masterfully brought to recognition.

When the Killing's Done

One of the joys of reading anything by T.C. Boyle (and many joys await his readers) is the way he makes you reexamine the things you thought you knew. In his latest outing, When the Killing's Done, Boyle offers a thought-provoking look at environmental issues through the story of two philosophically incompatible characters engaged in a pitched battle over animal rights. Alma Boyd Takesue, a biologist for the National Park Service, oversees a program to eradicate an invasive species of rats from the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. Her goal is to return the islands to their one-pristine condition by preserving their native flora and fauna. Dave LaJoye, an animal rights activist, objects to the way the Parks Service is, in his opinion, trying to play god.