BOOK CLUB CLASSICS!

This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia

Release date: 2010 / 350 pages

First line: “Amy considered the postcard: a boardwalk scene.”

Synopsis (from back cover): “When Arthur Rook learns that his vital, creative wife, Amy, has been killed in an accident, he realizes to his horror that he has no idea what her last wishes would have been. Blindsided by the sudden loss and delirious with grief, he flees his home and job in Los Angeles, guided only by a pink shoebox full of Amy’s keepsakes.”

Review: Often when I sit down to write a review, I try to think of one adjective that best describes what I have jsut read.  In this case, one adjective was simply not enough as they crowded and jostled each other on to the page.  This novel is strange, dense, deep, sad, beautiful, and bizarre.  Every character but one is sympathetic and likeable, and the one who is neither is only present for 4 pages — yet influences the next 346 pages intimately, unknowingly, irresponsibly, uncaringly.

However, the other characters in the novel are so wholly likeable — and so original and unforgettable.  The perspective shifts between them, which works very well, fortunately, since the “plot” is only as strong and interesting as the characters.  And the author, Racculia, allows her readers intimate knowledge of each character, too.  This would be a lovely novel for a writing class focused on how to create living, breathing souls out of ink and paper.  Racculia does this so well, it’s almost disorienting.  How can these people not really be out in the world?

And, since this novel represents “real life” so well, there is pain and heartbreak, and joy and hope, and mortality and fear — in just the right amounts.  I was sad to see the characters go, but a bit exhausted from caring so deeply about Mona, and Arthur, and Oneida, and Wendy…  and by how “real” everyone and everything was, too.  However, I mostly loved the ending — even though it highlighted an implausible plot device in the novel.  But even this possible flaw was forgiven since the characters accepted it so well and allowed the reader to do so as well.

Sound interesting?  Feel free to drop me a comment and I’ll choose a winner by the weekend! 

Welcome back!

I love this list!  Each year the Notable Books Council selects 25 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry books.  According to the Notable Books Council, “…books may be selected because they possess exceptional literary merit; expand the horizons of human knowledge; make a specialized body of knowledge accessible to the non-specialist; have the potential to contribute significantly to the solution of a contemporary problem; and/or present a unique concept.”  FYI — every book that I have read on this list, I greatly enjoyed.  I have linked to my review, if available.

Fiction

Jessica Anthony. The Convalescent
Rovar Pfiegman, bus-dwelling meat salesman, fulfills his destiny as the last of his clan in this oddly imaginative tale.

Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood
In the near future, two women survive an apocalyptic event in a queasily enthralling work.

Nicholson Baker. The Anthologist
Poet Paul Chowder, a charming failure, struggles to regain his muse and his girlfriend while watching deadlines slip by.

Dan Chaon. Await Your Reply  My review for Await Your Reply
This chilling exploration of the modern meaning of identity follows three people on the fringes of society.

Chris Cleave. Little Bee   My review for Little Bee
The compelling voice of a refugee illuminates the life-changing friendship between two women that began with a horrifying encounter on a secluded Nigerian beach.

Pete Dexter. Spooner
A boy struggles to navigate the vagaries of the world with the lifelong guidance of his stepfather in this funny and heartbreaking tale.

Paul Harding. Tinkers   My review for Tinkers
In this lyrical novel, the life of a dying man is examined through the smallest moments of time and memory.

Yiyun Li. The Vagrants
The execution of a dissident woman reverberates through her small town in the aftermath of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Colum McCann. Let the Great World Spin  My review for Let the Great World Spin
Phillipe Petit’s highwire walk between the Twin Towers provides the backdrop for this rich portrait of the unlikely connections between a group of New Yorkers in the 1970s.

Toni Morrison. A Mercy
Four women—white, mixed race, black, and Native American—become a makeshift family under the care of a “good” man in colonial America.

Richard Powers. Generosity: An Enhancement
In this postmodern indictment of the biotech industry, a student’s unnerving happiness seems to hold the key to banishing despair from the human genetic code.

Colm Tóibín. Brooklyn
A young Irish woman faces heart-wrenching decisions in this unabashedly romantic and deceptively simple story of immigration and belonging.

Nonfiction

Dave Cullen. Columbine
This fine work of investigative journalism challenges the myths and misconceptions of the Columbine tragedy.

Dave Eggers. Zeitoun   My review for Zeitoun
This powerful account explores the devastation of post–Katrina New Orleans through the eyes of a Syrian American who remained during the storm and endured the resulting chaos and confusion.

David Finkel. The Good Soldiers
An embedded reporter describes the human cost paid by a U.S. Army battalion on the streets of Iraq in language that is searing, visceral, and immediate.

David Grann. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
An intrepid reporter sets out to uncover the mysterious fate the last of the great Victorian explorers in this thrilling adventure.

Emmanuel Guibert. The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
Using mixed visual media, this stunning memoir vividly depicts the struggles and accomplishments of a humanitarian mission in an unforgiving terrain.

Richard Holmes. The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science
This lively, stellar group biography animates the engrossing accounts of the research that inspired a sense of awe in poets and scientists alike.

Patrick Radden Keefe. The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
Human trafficking and its subsequent effects on the American economy and social structures are documented in this fast-paced panoramic expose.

Christopher McDougall. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
One journalist’s quest to discover the secrets of the reclusive Tarahumara Indians leads to an exciting and dangerous endurance race.

Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
In-depth, brutal, and moving, this narrative provides multiple perspectives into a tragic World War II episode in the Philippines.

Lainey Salisbury and Aly Sujo. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
This enthralling page-turner describes how archivists uncovered one of the most extensive frauds in recent art history.

David Small. Stitches: A Memoir
Stark drawings give voice to the horrors of a child who finds redemption in art while growing up in a repressed and disturbed family.

Nicholas Thompson. The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War
The remarkable half-century friendship and rivalry between two influential strategists who helped shape American policy is brought to life in this insightful dual biography.

Poetry

Sherman Alexie. Face
Hanging Loose. Autobiographical poems experimenting with various styles and forms explore childhood, fatherhood, and the trials, perks, and humor of minor celebrity.

Stephen Dunn. What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009
Completely accessible poems written in ordinary language deal with cats, love, barfights, desire, melancholia, and relationships.

My Fathers’ Daughterby Hannah Pool

Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 288 pages

Synopsis (from Booklist): Following her mother’s death in childbirth—and the erroneous notation of her father’s death as well—Pool was adopted by a white couple and transplanted from Eritrea. She eventually grew up in middle-class comfort in England, missing the hardships, deprivation, and war in Eritrea. But she also grew up with the fantasy of many adopted children of someday being reclaimed by the birth family, as well as the guilt of being curious about her birth family and seeming ungrateful of the adopted family. In Pool’s case, there were the additional layers of differences in race and nationality. Still, when a biological brother contacted her, she wavered for 10 years before returning the contact. At nearly 30 years old, Pool returned to Eritrea to meet her family and reconnect with the culture of her birth.

Review:  I really enjoyed this memoir!  My sister loaned it to me a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but be curious since my niece was adopted from Ethiopia, and I can’t help but wonder what her journey of selfhood will be like.  She is only two and so has no need to consider the concept of “identity” yet.  Her sunny, confident little spirit is so enamoured with ants and flowers and music and dancing and beads, she really has no time to contemplate questions like, “Who am I?” 

But, eventually I imagine she will ask the sorts of questions that make adolescence so difficult for us all…  and I hope her search is only made richer as a result of her two countries and not more complicated. 

Hannah Pool is very generous with the reader as she shares her own heroine’s journey to discover her origins.  Her history is inescapably painful, since it includes a birth mother who died an hour after Hannah’s birth and an adoptive mother who died from an overdose not long after. 

Hannah was born in Eritrea, spent a number of years of her childhood in Norway, and then most of her life in England.  When her brother from Eritrea sends her a letter in London, she waits ten years to respond!  But, when she does, she embarks on a journey with both geographical and personal ramifications that is impossible to put down. 

She meets her birth father as well as many siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and family friends and her experiences getting to know her birth family are fascinating for cultural reasons, too.  Pool is British, and is frequently overwhelmed by the emotional reaction of family members she has never met.  But by the end of her trip, she is irretrivably changed and fundamentally connected to both her birth country, birth family, and her home and family in England.

My only reservation would be that Pool’s story is uniquely tragic — regarding the loss of both of her mothers — and many of her observations regarding the longings of those adopted were presented as universal.  This seems highly unlikely given her horribly specific history, but I truly appreciate that she shared her story and hope to better understand my niece when she embarks on her own heroine’s journey.

Hayley!  Congratulations! 

photo credit: Olof S

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