Shelf Awareness for Readers | Week of Friday, October 19, 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||
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by Orhan Pamuk, trans. by Robert Finn The politics of late 1970s Turkey are deafening in Silent House, Orhan Pamuk's second novel--originally published in 1983 but only now available in an English-language translation. In a crumbling mansion, an old woman lives with only her memories and a dwarf she hates for company. She is joined by her grandchildren when they visit for the summer: Faruk, a middle-aged historian with a failed marriage and a stalled career; Nilgun, a pretty young woman with communist sympathies; and Metin, a teenager who aspires to strike it rich in America's corporate industry. |
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by Janis Owens Janis Owen takes inspiration from real-life events to tell the story of a fictional Florida town haunted by its past in the perceptive, well-paced American Ghost. In the 1930s, a white shop-owner in the panhandle community of Hendrix was shot and killed in a robbery by a black man, and a lynching followed. Decades later, Sam Lense, a Jewish graduate student in anthropology, comes to Hendrix to study the region's ethnic composition, including a group of close-knit townsfolk who are distrustful of outsiders. While doing his research, Sam falls in love with Jolie Hoyt, the humble, sheltered daughter of a protective, old-school preacher. The intensity of the young couple's three-month affair is the talk of the town. Some believe Jolie enraptured with Sam because he is a "rich Jew," while others feel that Sam is using Jolie and her connections to the "useless old lynching" for his own gain. The mounting tension threatens the small community until Sam's work is dramatically cut short and the bond between the lovers is ultimately severed. The novel then fast-forwards 12 years: Jolie and Sam, transformed for better and worse, are reunited when a black businessman arrives in Hendrix seeking answers to a past that affects him personally. Owens weaves complex narrative strands together in a captivating story abundant with historical context and characterizations that reflect the foibles of human nature. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines |
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by Timothy Egan Timothy Egan's Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, his biography of the photographer Edward Curtis (1868-1952), mesmerizes--it's instructive, entertaining and a joy to read. In the late 19th century, Curtis had a successful photography studio in Seattle. The last surviving daughter of Si'ahl, the Native American chief who gave the city its name, lived there, too, and once Curtis found out about her, he took her picture. From then on, he became determined to find more Native Americans to photograph. One day, he came across a lost hiking party on Mt. Rainier and led them to safety. One of the hikers was C. Hart Merriam, co-founder of the National Geographic Society, who invited Curtis to join him as the photographer on a voyage to Alaska. Curtis took 5,000 gorgeous photographs, many of Native Americans, using a laborious photogravure process in which the image was chemically etched onto the surface of a copper printing plate. He now saw his life's work as photographing as many Native Americans as he could; thus was born the 20-volume The North American Indian. Although Curtis was criticized by some for "staging" his photos, he always wanted them to be as authentic as possible. When it was completed, his magnum opus compiled more than 1,500 photogravure plates of Indians from roughly 80 tribes. Yet fewer than 500 copies were printed, and complete, uncut sets are now worth millions. The adjectives Egan uses in his subtitle--epic, immortal--set the bar high, but he clears it with ease. When it comes to historical writing, this is as good as it gets. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher |
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by Trudi Kanter The path Trudi Kanter's memoir took to publication is almost as remarkable as the book itself. In 1984, Kanter self-published her tale of escaping the Nazis, but it soon went out of print. More than a quarter-century later, a British editor discovered a copy in a secondhand bookshop, and Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler was rescued from oblivion. Kanter (who died in 1992) wrote in the present tense, imparting a sense of optimism even though, as an Austrian Jew in 1938, she was effectively doomed. A talented, chic milliner, she created hats that were prized by fashionable Viennese women. Her passionate love for the dashing Walter Ehrlich kept her in Vienna after Hitler invaded, in part because he resisted acknowledging the danger. Kanter captures the fears of the time, but writes with equal detail of their love, her loyal customers and her hopes. Through her connections and cleverness in working diplomatic and legal angles, she and Ehrlich escaped to London in the summer of 1938, where the British briefly interned Walter (along with Kanter's father) and the family suffered through the Blitz. After the war, the couple became naturalized British citizens and prospered in their careers--Kanter eventually held a co-directorship of a hat company. Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler does not minimize the horrors of war or the Holocaust, but through Kanter's delightful hopefulness and spare, riveting writing, it presents an unusual memoir of an era that must not be forgotten. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller |
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by Diana Athill Diana Athill was born in 1917, assisted André Deutsch in establishing his British publishing firm and worked as an editor with some of the most important writers of the 20th century. In other memoirs, she has written about her career, her love life and friendships; in Yesterday Morning, she recalls her childhood in Norfolk. |
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by Joan Nabseth Stevenson While General George Armstrong Custer was facing his last battle against the Sioux, another engagement was being fought on the steep bluffs and hilltop above the Little Big Horn River. Dr. Henry Porter was assigned to that battalion, and it is his compelling story Joan Stevenson brings to life in Deliverance from the Little Big Horn. Stevenson's extensive research is evident in the detailed description of the conditions under which the Seventh Cavalry fought that day: pounded by constant gunfire and a scorching sun, suffering from severe dehydration, the soldiers fought for two days--never realizing Custer and his men lay dead and exposed just four miles away. |
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by Ed Ayres Ed Ayres has been running competitively for more than half a century. On a professional basis, he's also studied climate change, sustainability and a variety of issues facing the future of the human race and our planet. The Longest Race is the story of his 2001 run at the JFK 50 Mile, the United States' oldest ultramarathon. As Ayres attempts, at age 60, to set a new age-group course record, he contemplates the relationship of human endurance to the sustainability of human life in a fast-changing world. |
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by Steven Wolf, Lynette Padwa Warning: Comet's Tale may cause spontaneous cases of greyhound adoption. |
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by Nancy Willard "Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world," Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote, "and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar." This sentiment comes to mind when reading Nancy Willard. The Sea at Truro, Willard's 12th collection of poems, showcases her talent both for revealing the simple beauty in everyday life and for celebrating the people, the plants and the natural world that surround us. Divided into five distinct parts, the poems in The Sea at Truro range in topic from the seemingly ordinary (a glass goblet, a tangerine, a bumblebee) to the more extraordinary (death and dying, grief and the afterlife, the worrisome state of our planet). Regardless of the subject matter, Willard's poetry is direct, often inquisitive and almost always notable for its striking imagery. Consider these lines from "Raphael's Goblet": this tall, thin-lipped cup
long ropes of sand ridged like muscles The Sea at Truro will speak to many readers, whether or not they've read Willard's work. And most will not be able to resist revisiting a poem or two again in the future. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore |
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by Mary Oliver If you're one of the many, many fans of National Book Award- and Pulitzer-winning poet Mary Oliver, you'll very much welcome A Thousand Mornings. One can't help but share in Oliver's love and enthusiam for life and the world around us, for "songs the shepherds sing, on the/ lonely mountains. while the sheep / are honoring the grass, by eating it." In one of the best poems in the book, "Tides," a single sentence running five stanzas explores what the "blue gray green lavender" low sea has left behind, from the "harbor's / dark-colored undercoat / slick and rutted and worm-riddled," to "barnacle-studded stones dragging / the shining sheets forward, deepening, / pushing, wreathing together / wave and seaweed, / their piled curvatures / spilling over themselves." When this description is complete, she adds: "And here you may find me So casual: Oliver's poetry seems that way on the surface, but look below and life rages, despite the hardness and disappointment the world can offer up. As she writes in "Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness": "So let us go on, cheerfully enough, A Thousand Mornings closes with a moving poem about Oliver's dog Percy that echoes Christopher Smart's famous poem to his cat Jeoffrey; dog lovers will shake their heads in a sad understanding and compassion: "For he was made small but brave of heart." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher |
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by Deborah Heiligman Many young adult novels take a few chapters to slide you into the narrator's world. But by page three of Intentions, readers know Rachel's family is falling apart; by page six, she's overheard her beloved rabbi having sex on the bima. It's an appropriately sudden beginning for a novel that captures the rapid letdowns and occasional triumphs of adolescence with realism and compassion. Rachel Greenberg, a 15-year-old living in Pennsylvania, is having a rough year. Not only are her parents fighting, but her best friend Alexis has turned into another person, her Grandma battles dementia, and Rachel likes Jake, but thinks Adam is hot. She begins to suspect there must be something wrong with her. Rachel always thought that Rabbi Cohn "might be the most perfect human being on the planet." When he turns out to be much less than that, Rachel has nowhere to turn in the wake of so many changes. The real star of the book is Rachel's genuine, clear voice. She stumbles from one bad decision to the next, and then must face the consequences of each. It's painful to imagine any person going through so much on their own, and even more so because Heiligman (Charles and Emma) doesn't allow for tidy solutions. For teens, who will identify with this sort of chaos, this book can be just the friend they're looking for; for adults, it is a good reminder of that awkward journey of adolescence toward becoming the person one is meant to be. --Stephanie Anderson, readers' advisor at Darien Library and blogger |
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by Patrick McDonnell Patrick McDonnell's (Me... Jane; The Gift of Nothing) enchanting monster tale will be relevant long past Halloween. Grouch, Grump and two-headed Gloom 'n' Doom live in a dark castle under a black cloud and argue over which one is the biggest, baddest monster until they wind up in a brawl. "Their little monster heads were always filled with big monster thoughts." Then one day, they unite to make "the biggest, baddest monster EVER!" But when they unveil the green-hued giant, he doesn't roar a fearsome roar. He says, "Dank you!" and opens the window to let in the light as little terrors turn from the sun in horror. "No, no, no no, NO!!!" they cry. "You're supposed to be a MONSTER!" When their Frankenstein-like creation finally lets out a ROAR and crashes through a wall, the three believe they may have achieved success after all. But like Mary Shelley's invention, the fellow has a mind of his own. The monsters' monster hits the bakery ("Dank you!" he says again) and heads for the beach. The vistas open up and the sky brightens as together the monsters watch the sun come up with a sense of awe and wonder. The frenetic pace and all capital letters of the early pages grow more serene as the monsters' creation casts a spell of calm and gratitude. The little terrors quickly realize they have no control over their creation, and he has a few things to teach them himself. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness |
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by Susan Hood, illust. by Melissa Sweet Sometimes kindness trumps scariness, when it comes to being an effective monster. That's the theme of Susan Hood's (Just Say Boo!) slyly engaging picture book. |
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