[bksvol-discuss] Fw: Fiction A to Z December 2009
- From: "Amber Wallenstein" <amber.wallens@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:09:05 -0500
"The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown."
~ traditional Christmas carol
New and Recently Released!
Family Album - by Penelope Lively
Publisher: Viking
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 10/29/2009
ISBN-13: 9780670021246
ISBN-10: 0670021245
Outside London, in a sprawling Edwardian house called Allersmead, Allison
Harper has built her version of the perfect life as the mother of six grown
children.
But having dedicated herself to her family, she's perhaps not quite able to see
the cracks in the facade. Long-repressed secrets, a distant father, and
Alison's own style of mothering have affected each of her six children, and
it's only now, as adults, that they've started to confront their childhoods.
Taking the form of multiple flashbacks to holidays, birthdays, and other family
events, Family Album is a great choice for readers who enjoy character-centered
stories.
The Gift: A Novel - by Cecelia Ahern
Publisher: Harper
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 11/03/2009
ISBN-13: 9780061706264
ISBN-10: 0061706264
Fans of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (or the movie It's a Wonderful Life)
will enjoy this holiday tale, which stars ambitious workaholic Lou Suffern,
whose family always comes second to his work. After a chance encounter with
Gabe, a young--and highly observant--homeless man, Lou gets Gabe a job in his
company's mailroom, hoping to use him for his own purposes. Soon, however, Gabe
starts making pointed comments about the way Lou treats his family...and
eventually has an even more direct impact on the way that Lou lives his life.
This "winning tale of magic and redemption" (Publishers Weekly) is just the
thing for the holiday season.
The lacuna : a novel - Kingsolver, Barbara
Publisher: Harper
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 11/03/2009
ISBN-13: 9780060852573
ISBN-10: 0060852577
Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The
Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a
divorced
American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American
military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s
in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest,
Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is
assassinated,
Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he
becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is
later
investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary
entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but
once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak
when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House
Un-American
Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). Employed by the
American imagination, is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could
apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in
American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.
The museum of innocence - Pamuk, Orhan
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 10/20/2009
ISBN-13: 9780307266767
ISBN-10: 0307266761
Three decades of tumultuous Turkish politics (with secularism and militarism
being two difficult strains in Turkish governmental life at the time) and social
eruptions as European modernism grinds against traditional Muslim mores
(focused, namely, on the issue of the preservation of female virginity until
marriage)
serve not merely as a passive backdrop but as an integral feature of this
highly creative, diligently developed new novel by Nobel winner Pamuk. In 1975
in Istanbul, a 30-year-old businessman of good standing finds himself
straddling an increasingly unworkable predicament: engaged to a young woman who
is
his social equal while obsessively in love with a much younger woman, who,
while a distant relative, is not on a par with him socially. This compelling
narrative, then, is the first-person remembrance of the troubled mans descent
into despair; he seeks, by telling his story, to share a detailed reconstruction
of the path of obsessive behavior, which came to include collecting over the
years all manner of artifacts that were possessions of the young woman, even
down to cigarette butts, which he eventually gathered in one place he called a
museum of innocence. Fiction about obsession can often grow tiresome, but
not so this novel, because Pamuk offers new views of the emotions and conflicts
that, by definition, flow and roil through the mind of the obsessive. Read,
next, Bruce Chatwins elegant novel about collecting, Utz (1989).
First Chapter
Too Much Happiness: Stories - by Alice Munro
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 11/17/2009
ISBN-13: 9780307269768
ISBN-10: 0307269760
Published to great acclaim, these new short stories by the award-winning
Canadian author Alice Munro capture the ups and downs of ordinary lives. Dealing
with questions of identity, regret, loneliness, the consequences of acting on
impulse, and the connection between storytelling and reality, Munro is as
psychologically astute as her fans have come to expect her to be. In this
collection she includes a story from a male perspective, one of a grieving
mother
aided in a surprising manner, and a 19th-century Russian émigré's winter
journey to the Riviera. As Kirkus Reviews says, "It's hard to imagine that
anyone
could write stories richer than these. Until the next Munro collection."
The Holly and the Ivy
What You Have Left: A Novel - by Will Allison
Publisher: Free Press
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 06/17/2008
ISBN-13: 9781416541400
ISBN-10: 1416541403
When Holly was five, her widowed and alcoholic father abandoned her at her
grandfather's farm in South Carolina. Holly grew up to be a temperamental woman
with alcohol and gambling problems of her own, albeit with a solid and
hardworking husband at her side. Spanning nearly 40 years, the story of Holly's
family--her life with husband Lyle, the history between her mother and father,
and the evolving relationships among all of the family members--may have
its fair share of loss, but eventually, there is forgiveness and absolution as
well.
First Chapter
A Thread of Truth - by Marie Bostwick
Publisher: Kensington Books
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 06/01/2009
ISBN-13: 9780758232151
ISBN-10: 0758232152
Ivy Peterman has fled an abusive marriage and settled in historic New Bern,
Connecticut, where she lands a part-time job at Cobbled Court Quilts (first
seen in A Single Thread). Ivy's making friends and building a life for herself
and her kids, but when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the store,
she finds her life in jeopardy after her husband sees her on television. If you
like reading about strong female friendships like the ones here, you might
want to try Kate Jacobs' The Friday Night Knitting Club. For more quilting
books, try Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilts series (the 1st is The
Quilter's
Apprentice).
First Chapter
Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories - by Truman Capote
Publisher: Modern Library
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 01/01/1994
ISBN-13: 9780679600855
ISBN-10: 067960085X
Author Truman Capote was known for throwing excellent parties and writing the
true crime tale In Cold Blood, but one could argue that his most enduring
legacy was the creation of Holly Golightly, the fun-loving party girl forever
associated with Audrey Hepburn in the memorable movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The Holly of the movie bears some relation to the Holly of the novella, but if
you want to know the true Holly, you should read Capote's work. Breakfast
at Tiffany's is accompanied by three short stories: "House of Flowers," "A
Diamond Guitar," and "A Christmas Memory."
Beginner's Greek: A Novel - by James Collins
Publisher: Little, Brown
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 01/09/2008
ISBN-13: 9780316021555
ISBN-10: 0316021555
Peter Russell has done a stupid, stupid thing: he's gone and fallen hopelessly
in love with the beautiful woman seated next to him on his flight to L.A...and
then lost her phone number. Over the next several years, life goes on for Peter
until, on the verge of marriage, he meets his former seatmate again. Holly
is, however, engaged--to a friend of Peter's who happens to be a womanizing
cad. Will Peter and his soul mate ever be together? If you've ever seen a
romantic
comedy or read a chick-lit novel, you'll know that the answer to that question
is yes, but that getting there is half the fun.
First Chapter
Second Chance - by Jane Green
Publisher: Plume
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 05/27/2008
ISBN-13: 9780452289444
ISBN-10: 0452289440
As in the movie The Big Chill, a group of old friends is reunited by the death
of one of their number, Tom, who was killed in a train accident outside Boston.
Among the friends he left behind in England 20 years ago are Saffron, an
actress; Olivia, who runs an animal shelter; and Holly, Tom's best friend, who's
in a marriage that's grown stale. As each of them works through the grief they
feel over Tom's death, they also evaluate the paths their own lives have
taken since they were all schoolmates together. Written with sensitivity and
humor, this appealing book is just the thing for readers whose friends are
like family.
Channeling Mark Twain: A Novel - by Carol Muske-Dukes
Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 07/03/2007
ISBN-13: 9780375509278
ISBN-10: 0375509275
Poet Holly Mattox is a Midwesterner who has moved to NYC in the
mid-1970s--she's landed a job lecturing to grad students at Columbia, but her
real interest
is the poetry class she teaches to women imprisoned on Rikers Island. There she
meets the fiery radical Akilah Malik and fragile Polly Lyle Clement, who
claims to not only be related to Mark Twain, but to communicate with him as
well, which plays out eerily in class when she goes into a trance and speaks
in a Southern male's voice. A former prison teacher herself, author Carol
Muske-Dukes has accomplished some "lovely, original writing on the unlikely
romance
between prisoners and poetry" (Kirkus Reviews).
First Chapter
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