I tried to finish this yesterday, but New Years eve got in the way!
When narrowing down my choices I found it interesting that so many stories here dealt with outsiders as well as differences both racially as well as class.
Politically it was a year of massive upheaval, and non fiction seemed to address this head on. Ta-Nehisi Coates book, 'Between the World and Me' felt like it should be required reading for schools, while 'Hillbilly Elegy' was touted as the book to read to understand the Trump voter. I'm not sure it did that completely, however it did shed light on a pocket of the country that feels terribly overlooked.
My choices this year were the books that captured me fully, and resonated the longest. And as usual some weren't even from this year but for me was a fresh discovery.
Books I'm excited for in 2018 include new works from Meg Wolitzer, Tom Rachman, & Curtis Sittenfeld. Please pass on if there's something great you read, and at the end of this post I've enclosed a link to everything I read this past year. Happy Reading in 2018!
Brett
I absolutely loved this book! Boyne dedicates it to John Irving and it's no surprise why. It's structured like Irving with each chapter having a title, as well as touching on subjects Irving loved: writers and writing, sexuality,strong women and abandoned children all distilled through the conservative lens of post war Ireland. The epic story of Cyril Avery spans over seventy years moving across the sea to New York and then back again, each section of time jumping ahead seven years and intersecting with events like the AIDS crisis of the mid eighties and 9/11. Like Irving it's both uproariously funny, and heartbreakingly sad, but upon finishing left me feeling sated like I'd just finished a fantastic meal with a group of unbearably charismatic and compelling people. The book was my favorite of 2017.
I am absolutely in awe of Emil Ferris and her graphic novel. Having never read one before I had no idea what to expect except to know that there had been a bidding war for the rights to make the movie. What to say besides I think this is one of the most imaginative, inventive, beautiful and engaging books this year. After, I listened to the author get interviewed on fresh air I was blown away that at forty she contracted West Nile virus which resulted in encephalitis and meningitis leaving her paralyzed, unable to walk, with limited speech, and only partial mobility in her hands. Boy did she make a recovery!
Chicago in the sixties on the brink of political and and racial upheaval is the back drop for young Karen Reyes, the young girl obsessed with all things horror who self identifies as a young werewolf on the brink of turning. Raised by her Mother and suave sexually active older brother, her life is suddenly interrupted by the murder of her upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor who has befriended the young girl. Armed with a pinned trench coat and a visual imagination that bleeds across the pages of what is the girls sketch notebook, Karen sets out to uncover the mystery of what happened to Anka while grappling with a series of events and circumstances that impact her life in profound ways. Unlike anything you’ll experience this year and an artistic tour de force.
Make no mistake this is not simply a monster tale, but an endlessly charming, beautiful romantic Victorian story, complete with fiercely intelligent women ahead of their time, an earthy,sexy man of God, unrequited love, religion vs secularism, and yes, the fear of the unknown in the guise of of a monstrous sea serpent. I found myself completely enthralled with the roughly nine or ten characters who inhabit these pages and had a hard time putting it down.
I was so completely taken with the execution of this book, the sheer theatricality of it. When I first started I had no idea if this would be something I'd even key into to since it reads less like a novel and more like a play, and yet I found myself utterly and completely moved by not only what Saunders explores in terms of grief and death, but also of life, its value, and the rich rewards of experiencing the beauty in both the complex and the simple.
Hannah Tinti has so artfully constructed a beautiful coming of age novel threaded with a classic quest story punctuated by bouts of terrific violence.
Samuel Hawley has spent his life running from his past, a past that has marked his body with puckered scars from a variety of guns. He does his best to shield his teenage daughter Loo from any of this, including the events surrounding her mothers death. But the past has a way of encroaching on the present, and soon Hawley's former lives and his present collide in a startling confrontation. Tinti is a incredibly visual writer, and each bullet Hawley takes is its own amazing,tense,and unforgettable cinematic like chapter which is why it's no surprise the book is being developed as a television series for cable. More than once I found myself holding my breath through their bloody conclusions. It's a fantastic story between a father and his daughter, a husband and his wife and and the lengths we go to protect the ones we love.
What a spectacular conclusion to a simply terrific trilogy. Iles, between these three books that started with 'Natchez Burning', has written one of the most brutal,honest, and compelling stories of the deep south and the horrible spectre of racism that still exists today. There's not alot of reason to summarize the plot for if you've read the first two, you know that a large portion of this is dedicated to the trial of Penn Cages Father. But this is no dry court room retelling, and it wouldn't be an Iles book without plenty of twists, hair raising scenes of shocking violence, and the knowledge he's not afraid to dispense with any character if it enriches the story. One of the best books of the year and a great series for any literary collection.
What if your child vanished. No trace, no call, no contact. You spend years with nothing. No confirmation of their death or life. You just hope. You keep their room the same and don’t touch anything. You attempt to work to try and move past something you don’t even know what it is. You life is cleaved into before and after. You see them everywhere but they’re nowhere. Every time the phone rings you answer it terrified and desperate for who’s on the other end.
And then, one day, years later, he’s found. And he’s alive.
This is what happens after. A pretty terrific first novel.
Oats wades deep into the current (still!) political social issue surrounding abortion,as her latest opens with a man violently shooting a doctor and his escort outside a clinic in small town Ohio. Oats presents the first half of the novel largely through the killers eyes- A devout man of God unwavering in his belief that what he did was nothing short of stopping the killing of innocent souls. But Gus Voorhees, the doctor, also lives by his own moral convictions, and has continued to provide services for women despite numerous threats against his life before the final fateful day. Yet all of this seems to merely serve as prologue for a lengthy exploration of the tragedy's aftermath and the effect on both families, one ruled by science and intellect, the other by their faith in Jesus Christ and their interpretation of his teachings. My only beef with an otherwise excellent book is that after being so incredibly prolific, Oats still seems to fall back on familiar terrain most obviously her love and near obsession with boxing. Small quibbles for what could be one of Oats best works.
Well this book definitely gets the 'clean your tear ducts award'. After devouring this in great meaty chunks I feel like I've just come out of a fever dream. . Halfway through this so funny, but oh so sad memoir I looked up Kit on Instagram and found myself so overwhelmingly grief stricken that this person I never knew was no longer among us. That's a testament to Ausiello, and his writing. I marveled at his blunt honesty not just in retelling what it was like to face the loss of the most important person in your life, but also who they were before the cancer struck. Warts and all Michael presents a modern, real, flawed, messy, complicated and most importantly loving relationship that feels instantly identifiable and so that much more of a gut punch as you follow their journey.I was lucky enough to attend a book signing event where Michael shared that one of the things that just broke his heart is Kit saying to him, "Don't forget me". How happy Kit must be to see that not only hasn't Michael forgotten, but has made him eternally alive and vibrant for the millions of people who never had the good fortune to meet him.
Wonder is wonderful. With everything happening in the world right now. With politics, and hurricanes and earthquakes and fires, floods and famine it’s a challenge to just get through the day, and not simply pull your covers over your head. The message of this book that resounds is so absolutely necessary, and can be distilled down to a quote that is actually written by JM Barrie of ‘Peter Pan’ fame, and is referenced in the story. “......always try to be a little kinder than necessary”. We all have our deformities whether on the inside and out. RJ Palladio has written a hero in young August that will make you believe in the innate goodness of people. This is a beautiful book that now more than ever should be read and shared in households everywhere.
In the upscale neighborhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio,in the late nineteen nineties, two very different families will come together and the results are at times funny, shocking and painfully honest. Ng has followed up her first book with a story that has enough biting social commentary to feel vaguely reminiscent of the Alan Ball's Oscar winning film 'American Beauty' while standing firmly on it's own and securing her as one of the best contemporary fiction writers going.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2725704-brett-benner?read_at=2017
|
|
|
