Ms. Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer and Polaris Prize winner in 2014. She can now add author to her artistic gifts. This is a remarkable first novel. There is the often difficult reality of living in Nunavut as a young person: endless summer sunshine, the dark and brutally cold winter, and human difficulties like substance and sexual abuse. And there is a magical imaginary component, sometimes based on dreams. Ms. Tagaq’s prose is accompanied by graphic poems and a few illustrations. Highly imaginative writing.
Category: relationships
The Homecoming – Andrew Pyper
This story begins simply with the reading of the will of an often absent and thus mysterious husband/father. But there is an unusual condition in the will: the family must live for a month in an isolated forest lodge in the Pacific Northwest before they can inherit a substantial estate. What could go wrong? And there are surprises. And more surprises that increasingly seem sinister, until secrets produce fear and much more. Is every part of the Quinlan family life a fabrication? Brilliant writing.
Dual Citizens – Alix Ohlin
Regular readers of this book blog know that I have a specific affection for introspective relationship books. This book by Ms. Ohlin is a perfect read, in my opinion. The story enters on two sisters, Lark and Robin, from their early childhood in Montreal and their complicated relationship with their mother Marianne, to adulthood in New York and the Laurentians. Lark is the main character, someone who hopes that silence will produce invisibility. The story contains vivid descriptions of art, music and film, motherhood and even wolves. The writing is divine; highly recommended.
The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas
A sensational first novel for a number of reasons. The important characters are all women. Specifically, four women perfect a time travel procedure; there is no emphasis on technology, the reality of time travel is treated as a matter-of-fact occurrence. Instead, as the title indicates, the story is about the psychological consequences of time travel. Future versions of an individual can co-exist. How do you cope with knowledge about your future self: who you marry, how you die? And finally, the book contains a cracking good mystery. Very entertaining.
Everything Under – Daisy Johnson
This is a really excellent novel set in contemporary England. The core of the story is a complicated mother-daughter relationship but it is much more: the use of a private language and a river creature and supplemental characters. The timeline is an interesting feature of the story telling. Johnson’s writing reminds me of Sarah Winman, so high praise.
An American Wife – Tayari Jones
Ms. Jones has written a superb relationship book. Celestial and Roy are newlyweds but Roy is wrongfully imprisoned and so goes to jail for 5 years. In Roy’s absence, Celestial’s relationship with Andre, a lifelong friend, is strengthened. So this is about a 3-way relationship with one of the participants, Roy, absent in prison for much of the story. The resolution to this complicated story is breathtaking.
The Affairs of the Falcons – Melissa Rivera
A compelling story of a Peruvian family displaced to New York as undocumented illegals. This is a relationship book that highlights a well-known fact that all relationships can be complicated, but none more that under the pressure of living illegally – how can Ana provide housing, food and shelter for her family? The displaced South Americans all watch Spanish soap operas on TV, but their own lives are infinitely more complicated than the TV plots. The essential question: what will you do to protect your family? This is an especially topical book given the current immigration chaos in the United States.
Our Souls At Night – Kent Haruf
This is a short but meaningful book about two widowed people in their 70s who are willing to take a risk, to start a relationship based on gentle companionship. The storytelling has a wonderful authentic simplicity: “they ate a supper of macaroni and cheese casserole and iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing and canned green beans and bread and butter and iced tea from an old heavy glass pitcher and there was Neapolitan ice cream for dessert”. They key feature in this book is the recognition that relationships, at any age, are complicated but especially for older people in the 70s and yet they have the courage to try, to see what happens.Thanks Karen, for this recommendation.
The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted – Robert Hillman
Perhaps predictably, this library book was chosen from the new releases bookshelf entirely based on the brilliant title. The story takes place in rural Australia in the 1960s, with two vivid characters: Tom, a farmer, has been abandoned by his wife,
Rand Hannah, an Auschwitz survivor who has a dream of operating a bookshop in a small town. Theirs is an unlikely romance, a complicated relationship to be sure. The combination of complex issues in a wonderful setting is intoxicating.
What David Read 