Sometimes it is worthwhile to read a cathartic story that makes you cry, and the life of Gloria Fairchild, told in flashbacks, fulfills that occasional need. Grace’s life is an emotional roller-coaster, with desperate lows and transcendent highs. The picturesque setting is rural Cape Breton with some excursions to New York, Toronto and New Brunswick. Thank you Mary, for this recommendation.
Category: Female author
Property – Lionel Shriver
As a general rule, I do not read short stories (with a notable exception for the sublime writing of Alice Munro) for a simple and somewhat trivial reason: short stories are too short to engage me. However, Lionel Shriver is a fabulous author (Big Brother, Double Fault, the fantastic We Need To Talk About Kevin…) so I decided to read her first book with ten short stories and two novellas. Shriver is such a keen observer and reporter of human behaviour, and these stories, almost without without exception, are masterful. As is clear from the title, the stories are about the relationships people have with possessions. Her writing is insightful, sometimes hilarious and such a pleasure to read in this format. Highly recommended.
Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
Ms. Ward previously wrote the excellent Salvage The Bones, and this new book is even better. The setting is Mississippi, a multi-generational family struggling to live, to love and to survive. Past atrocities live on in the form of ghosts. There are indelible portraits in this story: a thirteen year old boy trying to find his place in the world, his mother who is incapable of loving her children, his mixed-race grandparents. Powerful and evocative storytelling.
Vi – Kim Thuy
Ms Thuy writes with great economy: short titles and short books that have meaningful content. Vi leaves Viet Nam as an 8-year-old, part of the Vietnamese diaspora. She is quiet, taught to be invisible; nevertheless, she has a presence and strength of character. This moving book has an incredible ending – a must read.
The Last Neanderthal – Claire Cameron
This fascinating book has two story lines. The first, obvious from the title, is a Neanderthal woman known as Girl whose extended family is being decimated by disease and animal predation. The second is Rose, the modern day archeologist who is excavating a grave site in Europe containing two bodies, a Neanderthal woman and a Homo Sapiens. Neanderthal life is imagined as harsh with brutal struggles for survival, few verbal skills but sensitive senses for smells and heat. There are some striking parallels in the two stories that may be too contrived for some readers, but were satisfying to me. In the end, this is book about what it means to be human.
The Golden Age – Joan London
The Golden Age is a Convalescent Hospital for children with polio in Western Australia (1949-1959). This is a remarkable and compelling story of children forced to endure a wicked disease, an experience that makes some of the children wiser than adults. This is also a story of how children with a dread disease are treated by children, by their parents and by society at large. There are radiant and touching moments in this splendid book – highly recommended.
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
This book has been on a bookshelf in my home since 1997 but somehow I have never read it, to my chagrin. Atwood’s writing is impeccable, adopting the style of the mid-1800s in letters, for example. Her portrait of the enigmatic Grace Marks is breathtaking: poverty in childhood, a hard life in service, accused of being an accessory to murder at age 16 followed by 20 years of incarceration. The context of early versions of psychiatry and hypnotherapy are detailed carefully. Overall, a joy to read.
Little Sister – Barbara Gowdy
Gowdy is a masterful writer (Fearless, Falling Angels, The Romantic); she is an under-appreciated Canadian treasure. Little Sister is a fine addition to her collective works, a story about the female psyche and an existential story about entering (not observing but actually entering) another body. There is a grief subplot that is very compelling. Simply put, just excellent writing and story telling.
The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd
Set in Charleston in the early 19th century, this novel tells the story of slavery from two parallel and linked perspectives. One perspective is that of two privileged sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The sisters are living in a home with slaves and eventually become crusading abolitionists. The other perspective is Hetty/Handful, a house slave in the Grimke home. The stark reality of slavery is presented effectively in terms of slave abuse and cruelty, by a “good” family. There is also the church justification of slavery and the reality that the “value” of a slave is equivalent to a specific fraction (3/5) of a non-slave. Therefore, although there have been a multitude of books about slavery, this novel offers some new insights.The story also illustrates clearly the limitations of women in a male-dominated society, with an interesting perspective on Quaker philosophy. The author previously wrote the very good The Secret Life Of Bees.
What David Read 