It's Official - Library Journal Top Ten Literary Fiction Books of the Year

What happens when you put three book reviewers in a room and ask them to agree on their favorite novels of the year? Well, in a first for "Library Journal" that's just what happened and the results are now available for me to share. We each read thirty titles, wrote down our talking points, and met on the phone for a marathon book talk. Tastes are so different. What appeals to one may not be palatable to another. Still, we can agree that what we're looking for in a wonderful read is originality, glorious language, and a story that touches the soul. I hope you'll find that our ten finalists meet this criteria. Just click on the Literary Fiction tab. Oh, and while you're at it, take a look at the thrillers, crimes, sci-fi, and non-fiction titles as well.

https://www.libraryjournal.com/?page=best-books-2018&fbclid=IwAR0G3pwbe6HD8ZP1IFGL67LTMfbn_sisLgpqjWMf--wsXvuhn-nyX_g7c6I

Back When Immigrants Were Welcome Here

I finished listening to Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" with a deep sigh of satisfaction. A wonderful writer will do that for you, making it all the more obvious when you've read a book by an author whose talents just don't rise to the occasion. That's what happened to me this week as I also finished writing a review about a novel due out in the spring, a novel also about the immigrant experience in America, but one so dark and lacking in substance that I scarcely knew how to talk about it.

Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer for "Interpreter of Maladies," is able to take a domestic novel about one Bengali family adjusting to life in America and raise it to the level of poetry. Especially lovely was the lilting reading by actress Sarita Choudhury.

Ashoke Gangoli, a professor at MIT in Cambridge, returns home to Calcutta to meet the woman who has been chosen as his bride. There is a delightful scene in which Ashima listens outside the room as her parents discuss her with this young man whom she's never met. She sees his polished, cared for shoes where he's left them, according to custom, inside the door. Without thinking, she steps into them and senses that the man who owns these shoes will be a good and caring husband. She is right.

But the novel really centers around their first born child, Gogol Gangoli, and his relationship to his family, his world, and his name. Tradition says that Bengali children will have two names, the "real" one that the grandparents choose, and the nickname chosen by the parents. For the Gangolis  there's no hurry. But Ashoke, stymied by the American practice of leaving the hospital with a birth certificate, makes a very personal decision to name his boy after the Russian writer Nicolai Gogol. And young Gogol will spend the next thirty years both running from, and embracing the identity he's been given.

We follow Gogol through college, his decision not to follow in his father's footsteps as an engineer, his love affair with Maxine and her very white bread family, a decision that he knows will distance him from his own parents but pursues anyway in an attempt to declare his independence from his Indian culture. 

 Lahiri's vivid descriptions of Bengali food and clothing, and the Calcutta that the family returns to every few years,  made this book ripe for the film that came out in 2007 directed by Mira Nair. In fact, it was the movie that brought me to the book rather than the other way around.

"The Namesake" is a poignant, languid coming of age story that explores what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be an American, and the annoyances and joys of being a member of a family. It also works as an oft- needed reminder of the importance of that welcoming message at the base of the statue of liberty.

Martin Walker's Bruno Chef de Police Series

My sister and I often talk about books we like to read when we need a break from today's reality. Our go-to man is normally Alexander McCall Smith and the city of Gabarone in Botswana. But, looking for something a little different I recalled our neighbors in Maryland, a couple with an enviable home library, who had just returned from France, specifically the Dordogne area, because they had discovered Bruno Courreges, the delightful chief of police in St. Denis, brought to wonderful life by author and former UPI correspondent Martin Walker.

There are already fifteen books in this series, which I accidentally began smack dab in the middle with "Children of War." I had expected a cozy mystery set in the French countryside and was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that Walker manages to deftly juggle the light with the dark. So, while we meet many of the villagers, and learn about the local wines and foods, we are also treated to a suspenseful mystery that includes a Jewish brother and sister who were secreted from the Nazis in St. Denis during World War II, a local doctor who was sexually abused by a professor in medical school and forced to keep quiet about it, and a young Muslim boy with severe autism who was taken from a mosque in Toulouse and forced to build bombs for the Taliban.

If that isn't enough to interest you then I don't know what you're looking for in a good book! Bruno seems to be a sensitive officer, wise beyond his years yet hardened by his time in the service. He's sought after by several women in the community and yearns to be a parent. He has known Sami, the young man who disappeared from the mosque several years ago, since he was a child. Now Sami, escaped from the Taliban and seeking refuge back in St. Denis, is wanted by three countries, not to mention the FBI, because he is accused of actually being "the engineer," a man whose expertise with weaponry has been responsible for horrific deaths. Bruno and the local physician Fabiola hope to protect Sami and his family while unraveling the mystery of Sami's conversion to terrorism.

The story of David and Maya Halevy offers a short history lesson on the famed roundup of Jews in Paris who were then held in the Velodome while awaiting transfer by train to prison camps in Germany and Poland. Unsung heroes, families throughout the French countryside, took in children, converting them to Christianity for their safety, hiding them in apartments and on farms until the end of the war. Now wealthy and near death, the Halevy family wants to set up a memorial in St. Denis but they need the help of Bruno, the mayor, and even the local history teacher to find the husband and wife who sheltered them so many years ago.

Martin is a terrific writer, creating characters you'd really like to know living and working in an atmosphere that you can smell and taste. If you enjoy long series of novels where you can really feel at home and in the company of old friends then this is one you may want to try. I can't wait to begin at the beginning with "Death in the Dorgogne." Then I'll probably be perusing the Air France website!

Andre Dubus III, Gone So Long

A bare foot three-year-old stands over her mother's body quietly calling, "Mommy? Mommy?" Her father gently picks her up and, rather than call for help, takes little Suzie into her bedroom and reads her a story. By the time the police arrive, the woman with the knife in her chest is long dead, and Suzie has no doubt been traumatized for life.

When I met Mr. Dubus in New York in June I asked him if his new novel, "Gone So Long," would be a little more hopeful than the devastating "House of Sand and Fog," or his excruciatingly beautiful memoir "Townie." He reassured me that he, at least, thought it would. He was wrong.

I struggled mightily with Danny, Daniel Ahearn, husband and killer of Suzie's mother Linda. I firmly believe that a felon does his time, pays his dues to society, and should re-enter the world without prejudice. Daniel, now in his sixties, is dying of prostate cancer and hopes to see his little girl once more before he slips the bonds. To facilitate a meeting, he obsesses for months over a letter of explanation, self-examination, introduction? We aren't quite sure, nor is he.

Suzie is now forty-three, an adjunct writing professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. She is a blocked novelist and a woman whose life has been permanently upended by her past. Raised by her grandmother, Lois, she was hell on wheels as a kid, refusing to believe that anyone could truly love her (after all, didn't she carry half of her father's genes), and therefore, unable to open herself to love even when it's staring her in the face.

Back and forth through time and place, Dubus takes readers on a journey to a scruffy New England seaside carny, where Linda and Daniel first spotted each other and, to the surprise of many, became inseparable. Linda was a loner, happiest with her head in a book. Daniel was a loner too but for darker reasons. Insecure, nursing a ferocious anger that often surfaced with little provocation, he couldn't believe his good luck when he and Linda married and had Suzie. Jealousy and a lack of faith would be his downfall.

Any act of violence will have repercussions for years. Dubus addresses this truth in all of his work, usually on a broader, more political scale. Domestic violence can be especially difficult to read. Secrets are kept, truths repressed, grudges are nursed, and forgiveness withheld. At times we want to shake these characters, to yell, "Get over it!" But is that humanly possible?

Lois and Susan are two of the prickliest women I've ever met in fiction. At first I was annoyed but then I took a step back and realized that I'd have to walk a mile in their shoes before I could judge them. Of course, this is where Dubus works his literary magic. He forces readers to do just that. And Daniel? He is practically Shakespearean in his fatal flaws, unable to give Susan the only thing she's ever needed from him. Three words. I am sorry. He'd just been gone too long.