A Daunting Reading Task

I am so proud to say that, for a second year, my editor at Library Journal has chosen me and another reviewer to help her cull through the best of the best of this year's  literary fiction and come up with ten recommendations. She created a daunting list of thirty-six titles, made only a little bit more manageable by virtue of the fact that - phew - I had already read twelve of them. Nevertheless, we have a little less than two months to make this happen so my partner in reviewing and I are grateful that we are retired!

This is a nice way of telling you that I may be off the grid again for a while. Though I guess it would be okay, if I'm not leaning toward nominating a book for the top ten, to go ahead and review it here instead. After all, it wouldn't mean that it's not worth reading at all. Richard Russo, sadly, I'm talking about you.

Naturally, the new Colson Whitehead is on the list and I'm looking longingly at my ARCs of the new Ann Patchett and Alice Hoffman. The review of Tia Obreht's "Inland" was one of the best I've read in the Times Sunday supplement in ages. It had me salivating. Fortunately, the library system here in Maryland has a generous lending policy, even for new books. I will be taking full advantage.

Meanwhile, if you're still in lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer reading mode you might want to dive into this remarkably ambitious, sprawling debut novel (over 500 pages) from Claire Lombardo. "The Most Fun We Ever Had" is a multi-generational family saga that sucks you in and won't let you go. What's so

refreshing about this book is that the characters, rather than being abused, neglected, and in analysis, suffer from too much love. Is that even possible you might wonder? Well, I guess if you're one of the four daughters of Marilyn and David Sorenson the answer just may be yes. When your folks just can't keep their hands off each other - even after twenty, thirty, forty years of marriage, they set a pretty high bar for their girls to achieve. And, oh do they resent it!

You might think, as I did at first, "oh, cry me a river!" What a bunch of whiney brats! But soon I settled down and just threw myself into the story, discovering redeeming qualities in each of the girls, their significant others, and their offspring. Lombardo did an amazing job of fully realizing each character, helping the reader to understand her/him and how each evolved to become the person he is. There are no throwaway people in Lombardo's novel!

And she's so young! https://www.clairelombardo.com/ How did she get to be so wise beyond her years? Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the Iowa Writers' Workshops. In these days of pretentious literature passing as intellectual exercise it's nice to wallow now and then in good old fashioned storytelling about families with problems we've all seen or had to deal with ourselves. Granted, the Sorenson's have the upper middle class means to handle the troubles that arise but hey, they're human.