The Paris Library

You can tell that I must be longing to travel as here I am with another book set in Paris. Rather than a bookstore, this one revolves around the staff and patrons of the American Library of Paris and is informed by the author's time spent as program director at that formidable institution. Janet Skeslien Charles (https://www.jskesliencharles.com/behind-the-book) deftly blends the stories of her fictional characters with the actual employees who courageously held the library together, making sure it remained open and serving the public while Paris was under German occupation during World War II.

Librarians and book lovers will delight in the apt presentation of every day life in a general service library, the favorite patrons who consistently stake out their corners, the questions that are posed at a busy reference desk, and the politics of pleasing the Friends who donate time and money while standing firm on

policies. But besides offering up ample quotes from your favorite literature and touting the Dewey Decimal System, Charles tackles universal social issues and the pressing moral dilemmas of the time. 

It's 1939 and Odile Souchet, a smart, well-read, ambitious young woman wants nothing more than to escape the prison of her old-fashioned family who expect her to marry and have babies by the time she is twenty. When she lands the position at the library she is ecstatic and we watch her blossom under the tutelage of Miss Reeder, the library's director. Years later Odile is living in Montana, mentoring Lily, another young woman who dreams of leaving the constraints of her small town and limited expectations.  

How Odile morphs from passionate librarian, engaged to Paul an officer in the French Commissariat, to reclusive Montana widow is a story that I don't think you'll see coming. It is a tale of resistance, of librarians smuggling books to Jewish patrons who are no longer allowed in the building, of the verboten love affair between a British aristocrat and a German soldier, and of the best and worst of human nature during wartime in an occupied city. It is a novel about those who betray their ideals and those who find redemption in forgiveness. And it's a story about those who find solace in the written word. In other words, it has all the qualities we love for a lively book discussion. Look for it this winter - February 2021. This is a winner!

Ann Napolitano's Dear Edward

If you are still suffering from covid-19 anxiety as I am then I must give you fair warning. Ann Napolitano's new novel, "Dear Edward," is an exquisite but

ferociously stressful read. It's a testament to Napolitano's craftsmanship that, even though we know from the jacket copy that twelve-year-old Edward will be the sole survivor of a catastrophic airline accident, we read on, subconsciously  hoping that the plane will remain airborne.

Napolitano introduces us to many of the 183 deceased passengers in alternating chapters that offer vivid character sketches beginning with Edward's family, his mother Jane, a script writer who will never get to pen her passion piece, his older brother Jordan who is in the throes of first love, and his dad, Bruce, a mathematician who homeschools the boys and is responsible for their deep appreciation for learning. There's Linda, a scruffy looking young woman who confirms her pregnancy while hovering over the EPT stick in the claustrophobic airplane toilet, and Florida, who wears bells sown into the hem of her skirt and believes she's inhabited multiple bodies over the centuries.

During the first few hours of the flight, Edward will cross paths with many more souls, a multi-millionaire financial guru who can't buy a cure for the cancer that's consuming him, a military veteran who won't make eye contact, and  others whose lives will become intimately familiar to Edward several years down the road in a perfect plot point that I did not see coming.

The chapters that are not set on the doomed plane are even more intense. After Edward's physical healing he moves to the New Jersey home of his mom's sister Lacey and her husband John, a couple whose struggles to have a child of their own has ended, even though the nursery hasn't yet been dismantled. It sits at the top of the stairs, a constant reminder of failure. Now they face the daunting task of shepherding Edward through years of therapy as he tries to grapple with the depth of his loss.

I wondered while reading this devastatingly beautiful book what tragedy Napolitano could have drawn from to write such authentic prose. Edward's pain is a raw, trembling thing. He dare not look at it, speak of it, for fear of losing his mind to the unending torture of carrying 183 stories on his back. His salvation comes from those who don't require that he speak, Lacey and John, Shay, a quirky classmate who lives next door, a nurturing school principal, and Mrs. Tuhane the crusty gym teacher who practices tough love.

I promise that from such despair, springs hope, that eternal offering. This novel brims with humanity, it overflows with love and generosity of spirit. I'll paraphrase the author Kevin Wilson ("Nothing to See Here") who said that this book forces you to trust the author to first break your heart and then lead you toward something wondrous and profound.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Original novel alert! Oh what a pleasure to discover a debut author whose book has a genre defying plot when so many "hot" new titles are just same old, same old. Deepa Anappara's (https://www.deepa-anappara.com/) "Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line" is informed by her first career as a journalist working in India's bastis (slums) and though the subject matter, the kidnapping, killing or trafficking of children is devastating, Anappara remarkably manages to inject snippets of humor and hope.

To even call the neighborhood of filthy, tin-roofed, single room hovels a slum is being too kind, but seeing it through the eyes of our precocious, optimistic, funny narrator, nine-year-old Jai, we understand that this is his and his family's home, a place of love and caring. Jai and his older sister are in school, both parents have jobs, and the community acts as caretakers, that is until the system breaks down and children start to vanish.

Jai's family owns one special item - a TV. Jai is addicted to Police Patrol. He engages his wonderfully overactive imagination and his two best friends, Pari, the smartest girl in his class, and Faiz who, at nine, already works in a tea shop where he picks up the basti gossip, to form a detective agency. Everyone knows that the police will be no help to a basti family. The police will take a bribe and walk away without a word. They would rather bulldoze the community than investigate even one missing child. 

As the three budding sleuths attend classes, interact with the neighbors, and prowl the dangerous marketplace with photos of the lost children in hand, the reader is treated to a vivid picture of daily life in a Delhi slum and a visceral sense of the odors of garbage and sewage mixed with the tantalizing aromas of tandoori chicken and spices. You feel at once the beauty and the despair, the pride and the anger of people locked in lives that offer no way up and no way out. This is especially so when you read the alternating chapters told from the perspectives of the missing young people themselves.

Anappara, now a professor and doctoral candidate in the UK, won a human rights media award for her work in Mumbai and Delhi reporting on the impact of poverty and religious violence on the street children of these cities. She wraps up the these hard facts in a beautifully written story, perhaps to make them go down more palatably. Class, race, and religion are insurmountable barriers to success yet Jai's voice keeps us from despairing. 

The Lost and Found Bookshop

Natalie Harper is finally getting the promotion and corner office she's always deserved. She keeps a sharp eye on the room looking for her mother in the crowd, hoping that she'll make the effort to drive out to Sonoma from San Francisco and just this once give Natalie her hard-earned due. But mom is a flighty, bohemian book store owner, as scattered and devil-may-care as Natalie is uptight and focused. Still, Natalie's entire world is upended when she learns of her mother's sudden death. 

Not only has Natalie inherited responsibility for The Lost and Found Bookshop and the debt her mother has blithely accrued but she's now the sole caretaker of her beloved grandfather Andrew, whose health has been inexplicably

deteriorating for quite some time. Walking away from the security of her high-powered job, Natalie moves into her mother's upstairs apartment, pouring over the ledgers, looking for a miracle that might help her save the business which she begins to realize she's always secretly loved.

Enter general contractor Peach Gallagher whose precocious daughter Dorothy is a fixture in the children's section of the store. Natalie reluctantly hires him, the budget being non-existent, to repair the most glaring problems and no one, except Nat herself, has any trouble figuring out why he seems to be dragging the work out indefinitely. Well-read and personable, Peach is a much more complicated man than might appear on the surface, and his genuine affection for Andrew and burgeoning friendship with Natalie do not go unnoticed. 

This is a full-up romance novel, not my usual forte, but this is Susan Wiggs after all, so the dialog is snappy, the pace is quick, and if it's a tad predictable isn't that okay in these terribly unpredictable times? The book is about discovery, discovery of oneself, one's prejudices, and what truly brings us happiness. It's about a mother-daughter relationship reclaimed and there's a nifty secondary plot that examines the joy of doing the right thing even if it's at one's own expense. 

"The Lost and Found Bookshop" is a simply delightful story that came along at just the right time for me. I loved it. I wanted to be the woman who came downstairs to the book displays each morning, flipping the switch on the coffee maker, checking on grandad in his little ground floor apartment, unlocking the door to the two devoted staff members and the easy-going Gallagher, primed to spend another day talking books and life with like-minded customers. For a couple of days I was totally immersed in another world and that made all the difference. Don't you just love authors who can do that for you?

Library Journal's Day of Dialog - Preview of Hot New Titles

Can you imagine anything better than living in the New York Public Library's flagship building on Fifth Avenue? A book lover's dream, right? Well, writer Fiona Davis thought so, especially when she discovered that back in the early 1900's a family of four did just that. Laura Lyons' husband was the superintendent of the library. An apartment, which is still there by the way, was provided and the records that he kept for thirty years are archived and were available to Davis as source material for her latest novel "The Lions of Fifth Avenue." 

In 1993, Laura's grandaughter Sadie has landed the position of her dreams as a curator at the New York Public Library. But when a rare book goes missing from a renowned collection, Sadie begins an investigation that uncovers thefts from eighty years ago. Will she be able to save her career and salvage her

grandmother's reputation too? I'm excited for this great caper novel which will be out in August.

Book club devotees will remember the huge bestseller "The Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline. She also wrote "A Piece of the World," an imagining of the life of Christina Olsen, the subject of Andrew Wyeth's iconic painting Christina's World. For her newest historical novel, "The Exiles," Kline has gone farther afield. 

As a newlywed, Kline studied for six weeks on a Rotary Club fellowship in Australia, developing a deep curiosity about the

early days of the country that no one was willing to speak about with her. Now she's telling the stories of the women, British convicts, who were exiled down under to serve as breeders in a country trying to boost its white population at the expense of the aboriginals who had lived on the land for over 50,000 years.

And then there's that crazy rich Asian, Kevin Kwan, back with yet another sly piece of social commentary, this one with an obvious nod to E.M. Forster's "Room with a View." Between the title, "Sex and Vanity," and the location, the glorious Isle of Capri, this book should jump off the shelves next month. A basic theme in Kwan's books seems to be obsession with status, old money and new, and bi-racial identity. Lucy Churchill's name certainly reflects

the blue-blooded background of her white father and she has always tended to tamp down the Asian culture of her Chinese-American mother. So when she meets George Zao on Capri she denies the obvious attraction.

Several years later Lucy is engaged to the "right" kind of man. But while hob- nobbing in the Hamptons she finds herself once again in George's orbit. If you remember your Forster you'll know that duplicity reigns. How long will Lucy be able to maintain a veneer of normalcy as she tries to understand herself and weigh these two men in the balance? 

Short story writer and first-time novelist Bryan Washington caught my attention during his deeply sensitive interview with editor Barbara Hoffert. "Memorial" is the story of Benson and Mike, a couple whose four-year relationship is tested when Japanese chef Mike travels to Osaka to repair a shattered relationship with his dying father just as Mike's mother, Mitsuko, arrives at their home in Houston for a visit. Benson, an African-American day care worker, is uncomfortably

thrust into the role of host and roommate of a woman whose culture and language couldn't be more different from his own.

Washington admitted that he enjoyed writing in the longer form because it gave him more space to tackle the themes that are important to him. He believes and hopes his book will show that we as people have multitudes within us - a lesson we could surely use right now - and that we need not be defined by race, gender, or sexual orientation. I'm hoping I can get an advanced copy of this one from the publisher. I hate to have to wait until October to weigh in on it.

Library Journal's Barbara Hoffert and her cohort did a fabulous job of moderating these live panel discussions last week at the Virtual Book Expo. It's amazing how well everyone is coping with the new circumstances we find outselves in. That said, I really miss the tactile joy of interacting with real live human beings. Soon? Maybe?