More 2020 Favorites

Here are the five other novels that had me at hello this year.

“Dear Edward” by Ann Napolitano. This intensely deep dive into grief after the horrific deaths of twelve-year-old Edward’s family, along with 183 other passengers on a doomed airplane, is awe inspiring. As Edward heals from his wounds and faces the ultimate question, why was he spared, we learn that humankind’s capacity for love is truly beyond our understanding. My full review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/06/ann-napolitanos-dear-edward.html

It was a year full of grief and yet I seemed to run toward books that managed to uplift rather than drown in despair. Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet,” like Ms. Napolitano’s, is a perfect example. In piercingly poetic language O’Farrell portrays the blazing hot love affair between Agnes and a young Latin tutor, Will Shakespeare, who are later devastated by the death of their beloved son by the plague ravaging the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. Though their profound grief is laid bare on the page, their love for their son and for each other will eventually become manifest in Will’s finest play.

I can’t believe that my sister and I are the only two readers who just fell out over Deepa Anappara’s remarkably original debut novel “Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.” Life for the children living in Delhi’s slums bursts from the pages. The smell of streets strewn with garbage mixed with the odors of roasting meats and spices in the marketplace, is visceral and nine-year-old Jai is the sweetest protagonist I’ve met this year. Children are disappearing from the neighborhood but, unsurprisingly, the police are uninterested because the poverty- stricken families are unimportant in the overall scheme of things. Jai and his friends form their own detective agency, determined to discover what’s happened to their missing friends lending some humor to this disturbing novel of child trafficking. Full review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/06/djinn-patrol-on-purple-line.html

Author Rumaan Alam, on the other hand, is getting a tremendous amount of buzz over his prescient novel “Leave the World Behind.” It’s difficult to believe that he wrote this long before our own plague year. I found myself setting it down at the finish and wondering what the hell just happened? What begins as a family getaway at an elegant Air BnB in the Hamptons turns into a life altering experience that will force Amanda and Clay, so proud of their liberal bona fides, to examine the entire construct of their lives when the country’s entire power grid appears to fail, no
internet, no cell service, no way to communicate with the outside world. A knock at the door reveals another couple, desperate to come in, and beliefs about race, class and privilege will be sorely tested. This National Book Award finalist is simply WOW!

And finally, another incredible debut by writer Elizabeth Wetmore thrilled me this year. “Valentine” is the book for readers who are sick and tired of seeing women mistreated, disregarded, dismissed, and put down. Set in the desolate west Texas oil drilling town of Odessa, a place that Wetmore obviously knows well, the brutal rape of a young woman awakens a long- subsumed sense of justice in Mary Rose whose home Glory arrives at battered and broken and seeking help. The attack is discussed in the court of public opinion long before the actual trial and the ugly undercurrent of racism and prejudice is front and center. I reviewed it further here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/09/valentine-by-elizabeth-wetmore.html

 

Happy New Year dear readers. I’ve begun 2021 with the much talked about “A Children’s Bible” by Lydia Millet interspersed with the voluminous National Book Award winner “The Dead Are Arising,” the now definitive biography of Malcolm X by Les Payne and his daughter Tamara. Stay well, remain patient as difficult as that is. A new president and a vaccine are coming soon!