Staff Picks Category: Fiction

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz [Audiobook]

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The audiobook is read by the author, Junot Diaz, to wonderful effect. We follow the life and romantic misadventures of Yunior, from the time his family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to his life as a professor in Cambridge — although not in a straight chronology. Diaz’s language is in turns brash and lyrical, peppered with slang. Yunior is not always an easy guy to like, and that he becomes a sympathetic character at all is due to Diaz’s genius (as further evidenced by his being named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012). The version of the audiobook I listened to was further interspersed with latin music, helping to set the mood and carry me away.

Birth House by Ami McKay [Book]

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This book made me think about the births of my children as well as family tales I’ve heard from my mother and grandmother about their very different birth experiences. The clash between midwifery and “modern” medical care is at the center of this engaging story. The author does a great job of weaving in historical events and of setting the story during the nineteen-teens in a remote Nova Scotia village.

The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde [Audiobook, Book]

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This latest entry in the Thursday Next series of genre-bending literary absurdist fantasy adventure novels is immensely satisfying.  Fforde doesn’t miss a chance for a farcical or pun-driven punchline; the twists and knots and mobius strips in the overlapping plot lines make perfect sense in the impossible logic of his alternate world, despite (or because of) which, they still provide surprises.  Thursday has been pushed into semi-retirement but nevertheless manages to be at the center of the action, valiantly trying to save the world from Goliath Corporation (mission statement: to own everything and control everybody), the smitings of a wrathful deity, asteroid collisions, overdue library books, and genetically engineered fake versions of herself.  The reader on this Recorded Books version has done a brilliant job of voicing the many characters and pacing the reading with a deadpan nonchalance.

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay [Book]

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This emotionally laden story starts off with two alternating voices. Julia Jarmond is an American-born journalist, who has been living in Paris for 20 years, complete with a French family, and a marriage that is increasingly unstable. She is tasked with writing the story of the 1942 Vel d’Hiv Jewish roundup by the French police on the 60th anniversary of that difficult but little known episode in French history. We also see the roundup from the perspective of Sarah, a 10-year-old who is taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver with her family, but without her younger brother. The stories of these two lives converge, with a key unlocking many long-buried secrets. This is a story that will stay with you.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]

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Maigret and the Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon [Book]

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Fear not, international mystery fan.  The laconic, pipe smoking, French speaking inspector Maigret is on the case!

The long earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter [Book]

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As a longtime Pratchett fan, I was looking forward to a fantasy full of humor and parody.  This isn’t it, but I’ve been drawn in and am still reading.  Stephen Baxter is known for his prolific science fiction novels.  The Long Earth posits an infinite number of other worlds just like ours, each in its own universe–except they are completely undeveloped by humans.  In the very near future, a reclusive scientist develops a way to step between worlds by building a “stepping” box so simple any teenager can make one.  Large numbers of people begin popping back and forth, creating complex consequences and changing the world(s) in ways that no one can keep up with.  I’m enjoying interesting characters such as 13-year-old Joshua, who is more comfortable in the primordial forest of other Earths than in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, and a computer in the shape of a vending machine named Lobsang who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman.

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr [Book]

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Stones for Ibarra tells the story of Sara and Richard Everton, who have moved from California to the remote and small village of Ibarra, Mexico to reopen Richard’s grandfather’s copper mine. They have been lured there by photographs and the tales of older relatives: “They have experienced the terrible persuasion of a great-aunt’s recollections and adopted them as their own. They have not considered that memories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.” Instead of the beautiful grounds and tennis courts, they come to a house which no longer has shingles and a mine that has been flooded. They persevere, and get the mine up and running, having a large affect on the village and villagers. We learn of Sara’s experience with the villagers, although they always remain slightly apart, and her experience of her husband’s illness.
One of the most remarkable things about this book is that it was published when the author was 73 and won the National Book Award, which means I still have time to publish my own novel!

Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman [Book, Graphic Novel]

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Writer/illustrator Michael Kupperman drums up a thrilling, hilarious tale of what happened after Mark Twain had staged his death in 1910. Mark Twain is immortal. Wait, you didn’t know that?
Illustrations and short accompanying text highlight a century of the famed author’s mischief making. Kupperman obviously takes several liberties and also writes Twain a little crankier and crass than we’re used to reading, but he still manages to effectively live within the author’s witty voice. Twain’s stint as a shock jock radio host, experiments with psychedelics, space travel, advice to Charles Shultz, a psychic altercation with a doughnut shop employee (see below) and general shenanigans with his buddy Albert Einstein are just some of the episodes of this adventure.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout [Book]

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In the stifling hot summer of 1971, Amy has a summer job working in the same office as her mother, Isabelle, in the small town of Shirley Falls. We quickly learn that  something has come between them to drastically change their relationship, but what exactly that is takes longer to discover with story enfolding from the differing perspectives of both Amy and Isabelle. The troubles facing the people of this town are almost too realistically drawn; under almost every ideal roof something darker lurks. Great character development and lyrical writing. This is Strout’s first novel; she later won the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge.

Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler [Book]

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Folks have been recommending that I read Octavia E. Butler for some time. I’ve received recommendations from friends that know I like Ursula Le Guin and have told me that I would therefore like Butler’s writing as well, and I’ve also received recommendations from friends who have said, “Oh, you like science fiction. I don’t read much science fiction, but I just read this book by Octavia E. Butler…”.

I picked up my first novel by Octavia E. Butler, Patternmaster, last Thursday, and I finished reading it over the weekend. Needless to say, I enjoyed it! In this short novel, Butler introduces us to a post-apocalyptic world in which humans are divided into a complex system of social castes and warring factions based upon the powerful mental powers of some, and the disease induced mutations of others. The story, of a student who leaves school to find himself in conflict with his own power hungry brother, is relatively simple, but the detailed world in which it takes place makes it feel like part of something much bigger.

Reader’s of Ursula Le Guin’s fiction will recognize themes of class, gender, and sexuality in Butler’s writing, as well as a similar approach to speculative fiction that is based on rigorous world building and avoids the stereotypes of the genre. The struggles depicted in Patternmaster are, however, more violent, and the cast more power hungry, than in Le Guin’s writings. If you like Ursula Le Guin and don’t mind the a story with some loose ends and some violent passages, you should give Patternmaster a try.

The Might Have Been by Joseph M. Schuster [Book]

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Edward Everett Yates had his dream come true, he had been called up to the majors. After a decade playing in the minor leagues—years after most of his peers have given up—he’s still patiently waiting for his chance at the majors. Then one day he gets called up to the St. Louis Cardinals, and finally the future he wanted unfolds before him. During an away game in Canada, Yates is having the game of his life, until he sustains a devastating knee injury, which destroys his professional career. Yates continues to hang on to baseball, and we witness the next thirty years of his life. Although this novel has baseball has a common thread throughout the story, it is really more about the choices that we make (or are made for us) as we go through life, and what different pathways that can create for us. This is about the life that we have, and the one that might have been.