Book #1: The Quiet American by Graham Greene
I wanted to read a book set in Vietnam, since I'm going there in a few weeks. It's mighty hard to find anything other than war novels. And this one, set in the 1950s during the Indochina War. The narrator is a British journalist covering the war, in love with a young local woman. It's a bleak novel, no surprise, given the author, but interesting. I doubt it was very illuminating as to the Vietnam I will encounter in 2014, but it was a worthwhile read.
A lyrical, poetic novel of one ordinary woman's life. I had never read anything by McDermott but will definitely seek out more. The story skips about in time, but weaves a beautiful fabric. There is a constant sense of the often unnoticed poetry of life, but also a persistent sense of life's dangers, that feeling of horror being just around the next corner. Chosen by my book group as our January read, and I was pleased to discover a new author I thoroughly enjoyed.
Book #3: Fun Home by Alison BechdelI saw the musical at the public and was moved to read my first graphic novel, although this one is not really a novel, it's a graphic memoir, which unfortunately sounds like porn. It's her story of her family and childhood, the family business, a funeral home, nicknamed the "Fun Home," gives the book its title. Which makes sense, because this was not, in the normal meaning, a fun home. Alison's dour, depressed father was a high school English teacher and closeted homosexual, having secret encounters with other men, some of them underage. Her unhappy mother found an outlet in local community theater. And Alison herself came out as a lesbian in college. Her letter home announcing her lesbianism was greeted with her father's surprise coming out as gay, followed just a few months later by his suicide. The stage version, with three women starring as Alison at three different stages in her life, was amazing. And the book was equally moving and engrossing.
A small, slight, disturbed and disturbing story about a very broken family, this novel felt so real, so upsetting, that it was often hard to read, yet at the same time hard to put down. It's 1967, the Vietnam War is raging in his living room, and the narrator, Denny, is spying on all his neighbors and the other members of his family. There are plenty of rocks to turn over, and many worms crawling out. Some are clear, some are shady, because we see everything through Denny's often confused eyes. At the heart of the story is Denny's autistic older brother Fad, who may become, despite his mother's heroic efforts, the boy who went away. But even before he physically departs, Fad, the most important person in the family, is also, because of his condition, somewhere very far away.
Book #5: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, by Elizabeth Silver
Another book hopping on the Gone Girl train, this one wishes it could hold your interest and surprise you like Girl. It's the story of a woman who is on death row, her last minute appeals, and the flashbacks to her crime and the tough life that led up to it. I wasn't surprised, it wasn't a page-turner, and in the end, I didn't care.
