What I'm READING
Sometimes you read a novel or a short story collection and a month later you’ve forgotten most of it. That’s not the case with Crosscurents and other stories by Gerry Wilson. Crossscurrents offers us a sensitive, unflinching window into the lives of men and women tangled together in love and conflict, risk, loss, shame and redemption. One story in particular, Appendix, has stayed with me for weeks now. I’m sure these stories will stay with you.
Olive, Again
When I read Pulitzer Prize winner Olive Kittredge a few years ago, I was astounded at the depth emotion and meaning author Elizabeth Strout brings to the characters that populate the small town of Crosby, Maine, in this novel of powerful, evocative linked stories. After having recently read Olive, Again I am astounded, again.
Little Bee
Little Bee, by Chris Cleave, is an extraordinarily sensitive account of how the fates of two women—one a poor teenage girl from a village in Africa, the other, a glamorous fashion magazine editor from London—become intertwined because of a horrible act on a beach in Nigeria. Despite the tragedies that befall both of them, the author has managed to create hope out chaos, love out of darkness.