My 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.
My Reading
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.
My Reading
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.
My READING
EXIT WEST
by Moshin Hamid
In this novel, author Mohsin Hamid has created the possibility of hope in a world dominated by chaos and cruelty. I was struck by how, with simple language Hamid tells the story of a young couple willing to escape the turmoil and take risks to save their lives, even at the cost of leaving loved ones and their former lives behind. The writing is crisp. The concepts are imaginative. I wasn’t familiar with Hamid’s work but now I’m a fan.
My Reading
ANGELS IN THE SKY
by Robert Gandt
I’m embarrassed to say I wasn’t aware how precarious Israel’s existence was just day and weeks after its founding. Robert Gandt’s book Angels in the Sky: How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel tells the story of how a rag-tag group of rogue pilots, flying war-surplus airplanes saved Israel from the armies of five Arab states. It may be a cliché, but for me this work of non-fiction read like a war novel, only better.
My Reading
THIS TERRIBLE BEAUTY
by Katrin Schumann
You know a book is “good” when you’re still thinking about it long after you’ve finished. That’s how I felt about Katrin Schumann’s novel, This Terrible Beauty. Set in East Germany in post WWII, the heroine, Bettina Helstrom faces a terrible choice—because of her infidelity,she must either spend her life in an East German prison or leave the country. Either way, she faces losing her daughter and the love of her life. I was rooting for her. I still am.
