The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I'm glad my book club selected this book a few years back or I would never have read it. The subject matter--Afghanistan, war, rape--turned me way off. But the book is really more about childhood, friendship, American immigrants, and forgiveness than those other things. Honestly! In spite of the war-torn, brutal setting, the book glows with positivity and hope. Amir, a well-to-do child in Kabul, is best friends with the lower class Hassan. They both enjoy participating in kite races, an unfamiliar pastime to me, but apparently popular in that part of the world. The beauty and grace of kite flying strongly contrasts with the brutality and bullying going on all around the boys. Unfortunately, Hassan falls victim to a brutal attack, and Amir ends their friendship, a move that deeply haunts him into adulthood. Quite a bit of the novel discusses Amir's life in America--how his family adjusts, how he decides to become a writer. America is the country in which Amir matures and grows ready to face his past in Afghanistan. He does return to his homeland to face his demons, and he wins, in every way. The Kite Runner is a novel about triumphing over the evil that lives within and without.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Numbering roughly 200 pages, On Chesil Beach is an arresting novella about a wedding night gone wrong. McEwan (Atonement) succinctly paints the personalities, courtship, and nuptials of Edward and Florence, two virgins honeymooning on Chesil Beach in 1962. The reader is privy to their most intimate encounter, an inept confluence which miscarries in the worst of ways--divorce. Yet, McEwan, delicately mixing in time and reflection, intentionally causes us to wonder if this tragedy need have happened at all. Edward, older and wiser, reflects that the wedding night, with a little more love and patience on his part, might not have been a disaster. He and Florence were well-matched in many ways; why should sex have destroyed everything? The reader can't help but wonder if premarital sex could have saved the marriage. But, perhaps, Florence's extreme reluctance would simply have squelched the courtship at an earlier juncture. On Chesil Beach raises good questions about intimacy, physical and emotional, and the power of regret.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I had to include this book, Harper Lee's one and only. Narrated by young Scout, a girl growing up in small-town Alabama in the 1930s, the story wends it way through a plot chock-full of childhood play, family, growing pains, and, most important, the troubles racial tension causes. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in 9th grade and liked it. I read it in my thirties and loved it. The definitive coming of age novel, the story shows Scout maturing from child to young adult during a period of three years: she learns that some people can be dangerous, and others (often the most unlikely ones) can literally save your life. Some time after rereading this book, I also read Charles Shields' Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, garnering a few literary tidbits. Lee, still alive and living in Alabama, has never published another novel; in fact, in the decade or so following Mockingbird, a major magazine rejected some essays she submitted, calling them subpar. Talk about humiliation! Also, I seem to remember that Shields supported the theory that Lee's good friend Truman Capote had helped her write Mockingbird, but don't quote me on this. In any case, none of this drama is important because the book remains one of the best in American literature; children and adults both find value in it. It's one of those that won't waste your time, so you can read it every decade.

So B. It by Sarah Weeks

It seems to me that many of the young adult novels written today are mediocre. I sometimes think it's because my adult mind has lost its ability to relate to anything youthful, but then I read a book like So B. It by Sarah Weeks, and I realize that maybe it's not me after all--it's them. (Sorry, Traveling Pants !) A coming of age story, So B. It concerns twelve year old Heidi's search for the truth about her mother, a loving mentally challenged woman, and her mysterious past. Her mother has no other discernable family, an unusual name (So B. It), and lives with Heidi and a kind agoraphobic neighbor, Bernadette, in adjoining apartments in Reno. Certain things intrigue Heidi, leading her to search for her mother's identity. Who are the people in the old pictures she's found? Who pays for the rent on their apartment? Weeks excels in plain, old-fashioned story telling: the characters seem real, not petty and paper-thin, and the places they travel are the well paved, mortar and bricks sort. The So B. It character fascinated me--her disability should limit her, but it really doesn't at all. She lives, and she's loved. Maybe the real message of this book is that family is important, and it comes in many kinds of weird configurations. Maturity is at the heart of So B. It--wisdom without preachiness. I wish there were more YA books like it.

I'm back! The Ladies #1 Detective Agency Books by Alexander McCall Smith

Well, summer's passing quickly by, and I'm back at home base now, ready to read and write. I read some really enticing books with a great sense of place this month--the Ladies #1 Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith. I'd steered away from these because I thought I wasn't interested in Africa, but, boy, was I wrong! These little novels provide an excellent description of Botswana--the country feels very warm, tropical, Southern climed--and the main character Mma Precious Ramotswe is thoughtful, moral, and mature. I felt comforted by these stories, like I felt when reading the American "Mitford" series, but more so. I think this series is better than Jan Karon's, simply because it makes Africa, somewhat of an inscrutable continent, more understandable. When I read Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, I started to navigate the literature of the African sensibility, and McCall-Smith's detective stories (they aren't really serious mysteries at all, mind you, if there is such a thing) further pipe me along this journey. Granted, I have just read these--they haven't percolated in my mind over time--but what's summer for if not to be impulsive? So, I'm adding them to the list.

It's good to be back. Please read, and if you find a good one, let me know!

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

July 1st and we're really into summer now, baby! Our family will be having some serious beach time this month, so I've been thinking about some good ocean reads. Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell springs to mind. The very first of her Kay Scarpetta series, it remains, in my mind at least, the very best of them. There's a strangler loose in Richmond, VA, and Dr. Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner, solves the case. I've only read this book once, and that was on my honeymoon in 1992. I found a copy in the ship's library towards the end of our trip; having only one day left to read it, I took it with me everywhere for 24 hours. Well, you can imagine what my husband thought about that! I carried Postmortem to the pool, to bed, even on the junket to Hope Town. My husband was astonished to see my eyes glued to black print while all around us the green sea and blue sky beckoned. He's never forgotten my (misdirected) focus, and it remains to this day an object lesson for him on the perils of marrying a librarian. I literally could not put the book down; stealing it was not an option, either. I had to finish it before we disembarked, and I did, actually, with a few hours left to spare my poor husband some attention.

Happy summer, everybody! Read some good books in July and let me know the titles. I'll return to blog some more in August...

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

I sometimes confuse this book with City of Falling Angels, and, in my defense, they both inhabit the same corner of my mind reserved for shadowy, magical writing. Furthermore, the same crumbling graveyard-type angels are apt symbols for both stories. Yet, Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier is quite different from the Venice book. It is a novel of Edwardian England, childhood friendship, and women's suffrage. Told from several characters' perspectives, the story gives the reader an authentic feel for London during the brief reign of Edward VII. Two young girls, Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, meet in a cemetery and start a friendship with draws their very different families together. The cemetery (and the eerie stone figures within) is the dominant setting of the novel, representing the Victorian fascination with death, and by contrast, the new ways of life beginning to emerge in the just-begun 20th century. Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring (her take on the origin of the famous Vermeer painting) is better known. I liked Falling Angels better because of its excellent sense of place; Pearl Earring has a well-described setting as well, but I prefer 19th c London to 17th c Holland.