Blue Nights

A popular choice for book circles, readers may be most familiar with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) which recounts the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne.  Her latest work, Blue Nights, turns to the death of Dunne and Didion’s only (adopted) child, Quintana Roo, which came only two year’s later.  Undoubtedly, Quintana’s death inspires, even drives Blue Nights--a metaphor Didion beautifully establishes in the work’s first chapter--then weaves throughout her most poignant memories of Quintana.  But to suggest that Blue Nights is a work solely about the death of Didion’s daughter is an oversimplification.  The larger impressions are those of fear and loss:  Didion inevitably turns inward, observing herself aging, and becoming increasingly alone, in a world not only without her husband, but now without her daughter.  Certainly not uplifting, but heartfelt, highly recommended reading.  There may be few memoirists whose prose and storytelling are as hauntingly poetic as Joan Didion’s. 

Give the Gift of Reading!

Looking for a holiday gift idea?  See BookPage's Best Books of 2011 list from their December 2011 magazine.  Note:  Hard copies of BookPage are available for FREE at the library!

Listen to Books "On the Go"!

Check out our newest E-Audio book platform, OneClickDigital, from our library homepage.  After a quick one-time account set-up process, Julia Hull District Library cardholders will be able to checkout and download audiobooks to their favorite MP3 device.

More On Justin Torres

Check out these Justin Torres interviews:

The Diane Rehm Show (NPR) (Listen)

The New Yorker:  This Week In Fiction (Read)

We The Animals

Prepare to take a blow to the gut with Justin Torres' breathtaking debut novel, We The Animals:  the story of three young brothers of mixed White and Puerto Rican races who come of age in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.  Their story is told through the narration of the youngest boy whose observations of his father's infidelity, his mother's erratic behavior, and his brothers' development into like-creatures, are genuine in their horror and humor.  Ultimately, our narrator's observations lead him to acts of self-discovery, and his eventual, painful coming-of-age that will leave readers in awe and empathy.  Highly recommended, this is a work of masterful storytelling and prose. 

Changes in Reading...

Last month, The New Yorker magazine posted an article in response to an announcement from the National Endowment for the Arts that Americans are reading more than in previous years...  View the full article.

Fall Book Preview

For a sneak peek at what to look for on library shelves this Fall, check out Amazon's recently released Fall Book Preview. 

Maine

Summer may be closing, but I'm still in the mood for good beach reading, and J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine: A Novel fits the bill.  The setting (mostly) revolves around one family's beachfront home in Maine.  The Kellehers' vacation here, each summer, though for various reasons, they almost never gather together.  Their story is told through the eyes of three generations of Kelleher women, including the family matriarch, Alice, who both binds and divides her children, grandchildren and in-laws.  We learn that part of this divisiveness is because of a secret guilt she carries from her own young adulthood.  Because we have the beauty of storytelling from multiple perspectives, rather than that of Alice alone, we grow to know each character, and the persona of each character, more clearly.  We understand why the women in this story make the decisions they do, even if they are unclear. 

This story could easily be misclassified as mere "chick lit"--especially if one only glances at the book's cover.  But Sullivan's writing is good, her characters complex and her storytelling smart.

Faith

Jennifer Haigh's newest work, Faith, reminds me of the intriguing Oscar-Award Nominated film, Doubt (2008, starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Like Doubt, Faith is the story of a seemingly righteous Priest who's been accused of molesting a child in his care, and the resulting impact of that accusation on the characters and community involved.  Similarly, ambivalence threads through both stories, so we are sometimes uncertain (that is to say, we have doubts) about each Priests' innocence, while we are also sometimes convinced (or, have faith in) his innocence.  

This, to my memory, is where the similarities end. In Faith, Haigh develops a complex narrative of love, family and faith that is both beautifully written and hard to put down.  Unlike the film Doubt, which ends in more ambivalence, readers of Haigh's novel are awarded with an unexpected and captivating truth that leaves much to talk about.  This one's so good, it was an obvious pick for our December Adult Book Club. 

The Astral

The title of Kate Christensen's latest novel, The Astral, refers to an apartment building in Brooklyn.  But for most of the work, the building seems to be a mere backdrop to the drama that unfolds, both in and outside of its walls.

Harry Quirk is a writer whose wife, Luz, is convinced he's having an affair with his best (female) friend, Marion.  She thus destroys his latest collection of poems and boots him from their apartment.  This final act serves as a catalyst that forces Harry to come to terms with the loss of his marriage, his financial instability, his own literary drought, and his children's unusual lifestyle choices.  Ultimately, he discovers he has no control over any of these things, no matter how much he may try to exert.

The Astral is not a story driven by action.  Rather, it excels at drawing a portrait of a recognizable man whose life seems somehow familiar to readers, despite its peculiarities.  Similarly, Christensen balances what could otherwise turn into a depressing or melodramatic plot with humor, real emotion and striking dialog.