Category: What I’m Reading

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (Rated 5): A Lumpily “Blended” Family – Ann Patchett writes a multi-layered story about a lumpily “blended” family, who inspire a book and movie about them, both with the same title as the author’s ingenious and complex tale. Moving effortlessly through time and seamlessly across characters, the book honestly portrays the frequent challenges and rarer benefits for the six children of two disrupted marriages. Patchett displays strong narrative skills, finding the humor in tragedy and vice versa.

My Amazon review of A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass (Rated 4): A Hidden Public Life – Julia Glass dives beneath the surface of a public figure — a well known author of illustrated children’s books who has died — to unearth the man’s formative influences. The story is told from three perspectives, a device that works well, although some narrators are more satisfying than others. In the end, Glass does not penetrate the life of the artist, which is perhaps her message, although as a reader (and writer and artist), I wished for more. At times, the long digressions into back story overwhelmed the present narrative. However, Glass makes us care about her three living protagonists, all of whom, rather than being left in the late artist’s wake, are ready to create their own futures.

My Amazon review of Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout (Rated 5): A thorny woman who will prick your heart – Elizabeth Strout laces together stories in a rough weave with great tensile strength. Told direct and slant, the interlocked tales introduce readers to Olive, her family and friends, and people she barely knows but whose lives she has touched for better or worse. What emerges is a large, difficult woman determined to live her small life, filled with passions and regrets, until the very end. (See my REFLECTIONS on excerpts from interviews with Elizabeth Stroud published in The New Yorker (posted 05/08/17) and The Writer Magazine (posted 08/14/17).

My Amazon review of A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline (Rated 5): Christina’s world painted in words – As surely as Andrew Wyeth captured Christina’s world in paint, Christina Baker Kline captures her world in words. From the small details of daily existence in rural Maine, to the bigger question of how we fashion a life with what we’re given, the book strikes a fine balance between bitterness and beauty. A painterly novel.

My Amazon review of Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (Rated 5): Flaws and foibles, love and loyalty – J. D. Vance teaches us to love and admire the people he loves and admires, with their flaws, determination, and above all, their loyalty to one another. He gives credit to them for saving his life. Humility and gratitude aside, he also deserves to take credit himself for breaking with tradition while at the same time honoring, and maintaining, it.

My Amazon review of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Rated 5): Making the implausible “plausible” – Colson Whitehead makes the implausible, plausible, i.e., that the Underground Railroad was in fact a real, subterranean network of tunnels, tracks, and assorted railroad cars built by those “who built everything else in this country.” Even more accomplished is how Whitehead brings to life the heroic, and often tragic, existence of the slaves who dared to travel and lead others along its byways. Alas, their stories are too plausible and while the sum total is heartbreaking, readers will come away with admiration and the hope that their courage and determination persist today.

My Amazon review of Bellevue by David Oshinsky (Rated 5): A fascinating review of medical and social history – David Oshinsky offers a fascinating view of medical and social history through the lens of an institution that continues to reinvent itself with each era. As he did in his Pulitzer-prize winning masterpiece, Polio, the author introduces readers to the events, and most especially the people, that were the driving force beyond the sometimes tortuous path of progress.

My Amazon review of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Rated 5): George Saunders has hit upon a unique format for turning his gifts as a short story writer into a unified novel. I was immediately propelled by the staccato pace, although I admit that in the middle, I wished for less Sesame Street and more Fred Rogers. By the end, however, Saunders built to a sustained prose that penetrated my earthly being. A book that earns its “Bravo” reviews.