Archive for July, 2010

THE LONELY POLYGAMIST by Brady Udall

One can see why Rusty, Golden Richard’s son, would call him Sasquatch. After all, Golden is a lumbering, huge hulk of a man and to his son, probably as elusive to spot as Bigfoot. This is because Rusty is one of 28 children and Golden Richards is the “Lonely Polygamist” outlined in this novel’s title.

July 21, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: Contemporary, Family Matters

A THREAD OF SKY by Deanna Fei

In 2000 Fei toured China, her family’s ancestral homeland, with her mother, two sisters, grandmother and aunt. From that trip came the inspiration and the framework for this painterly, character-driven first novel. In acknowledging this Fei is quick to assert, “it is not about them; it does not depict their histories or their personalities.”

July 20, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Posted in: 2010 Favorites, Character Driven, China, Debut Novel, Family Matters, Literary, World Lit

CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell

While David Mitchell is undoubtedly a talented writer, and ideas abound in the centuries-spanning, globe-trotting narratives that make up CLOUD ATLAS, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed with this book. Of course, it’s entirely possible my disappointment was born from high expectations: Mitchell has been lauded as the best of a generation, and before the recent release of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, CLOUD ATLAS was widely trumpeted as his best book. And whileCLOUD ATLAS is a highly-entertaining smorgasbord of styles – a little something for everyone – it is also a post-modern comment on the ontological status of narrative that doesn’t fully come off.

July 19, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  · Posted in: Literary, Man Booker Nominee, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Unique Narrative

THE WILDERNESS by Samantha Harvey

This book unsettled me. Its rendering of a mind descending (drifting? decaying?) into an Alzheimerian abyss is frightening in its deft, almost poetic, description. Indeed, it is disarming in its expanding degrees of what is normal to what is irrevocably and silently lost. If you worry about Alzheimer’s–and who cannot but worry–or have experienced it in your family, the tale told in The Wilderness, the story of Lincolnshire (England) architect Jake Jameson, will stun you. Simply and frighteningly stun you.

July 18, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  · Posted in: Betty Trask Prize, Contemporary, Debut Novel, End-of-Life, Reading Guide, Unique Narrative

THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE by Jacqueline Kelly

In the baking hot Texas summer of 1899, Harry, the oldest of eleven-year-old Calpurnia Tate’s six brothers gives her a notebook in which she begins to write down her observations of nature. She also longs to get her hands on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, but the local librarian says it’s barely fit for adults, let alone a child. Calpurnia’s mother is busy riding herd over her seven active offspring and running the house, while her father oversees their cotton acreage and the mill. Neither parent nor all the brothers seem to have a scientific bone in their bodies. In the Tate family, Darwin’s note that “the child often reverts in certain characters to its grandfather’ seems on the money: Calpurnia’s granddaddy is a rather remote man who retired from commerce years ago to take up the pursuits of a naturalist. One day he comes across his granddaughter making her notes, and they begin exploring their mutual interest together. The old man mentors her, even opening one of his locked cabinets to haul out his copy of the book she so wants to read.

July 16, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Debut Novel, Facing History, Newbury Award

LUCY by Laurence Gonzales

Laurence Gonzales begins Lucy in the Congo, where Jenny Lowe, an American primatologist with a PhD in anthropology, is studying bonobos in their native habitat. She abruptly flees her hut when the insurgents resume their fighting, and makes her way to the camp of David Stone, a British researcher. Sadly, the revolutionaries had already been there, leaving one survivor, fourteen-year-old Lucy. Jenny takes Lucy back home to Chicago, not realizing that they are about to embark on a long and agonizing journey. For Lucy is no ordinary teenager; she is a genetic human-animal hybrid, created from the DNA of her father, David Stone, and a bonobo.

July 15, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Speculative (Beyond Reality)