MY HOLLYWOOD by Mona Simpson

Mona Simpson’s book, MY HOLLYWOOD, explores the relationship of mothers, children and nannies in southern California, most particularly in Santa Monica. The novel is told from two vantage points, the first one Claire, a mother in her 30’s with a 2 1/2 year old son, William. The other vantage point is Lola’s, the Filipina nanny who works as a live-in nanny for Claire and her husband Paul during the week when she takes care of “Williamo.” Lola also has a second job on the weekends, taking care of the son of a friend of Claire and Paul’s.

September 12, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Family Matters

THE GOLDEN MEAN by Annabel Lyon

The best books are not necessarily those with dazzling prose or mind-numbing theories. The best books are those that steal up on you, and lead you gently into a world made real, not by an abundance of detail, but by honestly rendered characters that, from the very first page, so completely captivate that before you know it, you’ve read half the book and there are but a few hours until dawn. That is, the best books understand the allure – our insatisfiable longing to compare and contrast our minds with others – of interesting characters. Annabel Lyon’s THE GOLDEN MEAN is such a book, and her accomplishment – the surprising irresistibility of her story – is all the more incredible when you consider that she’s chosen to focus on rather prosaic moments in a great man’s life.

September 7, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History

THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A collection of short stories is one of my favorite genres for reading. It is rare to find a book of short stories that is consistent in quality. When I do, it is a rare gift. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK is just such a gift. It consists of stories about Nigeria and the United States, focusing on the clash of cultures and the cultural misunderstandings and prejudices that the protagonists face. This book also includes the short story that I consider my all-time favorite – “The Headstrong Mistress.” I read it for the third time in this collection. I first read it in The New Yorker, then in the Pen/O’Henry Prize Stories of 2010. It gets better each time I read it.

August 29, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2010 Favorites, Africa, Class - Race - Gender, Short Stories, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE by Julie Orringer

The publisher of THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, this blockbuster book, speaks of its “Tolstoyesque juxtaposition of the fate of the individual with the motions of time and history.” The implied comparison to War and Peace is not unreasonable, in that Julie Orringer also describes the events of a terrible period (the decade beginning in 1937), concentrating on a number of sympathetic characters, mingling bloodshed with romance, and giving herself generous space in which to do so. But this is Tolstoy rewritten in book-of-the-movie style, Tolstoy lite.

August 19, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History

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: ,  Â· Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Speculative (Beyond Reality)

PERFECT READER by Maggie Pouncey

Any literary aspirant who is thinking of naming a child of their own as a literary executor might think twice after seeing how one daughter plans to treat her father’s legacy in PERFECT READER: A NOVEL. Flora Dempsey, who is in her ripe twenties, is more interested in using her deceased father’s poems as proof of his love for her and as a possessive and preemptory weapon against the woman, Cynthia Reynolds, who became his companion shortly before he died. Flora thinks of all kinds of reasons why others should not have access to the poems and why publication might never be permitted. In a sense, her father, Lewis Dempsey, former college president and renown literary critic, has unwittingly given her a means to strike back at him, if only posthumously, for his having strayed away from her and her mother and for his not being able to be everything Flora wanted. She loved (and still loves) him, and longed (and still longs) to be special to him, but she also continues to feel a sad breach between them that she resents.

June 16, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Character Driven, Contemporary, Literary, NE & New York, Reading Guide