I read Moon Tiger a few years ago. I loved it so much! A great book.

Capitu wrote: "Erin, if it makes you feel better, I voted for Moon Tiger. Please, do nominate it again. "

Thanks, Capitu!

Ruth, maybe we will be successful this year.

Erin, if it makes you feel better, I voted for Moon Tiger. Please, do nominate it again.

Ruth wrote: "Heehee, Erin. I nominated Moon Tiger quite a few years ago. It didn't make it then, either."

I am a new fan of Penelope Lively. I was assigned Moon Tiger for class last spring, and I thought it was wonderful. I recently purchased two other books by Lively, which I hope to find the time to read in the near future.

Heehee, Erin. I nominated Moon Tiger quite a few years ago. It didn't make it then, either.

I was reading the list, and I was like, "Ooh, somebody nominated Moon Tiger! I love that book! I'm going to vote for Moon Tiger!"

Then I remembered that I nominated it.

Oh, I missed the deadline to vote ... it is now Thursday :(

Yes, midnight Eastern Standard Time. (I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that other stuff.)

Are the Poles open 'til midnight? Warsaw shuts down early these days....

Excellent idea.

I spent some time at Amazon.com, typed the name of the book or the author, and when the detail page came up clicked on the search inside the book feature to get a feel for the author's style of writing. In addition, I read some of the customer reviews. That helped narrow my choices down.

Don't forget. Tomorrow is the last day to vote.

Votes have been trickling in. Don't forget to vote!

Ruth:

I can't tell you how often I end up not voting for either of my nominees after I see the list!

I have no idea what will win, but they all look pretty interesting to me.

I've done that before, Ruth. But usually I wait until the voting has gone on awhile, and if my book is sure to lose, I vote for something else. This time I voted early, but I promise not to vote often.

Sherry, What a terrific list! I am having trouble picking mine and just two others!!! I think I'll have to write them down on slips of paper and draw them, blindfolded, from a bowl!

As this is my first time joining in this process, I should have taken a little longer on my reviews. I do apologize to the Authors, and to my fellow members.
My nominations deserved much better, but I thought I was just giving Sherry a 'rundown' of what they were about!!!

Arrrrrrrrrgh. I've got it boiled down to 5, and there I'm stuck. I may just have to eliminate one of the books I nominated myself!

Yes, Barb. I should have made that clear.

So, we have until Wednesday, the 11th, right, Sherry? I look forward to pondering the choices over the weekend.

You still have time to vote, Carol. You can vote, even if you didn't nominate anything.

I am awaiting the results. I did not vote,because my computer was down.

Thanks for organizing this again, Sherry. That is a great list!

Is a week long enough for the voting? E-mail me with four selections. We sure have a lot of good ones to choose from.

Dai Sijie – BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS --184 pages

The Cultural Revolution altered Chinese history, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Colm Toibin -- THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP (288 pp)

The Blackwater lightship chronicles a week in the lives of its characters as they try to comfort their mutual connection, Declan, a man in his late 20s dying of AIDS and running out of time to see long-standing conflicts be put aside between his sister, mother and grandmother, all of whom are estranged from one other for over a decade because of reasons even they cannot quite articulate or understand. Aided by two friends who've been looking after him long before his family suspected anything was wrong, Declan also forces his family to come to terms with their stubborn refusal to ask for help from one other. Psychologically astute to the ways in which people hide from themselves and others and don't recognize how their best intentions may hurt them and those they love, this novel about living and dying is both beautiful and heart-wrenching, but never sappy. Though the characters are all stubborn in their own ways and the coast itself is veiled in mists, the novel is anything but willfully evasive and challenges our ability to empathize and forgive.

Jeannette Walls -- HALF BROKE HORSES: A True Life Novel (288 pp)

Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly). Now she brings us the story of her grandmother -- told in a voice so authentic and compelling that the book is destined to become an instant classic.
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane, and, with her husband, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night.
(From the publisher's description on goodreads)



Sarah Waters -- THE LITTLE STRANGER (480 pp)

Short-listed for the 2009 Booker Prize, this novel, set in 1940s England, is narrated by a country doctor who becomes entangled in the struggles of a family with much-reduced fortunes, who inhabit the crumbling estate in the village. Psychologically gripping and masterfully composed, this novel makes us reconsider our beliefs about superstition and sanity and leaves us wondering to the last page who or what exactly is the little stranger.

Donald Westlake -- GET REAL (288 pp)

According to Goodreads: "In Donald E. Westlake's classic caper novels, the bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and the current object of his attention.

However, being caught red-handed is inevitable in Dortmunder's next production, when a TV producer convinces this thief and his merry gang to do a reality show that captures their next score. The producer guarantees to find a way to keep the show from being used in evidence against them. They're dubious, but the pay is good, so they take him up on his offer."

The Dortmunder books are completely frivolous and very funny. Might fit in nicely between books about dysfunctional families and terminal illnesses.

William Wharton -- BIRDY (320 pp)
Who hasn’t at one time wanted to fly? When I was a kid I longed to be a seagull, soaring over the waves, riding the onshore uplift, sweeping over the shore. Birdy wants to be more, not only to fly, but to become a bird. His best friend Al wants to become a tough guy, to fend off his father’s physical abuse. 

Birdy raises canaries, not for their song but for their flight. Along the way we learn an awful lot about canaries, but it never seems like a lecture. It’s just what Birdy is passionate about. 

Birdy and Al are a mismatched pair, seemingly, but hang together through some terrific adventures, including the damage inflicted by World War II. As we might expect, it’s Birdy’s psyche that’s damaged while the hurt to Al is a physical wound. 

This is one of the most unforgettable books I’ve read. Don’t let me tell you in a couple of years that I know I read it but I don’t remember what it’s about. I will remember. It’s about flight and fight, about freedom and responsibility, about love
 

Thomas Williams - THE HAIR OF HAROLD ROUX (383 pp)
Winner of the National Book Award in 1975, this story within a story follows the adventures of a professor/writer who is trying to complete a novel about his rakish, post-WWII days -- only real life keeps interrupting. Aaron Benham is distracted by needy friends, a hectoring wife, attention-seeking kids, grade-grubbing college students, the siren roar of his motorcycle, and that nemesis of many a great (or would-be great) writer -- the bottle. A dark horse outing that still sings with its humor, pathos, and great writing. (372 pp.)

Penelope Lively - MOON TIGER (224 pp)
The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-selling author of popular history; lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life still glow in her fading consciousness, but she imagines writing a history of the world. Instead, Moon Tiger is her own history, the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends. At its center — forever frozen in time, the still point of her turning world — is the cruelly truncated affair with Tom, a British tank commander whom Claudia knew as a reporter in Egypt during World War II.
(from GoodReads description)

Michael Malone -- HANDLING SIN 622 pages (I know, but he's SO good you don't even notice!)

On the Ides of March, a man checks himself out of a hospital and, with a black, female mental patient, jumps into a yellow, convertible Cadillac, and takes off for points unknown!
His grown, politically correct son, who lives in Thermopylae, North Carolina, is in for the chase of his life. This has long been known as the "...Comic Masterpiece" of Malone's work.

Valerie Martin - PROPERTY (196 pp)
Valerie Martin's novel Property is set in an antebellum sugar cane plantation in Louisiana. The narrator of the novel, Manon Gaudet, is one unhappy woman. She's trapped in a marriage to a boorish and cruel man, she's frigid and barren, and her husband has slept with her slave to produce his only heir, a mulatto son. Manon, herself, is pretty nasty to her slaves, taking out the rage of her own life on her servants. Valerie Martin has written a novel that takes a stark look at life in the south before the Civil War, juxtaposing the unhappy life of white women in a man's world to the even harsher cruelty of slavery. Salon.com says, "Property shows how easy it is, even for the astute, to adopt the prevailing notions of one's age, to allow deeper contradictions to go unquestioned, and to protest only when our own rights and comforts are curtailed."

Lorrie Moore -- A GATE AT THE STAIRS (336 pp)

Moore knits together the shadow of 9/11 and a young girl's bumpy coming-of-age in this luminous, heart-wrenchingly wry novel—the author's first in 15 years. Tassie Keltjin, 20, a small town girl weathering a clumsy college year in the Athens of the Midwest, is taken on as prospective nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent adventures in prospective motherhood involve a pregnant girl with scarcely a tooth in her head and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriend—both encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie. In a parallel tale, Tassie lands a lover, enigmatic Reynaldo, who tries to keep certain parts of his life a secret from Tassie. Moore's graceful prose considers serious emotional and political issues with low-key clarity and poignancy, while generous flashes of wit—Tessie the sexual innocent using her roommate's vibrator to stir her chocolate milk—endow this stellar novel with great heart. (from Publisher’s Weekly)


Brian Morton - BREAKABLE Y0U (368 pp)
From Booklist
Like Cheryl Mendelson in her Morningside Heights novels, Morton writes with fluid grace and keen detail about lifelong New Yorkers in the grip of shifting family dynamics. Adam Weller, an aging reprobate who has left his wife for his ambitious young mistress, sees a chance to revivify his literary career when an old friend dies, leaving behind the unpublished manuscript of his masterpiece. He calculatedly decides to publish the book as his own after weighing his chances for acclaim against the possibility of being found out. Meanwhile, his bitter ex-wife, feeling ashamed of her weight and her circumstances, decides to reconnect with an old flame and to take up the writing she abandoned upon becoming a mother. Their ethereal daughter, Maud, completely absorbed by her philosophy studies, enters into a sudden, deeply sexual relationship with a reticent Arab American haunted by tragedy. As the three members of this family navigate their changing circumstances, Morton (A Window across the River, 2003) poignantly speaks to the notion of loyalty--to the past and to one's sense of self. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Stewart O'Nan - A PRAYER FOR THE DYING (208 pp)

Set in post-Civil War times, this short chiller tells the story of an epidemic that grips a Wisconsin town called "Friendship." One man, Jacob Hansen, who serves as sheriff, undertaker, and pastor, tries to stem the tide against an invisible and ghoulish enemy -- but "the enemy" can infect people in more ways than one, as the terrorized folks of Friendship discover the hard way. With epidemics back in the news (H1N1 hysteria), this 1999 sleeper was Publisher Weekly's "Best Book of the Year" and a New York Times Notable Book (195 pp.).


Arto Paasilinna – THE HOWLING MILLER (288 pp)

In The Howling Miller a tall, hardworking loner with a mysterious past, Gunnar Huttunen, arrives in a northern canton to renovate a water mill, in disrepair since the recent wars of 1939-45 with the Soviet Union and then the retreating Nazis. The new miller has a gift for imitating forest animals, ebulliently entertaining local children with his impressions of elks, cranes and bears. He also charms Sanelma, a woman with the job of encouraging the populace to grow their own vegetables. But Huttunen is prone to bouts of depression, and the locals are troubled by his sporadic need to howl nocturnally like a wolf, spurring a sympathetic chorus of dogs, and keeping the village awake. (guardian.co.uk)

Daniyal Mueenuddin -- IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS (256 pp)

In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro-society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni. In Nawabdin Electrician, Harounis indispensable electrician, Nawab, excels at his work and at home, raising 12 daughters and one son by virtue of his cunning and ingenuity—qualities that allow him to triumph over entrenched poverty and outlive a robber bent on stealing his livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable without the protection of family and marriage ties, as the protagonist of Saleema learns: a maid in the Harouni mansion who cultivates a love affair with an older servant, Saleema is left with a baby and without recourse when he must honor his first family and renounce her. Similarly, the women who become lovers of powerful men, as in the title story and in Provide, Provide, fall into disgrace and poverty with the death of their patrons. An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience. (Starred review from Publisher's Weekly)

Mark Dunn - ELLA MINNOW PEA: A NOVEL IN LETTERS

Page count: 208 pages
Summary: Ella Minnow Pea is a charming and clever fable of unlikely design, a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram (a phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet), "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel.

The Complete Review said of it:
"There's suspense here, and love, and a great deal of affection for language and people. And the book zips along quickly enough that the wordplay does not get tiresome. Ella Minnow Pea is also a very effective allegory of totalitarianism. … This is a simple, utterly engaging tale, a quick and always enjoyable read, a strikingly clever book, and more. It is a very ambitious novel, and it succeeds completely in everything it sets out to do. A remarkable achievement. We recommend it very strongly."



Jane Gardam -- OLD FILTH (289 pp)
It’s not what you think.  It’s Failed in London Try Hong Kong.  From the New Yorker: This mordantly funny novel examines the life of Sir Edward Feathers, a desiccated barrister known to colleagues and friends as Old Filth. After a lucrative career in Asia, Filth settles into retirement in Dorset. With anatomical precision, Gardam reveals that, contrary to appearances, Sir Edward's life is seething with incident: a "raj orphan," whose mother died when he was born and whose father took no notice of him, he was shipped from Malaysia to Wales (cheaper than England) and entrusted to a foster mother who was cruel to him. What happened in the years before he settled into school, and was casually adopted by his best friend's kindly English country family, haunts, corrodes, and quickens Filth's heart; Gardam's prose is so economical that no moment she describes is either gratuitous or wasted.

Gail Godwin -- FATHER MELANCHOLY’S DAUGHTER (416 pp)

Father Melancholy's Daughter, is widely recognized as one of the author's most poignant and accomplished novels -- a bittersweet and ultimately transcendent story of a young girl's devotion to her father, the rector of a small Virginia church, and of the hope, dreams, and love that sustain them both in the wake of the betrayal and tragedy that diminished their family. (from Goodreads)


Knut Hamsun -- HUNGER (310 pp)

Hunger was published in 1890 and marks Hamsun’s breakthrough. The protagonist is a nameless man wandering through Kristiania (Oslo). Here he meets people, lies and pretends, is hungry, has some healthy and some unhealthy obsessions and pawns everything he owns while aspiring to become a writer. There is autobiographical value in this as well: Hamsun struggled for many years before becoming a Nobel-prize awarded author. Hunger was, when it was first published, very innovative and different from other publications. It can be seen as the start of a new movement in literature.
There is more to Hunger than just the surface-story. With Hunger Hamsun has attempted to give an account of the unconscious mental processes of his protagonist. To him the psychological aspect is far more important and interesting than just outside behavior: “Ordinary fiction about dances and engagements and excursions and marriages is nothing but reading for sea-captains and coachmen looking for an hour’s entertainment.” Literature is a form of art meant for exploring the darkest corners of the mind of man. He also had a high esteem of the individual as opposed to the ‘type’. He was convinced that there was too much writing being published with just ‘ types’ in it instead of real characters and individuals. All of this had to be presented in a language used in its full depth.

John Healy -- THE GRASS ARENA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Page Count: 272 pages
Summary: This searing autobiography is chess champion John Healy's account of living as a park bench alcoholic, and how, against the odds, he found redemption in prison through chess. It's a riveting, repulsive, gripping and grotesque account of life on the frontline which wakes every cell in the body -- a beautiful poem. Now it is being lauded as a modern classic.

The Guardian said of it:
"For me, the impact of the book was instant. From the gentle but ominous first line, "My father didn't look like he would harm anyone", to the wistful and poignant last, not a breath was wasted, not a drama overstated. His unique voice, at times angry and vicious, at others tender and funny, took me into a world whose inhabitants were as grotesque as they were wanting. Prison life could be base; life in the grass arena was baser. I read it greedily in one sitting, Healy's beautiful prose sweetening the unpalatable, disguising the monstrous. I gasped at the sheer resilience that had enabled him not only to live through what men of lesser mettle would have found unsurvivable, but to come out the other end a notable figure in tournament chess and a world-class author. The Grass Arena even won the prestigious JR Ackerley prize for autobiography."


Barbara Kingsolver -- THE LACUNA (784!!! pp)

"Moving from a setting in Mexico (in the company of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Trotsky) to the 1950s America of Red Scares and McCarthyism, The Lacuna tells the very personal and human story of young novelist Harrison Shepherd. Kingsolver does a masterful job creating a story with both scope and intimacy while also raising potent questions about freedom of expression and belief. Bravo!" --Sheryl Cotleur, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

Janet Lord Leszl -- A PEBBLE TO POLISH (300 pp.)

Idealistic college student Cassandra Delaine, preoccupied with classes and a busy social calendar, is totally unprepared for the drastic changes life has in store for her. A financial windfall opens new and unexpected doors, but her good fortune is soon followed by the loss of loved ones; leaving Cassandra to pick up the pieces. Ultimately, she finds herself a single parent, caring for a child with autism. Happiness, fulfillment and emotional wellbeing are seemingly out of reach until Cassandra reaches out to other parents who have made the same difficult journey.

“A Pebble to Polish takes you on a journey into the world of autism as seen through the eyes of a young mother. In this skillfully crafted novel, the author intertwines trauma, humor and information in such a way that it leaves the reader with a greater understanding of autism and the desire to learn more about this strange and complex condition.” - 2009 Gold Recipient: Fiction --Mom's Choice Award

David Lodge -- THINKS (352 pp)

Inimitable British writer Lodge is at his best in another of his comedies of manners set in the academic world. His 10th novel is distinguished by gentle satire, vigorous intelligence, sometimes ribald humor and a perspicacious understanding of the human condition. At the fictitious University of Gloucester, science and literature collide in the persons of 40-something Ralph Messenger and Helen Reed. Ralph's research as the director of cognitive science and his wit and charisma as an explicator of artificial intelligence make him a bit of a star in Britain, and with the ladies. He delights in opportunities for extramarital activities within the confines of the don't-ask-don't-tell arrangement he's established with his wife. Ralph's worthy opponent, newly widowed Helen, a novelist and Henry James devotee, has come to the university to teach creative
writing. Helen represents the religious conflict common to Lodge's characters. She has nostalgic respect for her Catholic upbringing, but she's enduring a crisis of faith. Because of her strong moral conscience, she disapproves of Ralph's infidelities. Yet sparks fly during their heated debates, and they share an undeniable attraction and mutual respect. Ralph argues convincingly for artificial intelligence as the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, but Lodge's own opinion clearly corresponds to Helen's: she's dubious of a machine that could embody human consciousness, "a computer that has hangovers and falls in love and suffers bereavement." The perfectly paced story unfolds alternately via Helen's diary, Ralph's audio-dictated journal and an omniscient narrator. Although still politically aware, Lodge is arguably less concerned with social commentary than with human nature, and he digs deeper here than in Therapy into the universal mysteries of death and the soul.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- HALF A YELLOW SUN (560 pp)

When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art—and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing.


Sherman Alexie - WAR DANCES (256 pp)

According to Goodreads "Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories and poems that explore the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large."
In the title story, a famous writer must decide how to care for his distant father who is slowly dying a “natural Indian death” from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor. I particularly liked the relaxed style of this story when it appeared in The New Yorker earlier this year in spite of my aversion to "How I Felt When My Father Died" stories

Margaret Atwood - ORYX AND CRAKE (376 pp)

Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
(from GoodReads description)

Alessandro Baricco -- OCEAN SEA – (256 pages)

Italian writer Baricco delivers a work whose spare, lyrical language and enigmatic episodes culminate in a tale of love and revenge. This story of obsession is a meditation on the sea and its seductive surface and erotic depths with the power to heal or destroy. Mirroring the ebb and flow of the ocean, Baricco's cast of characters complement each other. In 19th-century France, six people are drawn, each for distinct reasons, to a seaside hotel inhabited only by four precocious, spiritlike children. Researching his scientific book, An Encyclopedia of Limits, Professor Bartleboom seeks the point at which the sea ends; painter Plasson is determined to find where the sea begins. Ann Deveria has been sent by her husband to repent her adulterous ways, while Elisewin, a young, sickly girl, experiences her first love and finds her health restored. Father Pluche, the priest who accompanies Elisewin, discovers the meaning of life; a secretive sailor, Adams, searches for death. For each person, the “sea is a place where you take leave of yourself” in search of his or her mystery; yet each character's story of love, betrayal, murder or redemption is revealed to be inexorably entangled with the others' while the sea bears silent witness to their destinies. It is only through the ripples of Adams's vengeful act that each person realizes his or her destiny. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Dan Chaon -- AWAIT YOUR REPLY (336 pages)

A gripping thriller about three different people whose lives cross, and become intertwined,and the results that occur.
I first read about this novel in the New York Times Literary Journal and it rated their highest award for new novels. At that point I had no idea he was a GR Author.


Lars Saabye Christensen – HERMAN (192 pp)
Poor Herman--has he got troubles. The bullies in his class make his life hell after school; the red-haired girl he likes humiliates him; his gym teacher calls him a sissy for failing at rope climbing; and all his hair is falling out from a mysterious illness that neither the doctor nor his parents will fully explain to him. Herman is furious at his parents for not understanding him and broods about his hair loss. But when his sick grandfather dies, the boy realizes there are bigger losses than his in the world and begins growing up. This is a tragicomic coming-of-age story--one that straddles the adult/young adult market--told from the perspective of an imaginative, funny kid. On seeing a pigeon in the rain, Herman thinks, "Birds are lucky not to need raincoats and hats. . . . But if it rains for forty days, like in Africa, then maybe they have to use life vests and snorkels?" Though Herman's mother gets superficial treatment, and some of Herman's jokes wear thin with repetition, the author enjoys extending the boy's imagination. Christensen ( The Joker ) uses fresh imagery and lyrical prose, while the translator gives readers a solid feel for Norway's language and culture. (Publishers Weekly)

Ivan Doig -- THE ELEVENTH MAN

Harcourt, 406 pages, $26
Montana native Ivan Doig returns to his home state for his ninth novel, using East Base in Great Falls as the launching pad to send his characters to every part of the globe, including Guam, New Guinea, Belgium, and Alaska.  The Eleventh Man[bookmark_12.gif:] is an engrossing World War II epic, centered around newspaper reporter Ben Reinking, who is removed from pilot training and given orders to write articles for a U.S. government propaganda agency called the Threshold Press War Project (or TPWP) that provides frontline stories to run in newspapers that are too small to support correspondents.  Besides being the son of a Montana newspaper editor, Reinking has another valuable qualification for this duty: He played football for Montana’s Treasure State University in 1941, when the team went undefeated and became known as the “Supreme Team.”