This 2011 graphic novel, which is kid-friendly, is Marzena Sowa’s memoir of childhood in Poland in the 1980’s, the time of Lech Walesa, Solidarity, Pope John Paul II, Chernobyl, and the ordinary every day life of a 10 year old. It’s beautifully told with humor, sadness, and ultimately optimism. I think tweens would identify with Marzi’s hopes, joys and frustrations, while also getting an education about life behind the Iron Curtain just before it started to fall. In many ways, Marzi is a fairly typical […]
The Victim’s Name Was Musa
My brother’s name was Musa. He had a name. But he’ll remain ‘the Arab’ forever. Albert Camus’ The Stranger, published in 1942, is a literary classic about one man’s existential crisis. The action of the novel takes place in Algeria under French colonial rule and the narrator, Meursault, is a Frenchman who has murdered an Arab. In The Meursault Investigation, Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud imagines the same story as told by the victim’s brother. The result is a powerful and insightful tale of the destructive […]
What’s Behind Your Mask/Cannonball!
Eileen is the debut novel of writer Ottessa Moshfegh, whose short stories have been featured in Paris Review and have won prestigious prizes. The action is set during the week leading up to Christmas in 1964, but this is far from a heartwarming holiday tale. It is dark, twisted and suspenseful. Readers who enjoyed The Dinner or The Care of Wooden Floors or Gone Girl will be delighted. We have a narrator who is seems honest, but what kind of person is she really? Eileen, […]
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Gloria Steinem’s latest book is part auto-biography and part political philosophy. Steinem examines her early years with her family, a seminal trip to India, and her subsequent political activity through the prism of travel. Steinem presents a brief history of post-war US feminism here as well as the links between feminism and other civil rights’ movements. Steinem’s goal is to inspire readers to take risks, pursue dreams, and connect, to speak up but also to listen. As she has famously said, she does not want […]
A Recommendation from Gloria Steinem
Woman on the Edge of Time is a sci-fi or “speculative fiction” classic originally published in 1976. Author Marge Piercy has had critical success as a novelist and poet over a span of several decades, and I remember reading some of her poetry in college but it was a recent NY Times interview with Gloria Steinem that brought Piercy and this particular novel back onto my radar. Woman on the Edge of Time is a provocative tale of time travel that addresses poverty, race, sex, politics, […]
Amster-Dayum!
Jessie Burton’s debut novel The Miniaturist packs a lot of plot and history into its 537 pages. The action takes place in Amsterdam over the course of 3 months, from October 1686 into January 1687, and focuses on the oppressive social and religious restrictions that operated within a booming and expanding economy during the Dutch Golden Age. Eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman, whose family name is old and respected but whose fortunes have faltered, has made a fine match with Johannes Brandt, a successful businessman some 20 […]
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