OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout

Winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Literature, this is a novel in 13 stories.  The central character, who appears in all of the stories in various ways, is Olive herself, larger than life, matter-of-fact, striding through each and every story, a former Grade Seven Math teacher, she knows most everyone in the town of Crosby, Maine, and we get to know some of them,too.  It's like walking through a town, wondering what goes on behind closed doors, but here you get to enter these various lives.  It's a story of ordinary people living extraordinary circumstances: alcoholism, death, drugs, loss, betrayal, told with such a wide range of emotion and excellence.  You don't forget Olive easily, and you see yourself in her,too.

Wikipedia has extensive articles on Olive, and I saved a Globe and Mail Interview.  Check Oprah and Book Browse.

I'll recommend this for next year's reading list for Book Club.

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley

Eleven-year old Flavia de Luce is an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, living in a decaying family mansion with her father, her two sisters, Feelie and Daphne, the gardener, Dogger, and Mrs. Mullet, their cook. A series of events : a dead bird on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak, a mysterious visitor who is found dead in the garden,to name just two, keep Flavia busy as she tries to clear her father's name of murder.  This was a very quick read, and fun to read - lots of capital letters and dialogue to keep the eye moving along the page.  Apparently there will be more adventures for Flavia: she's a little like Nancy Drew!

I bought this at BMV, around the corner from Karen's apartment.I believe Bradley is Canadian, although this is set inEngland.

COVENTRY by Helen Humphreys

Harriet Marsh is a fire-watcher, standing on the roof of Coventry Cathedral on November 14, 1940. Twenty-two years earlier, she had said farewell to Owen, her husband of two days, who left to fight in WWI and was killed.  This book- only 175 pages long - tells the story of the bombing blitz that hit Coventry that night and nearly destroyed the whole city. Along with Harriet on that roof is a young fire-watcher named Jeremy, who lives with his mother, Maeve, a painter, and the book tells the story of how these three people endured that night, and how their lives were intertwined by love, loss and remembrance.

The book is beautifully written, and every sentence has meaning.  At one point, Harriet is taking refuge in a field ,is reminded of a Russian story in which a horse suddenly appears, when she sees a donkey before her: "The good thing about books is that they remain themselves. What happens in their pages stays there. Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story and doesn't trust real life.  But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is. that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her."

La's Orchestra Saves The World - Alexander McCall Smith

I picked this up at the library and read the whole thing in a matter of hours. The story is set in WWII England, where La, a young widow, moves to Suffolk to start her life again, and with the help of an airman from a base nearby, starts a little orchestra.  She also meets a Pole who moves in and out of her life for many years.  The novel is about the healing power of music, the strength of people in times of war, the warmth and character of people who live in small communities.

I don't know how McCall Smith manages to turn out so many short novels, but they're all so charmingly written, but are completely natural.  There's no artifice about them, but they're beautifully crafted to reach the reader.

I'd ike to read them all!

THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED - Wally Lamb

There's a lot in this book: I guess that's why it took 700-odd pages to tell it all, and why the author took 9 years to write it. It's a captivating story ( I wanted to say "marvellous" but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to using that word) starting with the killings at Columbine, where the narrator, Caelum, is a teacher whose wife, Maureen, hides in a cabinet in the infamous library while many of the killings took place.  Maureen then suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, ends up becoming addicted to prescribed tranquillizers, runs over a promising young athlete while driving her car in a haze of drugs, and goes to jail for five years.  Her husband Caelum then becomes the centre of attention in the story as he seeks his true roots back on his family's farm, where they have moved. Connected to his story is the story of his prison-reform ancestors, and the prison where Maureen is jailed, which is on the family farm property. 

So we have the past, the present and the future, everything is connected, cause and effect plays a large role. Hurricane Katrina, the building of the Statue of Liberty, September 11, college students studying mythology and how that shows in their lives, a soldier back from Iraq, the Miss Rheingold contest, Mark Twain- it's all there.

Lamb is obviously trying to portray how we are all connected,too, as humans, and that we have a responsibility towards one another.  Fortunately, the one subject he almost successfully avoids completely is religion, but he  does acknowledge a " higher power".  The hour he first believed is when he finds hope for the future with the coming birth of his "daughter's" baby, at the same time as he finds reconciliation with the past.

Well-done, on the whole.  At one point, I nearly gave up, because he hadn't really set the reader up for the addition of new characters, and after 300 pages, I suddenly felt I was adrift, trying to make the connection, but at the same time wondering if I cared enough to do that. I'm glad I stuck with it, though.

DREAMS OF MY FATHER by Barack Obama

I feel a little guilty for confessing that I didn't finish this.  Sorry, Barack, I think you're wonderful, and your story is interesting enough, but not enough to sustain my interest when there are other books I'm just itching to read.

It's written well, too, but seems a little bloodless at times: maybe you didn't go deep enough into your experiences.  Was this almost like an assignment to present yourself to the public before you were nominated for President?Like, tell them just enough so they get to know you and perhaps even understand you a little, but don't tell them too much, y'know?

BOOK LIST FROM FALL 2008

Here are 12 books I really enjoyed.  By the time you’ve read them all, I’ll probably have another 12!

Three Day Road – Joseph Boyden  .  Set in Moosonee and the trenches of World War I, this is the story of two native boys. 

Rockbound: Frank Parker Day.  Canada Reads winner in 2005. Rockbound is an island off the south shore of Nova Scotia.  It’s the story of two families.

The Birth House - Ami McKay. The story of a midwife in Nova Scotia, her friends, neighbours, and their lives as wives and mothers.

Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen.  Life in a circus: the animals, the workers.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan- Lisa See . Set in China, it’s the story of a friendship between two girls. Foot binding is described at length: and I complain about bunions!

Shadow on The Wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A boy searches for the author of a long-loved book and stumbles on several mysteries about the book and the author. A juicy, long read.

The Way The Crow Flies – Anne-Marie MacDonald. A fictional representation of the Stephen Truscott case.

An Audience of Chairs – Joan Clark.  The story of a woman who is bipolar and how in the end she saves herself, mainly because she enjoys life so fully and completely.

Late Nights on Air- Elizabeth Hay.  The story of a radio station in Yellowknife, the people who work there, and a long, momentous canor trip.

The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill.  Aminata, abducted into slavery at age 12, the sea voyage to North Carolina, and her life in America and Nova Scotia, then back to Sierra Leone.

The Law of Dreams- Peter Behrens.  Peter is 15 when his family starves to death in Ireland as a result of the potato famine.  This is the story of how he survives to eventually come to Canada.

Strawberry Fields – Marina Lewycha.  A group of berry-pickers in England and their road trip through England. Very entertaining and illuminating.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

This was a re-read, to prepare for our Book Club presentation this coming Saturday.  I enjoyed it even more the second time.  I think this must be historical fiction at its very best, because the story is woven through the historical events so well that the two are almost inseparable: one is not the vehicle for the other, at least not obviously so.

There are events here I never knew about: the Black Loyalists most obviously, plus the fact that the slave trade started so early and was so widespread. It was the Portuguese who first sailed away from Africa with captives in the 15th century!

The author really cares for his subject, and this has been borne out by the related reading that I have done.

It should be a good discussion at Book Club this Saturday!