Newly Published September 2012

We have been having fall weather here and I am very grateful that friends and family have come out relatively unscathed from the Hurricane.  Unfortunately, there are many, many people who are going through unfathomable losses right now not to mention on-going hardship. My thoughts are with those on the East Coast.

With that said, new books came out in October and it took me quite a while to pare down the list. The most talked about release must be J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy. This seems to be a book you either love or hate but because part of the plot is centered on small town politics, it will be on my reading list. Irene Némirovsky (of Suite Française) has another novel released in September. The Wine of Solitude is said to be her most autobiographical following a family through the great war and the Russian revolution.

Two authors have published their second novel: Ilie Ruby with The Salt God’s Daughter and Attica Locke with The Cutting Season. My book group thought that Ruby’s first, The Language of Trees was a little overwritten but otherwise good. Her second, about a mother and daughter has some of the same elements of myth and folklore. I did not finish Locke’s first book, Black Water Rising, because I was so tense about what was happening I couldn’t stand it. The author is very good at building and holding tension so if that is your thing, both her books may be worth considering.

Two of the books published this month are centered on military and war. The first, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is getting a lot of buzz as a potential classic. Set during the Iraq war, the novel follows two young soldiers (18 and 21) trying to survive in a situation they feel totally unprepared for. The second is not as well publicized – The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Israeli author Shani Boianjiu. Her novel follows three young Israeli women conscripted into the army. This novel is getting rave reviews but not much notice otherwise.
An In Depth Look

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante: Ferrante is a reclusive Italian author (there is much speculation of her identity) and this is her fourth novel. Starting in the 1950’s, the book is about two friends, Elena and Lila growing up in a poor neighborhood of Naples. The book follows their lives, friendship and the transformation Italy goes through as time passes from the age of eight to Lila’s marriage at seventeen and is the first of a trilogy. Diane from Bibliophile by the Sea writes:

The translation is excellent and the author is a master of creating a wonderful sense of place. I could visualize the sights, sounds, smells of the villages, as well as the appearances of the characters. It’s a story of family, of friendship and of the struggles and challenges of an impoverished life.

The San Francisco Chronicle writes:

Ferrante, beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein, rises above “the confusion of the oral” and writes with a ferocious, intimate urgency that is a celebration of anger. Ferrante is terribly good with anger, a very specific sort of wrath harbored by women, who are so often not allowed to give voice to it. We are angry, a lot of the time, at the position we’re in – whether it’s as wife, daughter, mother, friend – and I can think of no other woman writing who is so swift and gorgeous in this rage, so bracingly fearless in mining fury.

The Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding: I have had this book on my radar since it was first published in England.  A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital in 1950’s Romania where he is recognized by a nurse, his childhood friend. The man is a deaf mute and communicates by drawing pictures. I love stories about language and communication and friendship so I can’t wait to read this one; besides I absolutely love the name. It may be my next pick for book group.

Mary Whipple from Seeing the World Through Books writes:

Basic questions about how we know and understand each other, how we perceive the world, and how we communicate with it echo throughout the novel, and the outbreak of war and the eventual Occupation put these themes into stark perspective. As the adult Safta observes, “We’re all so many people, aren’t we, nowadays?…There are the people we are inside, then the people we used to be, then there are the people other people think we are.

She also includes a wonderful quote from the book:

When Tinu drew a room, he drew it empty. He drew it as it was but somehow what you saw was not the room but its emptiness. With a door you saw the opening. When he drew a pitchfork left leaning against the barn wall you saw its abandonment….If the rooms were real [however], the people were not. They were only symbols of people. They had no smiles.

The Other Half of Me by Morgan McCarthy: Another coming of age novel, this one is set in Wales with Jonathan Anthony and his little sister, Theo as protagonists. They live on a grand estate with an alcoholic mom and many servants. Their grandmother comes from America to live with them and this changes their lives. Family history and secrets also play a significant role in this debut novel and the themes of memory and the past also are present. The reviews of this novel are very mixed but I am still intrigued by the relationship between the siblings and the character of Theo herself who is described by one reviewer as, “an uncommonly sensitive and imaginative girl, lives blissfully in her imagination.” The blog Literary Inklings writes:

In all, The Other Half of Me is a moving and vivid piece of fiction that is sure to delight readers who enjoy unhurried, precisely-detailed sojourns into literature; a starkly original novel that captures elements of Atonement and presents the traditional subject of family in a new, unexpected way. It marries mystery with the quiet observation of family, friendship and love, and offers them all in beautiful prose, with a cast of characters that will maintain a presence in the lives of readers long after the final page.

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