Dear Great Book Guru, With the holidays approaching, I will be feasting with friends and family - always great fun! I am particularly excited because we have heard one of our friends is coming out with his first novel. Do you know anything about it? Fan of the Holidays...... Dear Fan of the Holidays, yes – long-time Sea Cliff resident Charles Hansmann has written his debut novel SKYLIGHTING. It should be available just after Thanksgiving. The story opens in Ireland at Shannon airport. Our first-person narrator Nick and his wife Erin are joyfully embarking on a journey headed towards Dublin when moments into the story, the car crashes and Erin is dead. The remainder of the novel becomes a Homeric odyssey as Nick travels from place to place - continent to continent - in an attempt to assuage his grief and guilt. Along the way he meets an assortment of characters - each offering him some insight into existence. A teenage girl is his first encounter, and her troubled tale sends him searching further. Along the way he meets a myriad of characters – some troubling, some nurturing, always described in exquisite detail. As he travels from one city to another, we sense an underlying mystery that is about to be revealed, but like Odysseus, our hero finds the quest reward enough. Highly recommended !

Dear Great Book Guru, This weekend is the annual Sea Cliff Civic Association’s Progressive Dinner. Over twenty families open their homes to fellow Sea Cliffers with appetizers and dinner followed by dessert at the Sea Cliff Yacht Club - what a great evening! I would love to add a good book to the conversation. Any recommendations? Delighted Diner……… Dear Delighted Diner, One of my favorite authors - Ian McEwan (think ATONEMENT, THE CHILDREN ACT, NUTSHELL, etc.) - just came out with a new novel – WHAT WE CAN KNOW. The story is set in two distinct time periods - the opening chapters take place in 2119. A nuclear misfiring has changed the world’s topography. England and the Americas are largely submerged under sea, and Nigeria has become the financial and cultural capital of the world. Scholars are fixated on a poem written and read at a party in 2014. Tom Metcalf is first-person narrator and the poem’s chief researcher. He thinks he has found the missing clue to this mystery. Suddenly the book takes a dramatic turn back to 2014 and our narrator is Vivian, the woman for whom the poem was written. As she tells the story of that night, we realize how wrong we have all been. The motives, infatuations, and romantic entanglements provide us with a glimpse of the world we now live in and a world we might well be forging. Nothing in the past, present, or future can be trusted in this novel - highly recommended!