Dear Great Book Guru,  April is coming to an end and I have lots of plans for the coming months.   High on my list is to read a worthwhile book every week.  I do love a good novel especially with contemporary overtones.  Any suggestions? 

A Resolute Reader

Dear Resolute Reader,  AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones is an excellent book to begin your regimen.  Celestial and Roy are a newly married African-American couple living the American Dream. He is the child of the Old South – he grew up in a small Louisiana town that he left the day he graduated from high school. Armed with his “first generation” scholarship to Morehouse College, Roy saw himself headed for success on all fronts. Celestial was a city girl from Atlanta with highly educated urbane parents. Together they see a future of unlimited potential until…. Roy is arrested and imprisoned for a crime they both know he did not commit.  The rest of the book recounts the damage done to them by a justice system weighed heavily against black men and their families.  Told partly in letters from  Roy and Celestial, the novel reveals the disbelief,  pain, and anger the couple  feel as they come to realize the empty promise for them of the American Dream.  Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  This weekend I will be attending my family’s annual Duck Hunt- rubber duckys, of course…. It will be great fun and I will see my siblings and lots of cousins,  all of whom are avid readers. The question of the day will be what have you read lately? Do you have a book I can offer to the group? From A Family of Readers

Dear From A Family of Readers,  It’s April so that means the latest Donna Leon novel has arrived.   Her TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS is the newest in her Venice literary mysteries. As in the past,  Inspector Brunetti faces a series of dilemmas that often have little to do with real criminality.  Rather his is the struggle of a moral man living in a world of great moral complexity.  There are few villains in Leon’s books but instead men and women who are dealing with issues that refuse to have simple outcomes. In this latest novel, it is the terrible consequences of the too kind heart that Leon presents to us - set against the ever beautiful, ever mysterious Venice.   Highly recommended!

Another work you might consider is Sea Cliff author Margaret Gay Malone’s recently published CHOICES OF THE HEART. Malone writes a multi-generational novel set over two continents and many decades with many fascinating plot developments.

Dear Great Book Guru, Saturday April 14 is opening day for Sea Cliff Baseball and Softball with its traditional parade down Sea Cliff Avenue.  We are great fans of the Artful Dodgers and will be cheering them on all season. When the parade is over, I would like to read a book that will help me understand some of the pressing issues of the day.  I am up for a challenge. 

Fan of the Artful Dodgers

Dear Fan of the Artful Dodgers,  This weekend I read a lengthy, disturbing history of racist ideas in American: STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING  by Ibram X.  Kendi. This National Book Award Winner traces racism in America by focusing on  five  intellectuals whose lives span colonial times  up through the present: the Puritan minister Cotton Mather; Thomas Jefferson;  fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison;  philosopher W.E.B. DuBois; and anti- prison activist Angela Davis. Kendi maintains that racist ideas were and continue to be manufactured to justify racist policy.   The title comes from a speech Jefferson Davis- future president of the Confederacy- made before the US Senate claiming that “the inequality of the races was stamped from the beginning.” A most readable and rewarding book- highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  Looking out the window on this snowy day, I wonder if spring is really in the air, but with schools closed and so many fellow Sea Cliffers out of town, I do have time to get into a good book. Any thoughts? 

Springing into a Good Book

Dear Springing into….,  I just finished an interesting novel we will be discussing at my  April book club meeting: THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez.  The unnamed narrator is a writer who has recently lost her best friend and mentor and- unexpectedly- inherits his enormous Great Dane.  At two hundred pounds and a standing height of seven feet, Apollo moves into the woman’s tiny rent-controlled apartment despite a very strong no-pet clause in her lease. Suspense builds as she navigates the world of New York City real estate with a very clever outcome.   The narrator recounts in beautiful prose her thoughts on mourning, loyalty, solitude, and death.  At times she seems dangerously obsessed with the dog’s well-being, but we soon see the redemptive powers of this human- canine relationship. The book opens with a Nicholson Baker quote “The question any novel is really trying to answer is, ‘Is life worth living?’ ” - our narrator attempts throughout to do just this. Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  I have just been invited to a ceilidh by a friend- apparently it’s a party with  Irish dancing, music, and storytelling. It sounds like great fun and- as usual- I’d like to have a good book to read beforehand- perhaps something about the creative process. 

Ceilidh Celebrant

Dear Ceilidh Celebrant,  I just finished a widely praised book about writers and the writing process: ASYMMETRY by Lisa Halliday. It is divided into three distinct but overlapping stories. In the first, we meet Alice- a young junior editor for a publishing house- and Ezra Blazer- a famous author who is much older than Alice. Set in the 1990’s in Manhattan and Long Island’s East End, the novel humorously and touchingly chronicles their love affair.  The second story opens in 2008 at Heathrow  Airport where Amar, a Brooklyn economist, is being detained by immigration police as he attempts to visit his brother in Kurdistan.   In the final piece it is 2011 and Ezra Blazer is being interviewed  on the BBC  about his award winning career, exquisitely capturing his thoughts on love, life, and  legacy. How can the three pieces come together?  Halliday does a remarkable job of capturing the creative forces that unite these disparate stories in this -her semi-autobiographical debut novel.    Recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  This weekend, a number of my friends and I will be attending a literary conference at Harvard’s Law School on the British author Barbara Pym.  They are huge fans of hers, but I have never read any of her novels.  Would you suggest one to start my Pymian adventure?

Preparing for Pym

Dear Preparing for Pym,  Like your friends, I too am a huge Pym fan.  She has written about a dozen books  - each  a jewel to be read and reread many times.  Her novels are about the exquisite loveliness of everyday life with each word, each gesture, each character treated with humor, care, and respect-  offering gentle but frequently biting insights into the human condition.  Her descriptions of food, clothing, and those daily rituals which consume and distract us, envelope her readers in a familiar yet unique world.   This weekend’s conference at Harvard will be focusing on one novel in particular: THE SWEET DOVE DIED.   Lenora, the central character, is a middle-aged, rather self-absorbed woman who spurns the devoted Humphrey for his twenty-four year-old nephew James. Lenore’s romantic overtures are thwarted when James turns first to Phoebe- a young woman his own age- and then to Ned, a visiting scholar from America.  We watch in growing dismay as Lenore tries time and again to win James’s affection.   A wonderful look into the mysteries of attraction and love- highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, Next Tuesday, March 13 at 7:30pm all the candidates for Sea Cliff Village Trustee will meet at St. Luke’s Parish Hall to state their beliefs about Village governance and answer questions from the audience.  It should be an exciting, informative evening.  While I am waiting for the event to begin, I would love to have something interesting and worthwhile to read.  A recommendation?

Hoping to be Informed

Dear Hoping,  Every year the Sea Cliff Civic Association sponsors this Meet the Candidates forum and –you are right- it’s a great evening to learn about the workings of the Village. While waiting, you might want to get a copy of Elizabeth Flock’s debut work: THE HEART IS A SHIFTING SEA: Love and Marriage in Mumbai.  Flock writes about three couples living in present day Mumbai and how Indian culture – past and present- impacts their marriages.   We meet Veer and Maya, a Hindu couple whose life together is a struggle for Maya a school principal and Veer who is haunted by an earlier love- Shahzad and Sabeena, a Muslim couple who battle parental interference, depression, and childlessness- and Ashok and Parvati, a highly educated Hindu couple whose  marriage was arranged with the help of an online matchmaker.  A fascinating story of love, religion, economics, technology, and life in a changing world- highly recommended!