Dear Great Book Guru, I am looking forward to the New Year celebrations this weekend- the Sea Cliff Civic Association’s annual Holiday Duck Hunt, the Children’s Library noon time ringing of the bells, and the Polar Bear plunge -   but I certainly would like to end the year with a good book to read. Any recommendations?  New Year’s Reveler

Dear New Year’s Reveler,  TRUST by Hernan Diaz has appeared on many best books list for 2022, so I rushed to read it before the end of the year. It truly is a winner !  TRUST is actually four stories or really versions of the same story so the reader is left “trusting” no one. The first hundred pages are a novel within a novel  “Bonds ”featuring  1920’s Wall Street mogul  Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen.  This book was supposedly a vastly successful 1937 bestseller that  mysteriously disappeared from book stores and libraries shortly after publication.  The next section appears to be notes about the story we have just finished – quickly followed by apparently a  biography commissioned by Andrew Bevel- purporting to be the trustworthy version of the “Bonds” tale.  The final piece brings us to the  1980’s where the biographer Ida Partenza discovers a memoir revealing yet another set of facts.  What is the reader to believe or trust ?  An amazing book and highly recommended!

Another book perfect for this time of year is local author Anne Dupre’s WHERE DREAMS LIVE which opens with a hauntingly beautiful description of the Nutcracker ballet and young Sarah’s fascination with the world of dance. 

Here’s to  2023 and a year filled with many  good books!

 Dear Great Book Guru, December in Sea Cliff is always great, great fun. This week is the iconic Hanukah Happening at the Fire House. And at St. Luke’s - a lively Christmas tale presentation by Fred Stroppel with musical accompaniment by Joe Stroppel. Do you have any novels set in the holiday season to get me even more in the mood for celebrating?   Enjoying the Holidays

Dear Enjoying the Holidays, There’s a great new book FLIGHT by Lynn Steger Strong that opens on December 22 as three siblings and their families gather for their first Christmas after the death of the family matriarch Helen.  They are gathering in a drafty, shabby home in upstate New York - probably for the last time.  Each of the couples faces the event with great trepidation. Martin is the eldest - a professor who has been placed on leave because of a harassment charge brought by one of his students. Henry, the younger son, and his wife Alice are struggling emotionally and financially while Kate, their sister, is desperately hoping to continue to live in the family home that is about to be put on the market. In addition, there are numerous children all with back stories that add to the richness of this tale.  The coming together of families in one place always makes for drama, tension, and reflection.  Past hurts and present jealousies make for a potent brew indeed, and these siblings experience it all. Highly recommended!

 Dear Great Book Guru, Help!  This coming weekend is filled with so many fun events, among them the Sea Cliff Civic Association’s  Scrooge Stroll  through the Village at 2pm on Sunday starting in front of the Children’s Library,  followed by the Village Holiday Lighting event at 3:45 at Clifton Park. I need a short, very short novel to read if I am to keep my 2022 resolution to read a book a week.  Any suggestions?  Holiday Reveler

Dear Holiday Reveler, I have just the book for you: THE POSSESSION by Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Prize winner for literature. She has written many novels, most of which are autobiographical, so the line of novel and memoir is often blurred.  In this 68-page book, we are in the mind of a woman who is possessed.  She has recently broken up with her lover of many years and has become obsessed with finding out about his current partner.  We follow her as she google searches, spies on the woman’s workplace, and attempts to meet up with her.   We come to realize this obsession is more passionate than her relationship with the former lover ever was.  Jealousy certainly plays a role, but it is more than that.  Ernaux captures the relentless pursuit of someone or something that embodies all previous losses - so much easier to concentrate on one thing rather than a lifetime of losses.  As the narrator says in the opening sentence “I always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published - to write as if I was about to die.” This embarrassment over caring so much is the book’s underlying theme and one that readers will share ….recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  My friends and I are having great fun with our film discussion group and your suggestions for book/movie combinations have been very helpful. Now we are thinking of reading something about present time movie production.  Any thoughts?   Film Fan

Dear Film Fan,  I recently read COMPLICIT by Winnie M Li - a fascinating look at the underbelly of the Hollywood moving making industry.  Sarah is a thirty-seven-year-old teacher of screenwriting at an obscure college in New York City and we meet her as she is preparing for an interview with New York Times reporter Tom Gallagher to discuss her past career as a film producer. We immediately sense that things had not ended well in Hollywood and the series of interviews that follow confirm this. The daughter of Chinese immigrant parents who own a successful restaurant in Queens, Sarah was a cinephile since childhood and after graduating with honors from Columbia University,   was eager to work in the film industry, much to her parents’ dismay. A lawyer, doctor, accountant… these would please her family. When she gets an internship with a small production company, she quickly makes herself indispensable. So, when billionaire investor Hugo North becomes part owner, she inexorably moves into the Hollywood world of glitter and greed. Sarah sees the newspaper interviews as a way to right the wrongs she has endured, but she slowly begins to question her role in the downfall of many of her colleagues.  A very thought-provoking study of personal responsibility - highly recommended! 

 

 Dear Great Book Guru,  There is a fun-filled Sea Cliff weekend coming up - the rained out, much beloved Mini Mart has been reinvented  on a smaller, more intimate scale for Saturday October 15 at Roslyn Park in conjunction with St Luke’s Fall Bazaar.  What fun…but I am always looking for something good to read even during the busiest of times!  Any suggestions?  Fall Festival Fan

Dear Fall Festival Fan, I just finished a compelling, albeit terrifying, novel by Celeste Ng: OUR MISSING HEARTS.  Unlike Ng’s earlier, very popular novel LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, this is a truly dystopian tale. Narrated in part by a twelve-year old boy Noah - or as he is sometimes called, “Bird” - and by his mother Margaret, the novel is set slightly in the future after a “Crisis” – an economic and societal breakdown - has occurred. To keep peace and end the violence, a common enemy is identified, families are cautioned to educate their children in the new ways, books are banned, and those that question the draconian laws are mysteriously sent away.  Bird’s mother had been identified as a dissident because of her poetry, and to protect her family, she flees their Boston home leaving behind Bird and his father, Ethan, a linguistics teacher at Harvard. Much of the novel recounts Bird and Margaret’s quest to reunite, but the most disturbing part of the story is the indifference shown by much of the population to the extreme injustices that abound. Interestingly, libraries are shown as beacons of enlightenment and a continuing means to right society’s wrongs.  Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  Last week I read that the six finalists for the annual Booker Prize for Literature have been chosen. The criteria seem simple – the author could be any nationality but the book must have been written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.  They all looked interesting, but one stood out… a very short tale set around Christmas time.  Too early for holiday reading?  Fall Reader

Dear Fall Reader, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE by Claire Keegan is a wonderful book with year-wide appeal. Set in a small town in Ireland in 1985, this short novel describes the daily life and musings of Bill Furlong. Bill was born to a young unmarried girl employed as a live-in maid. Her employer was a wealthy elderly woman with progressive ideas and a generous spirit.  Bill and his mother lived comfortably but his illegitimacy was always an issue with the townspeople. Over the years, his hard work earned him a good job as a coal merchant, he married a woman from the middle class, and they ha five daughters. Always however Bill feels an outsider - precariously holding on to economic and social stability.  When he is confronted with a grave injustice, he must decide whether he should endanger his livelihood and his daughters’ future well-being. Bill knows the pain of being the outlier but is he willing to have his family share this fate?  The coal business that provides warmth and security for them is shown to be ephemeral as Bill attempts to be a good man in a corrupt system. Highly recommended!

 

Dear Great Book Guru,  I belong to a film discussion group and we focus on older, classic noir movies.  One of our members mentioned that there is a new novel out that covers a myriad of subjects, but the focus is on Hollywood in the 1960’s. Does it sound familiar?  Movie Maven

Dear Movie Maven, Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel is THE LIONESS and it is a great piece of historical fiction and a suspense thriller.  Set for the most part in 1964 on the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania, Hollywood super star Katie Barstow has just married David Hill and the couple has planned an iconic safari honeymoon with seven guests accompanying them. A luxurious trip has been arranged with all the comforts of home mixed with the wonders of African flora and fauna - giraffes nibbling outside their exquisite tents, zebras singing them to sleep, gourmet meals served by attentive natives.  Very soon into the trip, our group of Hollywood denizens is caught up in a political kidnapping gone awry. Each of the party and their tour guides has a story that unfolds in alternating chapters.  Their glittering lives back home have done little to prepare them for the nightmarish adventure to come.  The events of that time in that part of the world seem far away but reminiscent of an era where movies colored the lives of all. The racism of 1960’s Hollywood and the political upheaval in Tanzania eerily mirror each other and the reader is left to reflect on what “civilized” truly means. Recommended!