Dear Great Book Guru, Friday’s Beach Music at Sea Cliff Beach is such a treat - great music, delicious food at Jay and Tanya Potter’s Cliffside Café, and beautiful views of the Sound! While looking out at the many boats anchored there, I thought about a book that a friend recommended about yachts and their owners.  Have you heard of it?  Sea Cliff Beach Fan

Dear Sea Cliff Beach Fan, THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-YACHTS by Evan Osnos is a fascinating book about the ultra rich.  There are many, many very wealthy people but then there are those whose wealth is so much that they own super yachts, and Osnos tells the tales of these ultra-wealthy in a series of ten essays. He leads off with a fascinating take on famous musicians who are hired to perform for small events - yes even children’s birthday parties - for exorbitant fees. Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Jon Bovi, Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey are a few he mentions. Later he profiles Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his lavish lifestyle. The Greenwich Rebellion chapter traces the transformation of Greenwich, Connecticut from home to storied old money families to the extraordinarily wealthy and political powerful. Trust Issues introduces us to a young woman who becomes the trusted financial advisor to the Getty heirs and then turns on them spilling family secrets that reveal their incredible wealth and machinations. The most disturbing essay was about a Hollywood actor/con artist who manipulated friends and family out of $500 million dollars.  The lifestyle of the people Osnos describes is astonishing - almost beyond belief - but not quite… highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, My friends and I love StoryTime at Sea Cliff Beach.  Every Wednesday throughout the summer at 10:30 we meet up for a story, songs, and a bubble parade under the lovely blue canvases. Last week, one of the parents mentioned a new book made up of the voices of twenty-one residents of a small village in County Limerick. It sounds interesting – thoughts?  Storytime Fan

Dear Storytime Fan, Donal Ryan’s HEART BE AT PEACE tells the story of a village coming back from disastrous economic turmoil. But old grudges and new problems beset the community. Twenty-one residents -all interconnected - tell their stories in short, lyrical chapters. Bobby is a middle-aged man with a loving wife and a booming business but is beset with terrible rage. Milly is a young girl torn by love for her grandmother and a very dangerous young man. Pokey is a young man running a bogus school that provides illegal visas. Lily is a witch by training and makes her living selling potions to needy neighbors.  Dylan is a young boy who was kidnapped for two days and troubled for years after.  Sean is torturing a lifelong friend with compromising photos. Jim is a retired policeman who says: “Madness comes circling around - every ten years - as sure as the sun rises.”  Each of the residents tells his/her story and we come to see the value of village life and – yes - its vexations. Some stories are more nuanced but all show a deep understanding of difficult situations - the most difficult being an insidious drug ring. Both young and old are impacted and the eventual resolution is disturbing but inevitable. Recommended!

 

Dear Great Book Guru, I had so much fun this week at Sea Cliff’s very own Dining Alfresco! On a select few Wednesdays in July and August, Sea Cliff Avenue is closed from Main to Summit and Village restaurants take to the street. The spirit is great, with families and friends gathering outdoors to share delicious meals and sweet camaraderie. Someone that night mentioned a short novel with a young narrator and set in a dystopian future. It sounded interesting - thoughts?  Alfresco Dining Fan

Dear Alfresco Dining Fan, VERA, OR FAITH by Gary Shteyngart is a fascinating tale of a family finding its way in the United States of 2030. The narrator is Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, the ten-year-old Korean Russian stepchild of a Mayflower descendant. Throughout the novel, Vera is feverishly at work trying to keep her family intact. Her father is the publisher of a political magazine he is trying to sell to a Rhodesian billionaire; her stepmother is leading a movement to prevent passage of an amendment limiting voting rights; her young brother seems to have first place in her parents’ hearts…and – yes - her birth mother is missing. Meanwhile, Vera is dealing with the childhood angst of learning how to fit into a system that does not esteem her intellectual prowess and is suspicious of her “otherness.”  While often an unreliable narrator, Vera is an extraordinarily sensitive and empathic character and when she finally resolves the mystery surrounding her early childhood, she and the reader are greatly relieved. A very moving yet frightening tale of what the future might hold - highly recommended!

 

 Dear Great Book Guru, After a week of celebrating our country’s 249^th birthday, my thoughts turned to our neighbors across the sea, and I would love to read some historical fiction set perhaps in Ireland.  Any recommendations?  Fan of Historical Fiction

Dear Fan of Historical Fiction, I recently read THESE DAYS by Lucy Caldwell – a novel set in   Belfast, Northern Ireland. When we think of World War II and bombings, one does not think of Belfast but in April and May of 1941, the city was almost destroyed in three separate air raids known as the Belfast Blitz. The story describes four days spread over these two months and the impact these raids had on the lives of one family - the Bells. Phillip Bell is a local doctor who tends to the victims and is confronted daily with searing images of pain and destruction. Florence Bell - his wife - deals anew with memories of her first love who was killed in World War I. Their daughter Audrey is involved with wedding plans but questions the fragility of her relationship amidst this background of despair and destruction. Emma - the other daughter - works as a volunteer at a First Aid Post, believing that she can make a difference while Paul – the youngest child - deals with the forces that shape his life at home and school.  Told from the perspectives of the family members and other Belfast denizens, the novel is brutal in its depictions of the terror and panic that the German air raids bring on a city already beset with poverty, unemployment, and food shortages – all of which continued long after the war had ended.  A harrowing read but highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, I was at the first Sunset Serenade of the summer last week - it was great! Larry Martone & Friends entertained a crowd of almost two hundred fans of all ages. During the night, I overheard some concertgoers mentioning a book they had read for their book club -a novel set in California and sprinkled with lots of references to music from the ‘80s. It sounded interesting - thoughts?  Sunset Serenade Fan

Dear Sunset Serenade Fan - I too love those concerts - every Thursday from 6 to 8pm you will find my friends and me cheering on our local musicians at Clifton Park. THE IMAGINED LIFE by Andrew Porter is the novel mentioned.  Steve Mills is a fifty-year-old who leaves his wife and young son to travel along the coast of California in an attempt to find out what happened to his father who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve.  His wife cautions him that he might not be happy with what he discovers. The novel shifts back and forth between his life before and after his father’s disappearance.  He had been a brilliant, charismatic professor of literature whose life and career came to a devastating halt when he was denied tenure.  His increasingly erratic behavior doubtlessly contributed to this outcome, but in-fighting, jealous colleagues, and campus politics were also in play.  During his odyssey, Steve gets to talk to his father’s friends and enemies, and a story emerges of a very complicated man - a man Steve desperately misses. Throughout, he imagines what his life would have been like if his father had not disappeared.  A book suffused with music and memories of the time….  Recommended!

 

 Dear Great Book Guru, I was at the Sea Cliff Beautification Garden Tour last week - it was fabulous! The organizers did their usual great job and the gardens were amazing. While on the tour, someone mentioned a debut novel that sounded very interesting - mysterious phenomena with comedic and religious implications. Thoughts?  Garden Goer

Dear Garden Goer, THE NIMBUS by Robert P. Baird is an intellectually challenging read and great fun at the same time. Adrian Bennett, a theology professor at a school modeled loosely on the University of Chicago School of Divinity, is startled to discover his two-year-old son Luca is glowing - a soft, pulsating, pink, blue, neon-like light that comes and goes unpredictably and becomes known as the nimbus.  Some can see this glow but others, including the boy’s mother Renata, cannot. Paul Harkins, a doctoral student in the department, is the first to notice the glow and finds himself becoming more and more enmeshed in the lives of the family.  Warren Kayita, an aging theology school dropout who now works as a librarian at the university is being pursued by a dangerous mobster because of ever growing debt but sees a way out of his predicament - the debt will be forgiven if he can arrange a meeting with the toddler.  Parenting, marriage roles, academic politics, religious beliefs are examined – many times with great humor but eventually all clash in a dramatic but satisfying conclusion, and we are left to consider: what is belief and what is the desire to believe?  Highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru, I had such fun last week at the Sea Cliff Village-wide Garage Sale.  The Friends of the Library had a great selection of books, and I bought a few by my favorite author Chris Pavone. Someone mentioned at the sale that he has a new novel. Is it true…and - if so - I’m very excited!  Garage Sale Groupie

Dear Garage Sale Groupie, Yes - good news…THE DOORMAN, Chris Pavone’s latest novel, just came out and it is a spectacular read.  Set in New York City in the Bohemia - purported to be the world’s most famous apartment building (think the Dakota) - the story focuses on four characters: the building’s doorman, Chicky Diaz, and three of its residents.  Chicky is a former U.S.Marine, recently widowed. Julian Sonnenberg is an art dealer with a checkered past and a very bad medical diagnosis. Emily Longsworth is the wife of Whit, a billionaire whose wealth has loathsome origins. She is desperately unhappy but an onerous pre-nup agreement keeps her married to Whit. Other residents include dog-loving, human-hating Ethel Frum and Gucker Goff, bubble-wrap billionaire, and a myriad of colorful supporting characters. Chicky dutifully greets all by name, never shares his problems, walks their dogs, protects their children and remains basically invisible until trouble arises! Trouble in the form of racial riots besieging the city. And the residents of the Bohemia are not immune to its violence. Only Chicky can protect them, they feel, but can he?  An absorbing tale of class divide, domestic drama, and racial unrest… highly recommended!