Dear Great Book Guru, I was at a family reunion in Point Lookout last weekend and lots of my cousins were talking about a novel set on Long Island and particularly Garden City.  Are you familiar with the book and-if so- would you recommend it?  Fan of Local Locales

Dear Friend of Local Locales, GOOD NEIGHBORS by Sarah Langan, was a delightful find, indeed.  It opens on Maple Avenue in Garden City, in a kind of cul-de-sac where all the neighbors know all there is to know about each other…or so it seems. Block parties, cookie swaps, baseball pickup games - all these things and more unite the families.  When Arlo and Gertie Wilde move from Brooklyn, they are embraced by all, especially Rhea Schroeder – the acknowledged neighborhood leader.  A few months after their move, the newcomers are suddenly shunned, first by Rhea and then eventually all the residents of Maple Avenue. Mysteriously a sinkhole then develops in a nearby park; a sense of dread envelops all the families and reaches a climax when Rhea’s daughter Shelly falls into this muddy abyss.  We know from the opening pages set twenty years in the future that a murder has occurred but who and how is not revealed until the closing pages. Throughout, we see this veneer of utopian, civilized life gradually stripped away to reveal an underbelly of hypocrisy, greed, and hatred in wildly improbable ways. Definitely a page-turner and a great start to the new year - highly recommended!

Dear Great Book Guru,  Now that we are into 2023, I was wondering if you have compiled a list of your favorite books from 2022?  It’s been a busy year and I’m afraid I might have missed some good books. Looking Back on 2022

 Dear Looking Back on 2022,  So happy you asked-  I just made up my annual list of ten favorite books.  It was hard to choose because I had so many I really liked, but here goes (in no particular order):

TRUST by Herman Diaz

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE by Claire Keegan

THE LIONESS by Chris Bohjalian

APPLES NEVER FALL by Lianne Moriarty

MARRYING THE KETCHUPS by Jennifer Close

FRENCH BRAID by Anne Tyler

COUNTERFEIT by Kristen Chen

THIS TIME TOMORROW by Emma Straub

SOOLEY by John Grisham

56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard

 

 

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!