LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2013

These candidate books come from several sources, including suggestions from LAVA members, lists of award-winning books, favorites of other book clubs, the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list, literary blogs, etc.  Several were carried over from the previous voting list.  There are 21 books on this list, but we will choose only 8 of them in this balloting, which unfortunately means that many worthwhile books will be excluded from next year’s reading schedule.  As before, the most popular runners-up will be included in the next list of candidates.

Why do we need to choose only 8 books to cover 12 meetings?  We don’t read a book for January because that month is occupied with choosing the next list of books.  In March we read the book chosen by Writers and Books for the "If all of Rochester Read the Same Book" program.  In July and September we see a film at The Little Theater instead of discussing a book.  That leaves us eight books to choose for the year.

LAVA members are encouraged to research these book candidates in bookstores, libraries, on the web, etc.  Bring this list and your thoughts to the special January meeting at Bill and Andi's house on Saturday, January 12, which will be devoted to sharing information and opinions on these books (and sharing good food).

After the January meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Sunday February 3, please "mark your ballots" and return them to Bill.  First review the guidelines for choosing LAVA discussion books, which reflect some of the things we have learned about choosing books over the years.  Then, using a system similar to the one used in the Olympics, rate each book individually on a scale of 1 to 10, using 10 to indicate books that you think would generate the best Lava discussions.  The system works best if you provide a rating for every book on the list.  If you wish, you can write your rating for each book in the margins of this document.  Last year, several members rated each book as we discussed it during the January meeting and then handed in their marked list as they left, but you can use any method you prefer as long as you get your ratings to Bill by the voting deadline.

The candidates are divided into three groups: shorter fiction, shorter nonfiction, and longer works.  This division doesn’t affect how you cast your vote, but it does affect how the final schedule is created.  If no nonfiction book is among the top vote-getters, the most popular nonfiction book will go on the list anyway to assure that we get a little variety in our reading.  Any of the longer books among the top vote-getters will be assigned to the August and October meetings because that will give us two months to read them.

Candidates for Regular Meetings (fiction)

Aloft by Chang-rae Lee, 364 pages, 2004.  A tragicomic novel of suburban American life by an author of Korean ancestry who was raised in the U.S. since the age of three.  Boston Globe: "An affecting portrait of a man trying to define his place as a father, son, and lover in America today."  San Jose Mercury: "Filled with passages of revelation about who we are and what we are becoming."  Atlanta Constitution: "Nearly every page of Aloft is full of surprises, of emotional land mines."  This is the author's third novel.  His first, won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and his fourth was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/aloft/  Suggested by Joan S.  16 books plus one CD in the library system.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout.  304 pages, 1998.  Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge, which LAVA read in 2010.  A single mother "temporarily" moves with her infant daughter to a small New England mill town in an attempt to give her life new direction.  Socially isolated, she focuses her energy on her daughter, but their relationship becomes distant when the daughter becomes a teenager.  When the daughter falls in love with her math teacher, who is caught taking advantage of her, the mother reacts with fury and even jealousy.  They try to rebuild their relationship against the background of a gossip-ridden town with its own secrets.  San Francisco Chronicle: "Every once in a while, a novel comes along that plunges deep into your psyche, leaving you breathless... This year that novel is Amy and Isabelle."  New York Times: "One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place."  Review in the New York Times.  32 copies in the library system.

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks.  311 pages, 2011.  Caleb, the son of an Indian chieftan, and Bethia, a minister's daughter, become secret friends on Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s.  When the minister trains Caleb for entry into Harvard, Bethia secretly listens to the lessons.  When Caleb goes to Harvard, Bethia gets work as a servant there.  New York Times review by novelist Jane Smiley: "Caleb’s Crossing could not be more enlightening and involving.  Beautifully written from beginning to end, it reconfirms Geraldine Brooks’s reputation as one of our most supple and insightful novelists."  Washington Post: "[Bethia and Caleb] struggle every waking moment with spiritual questions that are as real and unending as the punishing New England winters." Kirkus Reviews: "While no masterpiece, this work nevertheless contributes in good measure to the current and very welcome revitalization of the historical novel."  LAVA read Brooks' earlier novels People of the Book in 2011 and March (which won the Pulitzer Prize) in 2008.  Suggested by Grace C.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/calebs_crossing/  63 copies in the library system.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaadje.  265 pages, 2011.  Amazon: "In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England.  At mealtimes he is seated at the 'cat’s table'—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of 'insignificant' adults and two other boys... By turns poignant and electrifying, The Cat’s Table is a spellbinding story about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood, and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage." Washington Post: "Lithe and quietly profound: a tale about the magic of adolescence and the passing strangers who help tip us into adulthood in ways we don’t become aware of until much later." Seattle Times: "A captivating reminder that it can take decades to comprehend the past, let alone to make amends with it."  Telegraph (UK): "The beauty of Ondaatje’s writing is in its swift accuracy; it sings with the simple precision of the gaze... Richly enjoyable, often very funny."  Globe and Mail (Toronto): "The lyricism of the prose is astonishing."  New York Review of Books: "To capture truly any moment of life is an achievement of art.  To find captured, in a single work, such disparate experiences—of youth and age, of action and reflection, of innocence and experience—is a rare pleasure." Recommended by Andi.  LAVA has read several of Ondaatje's books, including The English Patient.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/cats_table/  43 copies in the library system.

Faith by Jennifer Haigh.  318 pages, 2011.  Amazon: "It is the spring of 2002 and a perfect storm has hit Boston.  Across the city's archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care... Sheila McGann has remained close to her older brother Art, the popular, dynamic pastor of a large suburban parish.  When Art finds himself at the center of the maelstrom, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him and his reputation.  What she discovers is more complicated than she imagined.  Her strict, lace-curtain-Irish mother is living in a state of angry denial.  Sheila's younger brother Mike, to her horror, has already convicted his brother in his heart.  But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila's questions and refuses to defend himself."  New York Times: "Expertly wrought... Ms. Haigh, a subtle, serious novelist who happens to have a flair for capturing troubled family dynamics, never allows Faith to become predictable."  Washington Post: "Both riveting and profound... An incredibly suspenseful novel."  Haigh, who won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction, spoke at Rochester Arts and Lectures in 2012.  Review in the Washington Post.  25 copies in the library system.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.  357 pages, 2006.  This novel won the Booker Prize in 2006.  Jemubhai Patel, a Cambridge-educated judge, retires to an isolated house in the Himalayas that he shares with his cook and with his orphaned seventeen-year-old granddaughter.  The novel focuses mainly on the granddaughter and the cook's son, who lives a precarious life in New York City without a visa.  A theme is the loss of identity created by colonialism and its impact through generations.  New Yorker: "Briskly paced and sumptuously written, the novel ponders questions of nationhood, modernity, and class, in ways both moving and revelatory."  New York Times: "Desai is a gorgeous writer, capable of pulling us along on a raft of sensuous images that are often beautiful not because what they describe are inherently so, but because she has shown their naked truth."  Kirkus Reviews: "A rich stew of ironies and contradictions.  Desai’s eye for the ridiculous is as keen as ever."  Suggested by Joyce H.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/inheritance_of_loss/  25 copies in the library system.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison, 196 pages, 2008. Morrison is the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved, which LAVA read in 1996.  "In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love—first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith."  USA Today: "[It] examines slavery through the prism of power, not race.  Morrison achieves this by setting A Mercy in 1680s America, when slavery was a color-blind, equal-opportunity state of misery, not yet the rigid, peculiar institution it would become."  Christian Science Monitor: "The chances for mercy to thrive in a new land are weighed on a small farm in New York.  Four women who were acquired by farmer-turned-trader Jacob Vaark in various ways have forged an unlikely family... [Vaark’s] farm is a small collective of every type of servitude possible years before the country turned exclusively and implacably to the enslavement of black Africans."  Times (London): "A stark story of the evils of possessiveness and the perils of dispossession emerges slantwise.  Hints, suspicions, secrets, ambivalences, scarcely acknowledged motives and barely noticeable nuances serve as signposts to enormities and desperations."  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/mercy/  47 copies in the library system.

Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger.  337 pages, 2012.  Amazon: "In The Newlyweds, we follow the story of Amina Mazid, who at age twenty-four moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York, for love... [T]his is an arranged marriage for the twenty-first century: Amina is wooed by—and woos—George Stillman online... But each of them is hiding something: someone from the past they thought they could leave behind.  It is only when they put an ocean between them—and Amina returns to Bangladesh—that she and George find out if their secrets will tear them apart, or if they can build a future together."  Los Angeles Times: "For all its global sophistication, the most remarkable accomplishment of this hugely satisfying novel is Freudenberger’s subtle exploration of the stage of adulthood at the heart of The Newlyweds, and all the compromises with selfhood those early years of love and marriage entail." Seattle Times: "The Newlyweds is about all sorts of complex relationships: between parents and children; with first loves; with the places we depart and those we adopt, and 'the many selves' this fluidity creates.  Freudenberger does an especially lovely job creating Amina’s worlds—her emotional terrain, her wonder and bewilderment adjusting to America, her life in Bangladesh." Freudenberger was recently named to the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of young writers with promising futures.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/newlyweds/.  38 copies in the library system.

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey.  381 pages, 2009.  Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher, toured the United States in 1831 and from his experiences wrote the hugely influential Democracy in America.  Carey imagines a similar journey through the eyes of two fictional traveling companions, Olivier, the child of French aristocrats, and Parrot, the motherless son of an English printer who is expected to spy on Olivier for his over-protective parents.  This novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2010; two of the author's previous novels won the Booker Prize.  New York Magazine: "Cranks its energy, like Don Quixote, out of the friction between two antipodal characters... Hums with comic adventure."  The Christian Science Monitor: "An energetically intelligent novel... It bristles like a hedgehog with all of Carey’s spiky ideas."  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/parrot_and_olivier_in_america/  23 copies in the library system.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  163 pages, 2012.  This novel won the Booker Prize for 2012. Amazon: "This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he’d left all this behind... But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he’d understood all along."  Boston Globe: "That fundamentally chilling question— Am I the person I think I am?—turns out to be a surprisingly suspenseful one... As Barnes so elegantly and poignantly revels, we are all unreliable narrators, redeemed not by the accuracy of our memories but by our willingness to question them." San Francisco Chronicle: "A page turner, and when you finish you will return immediately to the beginning... At 163 pages, The Sense of an Ending is the longest book I have ever read, so prepare yourself for rereading. You won’t regret it."  Los Angeles Times: "[A] jewel of conciseness and precision... packs into so few pages so much that the reader finishes it with a sense of satisfaction more often derived from novels several times its length."  The Independent (London): "A slow burn, measured but suspenseful, this compact novel makes every slyly crafted sentence count." Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/sense_of_an_ending/.  47 copies in the library system.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.  353 pages, 2011.  Dr. Marina Singh goes deep into the Amazon to find her former mentor, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug and who turns out to be suppressing information about it.  New York Times: "An engaging, consummately told tale."  Washington Post: "This is surely the smartest, most exciting novel of the summer."  Amazon: "State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity."  Patchett wrote Bel Canto, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and which LAVA read in 2010. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/state_of_wonder/.  80 copies in the library system.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.  361 pages, 1993.  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Back cover: "In this miniaturist masterpiece, Carol Shields pieces together one woman’s story, from its dramatic beginning in a Manitoba kitchen at the turn of the last century to its closing chapter in a Florida hospital in the early nineties. Drifting through the stages of childhood, romance, motherhood, and old age — and frequently crowded out of her own history by more flamboyant forebears, friends, and relations — Daisy emerges as a twentieth-century Everywoman and her life as a diary of this 'mean old sentimental century.'"  The New York Times says that in this novel Shields explores "the mysteries of life with abandon, taking unusual risks along the way. The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters." Washington Post: "An extraordinarily loving and cheerful book."  San Francisco Chronicle: "deliciously unclassifiable, blatantly intelligent and subtly subversive."  Suggested by Andi.  Review in the New York Times.  35 copies in the library system.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.  397 pages, 2011.  Amazon: "Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos... As Ava sets out on a mission through the magical swamps to save them all, we are drawn into a lush and bravely imagined debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality." Booklist: "Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air." (And that doesn't even mention the fact that the local river is called the Styx.)  The New York Times Book Review: "Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride." This book was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, a year in which the judges were unable to agree on a winner.  The New York Times named it a Best Book of the Year.  Karen Russell was recently named to the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of young writers with promising future.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/swamplandia/.  Suggested by Andi.  34 copies in the library system.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  272 pages, 2012.  A shy, retired British brewery salesman, burdened by guilt, walks out of his house to post a letter to Queenie, a dying friend who lives 600 miles away.  On a sudden impulse, he walks past the post office and decides to keep on walking in an attempt to deliver the letter in person.  During the arduous journey he mulls over his past destructive actions and suffers a "dark night of the soul."  He also inspires the people he meets, some of whom are quite strange.  Times (London): "Harold’s journey is ordinary and extraordinary; it is a journey through the self, through modern society, through time and landscape. It is a funny book, a wise book, a charming book—but never cloying.  It’s a book with a savage twist—and yet never seems manipulative." Publishers Weekly gave it a mixed review: "Early chapters of the book are beguiling, but a final revelation tests credulity, and the sentimental ending may be an overdose of what the Brits call 'pudding.'"  This novel was one of a dozen on the longlist for the 2012 Booker Prize.  Suggested by Vicki and seconded by Grace C.  Review in the Washington Post.  43 copies in the library system.

Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning science reporter for the New York Times.  304 pages, 2007.  The American Scientist: "In wry, witty and occasionally florid prose, Angier introduces readers to the scientific method and basic probability and then presents guided tours of the basics of physics, chemistry, evolutionary and molecular biology, geology and astronomy. She illuminates each discipline by drawing on interviews with its top practitioners, and she displays everywhere a unique flair for finding familiar examples and vivid analogies." Boston Globe: "Everything you ever learned and forgot, or never learned, in high school science is here: what an atom looks like, how a cell survives, why Earth's tectonic plates move... She writes in folksy, sometimes cutesy prose, making even the most abstruse theories accessible." Nature: "An astonishingly literary science book... Angier’s gift for metaphor lights up the dustiest corner."  Suggested by Tess.  24 copies in the library system.

In the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson.  365 pages, 2011.  Amazon: "[A] vivid portrait of Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s reign, brought to life through the stories of two people: William E. Dodd, who in 1933 became America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s regime, and his scandalously carefree daughter, Martha." New York Times: "Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds’ intimate witness to Hitler’s ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller….a fresh picture of these terrible events." Chicago Sun-Times: "Reads like a suspense novel, replete with colorful characters... an on-the-ground documentary of a society going mad in slow motion." New York Times: "By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history….Powerful, poignant…a transportingly true story."  LAVA read Larson's Devil in the White City in 2011.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/in_the_garden_of_beasts/.  64 copies in the library system. 

Mayflower: a Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.  358 pages, 2007.  Library Journal: "Mayflower is a jaw-dropping epic of heroes and villains, bravery and bigotry, folly and forgiveness. Philbrick delivers a masterly told story that will appeal to lay readers and history buffs alike. Clearly one of the year's best books; highly recommended."  New York Times: "Mayflower is a surprise-filled account of what are supposed to be some of the best-known events in the American past but are instead an occasion for collective amnesia."  Philbrick won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2000 for another book.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/mayflower/ The library system has 50 books and 16 CDs.

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman.  298 pages, 2010.  Soon after graduating from Smith College, Kerman was enticed into helping a friend who was involved with drug smuggling.  Years later, an executive at a non-profit organization, she is appalled to find that her brief fling with the romance of crime had caught up with her and that she is going to prison.  Her story of acclimating to the culture of prison has been described as revealing, moving, enraging and often hilarious.  Los Angeles Times: "This book is impossible to put down because [Kerman] could be you.  Or your best friend. Or your daughter."  Smith magazine: "But it’s her rendering of her fellow prisoners—their surprise birthday parties with homemade cards and microwave cheesecake, the ways they bring hope and humor to the inside, and the makeshift families they create—that allows Orange to transcend the prison genre and become a story about the remarkable capacity for strength and resilience, that of Kerman and the women she met in prison."  Review in the Los Angeles Times.  22 copies in the library system.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.  312 pages, 2006.  This book won the National Book Award. The author is a national correspondent for the New York Times.  During the Great Depression dangerous dust storms were created by eight years of drought in parts of the Great Plains whose soil was not really suitable for plowing.  This is the true story of those who endured the Great American Dust Bowl.  Houston Chronicle: "The Worst Hard Time documents how government and business with the best of intentions can facilitate the destruction of an entire region." Pittsburg Post-Gazette: "Egan expertly knits unpublished diaries, newspaper archives, official reports and survivor interviews into a narrative that continually questions: How could people survive this?"  Chicago Tribune: "Masterfully captures the story of our nation's greatest environmental disaster." Christian Science Monitor: "Descriptions of illness in this book - affecting both people and animals - may seem unrelenting. But there are also victories and moments of light for those who prefer to focus on the spirit of survival."  Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "a flat-out masterpiece of historical reportage."  Suggested by Joyce H.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/worst_hard_time/  22 copies in the library system plus CD and eBook.

Longer Books (suitable for August and October)

We read no more than two books in this category per year, and we reserve these for our August and October discussions, which gives us two months to read them.  This does not imply that our August and October books must come from this section.  If all of the top choices are shorter books, that is what we read all year.  Note that this year some of our "shorter" books are a bit on the long side, with several having more than 350 pages.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.  517 pages, 2011.  Amazon: "The Art of Fielding explores relationships--between friends, family, and lovers--and the unpredictable forces that complicate them. There's an unintended affair, a post-graduate plan derailed by rejection letters, a marriage dissolved by honesty, and at the center of the book, the single baseball error that sets all of these events into motion.  New York Times (Kakutani): "not only a wonderful baseball novel…but it's also a magical, melancholy story about friendship and coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer."  New York Times (Cowles): a "slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel…If it seems a stretch for a baseball novel to hold truth and beauty and the entire human condition in its mitt, well, The Art of Fielding isn't really a baseball novel at all, or not only. It's also a campus novel and a bromance (and for that matter a full-fledged gay romance), a comedy of manners and a tragicomedy of errors."  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/art_of_fielding/  37 copies in the library system.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.  448 pages, written in 1942, published in 2007.  This best-seller is a book club favorite.  Washington Post: "This extraordinary work of fiction about the German occupation of France is embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one. Composed in 1941-42 by an accomplished writer who had published several well-received novels, Suite Française, her last work, was written under the tremendous pressure of a constant danger that was to catch up with her and kill her before she had finished.  Irene Nemirovsky was a Jewish, Russian immigrant from a wealthy family who had fled the Bolsheviks as a teenager. She spent her adult life in France, wrote in French but preserved the detachment and cool distance of the outsider. She and her husband were deported to Auschwitz in 1942."  This book contains two of what was intended to be a suite of five novellas.  The first follows families from different social classes during the chaotic flight from Paris during World War II, and the second observes life in a French village occupied by the Germans.  Puzzlingly, there is little mention of the plight of Jews. The Telegraph: "outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth." The Times (London): "a marvellous tragic-comedy of manners... No other work of fiction as forcefully conveys the fate of France under the Nazis."  Independent (Britain): "this is no gloomy elegy but a scintillating panorama of a people in crisis -- witty, satirical, romantic, waspish and gorgeously lyrical by turns."  Suggested by Ginny.  Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/suite_francaise/  and more reviews: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/nemirovi/suitef.htm  46 copies in the library system plus 3 CDs.