Archive for the ‘Contemporary’ Category
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami doesn’t lend himself to easy categorization. Though his prose is spare, almost styleless, it’s more supple than muscular, and though his stories are often occupied with mundane domesticities, they’re also often founded in the surreal. It’s no surprise, then, that Murakami’s long-awaited latest, 1Q84, isn’t easy to shelf –it’s at home among either fantasy, thriller or hard-boiled noir – but one thing’s for sure: this book is grotesquely Murakami. That is, quiet domesticity punctuates adventures tenuously connected to reality, and yet for all its faults – and some have argued there are many – this is a book that haunts you long after you’re done, a book that, like a jealous lover, won’t let you move on.
December 31, 2011
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Judi Clark · 
One Comment
Tags: 2012 PB Release, Knopf, Literary, Speculative (Beyond Reality) · Posted in: Contemporary, Literary, Noir, Speculative (Beyond Reality), World Literature
A STUDENT OF WEATHER by Elizabeth Hay
Elizabeth Hay centres her superb, enchanting and deeply moving novel around Norma Joyce and sister Lucinda, her senior by nine years. Set against the beautifully evoked natural environments of Saskatchewan and Ontario, and spanning over more than thirty years, the author explores in sometimes subtle, sometimes defter, ways the sisters’ dissimilar characters. One is an “ugly duckling,” the other a beauty; one is rebellious and lazy, the other kind, efficient and unassuming… I
December 15, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1930s, 2011 Favorites, Contemporary, sisters · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Award Winning Author, Canada, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Giller Prize, Nature, Reading Guide
THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides
“Reader, I married him.”
What sensitive reader hasn’t thrilled to the last lines of the novel JANE EYRE, when the mousy and unprepossessing girl triumphantly returns to windswept Thornfield as a mature woman, marrying her one-time employer and great love, Mr. Rochester?
That era of these great wrenching love stories is now dead and gone. Or is it?
November 16, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 2012 PB Release, College Setting, Contemporary, FSG, Literary, Rhode Island · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Contemporary, Literary, NE & New York, Reading Guide, Story Retold, Uncategorized
ED KING by David Guterson
ED KING had me mesmerized from the first page and did not let up throughout the book. It is a contemporary retelling of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex set in the American northwest. The protagonist’s name, Ed King, means Oedipus Rex. Ed is short for Oedipus and Rex means “king” in Greek. Ed’s middle name is Aaron and one could read into this, “Ed, A King.” There is no real subtlety to the retelling. The characters change but the story remains the same. Ed kills his father and marries his mother. It is a Greek tragedy of great proportions and strength, hubris and loss.
November 13, 2011
· Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: 2011 Favorites, Contemporary, Greek Literary Roots · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Award Winning Author, Contemporary, Literary, Story Retold, US Northwest
THE GREAT LEADER by Jim Harrison
Once, many years ago when I was living in Northern Michigan, Jim Harrison walked into the restaurant where I was dining. He didn’t so much walk in, in retrospect, as lumber in. It was the Blue Bird Cafe and I confess that I’d been hanging out there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him.
October 30, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Contemporary, Grove Press, Literary, Michigan, Mystery · Posted in: Contemporary, Literary, Mystery/Suspense, US Midwest
LIGHT FROM A DISTANT STAR by Mary McGarry Morris
Nellie Peck is thirteen years old going on forty. She is wise, intelligent and impulsive. Despite her precociousness, however, she is still a child. She lives with her parents and two siblings, Ruth and Henry; Ruth is a half-sister from a relationship that her mother had in high school. The Pecks are struggling financially. Nellie’s mother works as a hair dresser and Nellie’s father owns a hardware store that is slowly going under. Her father’s passion is his writing – he is writing a tome about the history of their town, Springvale. His goal is to get it self-published so that it can be read by a wide audience.
October 26, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Contemporary, Family Matters, Mary McGarry Morris, murder mystery · Posted in: Contemporary, Family Matters, Morality, Small Town
