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Hystera by Leora Skolkin-Smith
Date Published: November 16, 2011
Publisher: Fiction Studio Books
Pages: 194
ISBN: 978-1936558186
Genre: Health; Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Summary: Set in the turbulent 1970s when Patty Hearst became Tanya the Revolutionary, Hystera is a timeless story of madness, yearning, and identity. After a fatal accident takes her father away, Lillian Weill blames herself for the family tragedy. Tripping through failed love affairs with men and doomed friendships, all Lilly wants is to be sheltered from reality. She retreats from the outside world into a world of delusion and the private terrors of a New York City Psychiatric Hospital. Unreachable behind her thick wall of fears, the world of hospital corridors and strangers become a vessel of faith. She is a foreigner there until her fellow patients release her from her isolation with the power of human intimacy.
How do we know who we really are? How do we find our true selves under the heavy burden of family and our pasts? In an unpredictable portrait of mental illness, Hystera penetrates to the pulsing heart of the questions.
My Thoughts: Lilly has been voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward following a failed suicide attempt. She’s a smart woman, enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College. But life is difficult and debilitating. Overwhelming feelings of guilt regarding her father’s stroke and pressure from her clingy, critical mother have been troubling Lilly for quite a while. The final straw is the breakup with her boyfriend, Mitchell after Lilly wasn’t comfortable having sex with him. Lilly started experiencing delusions and hallucinations of a sexual nature brought on by shame about her body and sexual issues. These feelings resulted in an imagined physical manifestation of the shame on her body that both upset and calmed Lilly. She complained of pain between her legs, related to the imagined physical manifestation, while in the emergency room. When a nurse tried to examine her, Lilly became hysterical and had a severe breakdown, ending up in a quiet room on the locked psychiatric ward. There was nothing unusual found at the source of her pain. The doctors believe Lilly suffers from fear of intimacy and other issues of fear.
The majority of this book is told from Lilly’s point of view through a third-person narrator. The narrative is confusing and chaotic, especially early in the book, because we’re, essentially, inside Lilly’s mind experiencing what she thinks as she does. The narrative is also extremely effective and powerful since we’ve been given a front-row seat to Lilly’s thoughts and memories. It’s mesmerizing to read about Lilly’s memories of life with her mother when she was young and how she’s been strongly impacted by the things her mother said to her even when she was very young. Lilly struggles with issues about her mother and guilt that mainly revolve around Lilly’s desire to be free of her mother’s control. She’s searching for her own identity but Lilly doesn’t feel safe out in the world to discover who she is. Lilly also has difficulty trusting others and fears letting others know the real Lilly and what she wants from life. It’s a captivating and amazing experience to read about each day from Lilly’s point of view. It’s also confusing and disjointed, further emphasizing the mental illness at the center of this story but also making it difficult, sometimes, to understand what‘s happening in the book.
I’ve thought a lot about this book and Lilly since I read it. I’ve also returned to the book and reread a few chapters. I think it’s a book that benefits from rereading because there isn’t a straight-forward meaning to many of the passages. Lilly isn’t a character who it’s easy to relate to or identify with but she is dealing with some issues familiar, at least to a degree, to many women, particularly those issues involving mother-daughter relationships. Shame regarding our bodies, sexual feelings and behavior are also issues that are not uncommon to many people. Reading about how Lilly has been impacted by life is occasionally frightening because these familiar issues are partly responsible for driving Lilly mad, making her feel so insecure and unsafe in society that she tried to exit it. A few of the chapters, along with Lilly’s struggles, are also a little tiring and aggravating because it’s not always easy to understand where Lilly’s coming from or what she’s thinking and feeling. That’s probably due to my own lack of experience or understanding of mental illness and the unusual framework of this book.
Leora Skolkin-Smith has written a fascinating novel about one woman’s descent into mental illness and her struggle to feel whole. This is a haunting and poignant look at Lilly’s struggles. My heart went out to Lilly and I would have liked to know her better but the nature of her illness and this book makes that understandably impossible. I felt a range of emotions while reading this book and I, ultimately, rooted for Lilly to find herself and the feeling of security she longs for. I haven’t read many books about mental illness but Hystera has piqued my interest in reading some other books about struggling with mental illness and madness. I recommend this book to anyone interested in mental illness and people fighting to overcome it.
Leora Skolkin-Smith website.
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book and to Fiction Studio Books and Leora Skolkin-Smith for a copy of Hystera
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
Date Published: August 28, 2007
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 304
ISBN: 978-0345492340
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 3.0 out of 5
Book Summary: Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport – the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate: an “arrival party” that from then on is repeated every year as the two families become more and more deeply intertwined. Even Maryam is drawn in – up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by Bitsy Donaldson’s recently widowed father, all the values she cherishes – her traditions, her privacy, her otherness–are suddenly threatened.
A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that immerse us in the challenges of both sides of the American story.
My Thoughts: Bitsy Donaldson and her husband, Brad are very different from Sami and Ziba Yazdan. When the families cross paths at the airport while both waiting for the arrival of the little girls they’ve adopted from Korea, Brad insists Sami and Ziba and Sami’s mother, Maryam join them at the Donaldsons to welcome the babies girls. It makes sense for these families to become friends. Bitsy won’t have it any other way, anyway. Most people find it exceedingly difficult to say no to Bitsy because she doesn‘t make it easy to do! Ziba is too well-mannered and kind to refuse Bitsy’s orders...ahem, I mean invitations. Sami and Ziba also like the idea of their new baby daughter, Susan having a little Korean girl her age, Jin-ho Donaldson, as a friend. They feel that if this requires Sami and Ziba to be friends with the Donaldsons they‘ll do it. Quiet, well-mannered Maryam isn’t so sure a close friendship with the loud, opinionated though well-meaning Bitsy is a good idea.
Digging to America is a character-driven book. There really isn’t a plot but the theme about how people from other countries move and settle in the United States and slowly acclimate to the American way of life, is well-developed, as are the corresponding themes of identity, family, friendship, loyalty and individuality. Anne Tyler deftly examines relationships within the context of family and friendship and skillfully relays how cultural identity plays into and, often, alters these relationships. Tyler explores the idea of “otherness” for immigrants trying to fit in and what it means to be different. Susan and Jin-ho aren’t the only characters who’ve moved to the USA from another country. Maryam Yazdan, Sami’s mother and now Susan’s grandmother, grew up in Iran. She moved to America just shy of twenty to marry an Iranian man chosen by her family. Susan and Jin-ho adapt easily to life in America since they’re babies with the love and support of their family and friends. In contrast, Maryam, after more than 20 years in the United States, still hasn’t adjusted. She isn’t really comfortable with life in America or with the behavior of Americans. Maryam appears to feel awkward and uncomfortable around most people including her own son. Sami almost completely denies his Iranian heritage and has always wanted a completely American lifestyle. Maryam’s sadness is almost palpable in a few scenes where Sami is dismissive of the Iranian culture and his heritage. But Maryam doesn’t try hard to adapt, often criticizing American’s behavior. Tyler adeptly portrays the range of human emotions with her characters in this book.
Maryam’s relationship with Sami is, sadly, dysfunctional but the other relationships portrayed: Sami and Ziba, Bitsy and Brad as well as Bitsy’s parents Dave and Connie are strong and solid marriages. I thought this was intriguing especially considering that the characters are flawed, some more strongly than others, much like real people. Tyler does a terrific job showing how the couples support and help each other in their marriages, even when one spouse is unreasonable. I especially enjoyed the scenes in which the couples face issues and questions about raising their Korean-born daughters. So it was to my surprise and utter disappointment that I really wasn’t able to identify with or relate to any of the characters in Digging to America.
Maryam was the most fully-developed character, but her arrogance, critical nature and self-centered attitude made her difficult for me to like and she became tedious and exhausting. Bitsy is pushy, opinionated and forces her ideas on others, particularly Ziba. Ziba allows herself to be easily manipulated. She doubts herself and is extremely insecure. I wanted to know more about Ziba and Bitsy: their motivations, their backgrounds what may have happened in their lives to cause them to behave in this way and their ideas about raising their Korean daughters. Ziba and Bitsy remain a mystery for the most part, providing peeks into their history but no real explanations for the women they are. I essentially became irritated as I continued to read this book since I was unaware of Bitsy and Ziba’s motivations for their behavior. I had many questions and they remained unanswered.
Tyler’s writing is compelling and it’s easy to sink into one of her books quickly. She often addresses fascinating issues, exploring them skillfully as she does here with immigration, immigrants and assimilation. She doesn’t shy away from emotions or drama and excels at incorporating witty dialogue and commentary in her stories. I thought Digging to America was captivating when I first started reading it but by the second half of the book I was mostly aggravated as I read.
Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a weekly meme originally created and hosted by Marcia of A girl and her books and hosted this month by Anna of Diary of an Eccentric. Below are the titles I received for review, purchased, or otherwise obtained over the course of the past week.
Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty (for review from Faber abd Faber and TLC Book Tours)
Two police officers knock on Laura’s door. They tell her that her nine-year old daughter Betty has been hit by a car and killed. When justice is slow, Laura decides to take her own revenge and begins to track down the man responsible.
Laura’s grief reopens old wounds and she is thrown back to the story of her passionate love affair with Betty’s father David, their marriage and his subsequent desertion of her for another woman.
Haunted by her past and driven by her need to discover the truth, Laura discovers just how far she is prepared to go for love, desire and retribution.
Whatever You Love is a heart-wrenching and compulsive story from an acclaimed novelist writing at the height of her powers.
The Book Club Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp (from Penguin)
Whether it’s Roman Punch for The Age of Innocence, Sabzi Challow (spinach and rice) with Lamb for The Kite Runner, or Swedish Meatballs and Glögg for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, nothing spices up a book club meeting like great eats. Featuring recipes and discussion ideas from best-selling authors and book clubs across the country, this fully revised and updated edition of the classic book guides readers in selecting and preparing culinary masterpieces that blend perfectly with the literary masterpieces their club is reading. This edition includes new contributions from a host of today’s bestselling authors including:
*Kathryn Stockett, The Help (Demetrie’s Chocolate Pie and Caramel Cake)
*Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants (Oyster Brie Soup)
*Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper (Brian Fitzgerald’s Firehouse Marinara Sauce)
*Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (Almaz’s Ethiopian Doro Wot and Sister Mary Joseph Praise’s Cari De Dal)
*Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Annie Barrows’s Potato Peel Pie and Non-Occupied Potato Peel Pie)
*Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Lisa See’s Deep Fried Sugared Taro)
The Book Club Cookbook will add real flavor to your meetings!
Yummers!!
Happy Sunday! I wasn’t quite ready to lose an hour of sleep but the weather is so nice here it feels like Spring has already arrived! I think it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted a Sunday Salon. Last Sunday I took my 11-year old neighbor to the Flea Market. I spent a few hours pouring over books while she investigated booths and tables of toys. We both expected she’d have to drag me out of the market but I actually had to coax her to leave. Candy and ice cream are great bribes when you’re eleven! (and very yummy at my age, too!)
The cats are loving the warm, sunny weather. They have a lot more energy especially Lola and Edgar who chases anything that moves. Even Bob has wanted to play this week. I woke up the other morning to a tremendous racket. Bob was chasing a ball across the floor and ran into my portable oxygen canisters...as they crashed around him, he ran away, still chasing the ball right under the bed where he hid for a while! Edgar found a Badminton shuttlecock (I always call it a ’birdie’) outside and brought it inside to play with...it’s become his favorite toy. It seems out of place in this part of Brooklyn. I just don’t see Badminton as being a popular activity here but, apparently, somebody, other than Edgar, likes to play! Edgar stares at the birdie and stares and stares at it, suddenly pouncing...as it flies into the air, Edgar jumps as high as he can, his little furry body quivering and twisting in the air! Once he gets the birdie, he runs outside and plays in the grass with it for hours. I love watching him - he's so focused and absorbed in his game and enjoying it so much!
I'm thinking I might open an online used/rare bookstore. I need to bring in some money - cats eat a lot! - and I could also use a job or activity that helps me feel productive. Not working has bothered me for a long time...basically since I left my job and went on disability which was many years ago. This venture may not work out especially because of the popularity of e-readers and e-books. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit and I figure the only way I’ll know for sure is if I try! Maybe I’ll find a way to sell e-books at some point, too. So, although I’m not 100% sure of this, I’m leaning towards it and I feel excited about the idea.
I haven’t read much this weekend, so far, and I’m not quite sure why but I'm getting that desperate feeling I get when I haven't done much reading in a day or two. So today some reading is a priority! I’m hoping to finish The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove by Susan Gregg Gilmore and read more of Oxford Messed Up by Andrea Kayne Kauffman. I have reviews of some great books coming up the end of this month and beginning of April including The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson and The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng so I have some reading to do. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can read outside while working on my tan! Lol
What are you up to today? What good books are you reading?
Enjoy your day and have a great one!
The Radleys by Matt Haig
ISBN: 978-1451610338
Pages: 384
Published Date: September 20, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Free Press
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Summary: Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.
One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.
The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain—and lose—when we deny our appetites.
My Thoughts: I started to read this book in the fall last year. I put it down to get something else done and it got covered up in my disorganized mess of books. When I came across The Radleys while reorganizing my books last month, I thought, “Uh-oh!“. I set this book on my nightstand and as soon as I could, I picked it up and reread it. I must have been in a weird mood last time because this is a witty, smart and satiric book with engaging dialogue. I found this fast-paced, riveting and fun book difficult to put down once I started reading it. I’m very happy I came across The Radleys in my piles of books. It’s a great exception to my rule against vampire books as well as an exceptional book. The only other vampire book I’ve read is Dracula when I was in high school, a very different book than this one!
The Radleys, to the naked eye, seem to be a pretty typical, dysfunctional family. They have some rather odd quirks and idiosyncrasies but they don’t appear any more dysfunctional than the next family. Dad, Peter, is a local and respected doctor and Helen, is a stay-at-home mom, active in various activities. Rowen and Clara, are normal teenagers who attend the local high school. The family has been living in a nice house in the quaint and quiet English village of Bishopthorpe for many years without incident. This is rather remarkable because Peter and Helen have accomplished the amazing feat of hiding the fact that their family, The Radleys, are vampires. Rowen and Clara don’t even know despite feeling very different from their classmates in several ways. They don‘t suspect they are vampires at all. But who would?!
Rowen and Clara’s age and growing independence are causing some major problems related to being vampires. They aren’t aware some of their natural inclinations, many which set them apart from other teenagers, are a result of their being vampires Clara, for instance, upset because animals actually run away in fear when they sense her presence (they do the same with the other family members) insists on eating a vegetarian diet unaware that vampires don’t tolerate vegetables well. Clara is sick to her stomach everyday and very weak. And Rowen suffers frequently from severe insomnia that isn’t helped by handfuls of sleeping pills. He doesn’t know that it’s normal for him, as a vampire, to sleep during the day and play at night. Peter and Helen, as a result, are having an on-going argument about whether or not to tell Rowen and Clara the truth. Adding to this problem is one of the adults, I’m not going to reveal which one, has a secret of their own they’ve kept many years. They fear that revealing they’re vampires will result in the family living as vampires leading to the revelation of this major secret which will upset the family dynamic.
Peter and Helen are too distracted by these issues and some other concerns, many that plague most adults night and day. They, similar to many parents of teenagers, are out of touch with their children and unaware of the concerns and problems of teenagers. Matt Haig creates Peter and Helen as characters many readers can relate to and even identify with since many of us have children. It’s easy to understand and empathize with Peter and Helen’s struggles in raising teenagers even though we’re not familiar with the specific vampire issues. Helen and Peter are far from perfect, too. Helen gets tiresome at times with her worries and her nagging while Peter shows himself to be a selfish jerk , focused on his own needs and desires most of the time. But these flaws make them seem all the more human, interestingly, and more intriguing and real.
Haig also creates likable, relatable characters in Rowen and Clara. It’s easy to understand and empathize with them as they struggle with the problems faced by most teenagers including bullying classmates, relationships and fitting in. Rowen and Clara have the additional problems associated with being teenage vampires to deal with, such as very pale skin, sun-induced rashes, nausea, vomiting, insomnia. It’s enough to send you to bed with the covers over your head, something Rowen considers doing. It’s easy for readers to feel sympathy for them.
Clara soon finds herself in a situation many women, having once been teenagers, can understand and relate to, when she attends a party and has to cope with the unwanted advances of a drunken classmate. We empathize with the position Clara’s in and hope she can extricate herself from it before anything terrible happens. We aren’t prepared for what does happens next and neither is Clara when her identities as a teenager and a vampire combine and the unforeseen and unexpected happens. This occurrence changes everything for The Radleys and, when Clara calls her parents for help, Peter and Helen know they kept their secret too long. Like so many parents, all they want to do now is comfort and protect their little girl. The rest of the book is about keeping Clara safe as well as mitigating the damage. Peter and Helen also wonder about the possibility of incorporating the family’s identity as vampires into their current life. They’re not completely on the same page here, although, since one of them wants to live as a full-fledged vampire and drastically change their lifestyle.
Haig’s writing is scintillating, smart and engagingly clever. One of my favorite parts of the book is the passages from The Abstainer’s Handbook, the self-help bible for vampires trying to live life as regular humans. These ’rules of conduct’ covers issues such as OBT (overwhelming Blood Thirst) and how to deal with an attack of OBT; skin care and coping with daylight and the sun. I also thought it was clever that Byron and several other poets from the Romantic period were vampires. Rowen feels very connected to these poets even before he knows he’s a vampire and Uncle Will is a professor who teaches about the vampire poets. Haig also connects some passages throughout the book to the poetry of these poets in smart ways which I enjoyed. I highly recommend this book to everyone, those who enjoy vampires and those who don’t.
Thank you to Giselle at Simon & Schuster (Free Press ) for a copy of The Radleys and the opportunity to read and review the book.
First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. To participate share the opening paragraph or two of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. When I was contacted about reviewing this book, I read an excerpt and was immediately hooked. The author’s writing is beautiful and I’m curious about the story...I also love that part of the book is set in New York City!
Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!
Open City by Teju Cole
And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city. The path that drops down from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and crosses Morningside Park is only fifteen minutes from Central Park. In the other direction, going west, it is some ten minutes to Sakura Park, and walking northward from there brings you toward Harlem, along the Hudson, though traffic makes the river on the other side of the trees inaudible. These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily lengthened, taking me farther and farther a field each time, so that I often found myself at quite a distance from home late at night, and was compelled to return home by subway. In this way, at the beginning of the final year of my psychiatry fellowship, New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace.
Not long before this aimless wandering began, I had fallen into the habit of watching bird migrations from my apartment, and I wonder now if the two are connected. On the days when I was home early enough from the hospital, I used to look out the window like someone taking auspices, hoping to see the miracle of natural immigration. Each time I caught sight of geese swooping in formation across the sky, I wondered how our life below might look from their perspective, and imagined that, were they ever to indulge in such speculation, the high-rises might seem to them like firs massed in a grove. Often, as I searched the sky, all I saw was rain, or the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window, and I doubted in some part of myself whether these birds, with their dark wings and throats, their pale bodies and tireless little hearts, really did exist. So amazed was I by them that I couldn’t trust my memory when they weren’t there.
What are your thoughts about these paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?
Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a weekly meme originally created and hosted by Marcia of A girl and her books and hosted this month by Anna of Diary of an Eccentric. Below are the titles I received for review, purchased, or otherwise obtained over the course of the past week.
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (for blog tour review from Myrmidon publishers)
Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice 'until the monsoon comes.' Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases with each passing day. But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? Why is it that Yun Ling's friend and host Magnus Praetorius, seems to almost immune from the depredations of the Communists? What is the legend of 'Yamashita's Gold' and does it have any basis in fact? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (Flea market purchase!)
An exhilarating meditation on nature and its seasons -- a personal narrative highlighting one year's exploration on foot in the author's own neighborhood in Tinker Creek, Virginia. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays 'King of the Meadow' with a field of grasshoppers.
The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar (Flea market purchase!)
When Frank and Ellie Benton lose their only child, seven-year-old Benny, to a sudden illness, the perfect life they'd built is shattered. Filled with wrenching memories, their Ann Arbor home becomes unbearable and their marriage founders. But an unexpected job half a world away offers them an opportunity to start again. Life in Girbaug, India, holds promise—and peril—when Frank befriends Ramesh, a bright, curious boy who quickly becomes the focus of the grieving man's attentions. Haunted by memories of his dead son, Frank is consumed with making his family right—a quest that will lead him down an ever-darkening path with stark repercussions. Filled with satisfying real characters and glowing with local color, The Weight of Heaven is a rare glimpse of a family and a country struggling under pressures beyond their control. In a devastating look at cultural clashes and divides, Thrity Umrigar illuminates how slowly we recover from unforgettable loss, how easily good intentions can turn evil, and how far a person will go to build a new world for those he loves.
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor (swap with a friend!)
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is a story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawkes, Hazel Motes founds The Church of God Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child, and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdoms gives us one of the most riveting characters in twentieth-century American fiction
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