Readers Recommend: "Life, Death, and Loss" & "There From the Start"
Life, Death, And Loss
Though I am under 60, I’ve had more than my share of personal loss over recent years, including two husbands in ten years, nearly every member of my nuclear family, and several friends. As a lifelong reader, writer, and English teacher, I have coped by exploring the nature of life, death, and loss in my personal reading. I am drawn not to the "how to" grief manuals but to the ways that literature helps me revisit, reimagine, or question the wide range of attitudes and emotions I’ve experienced.
The Dogs of Babel
Carolyn Parkhurst
This novel proves that you can write about loss without being grim or sedate. Parkhurst’s depiction of the way we obsess to understand why but, through that obsession, find a way to rebuild is touching and funny at times.
Ghost Hunters
William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death
Deborah Blum
This is a serious work of scientific reporting and biography that reads like a historical novel. Blum portrays the American "father" of psychology, William James, and his many highly respected scientist-colleagues as they braved public scorn to attempt a rigorous investigation into the spiritualist movement of their time. They exposed many fakes, but they also created a disturbing body of evidence for an afterlife.
The Inhabited World
David Long
After his death, a man continues to occupy the home he lived in after his divorce—alongside a vulnerable woman he comes to care for and wishes to protect from her own loss. Totally plausible, tender, and inspiring, the novel makes a powerful statement about the primacy of personal space and of human connection.
In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
A Geography of Grief
Christopher Noël
This memoir of Noël’s recovery from the sudden death of his fiancée predates Joan Didion’s better-known account by a decade. It comes closer to my own experience than anything else I’ve read—and the writing is poetic.
Ghost
Alan Lightman
So you think you’ve seen a ghost. Whom do you tell, and how do folks react? This offbeat, but affecting, portrait of a lonely funeral home employee probes important questions: How do we know what we think we know? Who gets to say what is real?
The Whistling Season
Ivan Doig
Members of a pioneer family recover from the loss of their wife and mother with the help of some adventurous but kind-hearted scoundrels. Doig creates plenty of suspense, good humor, an unforgettable portrait of a small town in the West, and a powerful (fictional) argument for rural schools (which is not to be dismissed as nostalgia for those of us who teach in them).
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
Stephen King’s son writes a thriller that pushes our worst fears about ghosts right out into the open. It’s a great page-turner that also hints at a larger point: death isn’t the worst thing that we can experience, after all. In a bizarre way, this is comfort food.
Remembering the Bones
Frances Itani
What would it be like to leave home for a special holiday (the Queen’s birthday party at Buckingham Palace) and, within minutes, to find yourself contemplating, over a considerable period of time, the possibility of your own death? This suspenseful novel, about an 80-year-old woman’s contemplation of life after a car crash, helps remind us why "hanging in there" is indeed worth the effort.
Returning to Earth
Jim Harrison
This is a spectacular work. The main character, a Native American head of an extended family, models how to live as well as to die with dignity—with a philosophy drawn from a deep belief in the fullness of nature. Ultimately, the novel is filled with hope based on the power of love.
The Year of Pleasures
Elizabeth Berg
To end my list on an upbeat note: This novel is a wholly lighthearted portrait of a widow who learns, with the help of friends old and new, to move beyond the guilt of the survivor and to enjoy life once again.
There from the Start
Gasa-Gasa Girl
Naomi Hirahara
This excellent novel has a mystery at the core. Mas Arai is a 70-year-old gardener whose daughter calls on him for help. Mas uses his and his friends’ connections throughout the Japanese communities in New York and Los Angeles to try to catch a killer. Gasa-Gasa Girl offers an intriguing glimpse into Japanese immigrant culture.
The Eyre Affair
By Jasper Fforde
This book, the first in the Thursday Next series, is an inventive and always surprising mix of fiction, science fiction, action thriller, and a whole new genre where books are the most important thing in society. Imagine a world where the removal of a minor character from a classic book turns into a national crisis.
The Quiet Game
Greg Iles
The mystery at the heart of this thriller is the 1968 murder of a black man, Del Payton, in a Mississippi town divided mostly along racial lines. Penn Cage, former attorney and now best-selling author, inadvertently brings this case to the attention of a newspaper publisher. People emerge to help solve the case—or to keep it buried.
Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life
Or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child
Faulkner Fox
Fox ably discusses her difficulty adjusting to being a new parent—in particular, the conflict between her need to be with her children and her desire to write. I highly recommend this book for new mothers, especially those who are taking time off from a high-powered career or an important undertaking—or for any mother who looks around the playground and wonders what she is doing there.
Perma Red
Debra Magpie Earling
On Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, Louise White Elk dreams of escaping her life. Although sought after by Charlie Kicking Woman, a police officer, she marries Baptiste Yellow Knife—but her problems only become more complex. Perma Red is a depressing story, but ultimately, it is not a depressing read.
The End of Mr. Y
Scarlett Thomas
This science fiction novel begins with a vivid and accurate depiction of a poor graduate student, Ariel Manto. Ariel is obsessed with many things, including theoretical physics and obscure writers, and these passions take her on a very strange journey. I found the intertwining descriptions of quantum theory and religion interesting to read, especially the multiverse versus the godverse theory.
Free Fire
C. J. Box
In this mystery, a fired game warden investigates the deaths of four environmental activists in Yellowstone National Park. The plot is well conceived, and Yellowstone offers a unique setting with its geysers and all forms of wildlife. Free Fire is fast paced and fun to read.
Free Food for Millionaires
Min Jin Lee
This novel follows one of the two daughters of immigrant Koreans, as she struggles with life after college. Her conflicts with her boyfriends, her interactions with a helpful businesswoman, her financial issues, and her continuing struggles with her family form the backdrop to her main struggle: choosing a career and facing the larger world.
Death Without Company
Craig Johnson
In this second entry in the Walt Longmire Mystery series, the eponymous Wyoming sheriff investigates claims that a resident of the Durant Home for Assisted Living did not die a natural death. A major strength of the book is the incredible number and variety of characters; Johnson portrays each person in this fictional Wyoming town as a unique individual.
Without a Map
Meredith Hall
This memoir starts in the 1960s, when Hall became pregnant at age 16 and was forced to give up her child for adoption before she even saw him. The author looks unflinchingly at her family life before this traumatic event affected her in unforeseen ways; she then takes readers along on her journey of self-discovery.
- login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
