The Slap / by Christos Tsiolkas

An Australian author of Greek extraction, Christos Tsiolkas is a lifelong resident of Melbourne. He was the editor of his student newspaper in both high school and college and penned his first novel, Loaded, in 1995 at the

 age of 30. The novel was later made into the film Head On, a piece which won several AFI (Australian Film Institute) awards and gained international notoriety for both its controversial subject matter and riveting performances. In addition to his six full-length novels, Tsiolkas has written a number of plays and screenplays, many of which, like his fiction, have held worldwide acclaim. The Slap, his latest novel published in 2008, examines the conflict-driven sequence of events following a publicly controversial incident at a neighborhood barbecue.

"He bloody broke it. He should be punished."

At a family get together, an obnoxious three-year-old named Hugo acts aggressively toward another child without intervention. When the father of the victimized child sees nothing being done by the parents of the perpetrator, he slaps the kid across the face. Everyone is so horrified by the incident that, after a brief pause, the families disperse. A day later, the parents of the slapped child have the slapper arrested. The event is conflicted and complicated enough but their are deeper issues among the adult party-goers themselves. Hosts Hector and Aisha, a childless interracial couple, have their own private secrets just as they feel conflicted, caught in the middle as they are, about the incident. The slapper is Hector's hot-headed cousin, Harry, their original family having immigrated from Greece a generation previous. Harry defends his actions, feeling he was justified to discipline another couple's unruly offspring, and is defensive about the whole thing along along with Hector's mother and father who also witnessed the event. Hugo's parents are Rosie and Gary, a hippie-ish Anglo-saxon couple who say they never intervened because they believe in a more "naturalistic" resolution to matters of this sort, preferring to stand back and let any repercussions develop without a third party. Both Rosie and Gary--but especially Rosie--are simply outraged at Harry's act and are planning to press charges in full despite the uproar from the other side. As the trial approaches, furious Rosie and defensive Harry put more and more pressure on Aisha and Hector to testify on their behalf.

This book isn't really about child abuse or proper modes of discipline or anything like that. The slapping incident is really just a way to examine the dynamics of family and friendship connections, originally at the barbecue to look at how people of different backgrounds come together and then into a more privatized world of individual families and relationships. It's not an easy book to summarize. Tsiolkas uses his premise, a not uncommon everyday incident, to stabilize his larger structure. But his real talent is for exploring the inner lives of his eight primary characters, four women and four men, ranging in age from 18 to 70, all from different perspectives, family situations and ethnic origins. There are no stock characters in Tsiolkas' story. Each individual is a sharp observer with a particular personality, a personalized opinion. As things happen in the lives of the characters that have nothing to do with the case and are far more interesting, the audience is introduced to the truly idiosyncratic stations of all involved. No one is necessarily evil, no one deserves to be hit, or even judged negatively though all are distinctly flawed. Everyone means well, and everyone is doing the best he or she can; but then again, everyone is awfully angry. (FIC TSIOLKAS)

A Good Fall: Stories / by Ha Jin

Chineses-American author Ha Jin was born Jin Xuefei in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning in 1956. During his teen years, he volunteered with the People's Liberation Army, spending the majority of his time stationed along the Soviet border. Higher education was largely restricted during the Cultural Revolution (~1966-1976) and much of Jin's schooling during this period was informal, reading as much as he could and learning English through the country's fledgling institutional program. With the reopening of the Chinese colleges in 1977, he enrolled at Heilongjiang University and ultimately received a B.A. in English and thereafterwards an M.A. in American Literature. In 1985, he emigrated to America under a student visa where he studied at Brandeis University, eventually earning Ph.D. in English. With the culmination of events in China leading him to believe that his writing could never properly flourish in a country where both the language and the censorship regulations were obstacles to universal readership, he stayed in America where he began to publish poetry and short stories in English. He has since published two volumes of poetry, numerous short stories and several novels including one, Waiting, which won both the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for best book. A Good Fall chronicles of the lives of Chinese immigrants in America doing their best to cope with disorientation and social unease.

A young recent Chinese immigrant can barely make ends meet and yet she's hounded by her younger sister back home about money to pay for a new car. A lonely, isolated musician takes comfort in the antics of his girlfriend's parakeet, a bird he later rescues to the surprise of everyone. Meanwhile in a contemporary Chinese-American family, young children decide to change their names so that they might sound more "American", largely ignorant to how their decision offsets generations of cultural heritage. At a small liberal arts college, an Asian professor of English, though of Chinese nationality, attempts to formally defect into the US with the reluctant aid of a student. And in the cramped quarters of an urban city dwelling, a young male sweatshop worker tries to get along with his three female roommates, all prostitutes.

Everyone struggles in Ha Jin's world. Some struggle with a desire to remain loyal to tradition and stave off the temptations to indulge in the more opportunistic freedom while others fight just to keep their newfound 'freedom' their own. Of course the ideas of tradition and liberty are themselves dubious constructs in Jin's world where freedom often implies abandonment and opportunity can just as easily mean hopelessness as it does aspiration. Jin's style is fairly minimalist, given to describing people and places with limited characterizations and without elaborative descriptions and his stories are sometimes more snapshot images or sparse vignettes of characters than scenarios with actual story-archs. His overarching premise is telling though. All his characters seem to exist in permanent disillusionment, not only from their difference in physical location but from their very sense of self and identity where their emotional universe has become as limited as their physical surroundings and their living conditions as disorienting as their inner conscious. (FIC JIN)

Life is Short But Wide / by J. California Cooper

Author Joan California Cooper, known to readers as J. California Cooper, was born in Berkeley, California and divided much of her younger days between Northern California and rural Texas. She began writing a performing plays as a very young child and even though much of her earlier work was done in private and hidden from public view, she succeeded in quickly gaining esteem for her scripts like "Strangers", "Loners" and "Everytime It Rains" which have been widely performed in a variety of platforms. As well as a playwright Cooper is a successful short story writer and novelist. Her 1986 book Homemade Love won an ABA prize and she's been honored with the American Library Association's Literary Lion and James Baldwin awards. Considered a bit of a recluse who prefers to keep her whereabouts as well as her age a secret, Cooper has been characterized as an author whose deceptively simple style evokes a wide range of deftly portrayed themes and ideas. Among her latest novels is Life Is Short But Wide (2010), about a small rural Oklahoma community whose simple family and generational personalities evoke an often overlooked place and time.

In early twentieth century America, rural Wideland, Oklahoma is home to a handfull of hard-working African American families struggling to eke out a living and live out their dreams. With the railroad station has come some prosperity and a few newcomers, but very little has changed from how Hattie B. Brown, the local octogenarian and storyteller, remembers it. Though at a loss for memory some times and never quite as surefooted as she used to be, Hattie relates the comings and goings of the folks of Wideland. Among the new residents, Hattie introduces the gregarious cowboy Val Strong and his part-Cherokee friend Wings, both of whom work to keep their head of cattle well-fed and well-stocked. Then there's Val's beautiful but less-friendly and sometimes bitter wife Irene who takes care of the couple's two daughters Rose and Tante, both of them stubborn and often bickering but not without their joy and good times. Alongside the Strongs are Joseph and Bertha, another couple and their daughter Myra. As the families cope with the hardships that come with changing times and fortunes, and people are born and pass away, the characters learn the importance of living boldly and squeezing out every possible moment of life, love and ambition.

Cooper is very good. Her portrait of American life, at once tender-hearted and down-to-earth is as heartwarming as it is poignant, is every bit as truthful to life as Willa Cather, Jane Smiley, Larry McMurtry or even Ernest Gaines (Life is Short But Wide will remind more than a few readers of Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman). The trials and hardships, ambitions and setbacks of each of the characters in the novel can't help but captivate the reader as they share lessons and sidenotes on living life to the fullest and appreciating those who make you what you are. Those who've read Cooper's work before will recognize familiar voices in this book. The characters don't differ too much from previous protagonists and supporting cast where the actions and reactions to the changing times and new challenges offer a coherent blend of sage-like endearments and charming authenticity. (FIC COOPER)

Red Hook Road: A Novel / by Ayelet Waldman

It's the perfect day for a wedding. With the Maine summer sun shining down on a beautiful young couple, it seems a promising start to a new union between two people--John Tetherly and Becca Copaken--and two families who've known each other a while, though not always as intimate friends. The Copakens are New Yorkers who've owned a roomy vacation home in the small town of East Red Hook for over a century. Mother Iris Copaken even insists that since they've summered in East Red Hook every year since 1879 they have just as much right to be considered locals as the year-rounders. Not everyone agrees with this theory though. John's mother Jane Tetherly is the hard-edged manager of a maid service which the Copakens employ. She considers herself a true Mainer and doesn't much care for her oldest son marrying a "from awayer". But she also understands that her oldest son John genuinely loves his new bride and though she prefers not to admit it, that Becca really loves John.
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Then just after the wedding the unthinkable happens: the limousine carrying the newlyweds is involved in a fatal accident killing all passengers instantly. Suddenly everything changes between the two families, particularly for mothers Jane and Iris who quickly reacquaint themselves with the social differences separating them. Over the next few years, the women work through their grief and sorrow, experiencing all of the pain, anger and deep-seated resentment which the accident has caused. But with their loss comes the opportunity for new beginnings like the odd compatibility forged between other members of the respective clans. Specifically it's the bond born of mutual bereavement between younger siblings Matt Tetherly and Ruthie Copaken who transform their sadness into a solid friendship and a budding romance. It's also the oddly fascinating rejuvenation of Iris' father Isaac, a forgotten master violinist, who takes on the task of tutoring one of the Tetherley nieces, a dormant music prodigy in her own right. With time all begin to redress the wounds suffered in the midst of such a horrible tragedy.
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Mystery author Waldman's follow-up to her fiction debut Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is worthy of the positive reviews of its predecessor and then some. Reminiscent of other New England domestic fiction writers like Anita Shreve, Barbara Delinsky or Anna Quindlen, this is an engaging story in which friction between in-laws is generally a guarantee and more internal family problems are never completely put to rest. And though writing about culture clashes between "summer people" and "the help" is nothing new, it never seems to get old either, especially if the story rings true. In this case it's the unique but believable plot device of a marriage between two opposing families where tragedy leaves everyone at a loss for how to deal with such a catastrophe. In practical and not overly-sensationalized fashion, Waldman gets to the heart of the matter, carefully avoiding any hasty judgments or over-dramatized flare-ups and seeing the tragedy through with uncommon bonds formed between opposing characters in charmingly practical ways. (FIC WALDMAN)

The Infinities / by John Banville

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Once a renowned mathematician, Old Adam Godley now lies on his deathbed where family and friends have gathered round for his final days. In addition to his much-younger second wife Ursula, there's his desultory son Young Adam, who's never gotten out from beneath the shadow of his father, and his beautiful but flighty wife Helen, a once much sought after actress who's grown colder with age. Nineteen-year-old Petra, daughter to Old Adam, may or may not be insane (like her mother who killed herself) and Petra's wierd little boyfriend Roddy, an aspiring mathematician who seems more attached to dying Old Adam than Petra, are also present. This awkward combination of individuals in the house aren't quite alone though. Gods of the Greek myths, who've "always been here . . . ", mysteriously occupy the atmosphere and the consciousness of the scene around them. Pan (god of nature) wanders in on the crowd taking on the human form of Benny, a family acquaintance of bygone days, while Zeus, who's set his sights on the lovely Helen, maneuvers his way toward a series of "illicit amours". Meanwhile, monitoring the proceedings is Hermes, messenger god and son of Zeus, who's inhabited the body of a nearby farmer and fancifully interprets all that goes on.

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Banville, who won the Man Booker prize for his darker, more realist novel The Sea, displays just why he's called one of the greatest stylists of the English language alive today*. No one can quite mesh prose and poetry like he does. His story is more a forum for characterization than a plot with a beginning, middle and end. It's genius all the same. With lyrically adept personal emotions, thoughts and even subconscious ephemera all beautifully articulated, Banville is one of those authors who just seems more comfortable whispering thoughts than vocalizing dialogue (of which there is almost none here). So fluent is he at narrating the life of the mind, at evoking the substance of the soul that virtually no action is necessary. (FIC BANVILLE)

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*"Banville shines with profound rendering of a parallel universe" by Val Nolan". The Sunday Business Post. September 6, 2009.

New World Monkeys / by Nancy Mauro

Canadian author Nancy Mauro has lived in both Toronto and Vancouver and has recently working in New York City as a copyrighter and creative director for several magazines. She is also fellow with the University of British Columbia's well-known creative writing program. New World Monkeys, her debut novel, follows a young couple who decide to spend the summer in upstate New York only to meet with a quirky jumble of setbacks, problems and difficulties.


Their careers languishing in mediocrity and their marriage needing a tune-up, city dwellers Duncan and Lily decide on a summer getaway upstate to the town of Osterhagen, NY. But trouble finds them even before they reach their destination when they accidentally hit and kill a pig, a wild boar to be precise, on the drive into town. This slightly more than trivial incident soon transpires into some far-reaching repurcussions when the discover that the victim of their little car accident is, oddly enough, the town's beloved mascot--known and revered as the "Sovereign Lord of the Deep Wood".

Doing their best to conceal the fact that they're the real killers, Duncan and Lily settle into their old rundown mansion house only to suddenly find a human skeleton in their backyard. With the tension and unexpected problems with their new living situation getting the better of them, the bickering spouses excavate the remains and ponder what could've happened only to run into more hassles from curious, irritatingly pestering townspeople. More quirky and absurd incidents seem to crop up at every turn and the question for Duncan and Lily soon becomes one of survival--concerning both their little trip as well as their marriage. Mauro's a delightful writer, blending authentic relationship drama in with inventive humor and realistic situations. Even as problems seem bent on tearing Duncan and Lily apart, despair is rarely featured and a satisfactory resolution is never abandoned. New World Monkeys is a good, manageable read for all readers. (FIC MAURO)

The Last Convertible / by Anton Myrer

American novelist and WWII veteran Anton Myrer (1922-1996) wrote several well-received books, many of them on war, combat experiences the personal repercussions involved. The Last Convertible chronicles the intertwining paths of several youths entering their college years just prior to World War II.

"One minute we were a group of awkward,ill at ease strangers thrown together by chance, the next we were a force...comrades, partners, band of brothers, call us what you will."

The group of friends who would become known as the "Fusiliers" (George, Jean-Jean, Terry, Dal, Chris) all arrive at Harvard's freshman orientation in the early autumn of 1940, soon establishing solid mutual friendships among themselves and building loyalty to one another even amid attachments with several likable though somewhat garish females. Collectively, as each are caught up in the ensuing tumultuous years of the Second World War, their lives and subsequent relationship characterized and defined by the turmoil at home and abroad--also, to a lesser extent, through the affection each share for the "Empress", the green 1938 custom convertible. Preserving the memories for all is George Darrow, the leader of the group, who understands the importance of memory, legacy and, above all, love. George knows that love, with it's loyalty, pain, schisms, dreams; its essence often questioned, often broken, yet somehow is always redeemed defines the substance of life.

Through George's eyes, we watch as the group's fortunes rise and fall, their marriages bloom and are strained even as their own bonds of friendship grow, solidify and ultimately fall away. We read as their children grow, suffer, live and, in George's case, die (his son Ronny in Veitnam), carrying on the paradox and pathos of love and brotherhood vs. war and death as a way of life. With fine, lyrical prose, Myrer describes the pivotal World War II years and the impact and legacy the events surrounding the lives of those who lived it years after the fact. Thrilling and vivid descriptions of WW2 activity with it's inevitable trauma and loss are portrayed accurately even as romance away from the battlefield abounds with the flowery pursuit of true love throughout. This is an exceptional work by Anton Myrer, written almost as if he had lived the story himself. (FIC MYRER)

The Mercy Rule / by Perri Klass

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Dr. Lucy Weiss has come a long way. As a child she spent her early years bouncing around various foster homes until ultimately being adopted by one of her teachers. Now a pediatrician, Lucy manages a clinic specializing in care for the disadvantaged and travels the country delivering speeches on the particular medical needs of children under foster care. Also a devoted wife and mother, Lucy's the central figure in the lives of her professor husband, her gifted 10-year-old daughter Isabel and her mildly challenged son Freddy. Lucy's commitments to both her work and her family bring her into contact (and conflict) with seemingly endless series of confrontational issues including what to do when a mother abandons her 3 school-age children, when and how to cross the line of professionalism when dealing with clients and colleagues and what to do about David's increasingly retreative lifestyle.

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Klass, an M.D. as well as an author, delivers another warmhearted but practical novel on the ups and downs of life providing for the medical needs of the less fortunate. Dr. Lucy is a well-rounded character and the supporting cast, though marginalized, present a largely believable scenario. This book doesn't really have a plot; there's no real story arc and situations don't really develop or resolve themselves by the book's end. But it doesn't seem to matter. The novel does fine without any major plot twists and Klass's writing is able to keep readers interested through various anecdotal pieces like Lucy's airplane conversations with a kid being flown from one parent to the other--essentially a modern-age "foster" child, reflections on her own childhood and intriguing conversations between Lucy and her patients.

The Woman Next Door / by Barbara Delinsky

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Cozy suburban neighborhoods are meant for families; not young, buxom, recently-widowed women who've mysteriously become pregnant. For Amanda O'Leary, the news that her beautiful but reclusive next door neighbor Gretchen Tannenwald is suddenly with child--father unspecified--carries some twisted irony. Since their wedding day, Amanda and her husband Graham have tried everything imaginable to have a baby, a fact made all the more unbearable by her knowledge of Graham's ambitions for multiple children and Graham's family's equally fervent affinity for lots of kids. Now with a mystery baby next door, Amanda can't keep away the nagging suspicions that Graham just may have fathered Gretchen's baby. After all, from what Amanda's observed, Gretchen is convincingly friendlier with men than she is with women, never hesitating to ask Graham for assistance on more than one occasion.

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Amanda's friends Karen Cotter and Georgia Lange, also neighbors in the same cul-de-sac, have too begun to speculate on the parentage of Gretchen's baby, each possessing reasons enough to suspect their own husbands in with the pool of potential candidates. Karen, a stay-at-home mother of three, has already stood witness to multiple incidents of infidelity by her husband Russ and Georgia's husband Lee, while more trustworthy, also spends the most time around the house acting as the surrogate "mom" to the couple's two kids during Georgia's lengthy business trips. As the months pass and Gretchen's belly swells, Amanda and company endure the irritation of not knowing the origin of the pregnancy, a secret offsetting problems within each woman's lives, families, friendships and marriages.

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A lifelong New Englander and former cancer survivor, Barbara Delinsky has been a prominent writer since the 1980's, taking up the craft after reading a magazine article on writing your own novel. She has since authored dozens of domestic fiction books, all with relavent themes, well-crafted stories and intriguing characters. Knowledgeable about personal insecurities and internal pressures within relationships, Delinsky excels at creating context, authenticating the characters with appropriate enough conditions and capabilities to fully illuminate each's situation. The Woman Next Door, with its captivating plot, multi-dimensional characters and endearing protagonist, creates an alluring, well-rounded story which is sure to satisfy its audience and resonate with readers.

Songs Without Words / by Ann Packer

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California-born author Ann Packer grew up the daughter of Stanford professors and evidence of her academic background is largely visible in her writings. Her book The Dive From Clausen's Pier received loads of popular acclaim and was recently made into a Lifetime movie. Songs Without Words highlights four major characters, each a victim of their own doubts, insecurities and perceived self-inadequacies within their ordinary domestic lives.

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Sarabeth and Liz have been close for a long time, practically sisters ever since Sarabeth's mother committed suicide after which Liz's family largely assumed care of Sarabeth on a semi-permanent basis. Now adults, the pair have their separate lives but remain on intimate terms, closely intertwined with each's families and familiar with the various problems, concerns, feelings and secrets common to middle age. Liz is the consummate housewife, married to Brody, "a keeper", who's not only a well-established corporate trendsetter, but a caring father for the couple's two teenagers--Lauren (16) and Joe (14)--and a constructive type with time for about-the-house hobbies and keeping in shape. Eccentric, soulful and free-spirited, Sarabeth's life is a bit different. A freelance artist and entrepeneur, she finds herself frequently dissatisfied with life--two failed marriages and multiple careers--and eager for experience. Her alternative means of fulfillment, more often than not, take shape in the form of various loose relationships and affairs, the latest of which has torn apart her emotional well-being.

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Liz's daughter Lauren is having the hardest time though. Sinking in a sea of anguish, depression and self-hatred, her loose attempts at numbing the pain--withdrawn isolation, pills, self-mutilation, etc.--culminate in a near-fatal accident, one which not only lands her in the mental ward of the hospital but brings the entire family, Sarabeth included, into confrontation with some deeply disturbing internal issues. Unable to grasp why Lauren, their well-rounded, A-student model child, could be so wretched, Liz and Brody find their own once-solid relationship with each other unraveling. Meanwhile Sarabeth, who may be the one person able to identify with Lauren's situation, continues her own downward spiral, removing herself from Liz and Brody's company and plunging further into her own pit of despair.

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Author and literary critic John Barth may have been on to something in his assessment of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar, and other somber-toned, self-evaluative books of a simlar vein, when he gave it the label of "secular news reports". It's an accurate enough description for this type of contemporary womens fiction which exhaustively investigates the feelings, reflections, doubts, fears, memories, regrets and convictions of the relavent, predominately female characters. This book is like that, though not in a necessarily negative capacity. Packer's Songs Without Words achieves what so many other authors and wannabe authors try but fail at--realize the self-conscious as well-articulated prose.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova first paid a company to publish and distribute this book to independent bookstores, until she was finally introduced to the right agent and negotiated the book’s official release. Ms.Genova has a PhD in Neuroscience from Harvard, writes for the National Alzheimer’s Association, and is an actress. Her grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and this was the inspiration for Still Alice, her first novel. The book’s heroine is a Harvard professor, Alice, who discovers that she has, at age 49, an early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts 10% of all those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. One of Alice’s first warnings of the disease is forgetting some words of a speech, and this episode is swiftly followed by one in which she can’t (momentarily) find her way home. She sees her surroundings, she knows what buildings are which, but nothing tells her which way to turn. This riveting illustration of how everything can be known but without the connections needed to function kept me reading, committed to the journey’s end. Genova has the credentials to write accurately about the stages and symptoms of Alzheimer's, and about the current medication and life strategies for the patient and family. What most of us lack , however, is not just this specific knowledge of Alzheimer’s that Genova offers in her book, but the ability to imagine what the sufferer is experiencing. The poetic license Genova assumes in writing the book from Alice’s point of view is risky, and not all readers concur in how believable the story is. I found it both convincing and enlightening. I recommend the book, at the very least for inviting us to consider and ponder on how we do persist as individuals, even under the most debilitating of circumstances.