The Landed: A Novel / by Tim Pears

The most memorable moments of Owen Ithell's childhood were spent on his grandparents farm in the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Usually only there during holidays when he could accompany his grandfather, a hardscrabble farmer, on his chore rounds, Owen first cultivated his love of the soil. Most of his other memories of youth, of living at home with a cranky single mother and a disappointing academic record in school, aren't as nostalgic. Now an adult living in another, more urban part of England, he makes his living working as a gardener. He has a wife now, Mel, and three small children and believes he has found something resembling happiness.

When a fatal car accident takes the life of his young daughter and injures Owen, his hand  ultimately needing to be amputated, he falls into despair to the point of alienation from his family. Eventually Owen is legally separated from his wife estranged from his remaining children. Resolving to reconnect with a time and a place he once cherished, Owen makes a drastic decision, suddenly abducting his children and embarking on a walking journey to the Welsh farm of his childhood where he hopes to attain some kind of understanding and resolution. This is a rather riveting little novel. Pears has a somewhat unorthodox writing style. A bit of an abrupt, blunt method of storytelling akin to Don Delillo or Don Robertson, the author tells a story about the frequently hardluck circumstances encountered by those in England's west country. Thomas Hardy would be proud. (FIC PEARS)

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)

Black Swan Green / by David Mitchell

Born in Southport in 1969 but raised in the Worcestershire countryside, English author David Mitchell has traveled the world, living in places such as Sicily, Japan and South Africa before ultimately laying down roots in Ireland where he's lived ever since. Two of his first three novels were shortlisted for the Man Booker Award and his most recent, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, made this year's list. His 2007 novel Black Swan Green is a reflection of his own childhood in rural England, his 13th year specifically, where family turmoil, peer approval and girl trouble are all a part of growing up.

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Jason Taylor is 13 in 1982. And though his life in a small-town in England is unexciting from the outside looking in, there's certainly nothing mundane about his own daily personal drama. As an adolescent, Jason is involved with the treacherous game of finding out who his friends are, picking his way through the thorny world of peer approval and teen politics. Making things difficult is his speech impediment ("stammering") which tends mark him as a walking target whenever there's a large group of people around. Jason's smart though. He knows the score and gives as well as he gets most of the time. Meanwhile his parents have been fighting a lot lately, and it's increasingly becoming apparent to Jason that a divorce or at least a separation looms as the months pass by and the tension builds between his increasingly preoccupied father and stressed out mother. Things are not all bad. Strange as it may seem, Jason's found himself in the frequent company of classmate Dawn Madden, a popular girl who for some reason likes to hang out with Jason and his friends. But if he's sure of anything, it's that whatever he feels sure of one moment likely won't last long.

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Thirteen chapters intricately describe thirteen episodes in the protagonist's life in this starkly revealing book which rings achingly true to life. And while each chapter stands on its own, effectively as its own independent creation, it won't take the reader long to perceive the interconnectedness of each event as Mitchell skillfully threads each of the various, often seemingly tangential strands of the story, interweaving bits and pieces from what no doubt his own well-recollected though not so idyllic as one might assume young adulthood. There's a reason this is not a YA book. And it's not just the frequently indecipherable British slang. Nothing is very optimistic or even frivolous about Mitchell's prose as he subjects his protagonist to life's harsher elements, highlighting an overwhelming proportion of adolescence's more discomforting episodes. Even as Jason's a plucky, resilient character with much to preoccupy him outside of the negative sphere, it's still no fun to experience his world of very ordinary, but strikingly lucid pain and sorrow. Historical anecdotes and pop culture references like the Cold War and British invasion of the Falklands are well tied in to things and even subtle hints of the budding computer age creep on to the stage. But even the nostalgia of say 80's music or movies like Superman or Star Wars can't deviate from the author's painfully somber narrative which pulls no punches and most definitely refuses to shy away from life's crueler, more prevalent side which spares no one no matter what age. (FIC MITCHELL)