Getting on the Bandwagon
Categories: Award Winners , Staff Picks , Fiction
As I confessed a couple of weeks ago, I’m still catching up on the 2008 novels I had scribbled myself notes about last year. Of course, the most common reason for scribbling those notes was that somebody else had reviewed the books and made them sound wonderfully tempting to me.
Well, here are a couple of 2009 books that have already gotten many tempting reviews, including mentions elsewhere on our webpage. (Are you familiar with our Reading Recommendations page?)
That makes me feel a little sheepish blogging them—do you already have your own scribbled notes on these books, and will you all roll your virtual eyes if I add another review recommending them?
On the other hand, I really enjoyed these books and I’d hate for you to miss them! So on the principles of a) this blog is all about celebrating wonderful books, even if they are celebrated elsewhere, too, and b) it’s hardly the first time in my life that I’m behind the times, here are two gentle boosts onto the bandwagon for those of you who may want just one more nudge to place your holds on these books.
Chris Cleave’s novel Little Bee has an unusual dust jacket with no plot summary. The book’s publicists don’t want to spoil any of the book’s slowly unfolding plot twists for the reader.
It’s not revealing too much to say that the novel is the story of two women, a young Nigerian refugee and the Englishwoman she met on an African beach two years before. Their short encounter was a fateful one for both of them, and now that Little Bee is being released from a British detention center for illegal immigrants, she is trying to reunite with Sarah and Sarah’s husband, Andrew. Their next encounter will be fateful, too.
The book is a heartrending combination of realistic fiction and stylized tragedy, an intensely moving and thought-provoking story. It’s a beautifully crafted work, told in the first person by two different voices, Little Bee’s and Sarah’s.
Tiffany Baker’s The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is also told in the first person. The narrator is Truly Plaice, one of the odder residents of a little New York town. Her life would have been difficult enough after her mother’s death, but her enormous size (and the contrast with her pretty, doll-like older sister) seems to doom her to a freakish and lonely life. Larger-then-life Truly finally decides to take control of her own destiny.
Truly will remind readers of Anne Tyler or John Irving’s quirky and original characters, and Baker’s generous, supple style will, too.
(Okay, I promised two reviews, but speaking of other people’s tempting reviews, I have to add my agreement to Lisa’s blog entry about The Hunger Games in January. It’s about a futuristic Survivor-type reality competition. It has been winning awards for teen fiction, but it’s an absolutely terrific read for adults, too—I can’t remember when I last read such a fantastic entry in its genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction. Fans of social satire and coming-of-age adventure stories will love it, too.)
