"Must-reads" from 1998 

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore
      This book made everyone's " best" list last year. Lorrie Moore has been recognized as a superb short fiction writer for years, but this collection is truly magical.  Her gift of humor and sense of the absurd, combined with genuine empathy for her characters, strikes exactly the right note to create enjoyment as well as deep insight.  Especially brilliant was a story about a Pediatric Oncology ward, told from the point of view of the mother. Even if you don't see yourself as a short story reader, give this one a try.  You won't regret it. Back

The Love of a Good Woman,by Alice Munro
    Alice Munro is another highly acclaimed short story writer, and rightly so.  Her stories, mostly set in Canada and often in the past, describe events in the lives of seemingly ordinary people.  What they reveal, however, is the extraordinary depth of emotion and experience that underlies every life, even those that seem uneventful, simple, and insignificant. Back

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
    With this novel, Barbara Kingsolver makes a quantum leap from the much-praised and well-loved earlier works.  She has done something so significant with this book, because she takes the accessible, quirky, and humorous characters she always portrays, and puts them in an extraordinary situation, i.e., the Belgian Congo in 1960, on the very eve of revolution.  We all grew up hearing something about Patrice Lumumba and the events of that time, but these characters, a family of Southern missionaries with a fanatical father, are immersed in it.  We are brought into this situation, and shown what really happened, and what life in Africa is like, in vivid detail.  The transformation of this family, especially its women, and the country itself as it played out even into the present day, is truly remarkable.  This is a truly great book. Back

The fall of a Sparrow,by Robert Hellenga
    The novel's main character, Woody, is a college professor whose daughter is killed in a horrifying terrorist attack in Italy. Woody, his wife, and their other daughter are coping in different ways.  His wife turns to religion and even goes so far as to enter a convent, but Woody reacts with confused and erratic behavior.  His grief plays out in what looks to be a big mid-life crisis, having an affair with student, throwing parties, jeopardizing his careeer.  It all seems crazy until he actually goes to Italy and engages himself in the trial of his daughter's killers, where he seems to rediscover some purpose.  Woody's path, and all the interesting things he says, does, and knows about, make this book highly interesting and entertaining.  Robert Hellenga appears to be a writer who has sampled a little bit of everything in life, and we get to learn about it through the likable Woody.  Back
 
The half-life of happiness, by John Casey, and Preston Falls, by David Gates, could also be characterized as mid-life crisis novels, one coming to a more positive resolution than the other.  Each story is humorous, contemporary, and insightful.
    David Gates is the music editor for Newsweek magazine, and his main character, Doug Willis is in the throes of mid-life crisis extraordinaire.  He takes a 2-month leave of absence, ostensibly to fix up the family's country house.  But instead of making any positive progress, he descends into drinking and lethargy, eventually hooking up with a truly grotesque and hilarious garage band.  The book is a comic tragedy, and the thought processes of both Willis and his wife as they watch Willis, and his marriage, fall apart are both funny and moving.  Anyone of us who had ideals in the Sixties, children in the Seventies, and mortgages and expanding waistlines in the Eighties and Nineties will understand Willis as he loses it all in one voluntary and drug-fueled  fell swoop.
    Mike, the character in John Casey's novel decides to run for the Senate as a way of dealing with of his wife becoming a lesbian.  Mike and his wife had lived a rural life as holdovers from the Sixties, sharing property semi-communally with their best friends and their daughters, Nora and Edith.  Mike's run for the Senate is a hilarious disaster that encapsulates modern politics.  The story is told from Mike's point of view, as well as Edith's a brazenly honest and refreshing voice.  This book is so rich in character, observation, and truth about relationships, that ultimately it is impossible to summarize.

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