Great Books for June-July 2006

The World to Come, by Dara Horn
    The World to Come, by Dara Horn, is many things - mysterious, spiritual, passionate, whimsical and enthralling. The author takes the life and times of several characters, over many many years, including Russian-born Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam the eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on Earth and which is explained through Yiddish mythic culture. Benjamin Ziskind is an unlikely hero. He is a former child prodigy who realized at a certain point that his "prodigy-ness" is limited. Now he spends his days writing questions for a TV trivia show American Genius. When his twin sister Sara pressures him into attending a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, he spots "Over Vitebsk", a Chagall sketch that hung in his childhood home. Convinced the painting was wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art. Horn then tells a number of interwoven stories about the Ziskind??™s family history, including an exploration of Chagall's life; that of Chagall's friend the Yiddish novelist Der Nister; 1920's Soviet Russia and its horrific toll on Russian Jews: the nullifying brutality of Vietnam (where Ben's father Daniel served a devastating sting); and the paradoxes of American suburbia, a place where native Ben feels less at home than the teenage Soviet refugee Leonid Shcharansky. This is a really great book, written with great skill, by a very young writer.
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Daniel isn't Talking, by Marti Leimbach
    In the notes about the book, Marti Leimbach, the author "Daniel Isn' Talking", tells us that the title character is modeled on her own autistic son, and the result is moving, frequently funny, and never mawkish. Melanie Marsh, the novel's narrator is an American woman living in England who at first glance appears to have it all: Stephen, a rich if somewhat stiff husband; Emily, a vivacious daughter; and an adorable son named Daniel. But after a normal infancy, Daniel is behaving strangely - throwing tantrums, walking on his toes, still seeking his mother's breast and refusing to talk. As Melanie unravels, Stephen rmains in denial, until the dreaded diagnosis of autism is delivered. Stephen's upright British family, and Stephen himself, are unable to accept this anomaly in their midst. The marriage falls apart, but Melanie does not. She rebels against recommendations such as institutionalizing Daniel or warehousing him in "special" schools, and begins a heroic quest to get the best treatment for her son. She eventually encounters Andy O'Connor, a behaviorist with a dubious reputation, whose unorthodox methods actually begin to get results. This novel, while being very informative and moving in its study of autism and how the autistic child affects those around him, also manages to introduce several well-rounded, interesting, and even lovable characters.
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The Sisters Mortland, by Sally Beauman
It is the summer of 1967 in Suffolk, England and the sisters Mortland - gorgeous Julia, the eldest, intellectual Finn, and 13-year old Maisie, the youngest - are living in a medieval abby with their mother Stella. Maisie narrates the early part of the book, and she seems both precocious and eccentric, carrying on a close relationship with the ghosts of the abbey's nuns and observing the comings and goings of the abbey's adults, including Daniel Nunn, a local boy and longtime friend, and Lucas, a visiting artist who comes to paint the sisters. Maisie's narrative ends with a tragedy, and the novel picks up more than 20 years later, with Daniel taking up the story and attempting to fill in the blanks left in all of their lives after the tragedy of that summer. The novelist Beauman drops hints along the way about what has befallen the enchanting sisters, and I, as the reader was unable to put this book down.
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Digging to America, by Anne Tyler
Digging to America is Ann Tyler's 17th novel and I must say I have enjoyed all of them - some of them twice. She so skillfully draws her flawed characters, and so realistically portrays family dynamics, that reading her fiction is like taking a warm bath (and I mean that in a good way). In this novel she takes on the collision of cultures - most specifically between the American and Iranian. One can only think this is all too familiar for Tyler - she was married to an Iranian and shows in this book that she is very familiar with all aspects of her husband's culture. When Bitsy and Brad donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense, if somewhat awkward friendship. Sami's mother, Maryam Yazdan, who carefully preserves her exotic "outsiderness" despite having emigrated from Iran almost 40 years earlier, is frequently perplexed by her son and daughter-in-law??™s ongoing relationship with the loud, opinionated, unapologetically American Donaldsons. When Bitsy??™s recently widowed father, Dave, falls in love with Maryam, she must come to terms with what it means to be part of a culture and a country. The novel stretches from the babies' arrival in 1997 until 2004, and is punctuated by the yearly Arrival Parties celebrating the day their first daughters arrived. This tradition was manufactured by Bitsy, but the celebrations illustrate the two families' evolving connections.
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Torch, by Cheryl Strayed
Teresa Rae Wood was a teen mother and an abused wife who escaped to Minnesota, fell in love, tried to raise good kids and started hosting a radio program called Modern Pioneers, straight out the Prairie Home Companion playbook. At the end of her broadcasts - which eventually become an embarrassment to her teenage children - she always tells her listeners to "Work hard. Do good. Be incredible." That's what she has tried to do herself until she IS diagnosed with cancer and told she has only months to live. As her loving common-law husband, Bruce, and her children , Claire (a bright, responsible college senior), and Josh (a brooding 17-year old who does more than dabble in drugs), face Teresa's dying and death, Strayed, a first-time novelists shows how grief can truly divide people when they need each other most. The most surprising behavior is Bruce's - he first vows to commit suicide after Teresa's death, but instead marries his neighbor practically weeks after Teresa is gone. Claire drops out of school, cheats on her boyfriend, and stops eating; Josh is kicked out of school, starts selling drugs, and quickly impregnates his first teenage girlfriend. Without Teresa, these characters have lost their center and painfully wander through their mourning, with sometimes drastic consequences. Strayed depicts the life of the blue-collar Mid-Western culture with great accuracy and heart.
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Doctor's Daughter, by Hilma Wolitzer
Alice Brill is a 51-year-old wife, mother, frustrated writer and "book doctor" who wakes one morning with a profound pressure behind her sternum. The daughter of a once-renowned but now senile surgeon, Alice initially thinks her symptom may be a sign of breast cancer, which took her own mother's life 30 years before. Or could it be a reaction to her recently being down-sized as senior editor at a book publisher? Or could it be a premonition that the recent squabbling with her husband Everett signals a point of no return in their often competitive marriage? In her attempt to diagnose her symptom, Alice scours her childhood relationship with her then imperious father, her mother's poetry, Everett's motivations for harshly disciplining their youngest son, and her own unexpectedly erotic response to a talented new writer who comes to her for advice on his first novel. A great women's read.
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There Will Never Be Another You, by Carolyn See
Skinner's Drift, by Lisa Fugard