I started reading Everything's Fine by Cecilia Rabess today, a stunning debut introducing a talented new author. However, I found it easier to decide to read it after reading in the New York Times that some reviewers on Goodreads criticized the book's premise without reading it. It's unfair to criticize something after experiencing it first-hand.
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by Cecilia Rabess
I started reading Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess today, a stunning debut introducing a talented new author. However, I found it easier to decide to read it after reading in the New York Times that some reviewers on Goodreads criticized the book’s premise without reading it. It’s unfair to criticize something after experiencing it first-hand.
On Jess’s first day at Goldman Sachs, she’s disappointed to learn that she’ll be working with Josh, a white conservative she used to argue with in college. Josh enjoys playing devil’s advocate and can be challenging to deal with.
But when Jess realizes she’s the only Black woman on the team and is being overlooked, Josh offers his support in imperfect but meaningful ways. As they develop an unlikely friendship with undeniable chemistry, it eventually becomes an electrifying romance that shocks them both.
Despite their differences, their attraction brings them together, and Jess starts to question whether happiness is more important than being right. However, as the cultural and political landscape shifts in 2016, Jess, who is just discovering herself, must decide what she’s willing to compromise for love and if everything is excellent. This poignant and sharp novel by Cecilia Rabess asks if they will and if they should.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
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by Richard Powers
I started reading “Playground: A Novel” by Richard Powers today. This remarkable new novel comes from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author of “The Overstory” and “Bewilderment.” Even more astonishing is that this marks my three hundredth book since I embarked on this reading journey on January 1, 2019! I’m also enjoying “Judaism Is About Love,” which means “Playground: A Novel” will be my 98th or 99th book in 2024.
In this sweeping, panoramic novel, four lives intertwine, showcasing Richard Powers at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu finds herself at the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal, strapped to one of the world’s first aqua lungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific, finding solace in art as her only home. At an elite high school in Chicago, two opposites bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game: Rafi Young gets lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work leads to a startling breakthrough in artificial intelligence.
Their paths converge on the history-laden island of Makatea in French Polynesia, once known for its phosphorus deposits that helped sustain the world. This tiny atoll has been chosen for a groundbreaking venture: a plan to create floating, autonomous cities to venture out onto the open sea. However, the island’s residents must vote to approve the project or turn the seasteaders away.
Set against the world’s most enormous ocean backdrop, this awe-inspiring book delves into the last wild place we have yet to colonize, exploring a still-unfolding oceanic narrative. It beautifully weaves rich characters, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep examination of our shared humanity—and exploration that only Richard Powers can deliver.
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by Rachel Kushner
Today, I started reading Creation Lake: A Novel by Rachel Kushner, a two-time finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. This novel follows a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France. It is a gripping page-turner filled with dark humor. Creation Lake is Kushner‘s finest achievement—a work of high art, comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.
The story revolves around a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman who employs ruthless tactics and possesses striking beauty. She is sent to carry out covert operations in France. The narrator introduces herself as “Sadie Smith” when she arrives at a rural commune of French subversives, whom she is secretly monitoring, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-to-do Parisian whom she meets by so-called “cold bump”—making him believe their encounter was accidental. Like everyone else she targets, Lucien is helpful to her and ultimately manipulated by her. Sadie operates with strategy and deception, following instructions from her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government. Initially, these contacts want her to provoke reactions. As the story progresses, their demands become more complex.
In this region filled with ancient farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes captivated by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe. Bruno mentors young activists who believe that the path to emancipation lies not in revolt but in a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie thinks she is the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno enchants her with his ingenious counter-histories, poignant laments, and tragic narrative.
In brief, striking sections, Rachel Kushner‘s interpretation of “noir” is taut and dazzling.
When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!
by Sena Jeter Naslund
Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book that I could not put down. It is a page-turner. The title is from the four girls killed at Sunday School in Birmingham. When that happened in 1963, I was only a few years older and the impact brought home to me that we lived in a broken world that required repair. Like Stella Silver in the novel, my life changed as a result of the bombing.
As my reading list may indicate, I have always preferred non-fiction with a preference for history. Picking this novel up combined my prior reading habits with my desire to read books that my wife, Jan, recommended.
Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression, Sena Jeter Naslund creates a tapestry of American social transformation at once intimate and epic.
In Birmingham, Alabama, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by the events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change. Inspired by the courage and commitment of the civil rights movement, the child Edmund Powers embodies hope for future change. In this novel of maturation and growth, Naslund makes vital the intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America.
Stella’s idealism reminded me of how I became the person I am. Change is not easy but, it takes all of us to risk our lives to repair the world so, it works for all of us.
The book’s critical focus on the “intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America” makes this a must-read. The redefinition has made America a better country but, we may be retreating from that ideal.
by Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason
At the Villa Rose by Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason, initially published in 1910, is a mystery novel in which Major Mason introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud, who was an early template for Agatha Christie’s famous Hercule Poirot. Missing jewels, high adventure some one hundred and fifty kilometers from Geneva, a casino, and blind love are all factors in a complex case for Hanaud, which ultimately involves a gang of frightened murderers. If you enjoy deductive mysteries like me, I highly recommend At the Villa Rose.
The Goodreads summary,
In Aix les Bains during the early 20th century, Celia Harland, a beautiful (of course) young English girl down on her luck, is befriended by a wealthy widow, Madame Dauvray, an addict of “spiritualism,” and stages seances for her benefactrix, while knowing full well that the supposed manifestations from the spirit world are entirely bogus. This set-up supplies the opportunity for a criminal gang master-minded by Madame Dauvray’s maid, with their eyes on the widow’s jewelry collection, to engineer an introduction for one of their numbers, Adele Tacé (“Rossignol”), whose taunts of disbelief goad the old lady into allowing a seance to be held which, unsuspected by either Celia or her patron, will be the cover for murder and robbery.
The crux of the plot is that as a medium, Celia will be made their innocent victim, on whom suspicion is to be planted.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
The Secrets We Left Behind by Soraya M. Lane is a historical fiction that raises the question, where were the women after Dunkirk and the fall of France? When World War II appeared to have been lost with a Nazi victory. Ms. Lane watched the movie Dunkirk and then researched that time and the women’s possible roles during that difficult moment in history.
She connected the evacuation at Dunkirk to the Massacre at Le Paradis, fifty miles away, to connect a British nurse and two French women whose strength helps them survive Nazi-occupied France. Three British male soldiers, two of whom survived the massacre and one who escaped Dunkirk, have secondary roles in the novel.
The Secrets We Left Behind is the story of the three strong women and their efforts to survive the occupation while hiding the three soldiers. This focus on the role of women has been long overdue in history. Ms. Lane, who studied to be a lawyer, has found a career as a writer. The Secrets We Left Behind is the first book I have read, but it will not be the last one by Ms. Lane that I read.
I strongly recommend this book!
The Goodreads synopsis provides an overview of the novel.
How far will they go for family, friendship, and love? Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her.
Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies, two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in. When Cate, too, arrives at their door with her injured soldier, the pressure mounts.
The sisters are risking everything to keep their visitors safe. But with the Nazis coming ever closer and relationships in the farmhouse intensifying, they must all question the sacrifices they are willing to make for the lives of others. How far will they go for family, friendship, and love?
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Alice Hoffman
The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story by Alice Hoffman is a heartfelt short story about family, independence, and finding your place in the world. The overview should be enough to encourage everyone to read the book. I recommend this short story without any reservations. Ms. Hoffman has written a moving story that helped me to grapple with grief and reminded me that love is the highest and most important goal that humans can aspire.
Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.
But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island. What she finds there may forever alter her path—and change everything she thought she knew about her family, home, and herself.
Isabel sums up the power of love in this paragraph,
She was thinking about the way a fish loved a river, and a bird loved the sky, and a mother loved her daughters. She was remembering everything. How love could change a person, how it could cause you the greatest sorrow or shelter you from harm. There were moths hitting against the windowpanes. A night heron called in the marshland as if its heart were breaking.
I have always fantasized about working in or owning a small bookstore.
The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story rekindled that dream and reminded me of the power of love.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’sJan’s Love blog.
