New Book: Year of Wonders

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Read: November 2024

Year of Wonders: A Novel

by Geraldine Brooks

I started reading “Year of Wonders: A Novel” by Geraldine Brooks today. It is a compelling story set in 17th-century England about a village that quarantines itself to stop the spread of the plague. The book is written by the author of “The Secret Chord” and “March,” both of which won the Pulitzer Prize. Inspired by the events in Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, “Year of Wonders” offers a richly detailed portrayal of a significant historical moment.

The plot begins when an infected bolt of cloth arrives from London, bringing the plague to an isolated village. A housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s perspective, we experience the fateful year of 1666 as she and her fellow villagers confront the outbreak of disease and the rise of superstition. As death visits each household and villagers turn from prayer to fear-driven witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to face the breakdown of her community and the temptations of forbidden love. Her struggle for survival and growth transforms a disastrous year into an extraordinary “year of wonders.

Written with remarkable emotional depth, the novel introduces, according to The Wall Street Journal, “an inspiring heroine” and skillfully weaves themes of love and learning, loss and renewal into a captivating and unforgettable narrative.

Read: February 2023

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The School for Good Mothers

by Jessamine Chan

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages.

Although it has been forty-two years since I became a parent, I still remember the anxiety of being a father. What if I could not be a good dad? Fortunately, I never had a bad like Frida. or lived in an age where parents would be sent to “a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.”

Reading The School for Good Mothers was a reminder that solutions like this are possible unless we are willing to invest in families so that the skills and support are there to resolve any issues in the home. As a widow, I found Frida’s inner dialogue comparable to the early stages of my grief journey—the total isolation and fear of failing dominated my first months of mourning.

The School for Good Mothers had been on my book list since the middle of last year. I recommend it without reservations! Jan would have already read it, and we would be debating its fine points.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.

Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

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.

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Read: October 2022

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The Rabbit Hutch

by Tess Gunty

My sixtieth book this year, The Rabbit Hutch, was a page-turner that I highly recommend. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty is a debut novel that won the 2022 National Book Award for fiction. It is a novel about four teenagers—recently aged out of the state foster-care system—living together in an apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest, exploring the quest for transcendence and the desire for love.

As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Ms. Gunty’s book focuses on that ultimate and higher goal. If you can read only one book this year, I recommend The Rabbit Hutch!

“This week is the ceremony for the National Book Award, and one of the finalists is Tess Gunty, whose debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, is a finalist in the fiction category,” said Kerry Nolan as she spoke with Ms. Gunty.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, too. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, several people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors a great fear. But C4 is of particular interest.

Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine, who The Rabbit Hutch centers around. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by the structures, people, and places that not only failed her but actively harmed her. Now all Blandine wants is an escape, a true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads.

Set across one week and culminating in a shocking act of violence, The Rabbit Hutch chronicles a town on the brink, desperate for rebirth. How far will its residents—especially Blandine—go to achieve it? Does one person’s gain always come at another’s expense? Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and community, entrapment and freedom. It announces a major new voice in American fiction, one bristling with intelligence and vulnerability.

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.

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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.

Read: October 2023

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People Collide: A Novel

by Isle McElroy

Today, I started reading “People Collide” by Isle McElroy. The book is about a gender-bending, body-switching story that explores the themes of marriage, identity, and sex. “People Collide” is a profound exploration of ambition, sacrifice, desire, and loss. The book sheds a refreshing light on themes of love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are.

The protagonist, Eli, lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in a cramped apartment in Bulgaria. One day, Eli wakes up to find that he has switched bodies with Elizabeth, who has disappeared without a trace. The story follows Eli’s journey across Europe and America to find his missing wife while he learns to exist in her body.

As Eli comes closer to finding Elizabeth, he begins to question the effect of their metamorphosis on their relationship. He wonders how long he can keep up the illusion of living as someone else. Will their marriage wither away entirely in each other’s bodies? Or will this transformation be the key to making their marriage thrive?

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.

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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.

Read: October 2021

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The Swamps of Jersey

by Michael Stephen Daigle

The Swamps of Jersey by Michael Stephen Daigle is the first of the Frank Nagler series. Having read the fourth one – The Red Hand, I thought this was an excellent time to read the first in this impressive deceptive series. It was, in fact, an excellent decision. Understanding Frank Nagler better now, I plan to read the next two and the Red Hand to be ready for the fifth book Dragony Rising.

Ironton, New Jersey has seen hard times before. Deserted factories and empty stores reflect the decades-long decline, that even Mayor Gabriel Richman, scion of one of the city’s leading political families, cannot seem to rectify. Now families are living on the street or in the shells of the old factories.A week-long tropical storm floods the depressed city bringing more devastation as well as a new misery: The headless, handless body of a young woman in the Old Iron Bog.

Between the gruesome murder and an old factory suspiciously burning down, Detective Frank Nagler begins to believe that incarcerated Charlie Adams, the city’s famous serial killer, may have fostered a copycat killer. Determined to find the truth, he follows the case that leads into unexpected places.

Knowing the author and the geography of NJ, I found this book a must-read.

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Read: February 2019

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Revolutionary Mothers

by Carol Berkin

Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, is one of four books I purchased after my first One Day University Class on February 9, 2019. It should be required reading!

The book explains how women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers, and fathers died.

It was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. She explains the mystery of Molly Pitcher (she was not a person but a group of women), camp followers, women who spied for their country, Loyalist women, and the impact on African American and Native women.

This intelligent and comprehensive history brings these forgotten stories to their rightful place in the struggle for American independence. Dr. Birkin also highlights how their efforts set the stage for the continuing campaign for gender equality.

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Read: September 2024

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Cloud Atlas: A Novel

by David Mitchell

Today, I started reading Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell, one of The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary, voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins treating him for a rare species of brain parasite.

The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, the West Coast in the 1970s, an inglorious present-day England, a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok, and, finally, a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. What sets Cloud Atlas apart is its unique narrative structure, which boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. This journey reveals how the disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. The novel’s diverse settings and cultures, from 1850 Chatham Isles to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii, appeal to readers across the globe, offering a rich and varied reading experience.

New Book: Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders: A Novel

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