Book Reviews

Not surprisingly, Our Souls at Night, Kent Haruf's last before he passed away in 2014, is a quiet, beautiful book. The premise: 70-year-old widow Addie asks her widower neighbor, Louis, who lives two doors down, to come to her house each night and sleep with her–not for sex, but for pillow talk and as an antidote to crushing loneliness. Their unconventional agreement births not only town gossip but also a love and trust neither has before experienced. Recommended by Kelly

Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton is an brisk, intimate, and searing exploration of the troubled relationship between the title character and her mother. Lucy is in the hospital for many weeks with a mysterious illness when her estranged mother appears out of nowhere. Through their hospital bedside conversations, they make sense of their shared past, all while keeping troubling secrets buried. It’s a brilliant take on the silences of families and the process of making sense out of a difficult past.

Carrie Brownstein’s terrific memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is necessary reading for anyone who constructs their identity around the music they listen to. Regardless of your experience with Brownstein’s mighty band Sleater-Kinney, there’s much to delight in here, from immersive portraits of the early-90s Olympia rock scene, to poignant reveries about the pains of touring and the challenges of friendship and collaboration. Uniting all of the memorable scenes and anecdotes is Brownstein’s level-headed voice, plainly and beautifully capturing what animates her as an artist.

Magda Szabo’s novel The Door­—available and popular in her native Hungary since 1987—is long overdue to arrive on our shores. The devastating novel tells the story of the fraught and mysterious friendship between the narrator, also an author named Magda, and her housekeeper Emerence. Emerence, who won’t let anyone past her front door, is a true force of nature. Her relationship with Magda sizzles and cracks as it leads to the book’s Greek-tragic ending. At times brutal, the book examines friendship, betrayal, and aging with honesty and clear eyes. Savor this book; let it break your heart.

In my second childhood again (I was one of those little kids begging for a horse), I read My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara, which I'd always thought was a "little horse book for little girls." How wrong I was. Though it can happily be read by a child, it works on several levels. In the stunning backdrop of Wyoming grasslands, this story tells the tale of 12-year-old boy Ken McLaughlin, a rancher's son striving to win his father's approval.

As you're looking for gifts, don't forget Betty Smith's groundbreaking novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It chronicles the life of the Nolans, a desperately poor family in the tenements of turn-of-the-20th-century Brooklyn. Though only a child when the narrative begins, the novel's protagonist Francie does her best to make sense of the joys and hardships of her family, becoming a writer before the readers' eyes. Published in 1942, the novel is part coming-of-age story and part historical chronicle. Though occasionally sentimental, the novel's cumulative power is astonishing.

Here by Richard McGuire is a pretty stunning graphic novel that possesses a quiet power and poignancy. It follows the human dramas of a single corner of a single house over the course of millennia, from prehistory to the 1800s to the present day to the distant future. Whatever plot there is is associative and non-linear, but that doesn’t mean the reading experience is difficult. The book is poetic in its meaning-making and lovely in its illustrations; few comics are ever so thought-provoking. Recommended by Danny

STAFF REVIEW: Call off the dogs, luddites, the hunt is over. Richard Polt's THE TYPEWRITER REVOLUTION is the perfect book for those of us who have, for whatever reason, held on to our beloved typewriters and are actually still using them. It's also a perfect book for those who might want to dust off and repair a family heirloom. Not only does it have valuable information about how to keep your sweet old Royal, Underwood, etc in top form, but it also has loving testimonials from writers about their beloved machines. Okay, luddites stop reading, it also includes techie typewriter mimics.

Preoccupied with death since childhood, twenty-something Caitlin Doughty's one career goal was to work in a crematory. This memoir Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is not only a hilarious and poignant account of her realized hope, but also another of several recent books that take a long overdue look at expensive and often tragic results of America's paradoxical obsession with and fear of death. Recommended by Kelly

STAFF REVIEW: For soft science writing about the digestive system, I thought no one could equal Mary Roach's GULP, but Giulia Enders has done just that with GUT. Though not as roll-on-the-floor funny as Roach, Enders' science is much more detailed and, surprisingly, easier to understand than Roach's. With plenty of her own childhood digestive issues prompting her, Enders went into medical school and specialized in microbiology.