GREAT LINE:
The feminists had divined that, who once, when she rose to speak at a meeting, had hissed and cat-called, assuming her crowning glory to be the seductive and marketable product of an inhumanely tested bottle.
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With luck, once in a lifetime a novelist can take all the pieces and fit them together and come out with an absolutely wonderful work. Possession is one of those rare books. There is beautiful storytelling as each scene works in itself, drives the fast-moving plot forward toward solving a mystery, and reveals an extraordinary understanding of literature and ideas. It begins when two young academics discover secret love letters from a long-dead Victorian poet. There are amazing characters, including a brilliant professor who has spent a career studying that poet and has produced the definitive biography, proving that here was a great man who surely lived up to his own lofty ideals. On the side, the professor has a hobby of stealing anything he can get his hands on from the poet’s life. There is also poetry and interwoven tales that expand the inner hopes and thoughts of the characters. Most of all, it is the result of a life-long appreciation of the beauty of great writing and the joy of discovery, and also of the emptiness and cruelty of academic lives devoted to the study of beauty. This is, in all senses, a mature work by an author who has loved words, stories, books, and ideas and wants to make sense of all such love.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Possession
GREAT LINE:
I didn’t like Wuthering Heights at first, but the minute that specter, Cathy, scrabbled her bony fingers on the window glass- I was grasped by the throat and not let go.
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The story is on the surface rather pedestrian and predictable. In postwar Britain, a young writer finishing the book tour for her highly successful account of life in wartime London searches for a new topic for her next book, while being courted by a dashing, wealthy American. Enter a letter from a young farmer on the isle of Guernsey with a taste for Charles Lamb, and so begins her fascination with the plucky Guernsey folk who weathered the German occupation with courage and wit. Although it’s quite clear who our heroine will end up with, the journey to that satisfying conclusion is delightful, peopled with eccentric pig farmers, gay publishers, outspoken herbalists and the fierce 4 year old illegitimate daughter of a German medical officer and the book’s never-met but ever-present center, Elizabeth. Honestly, if I’d been reading it as a book, I would have put it down. But because of the multiple excellent readers, I couldn’t wait for an opportunity to drive so I could continue the story. Here is a case where good readers made all the difference in the world. The construction of the book, it consists entirely of letters between the many characters, lends itself to multiple readers one of whom is the fabulous English actress Juliet Mills.Themes of compassion, tolerance and global connections make this a true feel-good book but manage to avoid icky-sticky saccharine oversimplification of human nature. But the most delightful thing for me was how much all the characters were moved by the books they read, from Charles Lamb to Emily Bronte! It’s really about the joy of reading- or in this case of being read to.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
OPENING LINES:
You have never been so hungry. You have never been so cold.
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Lev Beniov is a 17-year-old just trying to survive the siege of Leningrad by doing some petty thieving, when he is caught by the Soviet army and sentenced to death. Unless… he agrees to help a crazy colonel who wants a dozen fresh eggs. Not the easiest thing to find in a blockaded city full of starving people. On his quest he is joined by a another man convicted of desertion, and it is the relationship between the two as they face perils terrifying and ridiculous that form the heart of the story. This book is just begging to be made into a movie, and a more appealing mix of buddy picture and touching coming of age story would be hard to find. Full of humor amid the horrors of war, it is the immensely appealing characters that carry this vivid WWII story.
Check the BPL Catalog for this title: City of Thieves
