Tuesday's Top 5
The week's best new book releases. I promise.
Watch out, world. A new year means new books!
I present these alpha by author surname.
If you want a big family saga, look no further. Chen’s tale of a Shanghainese couple separated by circumstance who nevertheless retain their psychic bond (known as “mingyun” in Chinese) will wow you with its sweep as well as its careful character development.
The Sinners All Bow by Kate Winkler Dawson
Was there a real-life Hester Prynne, all ye fans of The Scarlet Letter? Could her name have been Sarah Maria Cornell, the protagonist of a book titled Fall River, written by a woman named Catherine Williams in 1834, years before Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel? Dawson, a true-crime historian, looks back into a case of one woman, two authors, and a despicable crime. ::Shiver::
The Heart of Winter by Jonathan Evison
Ruth Warneke has a toothache. When it turns out to be more serious, her longtime husband Abe Winter, must step up as caregiver, a role that allows Evison (always a writer of compassion) to examine their marital history, showing that few of us make decisions when faced with the power of love, let alone the right decisions.
Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett
Another couple to examine! Meet Ann, divorced from her husband and estranged from their son, Peter. She runs a women’s retreat center and he’s an asylum attorney. One of his cases affects him so deeply that he decides he and his mother must revisit the long-ago terrible night that led to their schism. Haslett often writes about the lives of gay men, but here he has met the challenge of showing how families crumble and rebuild in the face of any kind of difference.
The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink
Schlink (The Reader) follows one Kaspar, as he attempts to find the baby his wife Birgit had to leave behind when she escaped East Germany. Sharing much more would be unfair, because the women who might be his daughter and granddaughter have joined a group so far from Kaspar’s ideological bearings that readers will be as shaken up as he is by their beliefs. It’s worth reading as a new administration begins here.