This book about a college professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers is so compelling, I still think about it often, months after reading it. Strout is definitely one of my all-time favorite authors and every book of hers that I’ve read has been an absolute treasure. She’s a true sage and she always leaves me with so many emotions and so much to think about. That’s much the same feeling I get reading Elizabeth Strout’s books - Although it often seems like nothing much happens on the surface, the quiet events of her protagonists’ lives feel a lot like our own, and their reflections as they look back are intriguing and at times, profound.Įlizabeth Strout is my Annie Dillard/Maya Angelou of fiction. I loved her honesty as she talked about her life and how she felt about all that had happened to her, and it made me feel very close to her. While reading, I was reminded of the long car rides I used to take with my grandmother when I was a kid, when she’d tell me stories of her life and experiences. Although it took me a little longer to get into Oh William! than Strout’s other novels, it wasn’t long before I was captivated by Lucy’s narrative voice and the book’s quiet yet absorbing storyline. Strout fans will love this latest novel, a continuation of Lucy Barton’s story as she reviews her marriage and continuing friendship with her first husband, William. I believe it will capture your heart as well. Do yourself a favor and read it as soon as possible. This book singlehandedly got me out of a yearlong reading slump filled with mostly mediocre novels. Zentner has managed to write a book that moves fast enough for a teen’s attention span, yet invites introspective readers to sit with it a while and ponder its deeper themes. It is beautifully and sensitively written and it continually poked and prodded at my heart and its hidden places. He writes with a vulnerability and openness that’s often only found in the young, and his reflections and turns of phrase open the reader’s heart in the process, encouraging all of us to feel these universal themes and how they’ve affected our own lives, forcing us to confront the walls we may have put up in order to stop feeling, and dull the pain. Narrated by Cash, a poet by nature although he doesn’t know it, we journey with him as he experiences love and loss, beginnings and endings, hope and desolation. The good news? These teens have in them the power to ascend far beyond their circumstances. They’ve spent their childhoods navigating all the pain and poverty and loss that is their birthright. It’s the story of two teens, Cash and Delaney, born to drug-addicted moms in small town Tennessee. It’s definitely going to be my favorite book of the year.
This beautiful book ripped my heart wide open and left it that way from the first page to the last.
That said, there were still some major standouts from this year’s book pile and I’m excited to share them with you now. And if that sounds like a lot of books, well, some people watch Netflix. I read a lot of stinkers and got into a major book slump as a result, only reading/listening to 43 books instead of my usual 60 or 70. I have to admit, this wasn’t the best book year for me.