Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (audio)

★★★★

"The world spins.  We stumble on.  It is enough."

This was one of the most interesting novels that I had read in a long time.  Filled with interwoven story lines, it features a host of unique characters and powerful insight to the connects that we make on a daily basis on how they effect our lives.  I very much enjoyed the audio version and the different narrators made the story even more intriguing. 

The Girls by Emma Cline

★★★★ 1/2

"Poor girls.  The world fattens them on the promise of love.  How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get.  The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.'  Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at this girlfriend on the bus."

It seems like I have been waiting forever to read this book!!! The writer's portrayal of fourteen-year-old Evie is precise and the insight into her young mind is beyond solid and one of the most realistic I have read in a very long time.  The language was beautiful and horrifying and gut-wrenchingly real.  I felt like I was in Evie's head the entire time and the general feeling of the book kept bringing me back to my teenage years.  The novel could have easily been classified as Young Adult if it wasn't for the very mature subject matter.  And that bring me to Evie's ultimate involvement in unspeakable crimes that I couldn't stop thinking about from the very first page.  She seemed so young to be caught up in a world completely unknown and foreign to her.  There was a part of me that didn't want to keep reading, but I couldn't put the book down.  A brilliant work of fiction by an amazing new author.

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

★★★★ 1/2

Nearly every family has some sort of dysfunctional aspect, but the four sibling of the Plumb family seem to sum this up to a tee.  Each child was promised a large amount of money from the "Nest" - a trust fund established by there now deceased father that they will have access to after Melody's (the youngest) quickly approaching 40th birthday.  Theres Leo who made A LOT of money after he sold his Internet company and hasn't really done anything thing since.  Jack is a mostly failing antique dealer has borrowed one against his beach house that he share with his husband Walker to keep his shop running.  Once a semi-famous short story writer Bea is doing better than the other siblings, but she can't seem to finish her long overdue novel and is stuck at a dead-end job.  And then there's Melody - the mother of teenage twin girls and hoping to pay off their way-to-expensive-house and have money left over to send her daughters to college.  

This pretty much says it all:

"A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives."

This book started with a hand-job gone horribly wrong and ended with a family birthday celebration.  Between these event we go to know a cast of characters - both members of the Plumb family and others - that were all so different and yet all connected in various ways.  The book was narrated by each character at various points and I really enjoyed getting a glimpise into each ones mind - if only for a short while.  I loved the connections between the people in this novel.  I loved their ability to make horrible decisions without even trying and I enjoyed seeing each of them grow as the book progressed.

When I started this book, I went through various stages of slight and extreme dislike for most of the characters, but by the end I found myself really liking and caring about (most of) this crazy family and there various acquaintances.  This story and these characters seemed to go together and a way that I can't quite seem to describe.  Their lives in New York Society were so far beyond my comprehension, but I was still able to connect to the characters in different ways.

I completely agree what all the hype is about and I totally agree with all of it.  This book isn't for everybody and requires a certain mind-set, but it just worked on so many different angles.  The writing was fun and witty and the story was unique and interesting and extremely addicting.  My only complaint was that there were so many narrator's that I sometime had trouble keeping them straight.  I listened to audio book and there wasn't a lot of time between each narration change though so it probably wouldn't have been an issue if I had read the actual book.  But, even so, this book was so, so good and can't wait to see what else this author has for us in the future.  I haven't read a book like this in a long time and couldn't get enough of these characters and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's brutal and realistic honesty.  

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (audio)

★★★★★

"Who does ever get what they want?  It doesn't seem to happen to many of us if any at all.  It's always two people bumping into each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings."

The premise of this book was unique - a widow asks her neighbor (who also lost his wife several years ago) to spend the night with him.  Not for romantic reasons, but so she can have someone to talk to and spend time with.  And so the two form a friendship that gets strong and stronger each night.  As they share their past with one another, they also find themselves more and more involved with each other's lives until they can't imagine not having one another.  The story is simple, but the writing and characters is what made this book brilliant.  It was touching and more than a little big sad at time, but it was also charming and sweet and wonderful.  The story of two people finding companion in the mostly unlikely of times in their lives.  And a story that grows with you as you turn each page.  I loved every bit of this amazing little book.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (audio)

★★★

"Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is is conscience.  There is no such thing as a collective conscious."

I have been meaning to read this book for quite sometime - I can't remember a book in recent memory that has gotten so much press and was interested to see what Harper Lee had waiting for us. Due to her huge success with 'To Kill a Mockingbird' I was always curious why she never wrote another book. Reading this book put a lot of things in perspective and I later found out that this was actually a very early manuscript for 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' I wouldn't say that I necessarily enjoyed this book as a whole, but I did enjoy certain aspects of it - such as Jean Louise booking back at her childhood and her feelings of being torn between her adult home and the home of her childhood. Overall, the book seemed a little disjointed and slow, but it was worth reading for it's historical aspects and connections to the previous book.  What kept me going was Reese Witherspoon as the narrator of the audio book version and I couldn't help being constantly reminded of 'Sweet Home Alabama.'

The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig (audio)

★★★★★

I have to admit that it if wasn't for book club the month I probably never would have picked up this book.  This isn't normally the type of book I usually read.  I wasn't expecting to love it (or even like it all that much), but love it I did and it consumed my thoughts for the last couple of weeks.  Even when I wasn't reading it, I would find myself constantly thinking about the characters as I went through my day.  This is the kind of book that stays with you long after you turn the last page.  It was the tenth book in the author's Two Medicine Country series (none of which I have read), but the author provided enough background that wasn't lost starting towards the end of the series.

The Bartender's Tale is the story of a bartender and his son and the small town image where days went by a little bit slower and everything seemed a just a little less complicated.  The narrator is an older man named Rusty taking place sometime in the present.  He takes us back to the year of 1960 when he was twelve years old living with his father, Tom, as he ran Medicine Lodge, a small-town bar in Montana's Two Medicine Country.  Rusty's mother took off when he was a baby and, after spending his first six years with relatives in Arizona, he came to live with his father.  They live a simple life of having tomato soup for breakfast and fishing on Sundays.  Tom runs the bar while Rusty spends his time in the backroom reading and making paper airplane models.  But, this summer things are about to get a little more interesting.  The diner down the street gets new owners and their daughter, Zoey, becomes Rusty's new "partner in crime."  And then Proxy, a dance from Tom's past, shows up with her daughter Frances and everything Rusty thought he knew about his past is about to change.

This book was wonderful in every possible way.  I loved the description of small-town life in the 1930s.  The imagery and mood was spot-on and the author was able to capture it perfectly.  I loved the relationships between the characters.  Specifically between Rusty and his father, but also between Rusty and Zoey.  Rusty and Tom had such a unique relationship since there was not mother-figure involved.  Tom's love and concern for his son comes though on every page, even though he didn't always know how to handle a situation.  Even though Rusty was young, Tom confided in him and I could feel their mutual respect for one another.  They grew up with only each other and figuring things out as the came and as a team.  The dialogue was quirky and real and the audio version made this even more so.  I also loved the portal of the Rusty's age.  Looking back, twelve seems so young, but it's such as unique age where you feel like you own the world and are, at the same time, starting to see the world differently for the first time.  I so enjoyed Rusty's twelve-year-old perspective on the storyline, even though he was telling the story as an adult.  

The ending wasn't sad, but I found myself bawling after it was over.  I can only count on my hand the number of books that have made me cry.  It was a perfect way to end the story, but I grew to love these characters so much and wanted nothing more than to keep reading about their lives and dreams and interactions with each other.  I was sad to learn that the author had pasted away in April of last year, but I will definitely be reading more of his books in the future - especially the ten other Two Medicine Country novels.

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler

★★★★★

"He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller."

This is the first book that I have read by Anne Tyler.  It is a wonderful and compelling novel about the marriage gone horribly wrong of two people and the effects that it has across three generations.  Michael and Pauline are young when they meet at Michael's mother's grocery store in the early 1940s.  Michael is smitten at first site, but from the beginning, it is evident that the two are not well-suited to be together. They have a short courtship before rushing off to a hasty marriage due to Michael returning from the war.

Throughout the next sixty years, Michael and Pauline suffer through an unhappy marriage.  They are both relatively decent people, but they just don't work well together.  Each chapter focuses on a short time in their lives and is filled with rich detail and insight into themselves and their relationship.  As the years pass, we also get a glimpse at how their actions effect their children and grandchildren.

I thought this book was extremely well-written and did a great job of writing about realistic characters and realistic situations throughout an ordinary life.  It wasn't all that fun to read and was actually pretty depressing, but that wasn't what the book was about.  It was heartbreaking to read at times, but was able to cause the reader to relate to each of the characters in different ways.  I loved the descriptions of the time periods and way of life during different time periods.  The vivid detail works well with the chapters.  The book spans many decades, but does so in a way that readers don't see the character throughout every event in their lives and instead focuses on specific periods with long gaps in between.  I really thought that this worked well in this book and it is one that I will remember for a long time.  I will definitely be looking at more books by this author.

I read this book as a buddy reads on goodreads.com for the month of March with some fellow goodreads members.  It was a great discussion book for us!!  You can view (and join!) our discussion here.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

★★★★

"This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can't possibly be true."

This was beautifully written book.  It was powerful and raw and captured the very basic of human emotions and experiences.  It was about mothers and daughters and sisters and wives.  It was about what happens when love and security - the basic of all human needs - are not met and a family who struggles to survive despite that.

In this short book (176 pages) we meet Lucy Barton - a woman in the hospital for an extended stay after she develops an infection from what was suppose to be a simple operation.  We meet her mother who we soon learn that Lucy hasn't spoken to for years due to their trouble relationship.  Her mother stay for five days and during this time they talk mostly about family and friends from Lucy's past.  As the discuss ordinary things, Lucy gives readers glimpses into her troubled childhood living in poverty.  We get pieces of growing up and starting her writing career as well as her marriage and love of her two daughter.

This book was not at all what I expected it to be.  The story seems little disjointed and I kept wanting something more from the narrator, but I was never exactly sure what.  I think that was what the author was trying to do and, if so, she did it perfectly.  Lucy's story was complex and tragic and that for her family even more so.  The author was able to capture Lucy's character perfectly and readers began to slowly understand her as the pages unraveled - even though we only got a glimpse of the detail of her childhood.  I'm not sure that I would say that I enjoyed the book, but I defiantly appreciated the style and the emotions that it brought out.  I found myself liking it a lot more after having had finished it than I did while reading it - which I can't say has happened to me more than a handful of times.