Poignant, well-written novel about the struggle for acceptance and connection.
343258
This novel broke my heart in the best of ways--it articulates grief so viscerally I had to put it down a few times and savor the emotions and memories it evoked before I could continue reading. The writing is excellent--funny, tender, erotic, mournful, joyous, and thoughtful in all the right places. The story explores sexuality, its expression in various relationships and circumstances, as well as fielding issues about families (immediate, extended, original/biological, and chosen) and religion within the context of a small town and the people who grew up or moved there; there are no trite resolutions, and pays respect to the complexity of people's lives. I found myself feeling the gamut of emotions while reading: angry at the antagonist(s), disappointed when the protagonists stumbled, and happy when characters found their footing again; I felt like taking a road trip to El Do only to realize that this is fiction. And that's how good Brandon's writing is, and this story--the characters are well-imagined, with strengths and weaknesses, and a place that may never exist has the familiarity of a favorite family vacation spot. I started this review by saying the novel broke my heart--but by the end, it put it back together again. I'm looking forward to the next work by Brandon Witt!
78802
An incredibly poignant novel that reads and feels as sharp and clear as a freezing cold running stream.
The author writes crisply, economically and precisely to reflect the times and circumstances of the lifestyle of Lydia Sanderson.  Lydia is widowed and decides to purchase what remains of a forsaken homestead in the Blue Mountains.  The challenges that she must face up to are great, being a woman, even greater, still.  The work she must do is brutal, the weather a force to break men's souls, the physical labor more demanding than anything she knows.  Yet she accepts this completely.
In brilliant detail the author portrays how this woman lived alone and prospered. It is a fascinating accounting of her lifestyle; the items she has in her possession, what she eats and how she transports herself and her animals.  All of this is told conservatively as her journal recounts the challenges that unfold before her.
In contrast to her personal life, the reader is introduced to the folk that live nearest to her.  These are strong and beautiful characters, tough and tender, strong and bending. In very difficult times, they came together and helped each other.  Their spirit is reflected through the accounting of Lydia's story.
1737218
After a lifetime of assuming that she understands her own sexuality, an older woman discovers that her feelings are much more complex than she has imagined in this beautifully-written novel.  The protagonist and her confusion are finely etched, as are her dying (and defiant) husband and the many other people in her life.  Eluding simple classification, this book raises questions that many women face, regardless of the actions they take, and its ending is grounded in reality while satisfying the reader's idealistic hopes for the main character.  In addition to all these fine attributes, "Light, Coming Back" is a very engrossing read.
2572067
I read this book a couple of weeks ago, but have delayed reviewing it, because I have been struggling to decide whether I liked it or not.

I'm still not entirely sure, so let's just start at the beginning.

Written in the first person, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is told from the perspective of Changez, a young Pakistani man who narrates the story of his life to an unnamed American over dinner. His life's story is one of journeys; from Lahore to Princeton, to a New York firm, through a failed relationship, the fallout of 9/11, and a return to Pakistan. There are underlying streams of pain and unrest. Changez is an outsider who struggles to find his away into American life until he is ultimately rejected and rejects all that an American life means. And finally, the man who was once a Princeton shining star becomes a radical.

The novel speaks to the pain and rejection of being within American society and then suddenly becoming an outsider. It is a novel of aspiration and disappointment and yet, I never really felt that it captured the essence of that experience. I could understand the narrator's pain and rejection at losing his girlfriend, but I never really had a clear sense of why Changez was so quick to turn on his adopted country.

In many ways the premise of this novel reminds me of the books that are being written about the internment of Japanese during World War II. In both cases people have gone from being entwined in a local community to overnight pariahs. Perhaps it is with the benefit of seventy years of hindsight that what is written about the Japanese is able to explore the communities' pain on a more subtle and open level. For its part, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, feels like it has been written with caution. The pain is there but there seems a reluctance to really dig down into it.

Perhaps the simplest way to describe my feelings about the novel is that I really admire what it has set out to do - to tell another side of the 9/11 experience. I like too that it doesn't offer easy answers; but still I wanted more. My hope is that this book opens the door to other novels exploring this event and experience from a different perspective. There are many stories to be told, and with each telling comes a different way of understanding. The more diverse the narrative being told, perhaps the greater the chance of us changing the way our societies interact with each other and with their own, in the future.
4341429
The art of this novel lies in the realistic and sensitive way it depicts the humble protagonist as she struggles with the things we've all struggled with, especially at that time in our lives when everything is confusing and every decision seems terrifyingly laden with potential heartbreak. Added to this is the turmoil of being burdened/blessed with faith that doesn't seem to be leading to happiness. Very well-written, funny, sad, hopeful, it's a powerful read for anyone who feels alone as they face interior conflicts that are impossible to express to the people we silently plead to love us and make all our doubts go away.
3974023
I was really moved by this book. It is a remarkably powerful coming of age novel. I quickly became engrossed in the narrator's search for answers as he recounts his family's history and revisits his own childhood in an impoverished area of southern Italy.
The narrator writes: "My head aches but my mind refuses to rest and the images keep rolling one after the other as if in a film." These images are vivid, sometimes extremely brutal and often painful but the writer has a poetic touch and there is light and humour along the way. I could see, smell and almost taste the local countryside and its cuisine and the people depicted were well rounded characters.
A thoroughly absorbing read, this book stands out as an intensely honest account of the profound and long lasting impact of poverty, superstition and ignorance on the narrator and his family.
Anne Scragg, Christchurch
2043549
The Optimists is a remarkable, essential novel - but it does take a brave reader as well as a brave writer to follow the book's journey and to engage with such dark and troubling themes. The story concerns Clem Glass (names have an almost mythic significance throughout this novel) a photojournalist who has witnessed a genocide of obscene proportions in an unnamed African township. The novel is not about the massacre itself - though there are fragments of description of it - but about the aftermath, Clem's attempts at coping and some sort of recovery. Arguably, the novel's premise provides a way of exploring recovery from any form of intense and shocking grief, charting as it does the stages - denial, apathy, anger and so on - that are well-documented in any account of bereavement.

  Clem, like many of us without the protection of an unshakable set of religious beliefs, must find a way to go on living while shaken to the core by what he's seen. The novel quietly explores and, for the most part dismisses, some of the possibilities on offer - separatism from the world as personified by Clem's father and his life in a religious order; acts of charity as pursued by Clem's former colleague Silverman. Clem's own solution revolves around his extended family, specifically from acts of kindness while caring for his sister, Clare, an art historian who is suffering from a breakdown. The siblings retreat to the landscape of their childhood, to an everyday existence of strawberry jam and haircuts, which provides a gentle respite from their damaged lives.  At the end of the novel, Clem attempts to confront the man responsible for the massacre, a way of staring deep into the devil's eyes - though Miller, to his considerable credit, does not present this as an easy resolution to Clem, but instead takes us through a series of stranger and more jolting realisations.

  In outline this novel may it sound like a philosophical treatise, but it was one of the most emotionally affecting novels I've read for a long time. In spite of its bleakness, in spite of the way it forces the reader to confront when they would far rather pull back, there is always hope running through its pages, always a sense that recovery can and will happen, but uncompromisingly, realistically, a thoughtful and intelligent optimism rather than the oblivious joy of fools. Time and again when I was reading I was struck by the way fiction is a more powerful medium than television or film in exploring emotional experience in close focus - the images in one's head are not only more horrific, but once conjured seemingly impossible to escape from. Like Clem Glass, I simply couldn't make the pictures go away.

  As in all Miller's novels the writing is immaculate, resonant and beautiful. His use of imagery is as poetic and precise as ever, and is all the more striking for being used more sparsely here than in the lush world of Ingenious Pain or Casanova. His ability to evoke a very English sort of family life, or to capture the sense of a place in a few phrases is unrivalled. He is undoubtedly one of the best writers of his generation.

  I know The Optimists has made me see the world differently, which is the mark of any worthwhile book..  I loved this novel in spite of all the tears and nightmares it brought me.
4426393
First, I want to say that I appreciate a non-Christian novel that is not full of vulgarities and curse words. Second, I at least as much appreciate a storyline that keeps me guessing until at least the halfway point. As an author and lifelong novel reader, I can usually predict where a story is going pretty early on. But I was about halfway through this novel when I began to make the first connections.

Besides those aspects, the author does an excellent job juxtapositioning the events of Graces life with the reading of her mothers diaries. I found it easy to relate to both mother and daughter, as well as to vicariously experience their emotions, because the author also does an excellent job of developing and delving deep into her characters. The story is a touching and poignant one illustrating the concept of family.

If you're looking for a quality work of womens fiction, I highly recommend this one!
704659
Overall
A powerful, moving story that follows two young men as they face cruel realities and the struggles of love and trust. While this tale starts off innocently as two first meet and begin to explore one another, it expands into something more, as a simple young romance is tested by external and internal forces. I enjoyed both parts of the ride, from the young love blooming to the rocky ride that follows.

A well-written and constructed piece filled with enjoyable, human (and flawed) characters and compelling emotional turmoil, this is a story that doesn't let you know until the very end if its going to have a happy ending.

Strengths
These flawed characters face difficult circumstances and while some are due to their own choices--or perhaps all are due to their own choices--they hardly complain about the situation, just work to get out of it. The lengths they go to to protect one another is touching, even if it means wanting to smack them on the head.

The struggles these characters endure and survive are more than I can imagine, and hopefully will never have to experience. But the despair and desperate hope they feel is something that most people can relate to. Because so much of this novel is a struggle against the inevitable, Brett's determination is beautiful and inspiring, a thread of silk for Tommy to hold onto when he's had to fend for himself for most his life. What are you willing to risk for love? It's a question Brett faces and answers, with surprising results. Although his attempts are not always victorious, his strength and spirit made me smile, even while I felt the same aches he did as it happened.

The emotional pull of this novel is perhaps what made me enjoy it the most as the combination of characters, situation and writing sucked me into the story and held me there, anxiously reading what happens next.

Weaknesses
I didn't really feel this book had any weaknesses, although there are two points that I would caution to readers who are one, looking for a bright, cheery book or two, hate anything that could possibly resemble dramatic life choices based on a lover you haven't known nearly long enough.

This story is not a completely happy one. There is a lot of trouble and hard emotions (I wouldn't say angst, though). For much of the later half of the book the reader is fighting (along with the characters) for their relationship but it's not clear if they will survive. It makes for a great read, but not if you're looking for a pick-me-up! I felt the resolution was pretty clear, but with everything that happened in the novel, there is always some flexibility with how it's interpreted.

Also, while the story doesn't have Insta-Love, it does have teen love that goes to some pretty far extremes (which I felt were reasonable, considering they are teens and it is pointed out within the story context). Just a warning, if this is a problem for the reader.
4019331
Paula Coston's first novel is unforgettable. It employs beautiful, evocative writing to weave a complex story. Poignant and thought-provoking, it uses the quest for fulfilment of the principal character, Martine, to illuminate the plight of many women in the 21st century.  I loved the prose and the storyline, but was less comfortable with the frequent shifts of time and place. This novel is certain to spark debate and would be an excellent choice for reading groups.  Male readers, like me, may find its imagery somewhat elusive and the theme less accessible, but no one can doubt the talent behind the writing.
1996648
Keelyn Healy's debut novel, Out Loud, packs a one-two punch. Both poignant and profound, Healy weaves threads of tragedy and humor throughout this tale of acceptance and friendship. Sometimes life is a leap of blind faith, but sometimes we need a hand to help guide us to the point where we can close our eyes and jump. Out Loud is a story of such a leap; a story of an unexpected friendship between two lost souls hoping to break free of the violence that shadows them.

Healy's protagonist, Klein, could allow her past to define her; instead she draws on her own painful memories to connect with Ed, a troubled boy she feels compelled to help. In an effort to keep Ed from spiraling out of control Klein is forced to face her troubled the past while Ed continues to deny the impending danger. Klein opens her heart and reaches out and in doing so finds a way to confront the past and the future. A real page-turner as we watch both Klein's past and Ed's futures unfold. Out Loud gives a voice to the children who never had one and in doing so may inspire others to be freed by speaking out; a must read.
2317078
The story started slowly, but was well written.  The characters are fully relatable as actual people; in a way that the reader could develop feelings for them throughout the course of the novel.  The story itself was poignant and thoughtful with a steady pace.  There were a couple of inconsistencies in the story line, but nothing too glaring.
2011404
Beyond the Mandarin Sky is a poignant, well written story of one woman's desire to find her place in the world. Jessie's personal family story is unique, but has a universal message. She persistantly unravels the bonds that link to her past, unsure what she'll discover, but unable to stop until she learns
why her own flesh and blood turned against her.
Jessie plays the roles of historian, detective, and daughter as she pieces together the tapestry of one family's life. The author draws the reader into her trials, but not without causing self-reflection and empathy. Truely, this is a story of one, but an experience of all.
2369714
Blaire is born in 1961 to alcoholic parents; her father is distant and her mother violent.  Along with her sister and brother, she survives the perils of being a practically orphaned child by relying on the one person who remains a steady rock throughout her life: her grandmother Eleanor.  Acting as a surrogate to her grandchildren, her grandmother is always on hand to fall back upon emotionally and physically as Blaire grows into a young woman and begins to follow in some of the same unfortunate paths of her parents.  Dreams of making something of her life seem doomed to failure as friends, family and acquaintances beset Blaire with turmoil and, mired in the confusion of a chaotic youth, she turns to drugs and alcohol and might very well have lost herself if not for the steadiness provided by the one person in her life possessed of enough love to stand by her through anything.  In finding the compassion and courage within herself to care for Eleanor at the end of her ninety-two years, Blaire comes to discover that she has not lost her grandmother in death because the womans strength abides still in the spirit of Blaire and her children.

Blaire Sharpes Not Really Gone is an engaging autobiography and memoir written with such urgency that much of the narrative quite nearly has the feel of a popular suspense novel.  Enlightening without being preachy and emotionally true without unnecessarily pandering to the mainstream need to fill in the blanks with saccharine snapshots, Sharpe has produced a book that stands as a sincere testament to her grandmother while honestly presenting the reality of her own life, including all of its mistakes and misunderstandings, without apparent censor.  The touching finality of the story, the end result of years of spiritual growth on the part of the author, is well worth the emotional journey undertaken by the reader in this excellent book.
835516
This novel explores what it is like to look for love, security and consistency as a child within the foster system and the anger engendered by abandonment.  In the dual threads of story the author also pursues the toll it takes on a boy to be the parent/protector of his mother.  The sadness and bitterness associated with the loss of a loved is incitefully dealt with.  Minnie, the main character's adoptive mother, provides a fine example of unconditional love and tolerant yet nurturing parenting - caution, you will fall in love with her.
1439998
This is a fascinating novel that explores both the personal journey of a young man into adulthood, while providing an insightful view into Malaysia and its people.  The main character lives in a culture that is an often uneasy blend of ethnicities, sometimes loving (as in his delightful band of city comrades)and sometimes in conflict (as with the tumultuous politics he wanders into).  Another uneasy blend is reflected in the marriage of the main character's own parents: a mother who struggles with an artistic spirituality and a father who enjoys fabulous material success but is often perplexed and clueless about his own wife. The main character must learn and come to accept the often painful conflicts and tragedies in his upbringing before moving on to make a life of his own.  This novel is crisply written and sensitive without sentimentality.  I highly reccmmend it.
1775272
"The Beginner's Goodbye," Anne Tyler's achingly beautiful, wistful, and droll tale of spousal loss, mourning, and acceptance is one of the best novels I've read in a long time.  It's not a subject I'd ordinarily have been drawn to read--so potentially maudlin--but I quickly found myself tucking into this engaging story.

Aaron Woolcott, a mid-thirties editor in his family's vanity press publishing company, was married to Dr. Dorothy Rosales, a radiologist several years his senior.  Much is made of their physical imperfections: Aaron's right arm and leg were debilitated by a childhood illness; Dorothy was kind of dumpy, unfashionably dressed, with short, thick black eyebrows and wearing a non-nonsense expression.  Theirs was hardly a perfect marriage--they had to work at overcoming their personal quirks to accommodate the other--but they had one another.  Until Dorothy was killed in a freak accident.

Aaron deeply mourns his wife, works at getting by without her and perseveres through the good intentions of many friends and acquaintances.  And then, Dorothy starts showing up in his life--not as a ghost or dream, but as a flesh-and-blood person, at least to Aaron.  The novel centers about Aaron's coming to learn the significance of these appearances.

Anne Tyler's prose is wonderfully astringent, deceptively effortless, and truly affecting.  She's just a really good storyteller.  The interpersonal interactions ring true, and the little observations sing, such as when Aaron's sister and her new beau are walking side-by-side and Aaron notes, "They were almost touching but not quite; there was perhaps an inch or two of empty space between them, and you could tell somehow that both of them were very conscious of this space--acutely conscious, *electrically* conscious."  Simply one nearly frozen moment, perfectly rendered.

In the end, Aaron's dawning comprehension of Dorothy's visits, which were at first so puzzling for him (it's just his grief, his sister and the reader think), makes for compelling and satisfying reading.  The coda--what Aaron does after he comes to this epiphany--seemed to me unnecessary at first, but after a while I came to see how through it Tyler deepened our understanding of Aaron just a little more, like an artist bringing out a revealing feature in the final moments of drawing a charcoal portrait.

The year's still young, but "The Beginner's Goodbye" is surely one of the best American novels of 2012.