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Recently read books
Jan. 21st, 2013 11:02 pmA Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell
This is part of my mission to read all books by MDR, because I love her style--there's something very warm and human about the way she writes, and she's great with setting and details. I loved this one, too, but not quite as much as I loved Doc. A Thread of Grace is a novel about the Italian WWII resistance against fascism and Nazism, and about how they helped Jewish refugees. So if you want to read an uplifting story about ordinary people doing the right thing, this book is for you. Uplifting in a certain sense, that is, since a lot of them die. It's a very ensemble book, with much less of a clear protagonist than Doc has. Also, lots of women and Bechdel-test-passing.
The Buddha In the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
This is a novel about Japanese women who came to America to marry men they'd never met. I was fascinated with the narrative voice in this book--it's all in first person plural POV, and manages to convey both a shared experience, and many quite different experiences. I feel like the "we" draws the reader closer in, too.
This is part of my mission to read all books by MDR, because I love her style--there's something very warm and human about the way she writes, and she's great with setting and details. I loved this one, too, but not quite as much as I loved Doc. A Thread of Grace is a novel about the Italian WWII resistance against fascism and Nazism, and about how they helped Jewish refugees. So if you want to read an uplifting story about ordinary people doing the right thing, this book is for you. Uplifting in a certain sense, that is, since a lot of them die. It's a very ensemble book, with much less of a clear protagonist than Doc has. Also, lots of women and Bechdel-test-passing.
The Buddha In the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
This is a novel about Japanese women who came to America to marry men they'd never met. I was fascinated with the narrative voice in this book--it's all in first person plural POV, and manages to convey both a shared experience, and many quite different experiences. I feel like the "we" draws the reader closer in, too.
