Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Homer’s epic, The Iliad, is accessible with modern language, yet faithful to Homer’s rhythmic style as it was extemporaneously performed nearly 3,000 years ago in Greece, “a contemporary poem in the parallel universe of the English language.”
Alexandra Fuller’s biography, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness,” tells of her parent’s costly determination to remain in “White-ruled” Africa, “the worst kind of costly; life and death kind of costly.”
A journey into Ben Loory’s unearthly imagination, “Stories for Nighttime and Some for The Day, ” is startling. Loory fabricates an outlandish abnormal world in 39 compressed short stories, fables and parables with themes that are familiar, stark and sometimes humorous which Loory says are laced with fear and desire.
Allegra Goodman’s extensive writing about modern technology overshadows the intriguing plot in “The Cookbook Collector,” in which an autodidact purchases a rare collection of cookbooks with secret notes, drawings and poetry tucked between the pages.
Author Bobbie Ann Mason’s book about World War II would seem passé, but unexpectedly this novel based on true events is timely and provocative. Commercial pilot Marshall Stone returns to France after his retirement in search of the people who rescued him from the Nazis when his B-17 fighter bomber crashed. After the war he didn’t think much about the incident, rather he returned to marry his sweetheart and have children.
Escaping a troubled marriage, Peter, a cardiologist, and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Alex, toss a dart on a map that hits Nepal. Cary Groner has skillfully plotted a cliffhanger novel laced with human intrigue.
R.J. Keller in her first novel, Waiting for Spring, transcends the life of Tess Dyer, who blames herself for her recent divorce. She refused to have a child and then had an affair. She wants out of town. In interior monologue she declares, “I might be Brookfield’s town whore, but I could sure scrub the hell out of a toilet.”
“The Fragile Mistress” is a dense poetic drama about 14-year-old Liana, who with her sister reluctantly accompany their mother from their American home to Jerusalem in 1963 for the reburial of her mother’s brother, who died during the 1948 “War of Independence”, in the new Jerusalem cemetery.
Gabrielle Hamilton should have written a cookbook rather than reveal her life blemishes in a memoir. Like cooking, when ingredients are left out, the dish is less than fulfilling. “Blood, Bones, & Butter,” leaves a lot of unanswered questions which wouldn’t have been the case if she’d stayed focused on how her cooking skills turned her into one of New York City’s top chefs.
In Union Atlantic, Adam Haslett deftly weaves a literary novel around the global financial crisis with a cast of disturbing characters. Ambitious investor Doug Flanning, moralist-historian Charlotte Graves and others intersect in a web of deviltry and deception.
