Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

The Perez Family by Christine Bell

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

A Frozen Woman by Annie Ernaux

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

The Progress of Love by Alice Munro

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

Corelli's Mandolin, a book not to be missed, tells of the Italian invasion and occupation of Greece during World War II, specifically of events on the island of Cephallonia, "plaything of the great, the powerful, the plutocratic, and the odious," and "plundered in perpetuity." Through a variety of narrators-one fascinating chapter gives us the egomaniacal ravings of Il Duce-we see the way in which the vagaries of war create both monster and hero, and how much is sacrificed to ego, ineptness, stupidity, greed, and simple indifference.

The central plot concerns Greek islanders Dr. Iannis and his daughter Pelagia, who are forced to share their home with the Italian army's Captain Corelli. Under orders but hardly sympathetic to Italy's nationalistic goals, the expansive Correlli's good humor and mandolin-playing soon win the favor of his "hosts." Full of humor and pathos-I laughed out loud many times while reading, and wept as well-Corelli's Mandolin is a sprawling, epic novel. It is Greek history, world history, a love story and a look at the madness of war. Books like this are the reason we read. C.W.

Excerpt
"If you want to be a musician this is the last place to be. You would have to go home, or to America. And I don't think that Pelagia could live in Italy. She is a Greek. She would die like a flower deprived of light.

"I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilization. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanishwell, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point. So can it work? Even disregarding the obvious impracticalities?"

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Gemmy Fairley, barely alive, washed up onto an Australian shore after a mid-19th-century shipwreck. He was rescued by native people and lived with them for sixteen years, learning their aboriginal ways. As the novel opens he suddenly appears in a newly-founded English settlement on the edge of the Queensland frontier. He is barely recognizable as human and has forgotten all but a few words of English. The presence of Gemmy, a man whose identity floats suspended between two cultures, challenges the settlers' precarious sense of who they are. It sets the stage to study the nature of identity and how it affects the interpretation of events. With stunning insight into human behavior and the way it shapes history, David Malouf demonstrates the irrationality and consequences of fear of the unknown as well as the power of trust in "the process and mystery of things." This book is beautifully written and highly readable. C.W.

Excerpt
Thwarted by their failure, most of the time, to grasp what the codger was after, and suspecting that his giggling and sidling and hopping about on one foot was meant to make a fool of them, some men would grow hot under the collar and begin to push him about; to the point at times where they had to be restrained. Even those who felt sorry for the man found themselves dismayed by what they called his 'antics.' They felt an urge, when he went into one of his jerking and stammering fits, to look hard at the horizon, and when that yielded no satisfaction, to give grave attention to the dust between their boots. He was a parody of a white man. If you gave him a word for a thing, he could, after a good deal of huffing and blowing, repeat it, but the next time round you had to teach it to him all over again. He was imitation gone wrong, and the mere sight of it put you wrong too, made the whole business somehow foolish and open to doubt.

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After twenty years in a Cuban prison, Juan Raul Perez finds himself heading for Florida in the 1980 Mariel boat lift. His dream of being reunited with his wife Carmela, who waits for him in Miami, is about to come true. But, like a man waking up after a long sleep, he has trouble getting his bearings. He passively allows himself to be taken under the wing of Dottie Perez, fellow traveler and no relation. Given that families enjoy a preferred status and that Dottie and Juan Raul have the same last name, they pose as husband and wife. A series of mistaken identities leads to a comedy of errors. Author Christine Bell adds a touch of magical realism in the form of San Lazaro, a somewhat inept and weary patron saint who does his best to comfort his earthly charges. Bell treats her wonderfully human characters with the greatest tenderness, and she treats her readers to a delicious story with an unexpected but most satisfying ending. C.W.

Excerpt
So many of them! San Lazaro thought as he watched Juan Raul Perez running towards Luz Paz. Who would have thought so many of them would come undone? Their resurrections burdened them more surely than the grave. San Lazaro barely had time to hear all their petitions, let alone answer so many prayers. Yet he had spent all morning telling Luz Paz that her daughter had not suffered. Her grief made her deaf to his words. Perhaps he needed to get someone else to tell her. He liked her very much. Everyone else brought San Lazaro water, it was traditional, but she brought him cafe cubano, and in times like these, with so many of them to take care of, he needed the caffeine.

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Like the island in Shakespeare's play The Tempest, Willow Springs is a mystical island. It differs, however, from Shakespeare's island in that a bridge connects it to the world of reality. Founded in 1823, it is sustained by the legend of Sapphira Wade, a slave woman who married and killed her master after obtaining from him the deed to the island. Miranda "Mama" Day is a descendant of Sapphirra Wade and matriarch of the island. She possesses the powers of a deep connection to place, nature and her own psyche. When her niece Cocoa crosses the bridge and marries George, a northerner shaped by reason and technology, the struggle between worlds begins.

Mama Day is a fascinating, sometimes frightening, exploration of two colliding views of the world. Can we reconcile technology with nature? Naylor is not optimistic about the possibility. N.P.

Excerpt
We're sitting here in Willow Springs, and you're God-knows-where. It's August 1999-ain't by a slim chance it's the same season where you are. Uh, huh, listen. Really listen this time: the only voice is your own. But you done just heard about the legend of Sapphira Wade, though nobody here breathes her name. You done heard it the way we know it, sitting on our porches and shelling June peas, quieting the midnight cough of a baby, taking apart the engine of a car-you done heard without a single living soul really saying a word. Pity, though, Reema's boy couldn't listen, like you, to Cocoa and George down by them oaks-or he woulda left here with quite a story.

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In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
Houghton Mifflin, 1994
Fiction, 306 pages

After suffering a bruising electoral defeat, John and Kathy Wade head for a cabin in northern Minnesota. They hope to get some perspective back in their lives but something goes horribly wrong: Kathy vanishes. As the investigation into her disappearance twists and turns into terrifying possibilities, we learn the terrible secret John carries with him from the past. It is a secret so shocking the only way to live with it has been to suppress it, yet the keeping of it has poisoned his marriage. Once nicknamed "The Sorcerer" for his seemingly magical ability to escape reality, John can no longer work his magic to undo what has happened to him, try as he might to blur the lines between what is real and what is conjured.

Nothing less than a masterpiece, this powerful, haunting and tragic novel sets the vast landscape of the Lake of the Woods alongside the landscape of the human psyche and the human heart. The beauty and precision of the language squeezes the heart, even as it leaves the reader breathless in sheer wonder at O'Brien's word sorcery. Don't miss the opportunity to fall under the spell of this great American writer. N.P.

Excerpt

The wilderness was massive. It was a place, Wade came to understand, where lost was a rule of thumb. The water here was the water there. Nothing in particular, all in general. Forests folded into forests, sky swallowed sky. The solitude bent back on itself. Everywhere was nowhere. It was perfect unity, perfect oneness, the flat mirroring waters giving off exact copies of other copies, everything in multiples, everything hypnotic and blue and meaningless, always the same. Here, Wade decided, was where the vanished things go. The dropped nickels. The needles in haystacks.

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The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Doubleday, 1993
Novel, 466 pages

The Robber Bride, inspired by the Grimm fairy tale "The Robber Bridegroom," explores female villainy and the way in which evil requires complicity from its victims. As the novel opens the three friends, Roz, Charis, and Tony, each having been ruthlessly exploited by the amoral Zenia, must come to grips with the fact that the presumed-dead Zenia is very much alive. The bulk of the novel consists of flashbacks in which author Margaret Atwood fleshes out these quirky and complicated characters and shows how Zenia insinuated herself into their lives and changed them forever. Part social satire, part gripping mystery, this modern story of women in relationship with each other and with men, is also a chilling account of wickedness. It is wonderfully entertaining as well. R.T.

Excerpt

The truth is that at certain times-early mornings, the middle of the night-she finds it hard to believe that Zenia is really dead. Despite herself, despite the rational part of herself, Tony keeps expecting her to turn up, stroll in through some unlocked door, climb through a window carelessly left open. It seems improbable that she would simply have evaporated, with nothing left over. There was too much of her: all that malign vitality must have gone somewhere.

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Staggerford by Jon Hassler
Ballantine Books, 1974
Novel, 294 pages

In this novel, Jon Hassler introduces the small town world of Staggerford, Minnesota and one of his most memorable characters, Miss Agatha McGee. Equally engaging is Miles Pruitt, a high school teacher who rooms at Miss McGee's. During the week in Pruitt's life which comprises the novel, we learn-through his musings, journal entries, and interactions with his students and fellow teachers-of his failed hopes and expectations. Through his own cautiousness and inaction he lost the love of his life to his rival, now principal of the high school. The irony of his life is not lost on Miles; he tells his story with the wry humor and compassion that has become the hallmark of Jon Hassler's fiction. J.G.

Excerpt

"So what I was thinking, Miles, was that maybe there is a similar process going on in human affairs. If you let sunshine stand for the goodness in the world and you let rain stand for evil, do goodness and evil mingle like sun and rain to produce something? To bring something to maturity, like those ferns? Does God permit sin because it's an ingredient in something he's concocting and we human beings aren't aware of what it is? Is there sprouting up somewhere a beautiful fern, as it were, composed of goodness and sin?"

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Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Graywolf Press, 1992
Novel, 426 pages

Cloudstreet follows the fortunes of two families who share a large and unusual house in the city of Perth in southwest Australia. One family allows Luck-"the shifty shadow of God"-the upper hand in their lives; the other believes in industry and thrift. Neither industry nor Luck, however, inoculates either family against trouble and tragedy. Tim Winton has drawn his totally original characters with affection and compassion; they are quirky yet familiar, flawed-some seriously-yet lovable. The colorful Australian working-class vernacular infuses this exuberant novel with an almost bawdy quality. Both funny and sad, it celebrates life as lived by human beings, their enormous capacity for self-defeating behavior notwithstanding-and the door always remains at least slightly open to the possibility of grace. C.W.

Excerpt

I've pulled a kid out of the river before, Rose. When I was eleven years old. My own brother. I know how it feels. I know how that poor bastard feels. And I got thinkin about my childhood, my life. I did a lot of feelin sorry for myself, those years. I used to see the saddest things, think about the saddest, saddest things. And those things put dents in me, you know. I could've turned out angry and cold like him. I can see how that evil little bugger might've just turned, like a pot of milk.

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A Frozen Woman by Annie Ernaux
Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995
Novel, 192 pages

The unnamed narrator of A Frozen Woman finds herself living a life she never planned. In an effort to understand how she went from an adventure-loving, intelligent, ambitious girl to a constrained, often-bored, always-exhausted housewife, she puts every stage of her life under the microscope. The result is the anatomy of a seduction: one step at a time she surrenders her dreams in favor of a relationship with a man, willfully ignoring any signal that the promise of marriage could never match the reality. Once married, she tries to challenge convention but is repeatedly defeated by a confluence of social forces, finally ending up "a well-broken little horsey." I can't recommend this book highly enough. But beware: Annie Ernaux, with stunning clarity, dredges up and articulates much that many women prefer not to see. Read at your own risk. C.W.

Excerpt

Organization, the watchword of women everywhere, magazines overflowing with advice, save time, do this, that, and the other, like my mother-in-law, but it's really a method of sticking yourself with the most work possible in the least amount of time without pain or suffering because that would bother those around you. I fall for it all, too-the memo pads for shopping lists and the reserves stockpiled in the cupboard, the frozen rabbit for unexpected visitors, the bottle of vinaigrette made in advance, the breakfast bowls set out on the table the night before. A system that relentlessly devours the present: you keep moving forward, the way you do in school, but without ever seeing the end of anything. Speed is my motto. Forget the sprightly dance, the loving touch of the dustrag, tomatoes carved into roses; I go full tilt, stampeding through the housework trying to free up an hour in the morning, which often turns out to be a mirage, but most of all I keep my eyes on the great prize of the day, that personal time regained at last but constantly threatened: my son's afternoon nap.

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In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Algonquin Books, 1994
Novel, 324 pages

On November 25, 1960, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were murdered by the Dominican Republic's repressive Trujillo regime for their efforts to overthrow the hated dictator. Dubbed "the butterflies," the three sisters have since become enshrined as mythic figures in the liberation of the Caribbean island. Fascinated by these larger-than-life Dominican heroes, Julia Alvarez undertook to learn more about the real Mirabal sisters. Her efforts resulted in this novel in which she imagines the sisters as ordinary women, who, once politicized, each in her own way, took extraordinary risks because integrity and the times required it. The reader sees that, their hero status notwithstanding, the risks these women took were not any easier for them than they would be for anyone. Indeed, Alvarez's flesh-and-blood characters inspire us into believing we all might be capable of heroism. C.W.

Excerpt

"Hail Mary," Maria Teresa began, "full of grace"

I turned around and saw the packed pews, hundreds of weary, upturned faces, and it was as if I'd been facing the wrong way all my life. My faith stirred. It kicked and somersaulted in my belly, coming alive. I turned back and touched my hand to the dirty glass.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," I joined in.

I stared at her pale, pretty face and challenged her. Here I am, Virgencita. Where are you?

And I heard her answer me with the coughs and cries and whispers of the crowd: Here, Patria Mercedes, I'm here, all around you. I've already more than appeared.

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The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
Penguin Books, 1986
Short stories, 411 pages

In this collection of eleven stories, Alice Munro creates characters whose experiences of love are both common and powerful: a daughter's memories of her mother, a wife's deception, a friend's betrayal, an old man's claim on his past. Munro captures the moment easily overlooked, the mundane encounter that, in hindsight, marks a turning point in a relationship. With razor sharp clarity, Munro illuminates the ambiguities involved in the progress of love. L.R.

Excerpt

When my father was very old, I figured out that he didn't mind people doing new sorts of things -for instance my getting divorced-as much as he minded them having new sorts of reasons for doing them.

Thank God he never had to know about the commune.

"The Lord never intended," he used to say. Sitting around with the other old men in the Home, in the long, dim porch behind the spirea bushes, he talked about how the Lord never intended for people to tear around the country on motorbikes and snowmobiles. And how the Lord never intended for nurses' uniforms to be pants. The nurses didn't mind at all. They called him "Handsome," and told me he was a real old sweetheart, a real old religious gentleman. They marveled at his thick black hair, which he kept until he died. They washed and combed it beautifully, wet-waved it with their fingers.

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Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Random House, 1975
Novel, 240 pages

In Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow recreates an America on the brink of entering the modern era-a time when the United States begins to shed its Victorian values to accommodate and recognize its multi-ethnic diversity. Two families-one "Yankee," the other Jewish immigrant-provide the contrast that reveals this emerging America.

In an intriguing blend of fact and fantasy, the lives of these family members intertwine with some of the leading figures of the time, including J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, and Harry Houdini. In words simple and spare, Ragtime portrays a mythical America confronting its reality. N.P.

Excerpt

The following Sunday, Coalhouse Walker did not appear for his visit. Sarah returned to her room. It was now clear to Father that the situation was deteriorating. He said it was ridiculous to allow a motorcar to take over everyone's life as it now had. He decided to go the next day and talk to the Emerald Isle contingent, especially to Chief Conklin. What will you do, Mother said. I will make them see they are dealing with a property owner of this city, Father said. If that doesn't work I will quite simply bribe them to repair the car and return it to my door. I will pay them money. I will buy them off. Mr. Walker would not like that, Mother said. Nevertheless, said Father, that's what I'm going to do. We will worry about explanations later. They are the town dregs and will respect money.

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