Melinda's Top Ten Literary Picks for 2017

The following list is in alphabetical order by author's name.  The list includes fiction, nonfiction  & poetry and is compiled from books read this past year.  The writers are American unless otherwise noted:

1.   Judd Apatow's "Sick in the Head - Conversations About Life & Comedy"  Nonfiction

2.   Paul Beatty's "The Sellout" awarded the Man Booker Prize

3.   Alain de Botton "The Course of Love" Swiss author awarded The Fellowship of Schopenhauer

4.    Michael Chabon "Moonglow" Memoir - Pulitizer Prize winning author

5.    Maylis de Kerangal "The Heart" French author nominated for Concourt des Lyceens

6.    Galway Kinnel "Strong is Your Hold" Poetry - Award Pulitzer Prize for Poetry & a Nat'l Book
       Award winner

7.    Dolan Ryan "All We Shall Know" Irish author nominated for the Man Booker Award

8.    George Saunders "Lincoln at the Bardot" - Mann Booker winning author

9.    Jesmyn Wards "Sing, Unburied Sing" awarded the Nat'l Book Award

10.  E.B. White's novella on NYC "Here is New York" Pulitzer Prize Special Citation writer

Jesse Ball's Novel "A Cure for Suicide" I Couldn't Endure this Psychological Fiction Depiction

Jesse Ball (b Amer 1978) is a novelist, poet and sketch artist.  "A Cure for Suicide" was long listed for the Nat'l Book Award (2015).  I couldn't endure the sparse, irritating context of a man (the claimant" and a woman (the examiner).   The examiner is steering the claimant to start his life over; having no knowledge of his personal history or how to function in the world.  The examiner (who asks to be called Teresa) informs the claimant (whom she names Anders) "We give you the freedom to make every conceivable mistake and have them all be forgotten."  The sic-fi psychological premise might have held promise but the outline is so blank it was too frustrating & tedious to engage with the characters.  The banal & uninspiring dialogue is dull.  "What would you call me"  I would call you examiner.  That's right, and why am I an examiner?  Because your work is to examine people and things and help to achieve balance."  Teresa mentors Anders with baby step guidance that goes at a torpid pace.  There is such sparse insight or background into how either Anders or Teresa present circumstance that there is nothing from which to build any curiosity.  "Teresa, he said.  I want to know more about your life."  It is a part of the help I bring you, she said.  One day, you will have heard so much that you tire of it."  I tired from their baffling and mind numbing exchange.  I did not venture to invest more time in this novel I found so off-putting.  "A Cure for Suicide" was too dormant for me to trudge through.  Perhaps I may find some intriguing prose in Ball's poetry.  "A person can travel when they have music.  Just as much as by walking."

Sam Shepard's "Spy of the First Person" Posthumously Published - Preambles to Mortality

Sam Sheperd (b Amer 1943-2017) was a Renaissance Man.  He was Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Oscar nominated actor and was a finalist for the W H Smith Literary award for his story collection and accomplished musician.  He was a member of the Amer. Acad. of Arts & Letters and an inductee into the Theater Hall of Fame.  Sheperd left a legacy of more than 50 plays and appeared in over 60 films.  He also left a legacy of two sons, Jesse and Walker and daughter Hannah.  Sheperd's final literary work "Spy of the First Person" was completed days before his passing in July and published posthumously.  The prose is an elegiac musing of his past, his family's history, social issues and his progressing illness.  It reads in part as a fable and in part as a memoir.  His narrative directed to the reader is intimate and revelatory.  "I'm not trying to prove anything to you.  I'm not trying to prove that I was the father you believed me to be when you were very young.  I've made some mistakes but I have no idea what they were.  And I've never desired to start over again.  I have no desire to eliminate pats of myself."  The novel has a magical sense of time which is hazy & perplexing.   As Sheperd mulls "Once upon a time - once upon a period in the past.  Many different things going on and so many of these different things seemed to matter.  Now they don't.  Then they did, but now they don't."  There is a voyeur glimpse of a doppelgänger figure whose declining health mirrors his own waning capabilities.  "Spy of the First Person" is a preamble requiem of a life filled with adventure, achievements and accolades.  Sheperd's eminent fulfilment came from familial love and the assurance of his progeny.   "I'll never forget the strength I felt from my two boys behind me.  Following us were my daughter Hannah, both my sisters and my daughter-in-law."  "The thing I remember most is being more or less helpless and the strength of my sons."

Pulitz. Prize Author Elizabeth Stout's "Anything is Possible" Ties Her Last Heroine Lucy Bates but Doesn't Rate

Elizabeth Stout (b Amer 1956) is a best selling novelist.  Her novel "Olive Kitteridge" received the Pulitzer Prize (2008) and was made into a mini-series starting Bill Murray & France McDormand.  She maintains repeating motifs dealing with the struggle to rise above one's station in life.  Her novel "Olive…" was structured with numerous characters set in a small town whose lives intertwine in unexpected and rewarding ways.  The story seemed a loose string of adept novellas bound together into a cohesive & clever novel.  Stout's previous novel "My Name is Lucy Barton" was met with critical & financial success.  The heroine Lucy Barton is brought into "Anything is Possible" as the fulcrum for the tangential characters are either family members or have connections to her, her family or her childhood  hometown.  Having left behind her impoverished & bleak small town, Lucy has achieved success as a writer having moved to Chicago.  The undercurrent of this ambitious but unsatisfying novel is the overbearing weight of inertia.  The prevalent despair impairs consideration of the possibilities for obtaining love, happiness and fulfillment.  Annie is the doppelgänger for Lucy. They're  from the same place, both raised in poverty with a dysfunctional family but managed to tear themselves away and achieve a modicum of joy & acceptance in the art world.  They escaped from the binds that stagnate their peers.  Lucy is an acclaimed writer & Annie an actress of recognition.  They both take a return visit home to visit their family.  For Lucy it brought on a panic attack and for Annie, an epiphany.  Annie realizes her siblings lack passion & curiosity.  "Her brother and sister, good respectable, decent fair-minded, had never known the passion that caused a person to risk everything they had, everything they held dear heedlessly put in danger - simply to be near the white dazzle of the sun that somehow for those moments seemed to leave the world behind."   Stout's characters are not all decent & respectable.  Several characters are layered in shame for their cruel & immoral acts.  And, still others feel the uncontrolled assault of shame knowing its unwarranted.  The droves of story lines veer into so many tangents it makes the story too disjointed.  The unifying theme is that as humans we're all just a mess trying the hardest we know how;  capable of loving, but loving imperfectly.  Humans are hard wired to always look for ways to feel superior.  Still, people can surprise with kindness and their keen abilities to express things in just the right way. Thomas Wolf said "You can't go home again."  Annie's grandmother told her "Don't come back. Don't get married.  Don't have children.  All these things will bring heartache."  "Anything is Possible" proves Stout is still at the top of her writing acumen.  Her crafty writing is packed with sharp-witted observations.  The massive consensus is that happiness is rare.  The dismal tone and fractured demanding structure make "Anything…" difficult to embrace.

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott Acclaimed Novelist & Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Alice McDermott is an esteemed American novelist.  She's received won the Nat'l Book, twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize & received the Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in Amer. Lit.  McDermott is a writer of grace and remarkable insight.  Born in America (1953) McDermott's novel share a commonality of Irish immigrants coming to the US.  "The Ninth Hour" is set prior to the turn of the 19th C in Brooklyn, NY bustling around a Catholic Convent whose Sisters altruistic charitable acts in their community helped care for the poor & misfortunate.  The Sisters maintained a certainty that all human loss would be restored.  The Catholic Church also believed in their responsibility to dole out punishments for those who strayed from the strict rules of the Church, committed sins and failed to be cleansed by confession.  The clever narrative comes from scores of voices in McDermott's theological liturgy.  Some may consider the novel sacrosanct but the majority will find her observations sagacious, satirical & credible.  The nuns who've chosen a celibate, sacrificing life to serve others are cognizant of the many rules of the Church, demands of the city and requirements of polite society.   Annie "Mc-something" finds herself in an unbearable situation at the start of the novel.  She is widowed by her husband's suicide and expecting a child.  The Sisters swoop in and see to her care & future welfare.  They provide Annie with employment doing laundry for the Church.  The Church becomes a haven for Annie & her daughter Sally who is raised within the Church.  This leads Sally to have a discernment towards becoming a nun. But, she realizes she's not destined for the lonely life of hard labor & long sacrifice.  Annie's best friend, Mrs. Tierney believed "that any woman who chose to spend a celibate life toiling for strangers was, by necessity a little peculiar."  Yet, she holds an adamant & grateful belief in the fact of heaven. The Sisters believed without doubt that all human loss would be restored.  Perhaps, not surprisingly, their compassion & patience fails even them in their love for God's people which couldn't outweigh their disdain for their stupidity, selfishness and sins.  McDermott's meme of immigrants' single-minded resolve towards moving up in the world is recurring theme in her novels.   This novel has a minor character who served in the Civil War for another man (Mr. Tierney's father); a one-time opportunity allotted the wealthy.  The Catholic Sister's answering the call to sanctity and self-sacrifice, the delusion and superstition it required from the world during this epoch, were fading and a dying breed even then.  What continues to blur the line between holiness and morality is the absolution of heinous behaviors based on one's justifications rather than societal laws.  "The Nine Hour" is written with a gleaming virtuosity that never cleanses the unrelenting wash of man's filth, misery & inhumanity.  As Sister Lucy told Sally said "Never waste your sympathy.  Never think for a minute that you will erase all suffering from the world."  

Khaled Hosseini's "And the Mountains Echoed" Reverberating Storytelling that is Grating

Khaled Hosseini is the best selling author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Suns."  Hosseini is an American writer born in Afghanistan in 1965.  His family moved from Afghanistan to Paris for his father's work when he was 11.  The family was unable to return to their native country because of warring factions and sought political asylum in the US in 1980 when he was 15.  Hosseini did not speak English at the time and the move was very jarring.  He was educated in the US and is a physician as well as a best selling author.  The novels echo back to his family's diaspora.  Hosseini's contrivance in his newest novel "And the Mountains…" is to weave interlocking stories of family members and friends who are become separated and yet their lives miraculously intersect in the future.  As one of the novel's main characters who becomes a plastic surgeon learned in Kabul "…it is that human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.  But I find comfort in it, in the idea of a pattern, of a narrative taking shape".  I find the forced of tying all the timelines tiresome although Hosseini heavily relies on this gimmick "like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand." I find the loose threads tying the main characters together to be a tiresome stretch which steers away from the gravitas of the political/social & economic strife the underlines the novel.  Mostly, I found the meanderings tedious mawkish melodrama.  "It's important to know this, to know your roots.  To know where you started as a person.  If not, your own life seems unreal to you.  Like a puzzle."  I'm puzzled why "And the Mountains Echoed" garners mass appeal.  Tt felt like a doppelgänger of his previous best selling books.  (Oh, now I get it.  I just don't find his writing worth investing the time.)

Tom Perrotta's MRS. FLETCHER Makes Mrs. Robinson Seem a Tame Dame

Tom Perrotta (b Amer 1961) is a novelist and Acad. Award nominated screenwriter for his novels "The Election" and "The Children".  His novel "The Leftovers" was turned into an HBO TV series.  But seriously, too-koo-ka-choo Mrs. Fletcher you are not a dame destined for fame or deserving of blame.  Mrs. Fletcher is a divorced mother of a son, Bernard, who is just about to depart on his debacle of a freshman semester of college.  Bernard is no saint and calling girls bitches ain't the way to talk or treat the ladies.  There are many more players in this novel of a middle-aged woman muddling her way through lonely nights mostly by watching porn.  I don't foresee "Mrs. Fletcher" being turned into a screenplay but if it is, it will just cut out the foreplay and head straight into sexual liaisons in countless couplings: hetero, homo, menage a trois, transgender and so on. Or, not at all for those who consider themselves asexual.  Asexual is explained as someone who wants to be with people but doesn't want to do anything with them.  This novel is a toast "to people being whatever the fuck they wanted."  It's a light read that tries for heavy philosophical mores by finding enlightenment in open minded views towards a progressing spectrum of sexuality in terms of acceptance, appetites and  attitudes.  Autism's broad spectrum and individualities are included as part of Perrotta's syllabus.  So too are the concepts of masculinity & femininity as embodied in the context of the novel as a continuous whole.  Overall, Perrotta's novel offers the ideals of trying something different, meeting new people, and making one's world bigger rather than withdrawing from life & becoming disconnected.  This all comes wrapped in a large lubricated condom.  The conundrum is it's partially engrossing, not totally dumb or grossing.

John Green's "Turtles all the Way Down" - A Teen Who Struggles with OCD as does He

John Green is a best selling author of novels including "The Fault in Our Stars" and "Paper Town" both of which were made into successful films. Green's characters are h.s. students experiencing the jubilance of youth & the bonds of friendship & romance formed during this youthful epoch.  The characters are admirable & likable.  His writing is abundant with literary & cultural references.  The term young adult fiction applied to Green's genre is balked at by this thoughtful & creative writer. His stories have intrigue & resonate deeply with emotions of angst & love; they're universal, stirring & enjoyable reads. "Turtles all the Way Down" shifts his storytelling to a deeper, more personal level.  Aza, our 16 year high old heroine has a lot of wonderful qualities but she's burdened with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).  As the book was released, Green shared his own struggles with these disruptive issues that overtake his life at times.  Aza is dealing with rites of adolescence, dating, friendship and thought to her future.  She allows us an insight into the troubling & at times overwhelming battles suffering from anxiety & OCD.  Aza's irrepressible friend Daisy has a sunny, funny disposition. Azi is just embarking on a boyfriend relationship with Davis.  Aza & Davis have both lost a beloved parent.  Aza still has her steadfast loving mother but Davis' billionaire father abandons him & his brother fleeing prosecution for shady financial dealings.  Daisy draws Aza into the mysterious disappearance of Davis' father for reward money for information leading to his whereabouts.  But what this novel is uncovering, is the mystifying, hard to fathom suffering of people afflicted with these disorders.  Daisy helps to draw Aza out of her downward spiraling vortex of dysfunctional thoughts that become so intrusive they leave little room for her to navigate in the world. Aza know's she has a serious problem.  But is unable to figure a way through to fixing it.    Aza describes her intrusive thoughts as a kind of bacteria that colonize her brain where she feels powerless to choose her own thoughts.  She feels trapped by thoughts that take over forcing her to think & behave in a repetitive, choking downward spiral.  We learn through Aza'a mom, friends & therapists how exhausting, disturbing, painful, off-putting & difficult it is for people within a close orbit of someone who manifests Aza's symptoms to cope.  Compared to Green's previous novels "Turtles all the Way Down" is more of a downer and less of a joyride.  It's the exploration into the vast unreachable understanding of another human being. "Nobody gets anybody, not really.  We're all stuck inside ourselves." The reward comes from finding empathy, compassion and support and trusting it will be there when you are burdened under heavy shells pushing you down.