I agree with the NYT review. Think Gone Girl when you get on board Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train. Good writing here but a map would help sort through the fast-moving scenes. A thriller for sure. A who done it? Absolutely. Find this book in your local library’s ” New Releases, Read and Return In Seven Days,” section.
I have not seen the movie. Some have told me it was ” OK.”
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi details the beginnings of the slave trade as African tribes raid one another’s villages to gain riches by kidnapping young men and women at the behest of British slave traders. The Gold Coast of Africa became Ghana where to this day stands the Cape Coast Castle and the “Door of No Return ” leading to the beach where the slave ships waited to sail to the Caribbean and America.
Homegoing is a story of Africa and the havoc wrought by British colonization. The book tells a parallel story of Africans chained together and cast upon the shores of America. Gyasi writes in Homegoing of generation after generation of her people searching for identity in frightening and ever-changing worlds in Africa, the American South and the streets of present day Harlem. Listen to Gyasi’s voice:
White men get a choice. They get to choose they job, choose they house. They get to make black babies, then disappear into thin air, like they wasn’t never there to begin with, like these black women they slept with or raped done laid on top of themselves and got pregnant. White men get to choose for black men too. Used to sell ’em; now they just send ’em to prison like they did my daddy, so they can’t be with their kids.
Homegoing is compelling, engaging, insightful and beautifully written The novel follows generations of descendants seeking answers and understanding as to how their past became the present. Through it all, Gyasi never loses the thread, weaving back and forth taking the reader along on an emotional journey. There will be much more to come from this brilliant first time novelist.
” But no one ever leaves the town where they grew up, not really, even if they go.” In those key strokes Anna Quindlen, through the voice of Mimi, Miller’s Valley protagonist, speaks for everyone who hails from small town rural America.
Miller’s Valley reads with an easy cadence. ” Oh, I get that, I know him he’s just like… she reminds me of…. ” I said to myself over and over, as Miller’s Valley unfolded on pages that turned easily and eagerly.
In every small town there exists a mystery behind every doorway and in Miller’s Valley the secrets play out at kitchen tables, barns and where else but at the local diner. The book reads like a memoir. It is both predictable and unpredictable in a perfect blend.
Anna Quindlen was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist while at the New York Times. Her memoir Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake published in 2012 was a number one New York Times bestseller.
Enjoy!
Summer is fleeting but this flashback to the 1950s will be a great ending to your summer reading. Edna Ferber’s Giant is my recommendation for a last-minute wrap on summer.
A great novelist, a wonderful story with unforgettable characters that can only be found in West Texas. Even if you’ve seen the movie a dozen times, read the book.
There is little wonder why The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah has received acclaim. The novel is a great read, indeed a page turner, reminding me of Doerr’s All The Light We Can Not See.
The Nightingale translates the horror of German occupied France during WW II. It is a hero’s worship of the French Resistance, of brave women and men fighting their occupiers against all odds. There are victories, losses, triumphs and tragedies but throughout the pages evolves a love story, and a reconciliation between sisters, a father and daughter. The war brings people together and simultaneously tears them apart. A tale of survival, brilliant storytelling, riveting to the end.
As is my want on this blog I will give no more detail about this story other than to encourage you to enjoy. The Nightingale is very much another of Gordon’s Good Reads.
A selection of additional books by Kristin Hannah include Fly Away, The Things We Do For Love, Once in Every Life, and A Handful of Heaven.
It took only three sittings to race through John Grisham’s latest novel Rogue Lawyer. I wasn’t in a particular rush but like so much of his work it was hard to put down. I especially liked Rogue Lawyer because it added a few edgy contemporary issues.
” A lawyer like me is forced to work in the shadows. My opponents are protected by badges, uniforms, and all the myriad trappings of government power. They are a sworn and duty-bound to uphold the law, but since they cheat like hell it forces me to cheat even more.”
The story of the middle of the night police invasion of a private home is frightening and carries a familiar ring of cable news. Your mind may chill with images of surplus Army tanks, Kevlar and night vision goggles on the streets of local communities. The book has a menu other cases, characters and clients.
John Grisham’s Rogue Lawyer is indeed a good read. For other great Grisham novels search gordonsgoodreads.com
Isabel Allende captures a complex variety of societal topics in her new novel The Japanese Lover. Allende weaves desperate themes in a story line encompassing aging, a burning love affair which transcends racial lines, the Japanese internment during WWII, human trafficking, child pornography and homosexuality.
Allende hardly misses a social issue while telling a story surrounding the life of a well to do San Francisco woman from a prominent Jewish family who beginning in her childhood falls in love with a Japanese boy, the son of the gardener at their seaside estate. The story continues over hills and valleys Till death do us part.
It is always pleasurable to read Allende’s writing. Her novels touch reality and the characters provoke thought and deliver insight but absent a lecture. I also commend to you Allende’s Island Beneath The Sea and Daughter of Fortune. Search here at gordonsgoodreads for further details on these novels.
It is another must read for all lovers of Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Novels. Again, Mark Greaney carries on the great tradition. Commander In Chief turns the Russo/American conflict from The Ukraine to Lithuania with a thinly disguised Russian President Valeri Volodin raising havoc in the Baltic’s.
Jack Ryan Jr. returns in this novel with a large role and John Clark again proves he is invincible! Add to the plot money laundering, Bitcoin and a new class of Russian submarines and Greaney has all the necessary ingredients for 718 pages of excitement.
No spoilers here! Just get the book and anticipate a good read.
The prose is magnificent and the story ironically timely in these divisive days of 2015. Twenty-one-years after its original publication in 1994 the story line is as prescient as then. Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson is an award-winning novel, the themes of which resonate today.
The writing captivates the reader from the very first pages. Outside the wind blew steadily from the north, driving snow against the courthouse. By noon three inches had settled on the town, a snow so ethereal it could hardly be said to have settled at all, instead it swirled like some icy fog.
As the story unfolds, a young Japanese man is accused of murder surrounded by the prejudice against all Japanese following the Second World War. A love affair between a young newspaperman and a Japanese woman, a trial, a community split apart and a verdict.
Prescient? Look into my face, interrupted Hatsue. Look at my eyes Ishmael. My face is the face of the people who did it–don’t you see what I mean? My face, it’s how the Japanese look. My family is in bad trouble now. Do you see what I mean?
No further spoiling of the story. It would be a travesty for me to do so. You will thank me for telling you of my belated discovery of Snow Falling On Cedars. The novel was made into a movie directed by John Hicks and released in 1995.
A love that kindles the depths of the heart is interwoven with an unimaginable self-inflicted tragedy in M.L. Stedman’s novel The Light Between Oceans. “When it comes to kids, parents are all instinct and hope.” The Light Between Oceans is everything that this reader believes a good novel should be.
The tale is told with extraordinary care with just enough complexity to always nudge reality. Stedman’s characters are believable, true to themselves and captivating story tellers. ” You have to forgive only once. To resent one must do it all day every day.” The skies over Janus are clear as its beacon keeps mariners safe, but even the brightest light is not a shield from life’s stormy seas. As The New York Times stated in its initial review, “Prepare to weep.”
First published in 2012 The Light Between Oceans is more than a good read. It is marvelous! M.L. Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia, the setting of this book. She now lives in London. This is her first novel. More please!
Gordon's Good Reads 