This 1998 novel is a wonderfully imagined story set in a violent post–Civil War America peopled with extraordinary characters. It's beautifully crafted, bleak, and operatic.
This book sat on my shelf for 20 years before I recently plucked up the courage to make inroads into its 1,400 pages. A few weeks later I was trying to ration my reading, as I never wanted it to end. Set a few years after India won independence from Britain, it is a most beautiful mosaic of interconnected families, Hindu and Muslim, arranged around the tale of a mother trying to find the right husband for her daughter. Fascinating, often very funny, and deeply touching.
I am entranced by these short stories and revisit them from time to time. Trevor never lays out where his stories are going — they are so deft and delicate that they just unfold, as he gently uncovers the wounded hearts of those who struggle with the shame and embarrassment of just being human.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
A World War II–era family drama turns into a story within a story, within a story — as well as a mystery, a thriller, and a tract on the politics of love, passion, and betrayal. It's brilliantly written, sharp as a blade, and completely engrossing.
Vargas Llosa's 2003 novel — based, evidently, on highly meticulous research — connects Flora Tristán, an early-19th-century socialist writer and feminist, with her grandson, the great French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin. Two extraordinary people, two extraordinary lives.
Two More Pints by Roddy Doyle (Jonathan Cape [London], $6).
The author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Woman Who Walked into Doors imagines a concoction of conversations between two regulars in a Dublin bar. Each conversation has its own interior logic, which will leave you either bamboozled or snorting with joy. A little treasure that you can dip into from time to time to cheer you up.
