By Mamie Potter
Are you missing our in-person book bashes at Quail Ridge Books? We sure are. While we wait to meet again, here are some of my recommendations from bashes past!
{{a href="external_link-19554006"}}Washington Black{{/a}} by Esi Edugyan. A slave on a plantation
in Barbados in the 1800s, George Washington Black receives a gift: he is chosen to help his master’s brother, who is building a flying machine. This is a story of a young boy on an amazing adventure, navigating air, water, and the evils of slavery.
Grand Union by Zadie Smith: Smith’s first story collection contains stories of an alarming future, stories that read like free-writes—riffs from the mind of a brilliant writer—and stories that drift into absurdity.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. Alternating between the ‘80s and the present, Makkai shows how AIDS altered the gay population in ways that reverberate today. This book will stand with the great writing about the AIDS epidemic, including Abraham Verghese’s memoir, My Own Country, and And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts.
There There by Tommy Orange. The urban Native American experience is laid bare in this debut novel by a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. The lives of twelve people are brought together by their preparation for the upcoming Big Oakland Powwow. Beautiful language, fascinating and complex characters, and a run-away-train plot.
The White Book by Han Kang. On the first page, Kang makes a list of white things. The objects on this list recur throughout the book (not sure I’d call it a novel—it’s more like a series of vignettes). It is the story of a woman whose infant brother died before she was born, whose black eyes are the only thing that isn’t white in her memories.
Five-Carat Soul by James McBride. These stories have all the magnificent qualities of McBride’s National Book Award winning novel, The Good Lord Bird: quirky and poignant and hilarious characters amid life in myriad situations, humanity at its most human presented in beautiful writing.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang. A young wife, Yeong-hye, makes a commitment to eschew meat because of disturbing dreams she has. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Award, this is not a book for those looking for a light read, but Deborah Smith’s translation of Kang’s book, originally written in Korean, is lyrical and hypnotic.
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob. Everyone is talking about this graphic memoir! Jacob looks at important events and topics of the twenty-first century, and answers deep questions for her son as he examines the world through young eyes. The text is accompanied by beautiful, meaningful collages.
All This Happened Long Ago—It Happens Now by Iris Tillman. Tillman, founding director of Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, explores her history as an American Jewish child during World War II and that of her relatives in Europe. If the horrors of that time can be made palatable, it is through Tillman’s elegant poetry.
Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born by Ray McManus. Get every poetry book you can by this award-winning South Carolina poet! In person he’s rough-talking, cigarette-smoking, and tattooed, but his heart is made of gold and so is his poetry!
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