Freedom / Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen seems to have a knack to chronicling America’s dysfunctional families. The Corrections was certainly memorable in that regard and in Freedom he charts the ups and downs of the decades-long relationship of Patty and Walter Berglund from St. Paul, Minnesota. The characters in Freedom offer an antidote to the St. Paul denizens of Garrison Keillor’s Minnesota ideal, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”. In Franzen’s Freedom individuals are flawed and far from perfect, and in spite of this they are very relatable and very human—they’re people you know, probably people you have Thanksgiving with (probably people you'd argue with at the Thanksgiving table). The subplot (beyond the chronicle of the Berglunds' long-suffering relationship) is a misguided attempt to purportedly create a habitat for an endangered bird, while flattening a mountaintop to do it.

I thought during the course of reading this that a more apt title might have been Mistakes (and Patty does write a missive called "Mistakes Were Made"), though I suppose the freedom in the title might refer to our freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to choose the course of our lives, for good or for bad?

Anyhow, I highlighted the passage below, always on the look-out for quotes that expose the internet for its notorious unreliability and all too frequent mediocrity.

“The internet’s f__d up, isn’t it?” Jenna said…
“So f__d up, so f__d up,” he
said
…” free information’s by definition worthless.”

Guess that’s what libraries are for!

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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