The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island / Linda Greenlaw

When this book came out nearly ten years ago, it caught my eye. It's one of those books I would have read sooner if I had infinite free time, or perhaps more self-discipline (I probably could have skipped seasons 3, 4, and 5 of "Hell’s Kitchen," for example).

After our brief trip to Acadia National Park this summer (and several meals of lobster quite literally “under our belts”) I decided to read this book to extend my vacation mentality. Back in Atlanta, a good five hours' drive from the salty ocean, and with temps reaching near 100 in early August, it was nice to escape with this book to the small wooded island surrounded by water that’s 55 degrees even in late summer, an island that still supports a fishing community, mostly of lobster fishermen. I’ve been fantasizing what it might be like living in Maine year round, having unlimited access to lobster and wild blueberries, that rugged coastline with crashing waves, a profusion of wildflowers and birch forests.

The book gives snapshots into everyday life on Isle au Haut, a large portion of which forms part of Acadia National Park, but separated from the mainland by seven watery miles, so it avoids the hoards of tourists that descend upon Mount Desert Island. Of course it’s lonely on Isle au Haut, there are eccentric characters you can’t escape from, bad weather, bad fishing, and the normal tragedies, big and small, that plague life everywhere. But there are wonderful things beyond the aforementioned supply of lobster (lobster casserole, and lobster omelets, lobster pasta, lobster bisque…)—a public library that serves 83 residents and lots of reading time, time for family and a sense of community, and beauty of nature in abundance. Greenlaw doesn’t sugarcoat life on Isle au Haut, but I must say it was a delight to escape to her island for a short while, if only via the pages of a book.

Linda Greenlaw is author of The Hungry Ocean.

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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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