Peachy Reads

The Virgin Suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides Click here to check for availability at AFPLS The title reveals the ending, so there is no surprise, but that is not to say there is no suspense. The Virgin Suicides recounts the story of the Lisbon sisters and the tragic gradual unraveling of their well-structured existence in suburban Detroit of the 1970s. Fate leads inevitably towards the final chapter of the book, which is also the final chapter of their short lives. Cecelia is the first to go (by self-defenestration) and her sudden death seems to set a chain of events in motion that eventually brings all her sisters with her (there is even speculation that Cecelia’s suicide released a contagion that infected her siblings). The story is told in the voice of the neighborhood boys who shared the same street and the same school with the Lisbon girls, secretly admiring them, mostly from afar, in life as well as after death. The identities of the boys remain somewhat mysterious to the reader, ...

Remarkable Creatures / Tracy Chevalier Click here to check for availability at AFPLS The best-selling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring brings us the story of Mary Anning, an early nineteenth century amateur paleontologist and discoverer of fossils. From her base in Lyme Regis in what is now known as Southern England’s Jurassic Coast, Mary Anning discovered amazingly complete fossilized skeletons of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and prehistoric fish. Because she uncovered fossilized impressions of “monsters” of which people understood very little (this was years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species or much understanding of geologic eras and extinctions), her discoveries challenged the prevailing view of God’s creation and plan, and caused her to be regarded with suspicion. (Fast forward 200 years to certain school districts in the US.) Mary Anning’s story is all the more remarkable because she was an unschooled woman from the lower class operating in a field dominated by educa...

One Day / David Nicholls Dexter and Emma, (known to each other as “Dex” and “Em”), nearly experience a romantic entanglement on the day of graduation from university in Edinburgh in 1988. Nearly, because it doesn’t quite happen. The remarkable premise of this book is that it follows their relationship for only one day during the next twenty years as their life paths drift apart and then reconnect, all the while holding on to that initial infatuation that seemed to make them soulmates. Every chapter meets up with Dex and Em on July 15th, charting the sometimes surprising, and often humorous courses of their lives. Dex is a bit narcissistic and self-destructive; Emma a little lacking in confidence and drive. But they seem to bring out the best in each other and depend on each other’s support to get through life’s tough patches. This book out-Nick-Hornbys Nick Hornby. It’s authentic, it’s funny, it’s frequently dramatic, but never boring. I smell a movie coming.

White Tiger / Aravind Adiga Click here to check for for availability at AFPLS Balram Halwai, a.k.a. the “White Tiger,” was born in the “Darkness” of India where inherited caste assignments condemn men and women to a lifetime of abject poverty and servitude. Starting first as a hired driver to a more privileged caste, Balram aspires to be part of the New India, where outsourced call-centers, foreign technology subsidiaries, and start-ups signal the new economic clout of the subcontinent within the global economy. He gains entrance to this New India by becoming a murderer. The images that Adiga paints of India are exquisite and often metaphorical, illustrating the frequent madness that is commonplace there. The White Tiger brought to mind J.M. Coetzee’s apartheid novels, Richard Wright’s Native Son , and the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Adiga’s highly captivating novel masterfully exposes the underside of India’s economic aspirations with all its contradictions: poverty and excess, mo...

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 Help / Kathryn Stockett Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This book by first-time novelist (and current Atlanta resident) Kathryn Stockett offers a glimpse into the 1962 segregated society of Jackson, Mississippi, where white women of even relatively modest means employed help (i.e. black maids) to cook, clean and essentially raise their children. Nearly one hundred years after the end of slavery, the relationships between the kitchen help and the mistress of the house are not all that different from antebellum times. The story is told in the distinctive voices of two black maids, Minny and Aibileen, and one white woman, Miss Skeeter, who thinks that the status quo bears some scrutiny. The book’s narrative and Miss Skeeter’s secret interviews with the maids reveal fascinating stories, and in the context of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, these stories threaten to turn Jackson society topsy-turvy. The resolution of some of the loose ends a...

La’s Orchestra Saves the World / Alexander McCall-Smith Click here to check for availability at AFPLS Alexander McCall-Smith hits another homerun with this standalone novel set in England during World War II. As usual, his characters drive the novel, but there is a wonderful sense of place and time that is different from his other writings. Lavender, known as “La,” has been unlucky in love and sets off from cosmopolitan London to a lonely refuge in Suffolk. The Blitz keeps her marooned in the countryside and she looks for things to do to keep her busy. She forms a small orchestra, made up of townspeople and airmen from the nearby field, and they practice once a month, preparing for a victory concert that is too long in coming. Alexander McCall-Smith just seems to have a knack for painting wonderful pictures with words. Like a Vermeer genre painting, his books create a picture of domesticity that is so accurate, it’s like watching a movie in your head. ©Ken Vesey, 7 June 2010