Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu - This 2020 National Book Award Fiction winner is a satire written in the form of a screenplay. Willis Wu is a "generic Asian man" in scenes set in a Chinese restaurant in a television police procedural, hoping to move up someday to another stereotypical role, "Kung Fu guy," like his immigrant father. A subtle statement, sometimes funny, mostly sad, on the racism experienced by non-whites in the United States.
Wish You Well by David Baldacci - My husband apparently read this book many years ago and then handed it to me, telling me I would like it. I was puzzled at the time, because he mostly reads mysteries/suspense/thrillers, and those are NOT my favorite genres. It's sat on my TBR shelf for some time for that reason. This book, however, is my favorite genre, historical fiction (and perhaps partly memoir).
Set in 1940, it tells the story of the Cardinal family. After their author father dies in an auto accident, 12-year-old Louisa "Lou" Cardinal, her younger brother Oscar ("Oz"), and their mother Amanda, catatonic after the same accident, move from New York City to live with Lou's great-grandmother and namesake, Louisa Mae Cardinal, in the mountains of Virginia. Louisa is helped by a black man named Eugene, and a lawyer in the nearest town named Cotton.
Much of the book describes in detail what the land and life was like in this rural area at the time, which was fine with me. Lou and Oz have some fun times with an orphan boy nicknamed Diamond, until he is killed in an explosion in an abandoned mine. This happens about 2/3 of the way through the book, and then the pace of the plot picks up, with courtroom drama and a predictable happy ending.
Baldacci explains in an author's note at the beginning that the story "is fictional, but the setting, other than place names, is not." His grandmother lived all but the last ten years of her life in those mountains, and his mother the first 17 of hers. He spent much time interviewing his mother in preparing to write this book, and states that the book is "in part, an oral history of both where and how my mother grew up." He concludes, "I've spent the last twenty years or so hunting relentlessly for story material, and utterly failed to see a lumberyardful within my own family...while it came later than it probably should have, writing this novel was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life."
This was an easy and pleasant read. I'm not sure why some reviews and descriptions of the book describe it as being set in 1953, because it clearly is not.
Four Streets and a Square by Marc Aronson - Marc Aronson, an award-winning author of nonfiction and biography, focuses this book, subtitled "A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea," on four major streets in New York City: Wall, 4th, 42nd, and 125th, as well as Union Square, in order to tell the history of New York City (primarily the island of Manhattan).
The book is packed with illustrations, timelines, and icons in the margins to remind readers to check the web page with multimedia links for the book - other websites, academic sites, and full texts of historical documents in the public domain. At the end, the author explains his use of terminology, tells how he researched and wrote the book (in a four-page author's note), and provides 24 pages of source notes, five pages of image credits, and a ten-plus-page bibliography. The final book (this was an advance reader edition) will also have an index.
I'm more familiar with Aronson as an author of books for elementary grades and up, and this book is grouped with those for "young adults and adults" on his home page. I think the book might be hard for students under high school age to follow, but it is definitely appropriate for older teens and any adult with an interest in the history of Manhattan.
No comments:
Post a Comment