One Day - review and giveaway

The ad for One Day by David Nicholls caught my eye because it featured a quote from Nick Hornby. When Hornby recommends a book, I take notice.

"big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable"

Hornby also noted One Day to be "the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads."


Well, well. I might be one of those people. And, I have to agree with Nick, it was a perfect poolside read.

Because it's still summer, although school has already started in some places, thanks to the wonderfully generous folks at Random House, I have three copies of One Day to give away so you, too, may experience this gem of a late summer read. But first, let me tell you why I liked this book so much.

The main characters, Em & Dex are compellingly human. Insecure, arrogant, witty, intelligent, clueless, vulnerable, clumsy, generous, lazy, ambitious, talented and ultimately lovable. The dialogue between Em & Dex made me laugh out loud several times, just like my favorite Hornby books.

The story spans twenty years beginning in 1988 on graduation day. I graduated from college in 1987 so right away, there was this connection for me. It's also set in England, which I love. Relationships are central to the story. Not just the relationship between Dex & Em but their relationships to others including family, coworkers, roommates and friends. I don't want to reveal too much because much of the charm in this book is in its curious unfolding. Lets just say, if you like Nick Hornby's "Juliet, Naked" or "About a Boy" and have a fondness for Bridget Jones and the film "When Harry Met Sally," you will like this book. You might even love it. You'll definitely want to read it before you see the movie (Anne Hathaway! Patricia Clarkson!).

Giveaway Details:

• Three copies of One Day by David Nicholls have been provided by Random House.
• To enter to win, leave a comment on this post that includes your email address.
• For another entry follow this blog or subscribe via email -- current followers/subscribers are eligible too. Leave a separate comment for this.
• Blog/Tweet about this giveaway. Leave a separate comment with your twitter user name and/or link to blog post.

NOTE: Giveaway reserved for residents within the U.S.

The winners will be selected from the comments using random.org.
Deadline: midnight, August 26. Winners announced August 27.

Good luck!

Review - The Believers

I read this book because it was a selection of the Twitter Book Club. This book club first caught my attention with its previous selection of Olive Kitteridge, one of my favorite novels. Why not give The Believers a try?

From the publisher:

When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this discovery themselves, but for the meantime, they are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts.

Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, has found herself drawn into the world of Orthodox Judaism and is now being pressed to make a commitment to that religion. Karla, a devoted social worker hoping to adopt a child with her husband, is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper stand outside her office. Ne’er-do-well Lenny is living at home, approaching another relapse into heroin addiction.

In the course of battling their own demons — and one another — the Litvinoff clan is called upon to examine long-held articles of faith that have formed the basis of their lives together and their identities as individuals. In the end, all the family members will have to answer their own questions and decide what — if anything — they still believe in.

Although there are many quirky characters, I was immediately intrigued with Audrey:

Audrey nodded warily. She had never cared for conspiratorial female conversation of this sort. Its assumption of shared preoccupations was usually unfounded in her experience, its intimacies almost always the trapdoor to some subterranean hostility.

As the story moves forward you see that Audrey has become adept at channeling her hostility into an integral facet of her personality. Her acid tongue actually defines her relationship with others -- by turns shockingly funny or plain mean. It's playful banter with her husband; it's tell-it-like-it-is honesty to her friend; and it's definitely one way she carves out some power for herself as the physically small woman living in the shadows of the larger-than-life man. Respect or fear -- doesn't matter, she isn't interested in being liked. What was once an attention attracting cheekiness has over the years ripened to a full-blown up yours attitude in middle age.

This book is one of the most tightly written satires I've read in ages. It's wickedly funny. As I read along, I kept wanting to stop and mark the really great lines but every paragraph produced a zinger of insight about one of the characters.

Here's an example (again about Audrey):

It was terrifying, certainly, to think that her sex life was over for good, but marginally more terrifying to think that it was not. She did not want to become one of those hormone-replacement floozies bopping around in a leather skirt, boasting about her still-vibrant sexuality, trawling in the back of the New York Review of Books for someone to share her love of Pinter and Klee and rainy days in Montauk.

While I was thoroughly entertained and, at times thrilled with Heller's writing, this book will not be popular with everyone. Like all great satire, it pokes a sharp stick at beliefs. Not just any beliefs, but the ones we hold on to most strongly to give our lives meaning and to define ourselves: religious, political, family roles, loyalty, betrayal, gender roles, racial identity, etc.

Will The Believers be made into a film? I'd be surprised if it isn't. Cate Blanchett as Audrey? Helen Mirren?

Recommended if you liked The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

Note: The Twitter Book Club will discuss this book on October 26, 2009 at 9:00 pm Eastern Time

Olive Kitteridge 2009 winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

I loved this book and am full agreement with the Pulitzer committee's decision. What a difference a year makes as I don't know what they were thinking with regard to last year's winner.

“Olive Kitteridge,” a set of linked stories about a gruff, 60-something school teacher in a coastal town in Maine, is the work that has won its author, Elizabeth Strout, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

“As heroines go, Olive Kitteridge is about as far away from a Disney princess as Maine is from Florida,” wrote Yvonne Zipp in her review of “Olive Kitteridge” for the Monitor (5/16/08). “Before her retirement, the gruff 60-something was ‘the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of.’ And the years haven’t exactly mellowed her.”

“And yet,” adds Zipp, “as she stumps her way through Elizabeth Strout’s translucent new ‘novel in stories,’ ‘Olive Kitteridge’, she’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Strout makes a reader feel protective, even tender, toward Olive – despite her prickliness,” notes Zipp.

The 13 linked stories also serve as microcosms of small-town life, “with its gossip, small kindnesses, and everyday tragedies.”

Olive herself has conflicted feelings about her fellow man – “She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people.”

And yet, in the end, writes Zipp, “When Olive’s story is over, she doesn’t end with bitterness, but equal parts gratitude and regret. ‘It baffled her, the world. She didn’t want to leave it yet.’ Readers will know just how she feels.”

When tackling a Maine coastal town, Strout knows whereof she writes. She was raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire.

She is also the author of “Amy and Isabelle” (1998), a mother-daughter young adult novel set in a small New England town, and “Abide with Me” (2006) about a minister in a Maine town during the Cold War.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Congratulations to Elizabeth Strout on a well-deserved honor.

Book Love

Not so long ago, if asked about my reading preferences I would have said I prefer nonfiction to fiction. This has started to change beginning with reading "The Road" this summer and "The Senator's Wife" not long after. Cormac McCarthy may not be exactly what first comes to mind for poolside reading but I was captivated. Since then, I've been checking out blogs about books and the joys of reading for pleasure. As a result, I've learned about great books, mostly fiction but some nonfiction too, and have been motivated to read more novels.

Here are some recently read books that have captured my heart:

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

"While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

This quote is taken from the final story "The Third and Final Continent" which ended up being my favorite. I think this story could be adapted to make a wonderful film.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

"The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place."

Such beautiful, bittersweet writing...

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Can't say it better than this from the New Yorker:

"And there in every story, like a tree that’s been blackened by lightning but still leafs in the spring, stands Olive Kitteridge, a retired math teacher who loves her tulips, bullies her husband, and barks at anyone foolish enough to irritate her. You loathe this woman at the book’s beginning; you long for her at its finish."

The Best of 2008

- Nonfiction -

Infidel

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Three Cups of Tea

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

A Three Dog Life

Honorable mention: The Middle Place

- Fiction -

The Road

Interpreter of Maladies

The Senator's Wife

Annie Dunne

Last Night at the Lobster