The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am going to need to read this book again. It is a complex series of interconnections and transformations and now that I finished it and know how it began I want to read the ending again. Yes, that seems backwards, but it is how this excellent novel is constructed we start with a story set in 1999 and then we go back in 2 distinct jumps to previous periods in the house's history. The story is intriguing, the characters well-drawn, and the structure brilliant.
This is my contribution to the October Books You Loved Link Up.
It also counts toward the What's in a Name 7 challenge as a book with a reference to time in the title.
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read this in November 2008 and wrote this review at the time: Wow! This is an amazing novel. I read it in a single evening and was very impressed. The story is a page-turner, the writing is beautiful, and the characters are strange and familiar at the same time. There are (of course) lots of reflections on marriage, but also on youth, and war, and courage, and race, and the Rosenbergs, and love, and how a house is a witness to our life.
“We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives.”
This is my contribution to the September Books You Loved Link Up.
The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love the way Davies wove the story of his narrator's life in and out of the lives (and letters) of other people in this book. As always he played around with words and made lots of sly observations about the human condition and made Canada, Toronto in particular, a character in the story. I could be totally wrong (as I have no actual knowledge of it) but I feel like I learn so much about what makes Canadians Canadian when I read Davies.
There were lots of great lines in this book and I want share some of them:
"I suspect you of having a nice, happy uncomplicated home. A terrible start in life, let me tell you. The more tough-and-tumble you experience early in life, the better armed you are against what's to follow." (p.122)
"I was a great reader in my childhood. I knew a lot of poetry, not all of it good, but there is an astonishing amount of nutrition in second-rate poetry." (p. 152)
"There is a lot of schoolgirl still left in her, and she wants to do something outlandish and mess with unlimited butter." (p. 348)
"Every love affair is a private madness into which nobody else can hope to penetrate." (p. 461)
"To have watched my city change from a colonial outpost of a great Empire to a great city in what looks decidedly like a new empire; to have watched the British connection wither as the Brits grew weary under Imperial greatness, and the American connection grow under the caress of the iron hand beneath the buckskin glove -- that was to have taken part in a great movement of history." (p. 468)
Robertson Davies is a Canadian author, and this novel is set mostly in Toronto so it counts toward the 8th Canadian Book Challenge. This is also my contribution to the August Books You Loved Link Up.
This is the first in a new series of posts about books that I read in the past that I thought were great. Carole's Chatter hosts a monthly link-up of "Books You Loved" which I wanted to participate in. The problem is that I don't necessarily read a 5-star book every month. My solution is this series in which I will look back at past (pre-blogging) favorites.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is touching without being sentimental and it is beautifully written. The connections in this family -- going back to their abolitionist grandfather -- are rendered perfectly. To a great extent you are who (and where) you come from. Also, I finally realized why I don't like black walnuts, they taste like furniture.
“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.”
I have read 2 other books by Robinson--I liked Home and really disliked Housekeeping--but this one is amazing. The voice of the narrator seemed so familiar and comfortable to me that it made reading the book like talking to a friend.
This is my contribution to the July Books You Loved Link Up.
