The Mandibles

<sigh>  I like “the world is ending” novels because they give me hope and since this one is set in the near future it seems more realistic and scarier than other dystopian novels I have read.  The story reeled me in although I kept thinking that the author’s real name must be PAUL RYAN.  What we have here is basically the Right’s view of hell and if you don’t have a pretty good grasp of fiscal policy you’re in for a few pages of slow reading.  Basically, the Fed’s money printing policy and an incompetent Lat president (Hispanics are the majority now) who decides to default on our debt (you know, like what the current Republican nominee wants to do) cause the dollar to plunge, taking the U.S. with it.  We follow the once filthy rich Mandible patriarch and his offspring — the ridiculously precocious great-grandson and seer who force-feeds us the nuts-and-bolts of reckless fiscal policy, the dead-wrong liberal economic professor son-in-law, the survivalist renegade who becomes the family’s savior, the boho aunt, the young trophy-wife turned poop-encrusted Alzheimer’s patient & the rest — as they struggle with their shifting fortunes and general breakdown of society.  Other features: No global warming (the characters complain constantly about the cold), the new word for “bullshit” is “treasury,” the government takes over even the minutia of life, and a happy ending that will put a great big smile Sean Hannity’s face.   Happy reading!

The Patrick Melrose Novels

And you thought YOUR childhood was bad.  Maybe I’m just partial to super screwed up English families, but I found these novels (they’re packed together in one book) immensely entertaining.   The novels follow Patrick Melrose through childhood, heroin addiction (I know, I know, but it’s not one of these book takes up a lot of dull pages talking about recovery), and loss of his family home to a cult.  Also, I have not come across a father more villainous than David Melrose, and I’ve read a lot of Dickens.  Biting dialogue, acerbically funny and, sad to say for St. Aubyn, based on a true story!   A fun read.

The Fifth Child

The perfect gift for that new mother!  This is probably the creepiest book I’ve ever read.  Basically a loving couple with four loving children find their little Eden disrupted when the fifth, not so loving, child is born.   Lessing raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about parental and societal responsibility and the sacrificing of one for the good of the whole.  Well written and depressingly hard to put down.

The Orphan Master’s Son

Probably the best book I’ve read over the past couple of years.  Funny and compelling, you don’t even realize how much you’re learning about the country until you’re done.  The story takes place in North Korea during the Kim Jong Il years.  The book’s protagonist, Jun Do, rises through the ranks, doing whatever it takes to survive and introducing us to jobs we (or at least I) never knew existed.  Tunnel soldier anyone?  How about learning the ins and outs of kidnapping the Japanese?   The portrait Adam Johnson paints of the country is devastating, but he does it with such humor and wit that you want to keep reading into the wee hours of the morning.

The Greenlanders

The perfect gift for anyone up for an Old Norse saga.  Jane Smiley does an amazing job giving one the sense of what it was like to live in fourteenth century Greenland —  the language, customs, hardships and justice.  The story centers around Margret, who is exiled from the community for adultery, and her brother Asgeir, a landowner who loses much of his property through deceit.  Feuds, starvation, death, fragile acceptance, this book has it all.

Cloud Atlas

I loved this book.  One soul living six very different lives over several centuries, starting in the 1800s and ending in a post-apocalyptic world.  The chapters are very loosely connected and written in different styles.  One story is told through letters, another a journal, another through an interrogation, etc.   All are interesting.  The 1rst story takes place a couple of centuries ago, the last far into the future.   The narratives double back, starting and ending within the shadow of the Moriori, a pacifist tribe that lived in New Zealand and was eventually wiped out by the Maori.  Highly recommend.

The Incarnations

The plot: a cabdriver learns through a series of anonymous letters that he and an unidentified soul mate have had six past lives together. The story takes place in China as do the past lives.  This is not a book that will make you yearn to be reincarnated.  Ever. The incarnations are violent — one so violent I had to skip over some of the details — and don’t improve from life to life. Mongol slave, concubine to a Marquis de Sade-like emperor, prostitute, school girl during the Cultural Revolution and other happy scenarios had me wondering

All the Light We Cannot See

I liked this book but didn’t love it.  Not being too familiar with WWII literature, I found the depiction of living in Nazi-occupied France interesting (although the chapter with the trite “boiling frog” analogy has no business being in a National Book Award winner) as well as the runner about the missing diamond.  It’s an easy read, short chapters that jump back and forth in time, and though I kept fearing a Disney ending (which may have affected my enjoyment in general), it didn’t happen.  My main complaint is that while I admired some of the characters, I was never emotionally drawn-in by them.  A good read for those who aren’t up for a over-challenging book at the moment.