Staff Choices

Author Arshay Cooper grew up on the West Side of Chicago in a rough neighborhood with seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his way at almost every turn. While attending high school in the 1990's, a benefactor introduces the sport of rowing to his school. It was difficult to recruit a team of students willing to participate. Arshay was one of them. The assembled group of students quickly discovered how much physical effort and team coordination is required to row. They are ridiculed by their classmates and then by other rowing teams. Some didn't even know how to swim. With a combination of grit, dedication and determination their team improved. They get to be part of something together. Arshay became a team leader among his fellow students. You can hear in his voice the beginnings of the motivational speaker and activist he is today. This book is about the power of someone believing in you so that you can believe in yourself so that you can succeed and pay it forward.

Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout  is a sequel to her successful novel Olive Kitteridge, which was written a decade ago, and was made into a 4 part TV series

You don’t need to have read Olive Kitteridge, to enjoy Olive Again, but it will help to have a familiarity with this cranky unforgettable character

Olive, who lives in a coastal town in Maine is now in her 70’s and is a widow. Grief has not softened the edges, she is still stubborn, opinionated, salty and gossipy. Finding herself lonely after the death of her husband, Olive strikes up an unlikely relationship with Jack Kennison, a retired Harvard professor whom she and her husband once mocked as arrogant. They share a prickly connection as they both regret alienating their children and many friends along the way.

Like Olive Kitteridge, this novel is made up of 13 somewhat connected short stories. Olive plays a role in most of them, as do several characters from Strouts novels The Burgess Boys and Amy and Isabelle.

Elizabeth Strout brilliantly weaves these stories together with themes of loneliness, regret, faith, class division and family ties. There is a richness and a raw humanness to each of them. The underlying theme within them is resilience.

Olive is THE most complex character I have ever come across. Strout is a master at showing the subtleties of characters , and their innermost thoughts.

Olive will surprise you, confuse you, and she might even anger you, but she will also inspire you.. Through it all, somehow you can’t help but root for her! All the credit goes to Elizabeth Strout for creating yet another well written novel. I have enjoyed all of her books, and this one was well worth the wait. I hope you enjoy it.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig was an extraordinary example of literary fiction along with a healthy helping of fantasy thrown in. 

Nora Seed is having a really bad day. She is mugged, loses her job, blamed for other’s people’s failures, and her cat is run over by a car. She is also seriously depressed. This day is one of many bad days that Nora has experienced over the last decade of her life. She can’t take life anymore and attempts suicide.

When she wakes up, Nora discovers that she is in the space between life and death known as The Midnight Library.

“Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

This magical library, overseen by a version of Mrs. Elm, Nora’s kindly grade school librarian, offers Nora the opportunity to choose “books” that are variations on her life that exist in a kind of alternate universe. Technically she’s able to try on lives to see if there is one she wants to live. The only catch is that the library and any opportunities therein will disappear forever if she doesn’t ultimately decide she wants to live.

This book makes you ponder your own life, and if you’re living your truest and best version of yourself. Matt Haig is such a talented writer and knowing that he has struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide made this book all the more meaningful. If you enjoyed Taylor Jenkin Reid’s book Maybe in Another Life this should be your next read. It would make a perfect book discussion choice as well.

A touching often painful story of a young boy “Shuggie” growing up in the bleak, coal covered public housing of  Glasgow, Scotland in the 1980’s. His beloved mother is haunted by unfulfilled dreams of glamour and soaks her disappointments in alcohol. His mostly absent father and older siblings walk out, leaving Shuggie to navigate the burden. He has his own societal struggles of not being a “normal” boy as he navigates his yearnings and desires.

This is a raw epic tale of a working class family, their struggles with love, devotion, poverty, addiction and sexuality. The Winner of the Booker Prize and first time novelist Douglas Stuart tells a rich, somewhat autobiographical, unforgettable story that will stay with you for a long time.

It has been said that there are two types of readers during this pandemic—those that want to immerse themselves in all things virus past, present, and future;  and those who want to avoid the topic at all costs. If you find yourself in the former group, then you will want to pick up The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. In her latest book, Donoghue (most famous for her novel Room) sets this gripping story in a Dublin hospital that is overwhelmed with people suffering from the double catastrophes of the 1918 Influenza pandemic and WWI.   Nurse Julia Power has been assigned to a makeshift ward for expectant mothers who have been stricken with the deadly flu. The hospital is severely understaffed as much of  the medical team has also been felled by the flu, and Julia is working almost round the clock trying to save her patients and their unborn babies. Help arrives in the unlikely figure of Bridie, a young, impoverished volunteer with no medical background but with great energy and spirit. As the two women deal with crisis after crisis in brutal conditions, a deep bond develops between them, transcending the social barriers that would have once kept them apart.

 The whole novel takes place within just 36 hours, and the pace is unrelenting, the hospital scenes filled with gore and the stench of death. Yet there is also a quiet observation happening in the background, of how class determines so much for these characters, often literally life and death.  Donoghue finished her first draft of The Pull of the Stars just at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the parallels between her fictional world versus what is currently happening in major cities across the world is uncanny. Despite over a century of medical advances, the power of a pandemic to bring the modern world almost to a screeching halt has hardly diminished. The same holds true with the politics of pandemics, in the sometimes false messaging to the public and the ugly reality of which groups in society will suffer the most. 

Two shy friends, not quite a bromance, navigate the world in an understated and guileless manner. A feel-good story that does not need fireworks or high drama in the telling of it. In this unprecedented pandemic time, this suited me just fine. Leonard and Hungry Paul is author Ronan Hession's debut novel.

"You may wish to note the above."

In Hamnet, author Maggie O'Farrell reimagines Shakespeare's wife, Agnes, as a healer with preternatural gifts. The reader is immersed in 16th century Stratford, where a sullen, hapless teenage Shakespeare (never identified by name in the novel) falls madly in love with the older, mysterious,and wild Agnes. She can foresee his greatness, even as he struggles under the thumb of his abusive, crooked father, who runs a glove business. Agnes becomes pregnant with their first daughter, necessitating a marriage. She instinctively knows that she is destined to have two children, so when she gives birth again to twins, Judith and Hamnet, Agnes is unnerved and worried for her children.

The inner lives of the children, especially the twins, is so exquisitely written. This is really a domestic novel about family relationships, how all these characters interact with one another through the daily grind of cooking, laundry, farming, etc. The adults nurse their grievances and anger, while the children silently observe.

The subtitle of this book, "a novel of the plague", forewarns the reader that the Bubonic Plague will scourge this family. In one stunning chapter, the author traces how a chance encounter, between a ship boy and a pet monkey he comes across at a far flung port, will spread the plague throughout Europe, eventually arriving at the door of the Shakespeare home. As COVID-19 is again flaring up worldwide, it is eerie and chilling reading about this horrible disease over four centuries ago.

Some may find the pacing of Hamnet too slow. It did take me about a quarter of the book in to really get into the rhythm of the writing. But once that happened, I was hooked. This will definitely be in my top ten for the year. 

If you enjoy learning about history and foreign places through your fiction reading, then A Long Petal of the Sea by Chilean author Isabel Allende, will have you riveted. This is a family saga that spans seven decades and is set against the world stage. The action begins in Barcelona in the late 1930s, as Spain is torn apart by General Franco and his fascist forces as they attempt to overthrow the government. The middle class Dalmas family, who are on the side of the Spanish Republic, will be forever changed by this civil war. Son Victor, a former medical school student who has been treating the injured soldiers, must flee Spain along with Roser, the pregnant fiancee of his brother who stays behind to fight. Allende does a masterful job of detailing the plight of the refugees, as they risk violence, disease, and starvation to seek safety.

Eventually, Victor and Roser will arrive in Chile, deemed "a long petal of the sea" by native poet Pablo Neruda. They will forge new lives in this strange country on the other side of the world, and live safely until political upheaval and violence will arrive many years later in Chile...this time in the figure of General Pinochet and his military coup.

Allende is a very gifted storyteller, and she is able to weave many historical facts about people and events, without ever making the novel boring or pedantic.

A non-scary Stephen King book (no clowns in thie one!)  An interesting reimagining of JFK's assassination.

Laura - ISG

In a very personal and candid memoir, Rebekah Taussig shares what it is like to navigate the world using a wheelchair. She writes about people being over-solicitous to help, about being ignored, and to still not have access to places she may want or have to visit. She reminds us that the Americans with Disabilities Act was only signed into law in 1990.

A term called "ableism" is discussed throughout the book. In Rebekah's words:  “Ableism is the process of favoring, fetishizing, and building the world around a mostly imagined, idealized body while discriminating against those bodies perceived to move, see, hear, process, operate, look, or need differently from that vision.” 

Sitting Pretty is an eye-opening book to read.