This is an elegant, beautiful, and sad story of one
man’s slowly growing awareness of the horrors of the Magdalen laundry in his
town that has been incarcerating and exploiting young women and covering up the
abuses.
As the protagonist comes to
realize what is happening, he shifts from an outside observer living in the town
to one who must act ethically, no matter what the cost. The author never foregrounds this shift in
the character but unfolds it in such a way that it speaks to a wider obligation
to know and to act.
It is a short book that I did not want to end. There
are few words, but each one matters to the story, and each sentence opens up as a
gift. I wanted to follow all the characters forward and learn about their
lives. Too few authors look at the lives of vulnerable young people with such an understanding of how their lives are controlled by others and what should be
done for them.
"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers
Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him…
This book transported me to the Berlin of today, where desperate immigrants are
struggling to find a way to live.
It put me alongside a retired professor
(which I am) who slowly comes to know some of these African men and who tries
to help them and to make their lives easier, and in the process, realizes that
his life as a widower and as someone no longer with a job or a title still can
have enormous meaning for him and for others.
It is a book about the world outside of books and how people can
endeavor to make that a better world.
Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, "one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation" (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the…
This book is an old favorite of mine, and I picked up
again after decades of not having read it because it deals with a child’s
experience of his mother’s death during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
As a
historian of childhood, I was thinking about the experiences of children during
the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and of this past one. I recalled that this was the best book I had
read that captured the feeling of losing a mother and the family transformation
that followed.
It is a beautifully written, melancholy book. So much is left unsaid by the characters that
the author has to guide us to their emotions and to the repercussions of the
death by conveying in a few unforgettable words, how they are experiencing this
profound change.
Discover William Maxwell's classic, heart-breaking portrait of an ordinary American family struck by the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
'A story of such engaging warmth that it would thaw the heart of any critic... Will melt many a reader to tears' TIME
Elizabeth Morison is an ordinary woman.
Yet, to eight-year-old Bunny, his mother is the centre of his universe. To Robert, her elder son, she is someone he must protect against the dangers of the outside world. And to her husband, James, she is the foundation on which his family rests and life without her is unimaginable.
Placing babies' lives at the center of her
narrative, historian Janet Golden analyzes the dramatic transformations in the
lives of American babies during the twentieth century.
She examines how babies
shaped American society and culture and led their families into the modern
world to become more accepting of scientific medicine, active consumers, open
to new theories of human psychological development, and welcoming of government
advice and programs. Importantly Golden also connects the reduction in infant
mortality to the increasing privatization of American lives.
She also examines
the influence of cultural traditions and religious practices upon the diversity
of infant lives, exploring the ways class, race, region, gender, and community
shaped life in the nursery and household.
