I love to travel, most especially to Asia and
Southeast Asia, and am drawn to novels from, about, and based in those parts of
the globe.
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World was particularly
intriguing to me as it is a fictional story focusing on a real place that I had
read about after Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The author's imagination
was sparked by a disconnected old black telephone in a phone booth—a "Wind
Phone"—installed on a high hill, offering people the chance to communicate
with lost loved ones; their voices carried into the wind.
Beautifully written, poetic,
this is a heartbreaking and heartwarming tale about grieving, loss, hope, healing,
and love. It is a story that will always stay with me.
Laura Imai Messina’s international bestselling novel is a story about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami.
When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.
Isla
Morley's harrowing story is both captivating and surprising.
Her writing is
luminous; a key reason why I loved this novel. I would often stop to reread a sentence
or a paragraph. It is one of those books you can't put down, while simultaneously
not wanting it to end. A gift is that the characters stayed with me long after
I did finish.
The Last Blue is inspired by the real life Blue People of Kentucky whom I had not heard of
before. I was fascinated to learn this history, although pained that some of
human nature's worst attributes, including racism,
superstition, and prejudice, were inflicted on Jubilee, the story's protagonist,
and her family. But, there is redemption and there is love.
A luminous narrative inspired by the fascinating real case of "the Blue People of Kentucky" that probes questions of identity, love, and family.
In 1937, there are recesses in Appalachia no outsiders have ever explored. Two government-sponsored documentarians from Cincinnati, Ohio-a writer and photographer-are dispatched to penetrate this wilderness and record what they find for President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to reboot his flagging career. So when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of…
I've
been an avid reader since I first learned the alphabet, and throughout my
childhood the local library was my second home and sanctuary. Thus, it's not
surprising that the novel's premise—"Between life and death there is a
library"—resonated deeply.
I've always felt that whatever one needed to
know could be found in the library. But a library with umpteen books about
one's own life's path and choices? What could be more fascinating? And who hasn't
reflected on the "what if" choices of one's own life, like Robert
Frost's The Road Not Taken, a longtime favorite poem that I've often
reflected on.
This is a well-written,
thought-provoking novel that provides a path to letting go of regrets and
finding ways to move forward with renewed optimism.
The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year
"A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."-The Washington Post
The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of…
Weaving Eastern beliefs and perspectives with Western realities and pragmatism, Guesthouse for Ganesha is a tale of love, loss, and spirit reclaimed.
In 1923, 17-year-old Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln “with a hardened heart as her sole luggage,” Thus begins a 22-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and Hindu Kali Yuga (“Age of Darkness”), in search of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Her traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed Hindu God. Impressed by Esther’s fortitude and relentless determination, born of her deep―though unconscious―understanding of the meaning of love, Ganesha conveys her journey with compassion, insight, and poetry.
