I like to believe that my own characters struggle with being human. They struggle with their bitterness, their relations to others (or lack thereof), and their unresolved guilt. What happens when guilt is left unresolved? What happens when someone enters into a state of self-imposed isolation? These are topics I enjoy exploring in my work. Iâve enjoyed writing since I was a child. My mother deserves all the credit. At bedtime, rather than reading bedtime stories to me from a book, she would make up a story and then ask me to do the same. This helped me to develop a lifelong love for reading and writing.
I think The Assistant is an example of Malamud at his best. The story perfectly captures what it means to be human and depicts the consequences of unresolved guilt.
I found myself empathizing with Malamudâs incredibly flawed characters who, although unlikable at times, nonetheless succeed in illustrating the necessity of forgiveness.
The Assistant, Bernard Malamud's second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.
Like Malamud's best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined theâŚ
I enjoyed Yezierskaâs ability to effectively portray the struggles of a young girl growing up in a poor immigrant Jewish household. I found myself cheering Sara on as she yearned to escape her household and the expectation placed upon her to marry.
Yezierskaâs use of language and vivid imagery made the act of reading an almost palpable experience. I felt as though I was living Saraâs life as she lived it herself.
First published in 1925, Anzia Yezierska's "Bread Givers" is the tale of a young Jewish-American immigrant woman and her struggle to control her own destiny in Manhattan's Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The novel is based in large part on Yezierska's own life experiences immigrating from Poland as a child and growing up in New York City in an Orthodox Jewish family. "Bread Givers" centers on the story of its main character, Sara Smolinsky, who lives with her older sisters and parents in a poor tenement in the Lower East Side. The Smolinsky family is destituteâŚ
Red Clay, Running Waters is the little-known story of John Ridge, a Cherokee man dedicated to his people, and his White wife Sarah, a woman devoted to his search for justice as they forge a path to the future for the Cherokee in their homeland.
Sputnik Sweetheart was the first Murakami book I had ever read. The book had such an impact on me that I almost immediately went out and purchased his other titles.
It is perhaps more experimental than other titles Iâve recommended here, but I enjoyed its non-linear plot and the surreal elements included in the story. Reality and irreality become indistinguishable, and I found myself wanting to know more about Sumireâs haunting disappearance.
A beautifully packaged hardback edition of Haruki Murakami's classic mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes, now with a new introduction by the author
Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile KâŚ
I feel as though this book isnât widely known. The plot is quite bizarre and surrealâa man falls in love with a woman who is growing a water lily in her lung.
The novelâs theme of grief stood out to me, and I feel it was perfectly illustrated by Collinâs desperate attempts to keep his wife alive. It is evident that Vian used Jean-Paul Sartreâs existentialist philosophy as inspiration for this novel.
A WWII novel about a young Gunner's Mate - Max Hobbs - serving on a troop transport in the Pacific Theater.
Hobbs is a man with exceptional eye sight who earns a snipers designation in Gunner's Mate school. When he graduates he is assigned to an APA in San Diego,âŚ
I first read the English translation of this book during my undergraduate studies. The first time I read it, I couldnât stop thinking about it for days. Something about it disturbed me, made me feel sick, and made me question what it means to be human.
I felt myself called to read it again years later and, just recently, I picked it up a third time. Mersaultâs indifference in relation to his experiences and to society forced me to question my own views concerning the meaning of life.
With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The StrangerâCamus's masterpieceâgives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.
Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.
âThe Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Wardâs translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camusâs stoical anti-hero and Âdevious narrator remains one of the key expressions ofâŚ
This is a collection of twelve short stories, set largely in urban environments consisting of crowded tenement buildings and small apartments. The stories feature characters who live pinched lives and have chosen self-imposed states of solitude.
The characters find themselves haunted by the demands of a persistent âotherâ often taking the form of an object (a wallet, a letter), an animal (a stray cat), or a person whose presence becomes a reminder of discarded human connections and unresolved guilt (a long-dead son, an odd would-be suitor, an old man who collects plastic bottles). In this collection, the phrase ânot what [one] expectedâ becomes something of a refrain or leitmotiv.
Four sisters in hiding. A grand duchess in disguise. Dark family secrets revealed. An alternate future for the Romanovs from Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter Of The Tsar.
With her parents and brother missing and presumed dead, former Grand Duchess Olga Romanova must keep her younger sistersâŚ
Youâre grieving, youâre falling in love and youâre skint. On top of it all, Europeâs going to Hell in a handcart. Things canât get any worse, can they?
London, 1938. William is grieving over his former teacher and mentor, killed fighting for the Republicans in Spain. As Europe slides towardsâŚ