The best books about second chances, from an author who’s on her fifth chance (and teetering on the sixth)

This is the ultimate second chance book. A miserable old miser—Are there no workhouses?—is visited by three ghosts over the course of Christmas Eve. He has one night to change his life or he will be doomed to a tortured eternity. Will he do it? Well, yes. How could he not save Tiny Tim? But the ride is so joyful and well-written and Scrooge is so wonderfully miserable, and as many times as I get to the end, I’m always moved by the joy he feels when he gets his second chance. This is what I hope, that no matter how miserable I become (and hopefully not too miserable), that I will always have a chance to turn it around.

You would not think that a book about a sleazy (but incredibly handsome) man being chased by a hired killer would be an inspiring book about second chances, but it is. The story is set in November 1963. Frank Guidry is inadvertently involved in the Kennedy assassination and the powers that be want to shut him up. He’s running from a killer and he runs into Charlotte Roy, a young mother who, with her two daughters, is fleeing her alcoholic husband. They both have a lot of internal demons to grapple with, but along the way there’s a lot of sex and danger and some scenes that are absolutely haunting and when you get to the end, you just sit there thinking, yes. That feels exactly right.  

I do like curmudgeons. There’s something so vulnerable about them. You know that something bad happened in their life that made them that way and I automatically hope that something will heal them. Backman’s character is a classic curmudgeon, cut off from everyone. Ready to die. In fact, he keeps trying to die. The opening scene in which he goes to a store and argues with a salesperson about iPads (or as he called them, OPads) cracked me up and set the tone for the novel. And then, of course, against his will, he is drawn into the world around him and you really root for him. I love stories that make me care.

Sometimes second chances come with a steep price, which, in Candace Chen’s case, means the apocalyptic annihilation of the world’s population. I wouldn’t call this book a pick-me-up, though it is funny, but it is an incredibly moving story about what it means to move on. Ling Ma moves her characters between time, writing about Candace’s parent's decision to leave behind China and her own decision to stay in New York as the deadly fever takes hold. Some of the most beautiful writing is about New York City, a place I dearly love. “New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive.” 

First of all, it’s a mystery set in England and I love anything set in England, and if I were going to start over anywhere, and leave New York, which I will not do, it would be to go to England. So immediately I’m intrigued, and the details about Long Barston, Suffolk are just wonderful. But mainly I love Kate Hamilton, the protagonist of Berry’s novel, who is a smart (the sort of person who tells Beowulf jokes if she drinks too much), good-hearted, antiques appraiser who is starting over with a new husband, new job, new mother-in-law and new life. She feels like a friend, and I’m glad to go on her second chance journey with her.