Ellyne

Boo's investigatory thoroughness is more and more apparent the further into the book one gets, but her often lyrical writing elevates this beyond the reportorial. There is so much important information and emotion to sift through that to catalog would be to demean. This is a book that will stay with you.

This book was well reviewed in the New York Times, but please don't read the review: what a spoiler! Instead, just read the book. And then read the young adult novel, Going Underground (out mid September, 2011) about a 17-year-old boy whose experimentation with sexting when he was 14 led to his being registered as a sex offender - for the rest of his life.

Speaking of beaches (Brighton), this would be a great beach read. Hide under your hat and take a wonderful voyage with Vaclav the Magician and his lovely assistant, Lena.

Enjoy.

Still, I was gripped, cared about the characters - and recommend this read.

Make no mistake: this is a work of fiction with graceful writing, a poignant and substantive tale; realized characters; this is a really good read.

Yes, there are terrible man-against-man stories, most of which are actually man-against-woman (or women) stories; and there is the factual as well - statistics, etc. However, it is the accretion of information showing how women not only "holdup half the sky" (a quote from Mao), but how successful they are at building the worlds below that sky that makes this book a must read.

The book ends with a list of organizations that focus on helping women and that allow those who donate to feel connected, to feel they are equally helping and being helped by women all over the world.

An almost-old-maid and a soldier recently returned from WW II meet in Manhattan-at Schrafts!-and eventually marry and make that upwardly mobile move to the suburbs of Long Island. As the children arrive, two boys and two girls, we find ourselves with both curiousity and trepidation, wondering how this family will transition from the 50s comfort of church and close-knit community to the turbulent 60s. The country's naivete is laid bare as the eldest goes off to serve in Vietnam; and the oldest daughter studies in England, evoking Henry James' inncocent abroad.

McDermott leaves us with a novel so visual it keeps replaying in my mind, scene after scene, so well drawn with language so elegant that I am, we all are, part of this family as the trevails of every-day life unfold.

Sofer's story encompasses so much: our choices, expectations and responsibilities; the weight of absolute power; emigration and the loss of self-definition; and more. This is a beautifully written, wonderfully balanced, finely nuanced book and I don't know why I waited so long to read it!

You'll stretch out on the couch and enjoy spending time with the people you meet, including the Good Psychologist; and you'll gain some insight as well. Time will fly, because this is that kind of book, and you'll be upset when your hour is over!

Actually, I was a bit disappointed that there was not more about those Russians, but then I realized that there might be other books to come and that I have a lot to look forward to. Which is what I am doing now: looking forward to more from Elif Batuman.

Its characters live together in isolation, needing each other, struggling to be there for each other.  Those struggles in streams of consciousness that are honest, on target and full of pathos lay them bare for us.  A book to linger over and be amazed by - a first novel!

There are lots of luscious, informative tidbits, but it is the author's ability to evoke that makes this book worth picking up: the intensity of the heat; the glaring, unrelenting brightness of the sunlight: how languid it makes one feel. Go; be alone with Mahoney on the Nile where "the river, the trees, and the sand...could have been a scene from almost any period in Egyption history."

You may feel that one of the characters is not quite believeable, until you realize that, actually, you'd like to know him. You may figure out what's going to happen, but by the end, you'll be so submerged that you won't even remember.

Take this tale with you to the backyard, plop yourself down and read until someone makes you start weeding.

Living in Haiti with her father's brother and his wife until she is 12, Danticat is well cared for and well loved. This is not the story of an abused child, but of one of the children of an abused country. It is about her father who, as Danticat learns she is pregnant, learns that he is dying. Even more so, her story is focused on her iconic uncle, Joseph, a creator living amidst destroyers, a loving man amidst haters. Ultimately, it is about his death; and about those abrupt, little deaths of hope and faith we each experience when faced with every-day evil.

If you follow this read with Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, oh what a trilogy you will have read.

The end is heartfelt as told by a son, the fourth generation in this story, finally coming of age.