A Little Life and More

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 shortlist has been “revealed.” Only 2 women of the 6 nominees. Please go to the site and see the authors/books nominated. It's been a long time since we've read Anne Tyler - I'd love to read her nominated book.

I read Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (a Man Booker nominee). I didn’t post here about it because it is a bit overwhelming. It’s a very difficult story of child abuse and the repercussions through adult life. On the other hand, it is a heartening story of friendship, which can only do so much. The writing is beautiful, the story is tragically sad.

More recently I read The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf. I came upon that title in a NPR story about the author who died in November last year. He won numerous awards for his fiction and was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction. The Tie That Binds follows the Goodnough family and is a tale told by their neighbor Sanders Roscoe. This is a story of a hard rural life and missed potential. I loved his writing, natural-flowing and spare. I will be reading his book Plainsong next.

Finally, I just finished The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan. Part history, part biography, this is the story of a woman whose husband takes a second wife. This is permitted in Muslim Pakistan. I am frequently disappointed in my ignorance of world events/politics/history. Because of my lack of knowledge about Pakistan, her back-and-forth presentation of the history was difficult for me to follow. But, it was interesting to read about both the history and how her aunt dealt with being “the upstairs wife.”

So many books, so little time. . .