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Toni Morrison's first novel since she was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
Early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby, Oklahoma (pop. 360) assault the nearby Convent and the
women in it in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain." From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault,
Paradise tells the story of a people trying to preserve their community and coming to terms with themselves in the
process.
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In a voice totally authentic to its speaker, Banks narrates in first-person the sad story of a teenage boy whose aimlessness leads him to steal from his mother in order to buy pot; as a result, he is kicked out of the house. As a drifter, he's too young and inexperienced to take advantage of other people--he's taken advantage of. His need for dope and shelter drives him to consort with types even more disreputable than himself. (The thing is, he's not really so bad, he's just been kicked around too much.) He decides that tracking down his real father in Jamaica is a priority. From that experience, he gains some wisdom that just might help him over the hurdle into responsible adulthood. Banks' previous novels have been eagerly sought, and this one should prove no exception. Brad Hooper Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel--the magnificent story of four generations in the life of an American family. A wheelchair-bound retired historian embarks on a monumental quest: to come to know his grandparents, now long dead. The unfolding drama of the story of the American West sets the tone for Stegner's masterpiece.
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Nine stories, six of which have been previously published, that successfully explore the tensions and confusions that so often muddle relations between East and West. Divided into three groups, the stories are a reminder that Rushdie (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1991, etc.), the accomplished postmodern fabulist, is also a splendid realist storyteller who describes the human heart with clear-eyed sympathy. Grouped under the heading ``EAST,'' the first trio describes an encounter between a young Pakistani woman and an advice expert, who doesn't understand why the young woman is happy when the British Consulate rejects her application to join her aging fianc‚ in England (``Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies''); a poor young man, who has ``the rare quality of total belief in his dreams'' of moviedom success and who is sterilized because he believes the Indian government will give him a free radio (``The Free Radio''); and two children who try to have their greedy father robbed of a precious religious relic he is determined to add to his collection (``The Prophet's Hair''). Of the three stories in ``WEST,'' the most accomplished is ``At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,'' which describes a world where auctioneers ``establish the value of our pasts, of our futures, of our lives'' as they auction off movie memorabilia and cultural icons that help us be what ``we fear we are not--somebody.'' The stories in the final section, ``EAST, WEST,'' are all set in England. A young Indian learns too late of a betrayal by a now-dead English friend (``The Harmony of the Spheres''); two Indian diplomats, Star Trek fans and old school chums, have a prophetic conversation while posted in England (``Chekov and Zulu''); and a young Indian, recalling the unlikely friendship between his ayah and an elderly chess player in London, refuses to choose between East and West (``The Courter''). A product of both worlds, Rushdie builds a safe passage over the seemingly unbridgeable with generous insight and wry humor in this distinguished collection. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Jane Smiley
These two novellas, by the author of The Age of Grief and The Greenlanders reveal the intricate and often
heart-breaking inner workings of families. Here a woman recalls the long ago affair that ended her relationship
with her husband and changed their lives. And a man discovers that the carefully planned lifestyle he has
chosen for his family incorporates unexpected consequences. Nominee for the National Book Critics Circle
Award. HC: Knopf.
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Moving backward in time, Dorris's critically acclaimed debut novel is a lyrical and fierce saga of three generations of Indian women beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets, yet bound together by kinship, set in the Pacific Northwestand on a Montana Indian reservation.
In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
July's People demonstrates with breathtaking clarity the tensions and complex interdependencies between whites and blacks in South Africa. It is so flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible.
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith While visiting her relatives in the Dominican Republic, Yolanda reflects: "She and her sisters have led such turbulent lives - so many husbands, homes, jobs, wrong turns among them. But look at her cousins, women with households and authority in their voices. Let this turn out to be my home." Yolanda left this home in the early 1960s when, for political reasons, her parents immigrated to the United States with their four young daughters. Her parents made sure Yolanda and her sisters went to prep school to meet the "right kind" of Americans and in time, when the political climate cooled down in the Dominican Republic, the girls were allowed to return to spend summers with their extended family. Now the daughters are grown. Carla is a child psychologist who believes that being dressed like her sisters when they were young weakened their identities. Sandi is obsessed with her weight, never quite satisfied with her life. Sofia, always a rebel, has just given birth to the first male child in two generations and named him after his grandfather. Yolanda, the primary narrator of the story, contemplates a move back to the Dominican Republic; perhaps there she can shed her uncomfortable identity as the family poet. With humor, grace, and insight, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents looks back on the lives of the four Garcia sisters and their parents, blending family history and expectations with the realities of their adopted culture.
David Sedaris
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David Sedaris is nationally famous for his commentaries on National Public Radio--his "Santa Land Diaries," an exposé on being an elf at Macy Department Store's during Christmas is now a classic of American humor. In Naked, he takes on the rest of the year. Sedaris has a forthright, common sense prose style that seems perfectly reasonable until he begins to explain the world. Suddenly, the everyday becomes a nightmare, the ordinary hilarious, and the average incredible. Sedaris's genius is in exposing the basic absurdity--and cruelty--of people and institutions. While Naked is nonstop, screamingly funny, it is also oddly moving and sometimes scary, which is the mark of a great writer and comic.
Isabel Fonseca
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Isabel Fonseca describes the four years she spent with Gypsies from Albania to Poland, listening to their stories, deciphering their taboos, and befriending their matriarchs, activists, and child prostitutes. A masterful work of personal reportage, this volume is also a vibrant portrait of a mysterious people and an essential document of a disappearing culture.
I have my resume online.
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