by Arundhati Roy
“Mother Mary Comes to Me,” Arundhati Roy‘s first memoir, is an intimate and inspiring account of how she became the person and writer she is today. It explores how her life was shaped by various circumstances, particularly her complex relationship with her extraordinary mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” The book has been named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Top Ten Books of 2025 and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
Devastated by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022, Roy experienced a mix of confusion and shame over the depth of her emotions. She began writing to understand her feelings for the mother she had distanced herself from at eighteen, not out of a lack of love, but to preserve her ability to love her. Her writing marks the beginning of an astonishing, often disturbing, and surprisingly humorous memoir that chronicles the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to her accomplishments as a prize-winning novelist and essayist, and continues to the present day.
With the scope, richness, and emotional depth characteristic of her novels, “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness“, as well as the passion, political insight, and warmth found in her essays, “Mother Mary Comes to Me” serves as an ode to freedom and a tribute to complicated love and fierce grace—a memoir unlike any other.
Arundhati Roy is the author of “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” a novel translated into more than 40 languages and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several nonfiction works, including “The End of Imagination,” “The Doctor and the Saint,” “My Seditious Heart,” and “Azadi.” In 2023, she received the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024, she received the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She resides in Delhi.
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by Elizabeth McCracken
The Hero of This Book: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken is a searing examination of grief and renewal and a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. It is not a memoir but a remembrance of those we have lost. Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she reflects on her mother’s life and their relationship.
Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.
The following quote resonated with me.
I’ve always hated the notion, in life or in fiction, that the human personality is a puzzle to be solved, that we are a single flashback away from understanding why this person is cruel to her children, why that man has a dreamy, downcast look. A human being is not a lock and the past is not a key.
I highly recommend this book.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary–her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will to seize life despite physical difficulties–and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.
The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal and a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
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by Jessamine Chan
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages.
Although it has been forty-two years since I became a parent, I still remember the anxiety of being a father. What if I could not be a good dad? Fortunately, I never had a bad like Frida. or lived in an age where parents would be sent to “a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.”
Reading The School for Good Mothers was a reminder that solutions like this are possible unless we are willing to invest in families so that the skills and support are there to resolve any issues in the home. As a widow, I found Frida’s inner dialogue comparable to the early stages of my grief journey—the total isolation and fear of failing dominated my first months of mourning.
The School for Good Mothers had been on my book list since the middle of last year. I recommend it without reservations! Jan would have already read it, and we would be debating its fine points.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.
Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.
Until Frida has a very bad day.
The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Marilynne Robinson
Jack: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson is the second book in this series I have read. Previously I read, Home, and now I have read the fourth. Without Jan by my side, I read more but not always in order. Fortunately, Jack appears in Home at a later point than is covered in this novel. That provided an understanding of the next phase of Jack and Della’s relationship.
I very much enjoyed reading this novel. Although Jan and I fell in love without all of the complexities of this couple, there were enough similarities that reminded me of how special our love was and remains. For example, our long conversations, many of which were while we walked, are reminiscent of the novel.
I highly recommend this novel. One of the reviews suggested that the next volume should be about Della. I will read that book before the ink drys.
Goodreads provides an overview.
In this book, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. They’re deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.
Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world.
Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are vital to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.
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by Jung Yun
O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun, the critically acclaimed author of Shelter, has written an unflinching portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and the tortured realities of a deeply divided America. With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions, competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of beautiful but troubled land. I highly recommend O Beautiful!
I finished reading O Beautiful on International Women’s Day. It might have been coincidental, but in my humble opinion, it was the perfect book to read on this important day. Ms. Yun has written a novel that touches on the intersectionality of the core issues of our divided land. The misogyny, the racism, and the impact of capitalism out of control are all related and are affecting the quality of life in the early twenty-first century.
Elinor Hanson, the protagonist, is so vividly written that she jumps off the page and becomes someone we know as a family member. When she returned home to write about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota, I felt I had known her all my life. Unfortunately, the novel ended when she finally understood the issues and was in touch with her anger. I wish it would have continued so that the problems might have been addressed. Despite this, I highly recommend this novel.
O Beautiful is the twenty-first book I have read this year! My goal was twenty-three.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, struggles to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota.
Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers.
Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind.
The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and how she looks at the world.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
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by Elizabeth Strout
Today, I dived into “Tell Me Everything: A Novel” by Elizabeth Strout, and I’m already captivated. This book made it onto NPR’s best books list for 2024 and caught the eye of Oprah’s Book Club—no small feat! Strout writes with such empathy and emotional depth that it reflects her incredible talent. Lucy beautifully captures this sentiment by stating, “Love comes in many different forms, but it is always love.”
With her profound understanding of the human condition and silences that convey deep emotions, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, reuniting with her beloved characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and others—as they confront a shocking crime, navigate love while choosing to remain apart, and ponder the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer, Bob Burgess, finds himself entangled in a murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also developed a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William.
Lucy and Bob take walks and discuss their lives, fears, regrets, and what could have been. Meanwhile, Lucy is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, who now resides in a retirement community on the outskirts of town. They spend afternoons in Olive’s apartment, sharing stories about people they have known—what Olive calls “unrecorded lives,” which reanimate their experiences and imbue their lives with meaning.
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by Benjamín Labatut
Today, I began reading When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West. This book, listed on The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, promises to be thought-provoking as it delves into the intricate connections between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.
In a world where scientific advancements often involve ethical dilemmas and societal implications, this book offers a unique perspective on the lives of scientists who have shaped our understanding of the world. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger are some of the luminaries whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut deeply explores in his fictional examination. Labatut shows how these scientists and thinkers grappled with profound questions of existence, experiencing strokes of unparalleled genius, alienating friends and lovers, and descending into isolation and insanity. Their discoveries, some of which significantly improved human life, while others led to chaos and unimaginable suffering, continue to shape our world.
With a breakneck pace and a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses fiction’s imaginative resources to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.
by Julia Alvarez
Today, I began reading Julia Alvarez‘s novel “The Cemetery of Untold Stories.” The book explores whose stories deserve to be told and whose should remain buried. In the end, Alma, the main character, finds meaning in the power of storytelling. Julia Alvarez reminds us that our stories are never truly finished, even at the end.
Alma Cruz, a famous writer, doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as her friend, who became mentally unstable after struggling to finish a book. So, when Alma inherits a small plot of land in her native Dominican Republic, she turns it into a cemetery for her unfinished stories. She hopes her characters will finally be able to rest in peace.
However, they have other ideas and soon begin to rewrite and revise themselves, even talking and interacting with one another. Fortunately, Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a listener to Alma’s characters’ secret tales. These tales include those of Bienvenida, the abandoned wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was erased from official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
by Daniel Mason
I recommend reading “North Woods: A Novel” by Daniel Mason today. It is the story of two young lovers who leave a Puritan colony and find shelter in a humble cabin in the woods. They are unaware this cabin will become home to a succession of extraordinary human and nonhuman characters. North Woods” has been named one of the ten best books of 2023 by both the New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post.
An English soldier who was destined for glory decides to abandon the battlefields of the New World to dedicate himself to growing apples. Meanwhile, a pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, dealing with envy and desire. A crime reporter discovers an ancient mass grave but soon realizes the earth refuses to give up its secrets. In the same town, a lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, and a lusty beetle are all present. As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they realize that the dark, raucous, and beautiful past is still alive.
This remarkable and highly imaginative novel by Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason is full of love, insanity, humor, and optimism. North Woods follows the cycles of history, nature, and language to reveal the numerous, enchanting ways we are connected to our surroundings, history, and each other. It is not just a memorable story about secrets and fates but a perspective on the world that poses the timeless question: How can we continue living even after we are gone?
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
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by Amy Jo Burns
Today, I started reading Mercury: A Novel about a roofing family. The family’s bond of loyalty is tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town. The book is written by Amy Jo Burns, the author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner, which I read and enjoyed in 2022. I highly recommend it.
The story is set in 1990, and it follows the journey of a seventeen-year-old girl named Marley West, who arrives in the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. She is a loner who is looking for a place to belong. The first thing she sees when she gets to town is three men standing on a rooftop, and they soon become her whole world.
Marley becomes a young wife to one of the Joseph brothers, The One Who Got Away to another, and an adopted mother to all of them. Marley guides these unruly men as their mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface, and suddenly, the family’s survival hangs in the balance.
With Marley as their guide, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known or build something more substantial in its place.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Kathleen Grisson
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom was a book that I knew very little about who I took from our bookshelf. My wife had encouraged me to read it as it focused on the south, and she knew I ofter read both about that place and enjoyed history.
From the opening pages, It became a book that I could not put down.
Two characters narrate the book. One is Lavinia, an Irish girl orphaned and brought to the plantation by the master, a ship’s captain. She is assigned to the kitchen house to work with Belle, who is the illegitimate child of the master of the estate.
As Lavinia grows under the tutelage of Belle, the story highlights the struggles of a plantation. Lavinia finds family and love from the enslaved even though she is only indentured. The distinction that skin color would have on their lives is one that Lavinia only learns at the end.
Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom’s debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.
The Kitchen House is Ms. Grissom’s first novel and impressed me and inspired me even though I have no skills as a writer.
I strongly recommend this book.
by Jessica Knoll
Today, I commenced reading Bright Young Women: A Novel by Jessica Knoll. Violent acts of the same man bring together two women from opposite sides of the country and become allies and sisters in arms as they pursue the justice that would otherwise elude them in one of the year’s most acclaimed, highly anticipated thrillers.
Masterfully blending psychological suspense and actual crime elements, Jessica Knoll—author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaption starring Mila Kunis—delivers a new and exhilarating thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results.
The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and critical witness Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed. Across the country, Tina Cannon is convinced the man papers targeted her missing friend referred to as the All-American Sex Killer—and that he’s struck again. Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Roland Merullo
After reading Aftermirth, I wanted a book I could enjoy without raising questions I was not ready to answer. A Harvest of Secrets by Roland Merullo was set in Italy in 1943. The terror seeds planted by Hitler brought Allied forces to Italian soil. Young lovers separated by war—one near a Tuscan hill town, the other a soldier on the Sicilian front—will meet any challenge to reunite. Historical fiction is a genre I enjoy. Will this book fulfill my needs? The answer is yes.
The web of secrets that are harvested kept me on my toes. Usually, the surprises of a novel are ones that I know even before finishing the book. At least one of the secrets did surprise me.
I also found the background of the war and loyalty to Il Duce a reminder that blind loyalty to a leader can destroy a nation.
I recommend this book.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
Vittoria SanAntonio, the daughter of a prosperous vineyard owner, is caught in a web of family secrets. Defying her domineering father, she has fallen for humble vineyard keeper Carlo Conte. When Carlo is conscripted into Mussolini’s army, it sets a fire in Vittoria, and she joins the resistance. As the Nazi war machine encroaches, Vittoria is drawn into dangers as unknowable as those faced by the man she loves.
Badly wounded on the first day of the invasion, Carlo regains consciousness on a farm in Sicily. Nursed back to health by a kind family there, he embarks on an arduous journey north through his ravaged homeland. For Carlo and Vittoria, as wartime threats mount and their paths diverge, what lies ahead will test their courage as never before.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Today, I started reading “Chain Gang All Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. The story revolves around Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker, the main characters of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, a highly controversial and top-rated program in America’s private prison industry. The program is called Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE), where prisoners compete for the ultimate prize- their freedom. It’s similar to the return of the gladiators but in a modern-day setting.
The story is set in a prison called CAPE, where inmates are forced to participate in death matches as a part of a chain-gang. These matches are held in front of cheering crowds, while the prison authorities claim it to be a righteous act. Among the participants, Thurwar and Staxxx are the most popular as they are also lovers. Thurwar is just a few matches away from her freedom, which she carries with a heavy heart and lethal hammer. Thurwar contemplates how she can help her fellow inmates preserve their humanity despite being forced into these brutal games. However, the owners of CAPE are determined to safeguard their status quo, and they will go to extreme lengths to stop anyone who challenges them. Thurwar’s attempts to resist the system have devastating consequences.
Chain-Gang All-Stars” is a powerful book that sheds light on the American prison system’s problematic alliance with systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration. It critically examines the situation from various perspectives, from the Links in the field to the protestors, the CAPE employees, and beyond. The book offers a clear-eyed reckoning of what freedom really means in America. It is a noteworthy contribution from a “new and necessary American voice,” as described by Tommy Orange in The New York Times Book Review.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Garrett Carr
The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr is set on the west coast of Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s. This captivating debut novel tells the story of a baby boy found on the beach near a small fishing town, narrated by the locals who become enchanted by him. Both outrageously funny and profoundly moving, The Boy from the Sea showcases the talent of an essential new voice in Irish literature.
In 1973, a baby boy was discovered on the beach of a close-knit fishing village in Ireland. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar offers to bring the child into his family, which includes his son Declan, his wife Christine, and, up the lane, Christine’s sister and aging father. The townspeople remain fascinated by the baby, whom they name Brendan, as he grows into a strange yet charismatic young man.
The Boy from the Sea tells the story of a family and a community thrown into turmoil by Brendan’s arrival. The family’s fortunes rise and fall over the years, just as the town does because nothing happens to one family here without affecting them all. The forces of a voracious global economy and modernized commercial fishing wreak havoc on their way of life. In the village, Brendan and Declan are wildly different and often at odds; meanwhile, Ambrose worries about his children but cannot divert his attention from the brutal work that keeps his family afloat. As the world around them changes, the mystery of Brendan’s origins draws them toward a surprising and stormy fate.
Garrett Carr teaches creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast and frequently contributes to The Guardian and The Irish Times. His nonfiction work, The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border, was chosen as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. The Boy from the Sea marks Carr’s debut novel.
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by Robert A. Caro
Working by Robert A. Caro is a book of evocatively written essays on his life and work. Among the many valuable words of wisdom is his case that one needs to look at every piece of information, not just what we know when we begin. Far too often, people jump to conclusions without having learned all of the facts.
He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses’ Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ‘s mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers’ community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books.
Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power but about the people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences–some previously published, some written expressly for this book–bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work.
I found this one of the best books I have read and recommend it to all readers.
by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom
Today, I embarked on an emotional journey with “A Matter of Death and Life” by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom. This poignant narrative follows the renowned psychiatrist and his talented writer wife as they navigate a year filled with profound reflection following her terminal diagnosis. I received this thoughtful gift from my son Mike and his family, which makes it all the more special.
As the year winds down, I’m excited to say that this will be the final book I dive into in 2024 and will also mark the beginning of my reading adventures in 2025! Irwin and Marylin Yalom‘s exploration of love and living without regret is touching and inspiring, reminding me of the journey my wife and I took after her diagnosis of lymphoma in August 2019.
Irvin Yalom, an internationally acclaimed psychiatrist and author, dedicated his career to counseling those suffering from anxiety and grief. However, he had never faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, the esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In “A Matter of Death and Life,” the Yaloms share how they confronted profound new struggles: Marilyn aimed to die a good death, while Irv sought to continue living without her.
Through alternating accounts of their last months together and Irv’s first months alone, they provide a rare window into facing mortality and coping with the loss of a beloved partner. The Yaloms enjoyed a loving family, a home in Palo Alto under a magnificent valley oak, a large circle of friends, avid readers worldwide, and a long, fulfilling marriage. Yet, they faced death, as we all do. With the wisdom acquired over two lifetimes and the familiar warmth of teenage sweethearts who grew up together, they explore universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief.
Informed by their extensive life experiences, “A Matter of Death and Life” is an open-hearted offering to anyone seeking support, solace, and a meaningful life.
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by Ben Lerner
“Transcription” by Ben Lerner has been named one of The New York Times’ Best Books of the Year (So Far). Hailed as “the most talented writer of his generation” by The New York Times Magazine, Lerner presents a gripping emotional drama that also serves as a brilliant exploration of the digital and literary devices we use to store or erase our memories.
The narrator of Ben Lerner‘s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail from the future and the past simultaneously and who reenchants the air when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house without a recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to admit.
What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, as well as an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of COVID, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Full of startling insight, but summoning the intensity of a séance, Lerner’s writing shows us how the air is full of messages, full of ghosts. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.
Ben Lerner is the author of several poetry and prose books, as well as collaborative works with visual artists. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations. Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, along with many other honors. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.
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by Lauren Fox
Send for Me by Lauren Fox. Send for Me is an achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the constant push and pull of family. Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents’ famous bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick was thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refuse to patronize the bakery.
This novel explores mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness of four generations of mothers and daughters – Klara, Annelise, Ruth, and Clare.
Klara is the matriarch who remains in Germany, where she dies at the beginning of the war. Annelise is her daughter who becomes a refugee in Milwaukee. The poignant letters from her mother ask for help to leave Germany and reunite with her daughter and granddaughter Ruthie, tying together the four generations.
The letters are found by Clara, who pays to have them translated. Can we ever escape from the past, and how does it shape our futures.
I enjoyed reading this book as I prefer historical fiction, especially about the rise of Germany and antisemitism.
Send for Me is also a reminder that we are refugees.
Our lives are forever intertwined between two cultures, the past and the future.
I highly recommend Send for Me.
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by Amy Liptrot
The Outrun: A Memoir by Amy Liptrot is about her return to Orkney after more than a decade; she visits the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey. My current grief journey is not like Amy Liptrot‘s, but I learned from her struggles as we all need the support of family and friends.
Amy’s long walks, detailed description of bird watching, and life on a small island were very moving. I might have moved from one apartment to the adjacent one, but I learned from Amy’s journey and feel more confident facing life’s uncertainties.
I highly recommend this memoir.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father’s mental illness, which was as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London.
Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney’s wildlife—puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings—and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey toward recovery from addiction.
The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind, and the moon to restore life and renew hope.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Hila Blum
I started reading a novel called “How to Love Your Daughter,” written by Hila Blum and translated by Daniella Zamir today. The book explores a complicated relationship between a mother and her grown daughter. It raises the question of how much harm we can do to our loved ones when love blinds us.
The story takes place thousands of miles away from home, where a woman finds herself peeking through well-lit windows at her two granddaughters. She has never met them before, as they are the daughters of her estranged daughter, whom she hasn’t seen in years.
The book’s central theme revolves around the woman’s attempt to understand how a once-loving relationship between her and her daughter ended up in such a distant and unfathomable state. The story shifts past and present as the woman unravels her memories and long-buried emotions. She tries to make sense of the seemingly insignificant moments of parental care that, combined, may have undermined what she valued most.
The author, Blum, skillfully delves into the complexities of family life, where a parent can easily cross the line between protectiveness and possession without even realizing it. The story leaves us wondering whether it’s possible ever to find our way back from such a point.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Diana Evans
I just started reading A House for Alice: A Novel by Diana Evans. The story is set against a complicated political backdrop but is filled with hope, humor, and humanity. A House for Alice explores the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and reveals the secrets we keep from our loved ones.
The novel opens with two tragedies that occur in London. The first is the Grenfell Tower fire, which took many lives. The second is the death of Cornelius Winston Pitt, a family patriarch who dies alone. A House for Alice is a beautiful and poignant story about a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure.
The family matriarch, Alice, has lived in England for fifty years but longs to spend her remaining years in her homeland, Nigeria. Her three daughters are divided on the matter. The youngest daughter, Melissa, is also struggling with the aftermath of her failed relationship. The family’s foundational pillars of trust, love, and cultural identity begin to weaken as they navigate these difficult times.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Juhea Kim
Juhea Kim, the acclaimed author of Beasts of a Little Land and City of Night Birds, presents an exquisite collection of stories that explores the delicate balance between humans and the natural world. With the clear-eyed reverence of Richard Powers and the sparkling sincerity of George Saunders, her first story collection, A Love Story from the End of the World, offers a breathtaking view of our fractured world—and our broken hearts. Through its passionate narrative, the collection serves as a poignant reminder that, as humans, we are nothing without nature.
Spanning multiple locales and time periods, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive collection illustrates what it means to live as human inhabitants of our singular, miraculous planet.
Lyrical, at times hilarious, and always heartfelt, each of these ten stories reflects individual choices in the face of “man-made” apocalypses. In a near-future Seoul, where air pollution has become so severe that a translucent biodome has covered the city, a civil engineer responsible for its upkeep considers an arranged marriage. A painter, disenchanted with New York City, travels to the South of France and becomes romantically involved with an entrepreneur who claims to have invented a new color. Meanwhile, on an island where the Indian and Pacific Oceans converge, and where foreign countries have dumped their waste, causing a landfill mountain to form, a local boy facing daily hardships gains internet fame for his K-pop-inspired dances.
Juhea Kim is the author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the winner of the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, Russia’s most significant annual award in literature. It has been translated into many languages and is for television. She is also the author of City of Night Birds, which was a Reese’s Book Club pick.
A graduate of Princeton University, her writing has been published in Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, the Independent, Zyzzyva, Guernica<, and other outlets. She is an advocate for wildlife conservation, animal rights, and education and aid in Africa. Born in Korea and raised in Portland, Oregon, Kim now lives in London.
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by Sena Jeter Naslund
Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book that I could not put down. It is a page-turner. The title is from the four girls killed at Sunday School in Birmingham. When that happened in 1963, I was only a few years older and the impact brought home to me that we lived in a broken world that required repair. Like Stella Silver in the novel, my life changed as a result of the bombing.
As my reading list may indicate, I have always preferred non-fiction with a preference for history. Picking this novel up combined my prior reading habits with my desire to read books that my wife, Jan, recommended.
Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression, Sena Jeter Naslund creates a tapestry of American social transformation at once intimate and epic.
In Birmingham, Alabama, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by the events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change. Inspired by the courage and commitment of the civil rights movement, the child Edmund Powers embodies hope for future change. In this novel of maturation and growth, Naslund makes vital the intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America.
Stella’s idealism reminded me of how I became the person I am. Change is not easy but, it takes all of us to risk our lives to repair the world so, it works for all of us.
The book’s critical focus on the “intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America” makes this a must-read. The redefinition has made America a better country but, we may be retreating from that ideal.
by Shirley Ann Grau
The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau is a book that I read a portion of for a college class, but for reasons that I cannot now remember never got around to reading it from cover to cover. In the early stages of grief, I found a copy in our bookshelf and said, let me read it now. It was a decision that I did not regret.
Having grown up in the American South, the book resonated with me, as did the sections I read fifty years ago. It’s a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.
As someone who likes history and values the importance of place, the book’s focus on the continued ownership of the same land since the early 1800s by the Howland’s provided a broad historical perspective. Abigail Howland has learned many important family legacies, but not all.
However, when William’s, her grandfather, relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, is revealed to the community, the racism and fury boil over. Abigail chooses to get even with the town her family built by punishing them.
The Keepers of the House is a book that I wish I had read in its entirety half a century ago. Having read it now, I recommend it to all who care about life and community.
by Shelby Van Pelt
Today, I recommended reading “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt. It’s a charming, witty, and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope. The novel traces the unlikely connection of a widow with a giant Pacific octopus, making it perfect for fans of “A Man Called Ove.” Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes, looking at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.
The story follows Tova Sullivan, who works the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium after her husband dies. Tova has been coping with loss since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.
While at the aquarium, Tova becomes acquainted with Marcellus, a grumpy giant Pacific octopus who refuses to cooperate with his human captors. However, Marcellus forms a remarkable friendship with Tova and helps her uncover the truth about her son’s disappearance.
As a detective, Marcellus uses his invertebrate body to deduce what happened when Tova’s son disappeared. Together, they embark on a journey to unearth the truth before it’s too late.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
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