So Far Gone
by

So Far Gone: A Novel

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 0 seconds

For the week before Father’s Day, I read So Far Gone by Jess Walter, a hilarious, empathetic, and brilliantly provocative adventure through life in modern America about a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren. Is this gripping tale of a grandfather’s love and determination the perfect read for the upcoming Father’s Day?

Rhys Kinnick, a character who has truly gone off the grid, provides a humorous twist to the story. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window, and fled for a cabin in the woods with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.

Now, Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick, a man who is struggling with his past and his present, heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation from a writer who has been called “a genius of the modern American moment.”

Jess Walter is the author of seven previous novels, including the bestsellers The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins, the National Book Award Finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His short fiction, collected in The Angel of Rome and We Live in Water, has won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize and appeared three times in Best American Short Stories. He lives in his hometown of Spokane, Washington.

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A Parish Chronicle

Read: February 2026

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A Parish Chronicle

by Halldór Laxness

In “A Parish Chronicle,” celebrated novelist Halldór Laxness weaves an essayistic tale about the unlikely miracles that keep a church—destined to disappear time and again—rooted on the same hillside. Laxness explores the minutiae of history, from the location of the ancient burial mound of national hero Egill Skallagrímsson to the end of the 19th century, where weak-sighted Ólafur and boisterous farmhand Gunna each play unexpected roles in the parish’s enduring survival.

1882. In the still of morning, Ólafur sharpens his scythe on the bone-dry pavestones that separate his farmhouse from the rest of Mosfell Valley, where life revolves around sheep. The sound of his hammer rings out like a high-pitched bell over the tussocky fields. Across the valley, perched on a hill that receives more sunshine than others, stands Mosfell Church. Nearby, the parish priest’s maid Gunna pours her “slosh,” a weak cup of coffee. Further afield in Reykjavík (“down south” as the locals say), the general assembly decides to revisit an old plan to cut costs by consolidating small parishes and calls for the demolition of Mosfell. Yet today a church stands on that same hillside—its sharp steeple silhouetted against the clouds, its crown bell hanging to the left of the altar.

This intimate tribute to life in Laxness‘s home valley also offers a thoughtful commentary on how the peculiarities of certain individuals can shape history. “A Parish Chronicle” is rich with life and detail.

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) is the undisputed master of modern Icelandic fiction. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955, “for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland.” His body of work includes novels, essays, poems, plays, stories, and memoirs: more than sixty books in all. His works available in English include Independent People, The Fish Can Sing, World Light, Under the Glacier, Iceland’s Bell, and Paradise Reclaimed.

Philip Roughton has translated the work of Halldór Laxness, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, and many others. He has twice been awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize for his renderings of Halldór Laxness‘s work, in 2001 for Iceland’s Bell and in 2015 for Wayward Heroes. He also received the 2016 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man. He lives in Iceland. Translator Residence: Akureyri, Iceland

Salvatore Scibona is the recipient of a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, The Volunteer, was called a “masterpiece” by the New York Times and won the Ohioana Book Award. His books have been translated into ten languages. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a Whiting Award, and the New Yorker named him one of its “20 Under 40” fiction writers. He is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

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The Candy House

Read: December 2022

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The Candy House: A Novel

by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House: A Novel by Jennifer Egan focuses on a new technology that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—it has seduced multitudes. According to the NYTimes, “this is minimalist maximalism. As a widow, I live in a world of memories, but I would not want them shared as they are in The Candy House. “It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive.”

Of course, I am not able to access my unconscious memories. Albeit in an amateur way, I write down some of my memories as they remind me of the power of the love that Jan and I shared. For example, the essay when I met Jan rekindles the memory and attempts to tell the story the way it happened, not how some would like it to be remembered.

The Candy House is one of the NYTimes’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read two of them, The Furrows and Checkout 19. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of characters and was confused. By the novel’s middle, their interconnectedness helped me understand its real meaning. In the end, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for authentic connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption. As a widow, authenticity Is what I need to heal.

The Candy House is the seventieth (70) book I have read this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and “eluders” who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.​ Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption.

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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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel

Read: July 2024

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel

by Gabrielle Zevin

I delved into the pages of “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel” by Gabrielle Zevin. The narrative unfolds the lives of Sam and Sadie, two college friends who evolve into creative partners in video game design. Their journey is a tapestry of fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and a form of immortality, all woven into a unique love story that captivated me like no other.

This love story uniquely portrays the challenges and triumphs of a relationship in the context of their shared creative endeavors.

On a bitter-cold day in December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees Sadie Green amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

These friends, who have been close since childhood, take bold steps, borrow money, and seek favors. Even before they graduate from college, they have birthed their first blockbuster, Ichigo. In a blink, the world is at their feet. Sam and Sadie, not yet twenty-five, are shining with brilliance, success, and wealth. But these attributes can’t shield them from their emotional rollercoaster of creative aspirations and the heartbreaks that come with it.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin‘s Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow provides a profound exploration of the diverse nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our deep-seated need to connect: to be loved and to love. It’s a journey that will make you reflect on your life and relationships.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

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An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder

Read: February 2023

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An Assassin in Utopia

by Susan Wels

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder by Susan Wels is a true crime odyssey that explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield. I had read about this historical period in several other books, most recently Civil War by Other Means.

Susan Wels has written an excellent historical overview of a period we often overlook. I highly recommend An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder.

The Oneida Community, even though it was the most successful utopian community, is often overlooked. Ms. Wels connects the dots and places the experiment in the center of a transitional period. It is not merely the connection between Charles Julius Guitea and his assassination of President James Garfield, albeit a brutal crime, that shook America to its core, but all of the other linkages. These include “John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune).”

She also resurrects the importance of the Wormely Compromise and the African-American family that was an instrumental part of public society.

I have found fiction to be something I enjoy, but I knew it was time for a non-fiction book to balance my reading. The New York Times and other publications highly rated An Assassin in Utopia.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It was heaven on earth—and, some whispered, the devil’s garden.

Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place—especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this strange outpost worked and slept together—without sin, they claimed.

From 1848 to 1881, a small utopian colony in upstate New York—the Oneida Community—was known for its shocking sexual practices, from open marriage and free love to the sexual training of young boys by older women. And in 1881, a one-time member of the Oneida Community—Charles Julius Guiteau—assassinated President James Garfield in a brutal crime that shook America to its core.

An Assassin in Utopia is the first book that weaves together these explosive stories in a tale of utopian experiments, political machinations, and murder. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune); and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.

Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield’s assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in extraordinary, surprising ways.

Against a vivid backdrop of ambition, hucksterism, epidemics, and spectacle, the book’s interwoven stories fuse together in the climactic murder of President Garfield in 1881—at the same time as the Oneida Community collapsed.

Colorful and compelling, An Assassin in Utopia is a page-turning odyssey through America’s nineteenth-century cultural and political landscape.

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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How to Love Your Daughter

Read: August 2023

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How to Love Your Daughter

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.

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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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Reunion: A Novel

Read: June 2024

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Reunion: A Novel

by Elise Juska

Today, I immersed myself in the distinct world of Reunion: A Novel by Elise Juska. This enthralling narrative, crafted by the esteemed author of The Blessings, transports us alongside three middle-aged friends as they live during a college reunion in coastal Maine. Reunion, my forty-eighth read this year and my 250th since January 15, 2019, stands out for its compelling storytelling.

It’s June 2021, and three old college friends are heading to New England for the twenty-fifth reunion that was delayed the year before. Hope, a stay-at-home mom, is desperate to return to her beloved campus, a reprieve from her tense marriage and the stresses of pandemic parenting. Adam hesitates to leave his rustic but secluded life with his wife and young sons. Single mother Polly hasn’t been back to campus in more than twenty years and has no interest in returning—but changes her mind when her struggling teenage son suggests a road trip.

Yet, the reunion takes an unforeseen path, shattering their preconceptions. Hope, renowned for her sunny outlook, is forced to confront the harsh realities of her life and the fractures in her friendships. Adam embarks on a journey of self-discovery, reigniting the spirit of his carefree contrast to his current responsibilities. A single mother, Polly is compelled to face the shadows of her past,  youth, and a stark, long-kept secret. As the weekend takes a dramatic turn, all three are pushed to confront their past and its implications for the future, leading to profound personal transformation.

Beautifully observed and insightful, Reunion is a page-turning novel about the highs and lows of friendship from a writer at the height of her powers. Elise Juska’s skill in portraying the intricate dynamics of friendship will leave you intrigued and wanting more.

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