Today, I would like to recommend the book “Eastbound” by Maylis De Kerangal, which has been beautifully translated into English by Jessica Moore. The story revolves around a Russian conscript and a French woman who cross paths on the Trans-Siberian railroad, each trying to escape to the East for different reasons. “Eastbound” is an adventure story that takes you through two vibrant inner worlds.

The book has been listed as one of the five best fiction books 2023 by The New York Times. Maylis De Kerangal has done an excellent job telling the story of two unlikely souls with gorgeously translated, winding sentences that evoke a striking sense of tenderness. The brutality of the surrounding world contrasts sharply with the growing collaboration between the two characters.

As the story progresses, we meet Aliocha, a young Russian conscript who decides to desert the train soon after boarding the Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. During a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train, Aliocha encounters an older French woman, Hélène, for whom he feels an uncanny trust. He urgently asks Hélène, through pantomime and basic Russian, for her help hiding him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Hélène’s first-class sleeping car. As Aliocha becomes a hunted deserter, Hélène becomes his accomplice, having her inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.

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.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

Today, I started reading Help Wanted: A Novel by Adelle Waldman. The best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel writes a funny and eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America. The story revolves around the members of Team Movement, who work at the big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town.

They come in for their shift at 3:55 a.m. every day, and under the supervision of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s merchandise truck, stock the shelves, and leave before the store opens for customers.

Although their lives follow a familiar and grueling routine, their real problem is that Town Square needs to schedule them for more hours. As a result, most are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When the store manager, Big Will, announces he is leaving, the members of the Movement spot an opportunity. They set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion, hoping one of them might land a management job, providing stability and possibilities for advancement.

The members of Team Movement, including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman trying to keep her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path, band together to achieve their goal. Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, and her long-awaited follow-up brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to modern, low-wage work. Help Wanted is a humane and darkly comic workplace caper that highlights the hardships low-wage workers face in today’s economy. It is a funny and moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings, edited by Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, is a must-read in our times when a constitutional crisis is the watchword of our day. Compared to reading all 27 volumes of Hamilton’s writings, this book provides the essential texts that offer a clear understanding of both the revolutionary era, the debates over the constitution, Hamilton’s impact as Secretary of the Treasury, and his downfall and eventual downfall death in Weehawken.

Professor Freeman’s introductions and chronology help place the writings into a historical context.

The Essential Hamilton is one of four books that I purchased after my first One Day University class.

Subscribe

Contact Us

What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster is one of the best books I have read in the last few years. At this moment in my life, family means more than ever. This book explores how families can collapse and find ways to reunite. Although my life circumstances are the polar opposite of the protagonists, the book’s central themes resonated with me.

The focus on integration in this Millenium is a subject that needs to be discussed openly and honestly. The racist response of some of the parents is told in a way that clarifies the pain that that can cause.

Even the parents who favor integration have their flaws, which are passed on to their children.

The children, especially Noelle and Gee, oppose their parent’s actions. The sins of their parents are sowed upon them as well.

I have placed this book on my list of novels for reading later this year or n 2023. Its themes are so strong that a second reading is required to engage with its multiple levels fully.

This is a Goodreads summary.

A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the primarily Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years.

The debate is Jade, Gee’s steely, ambitious mother, on one side of the integration. In the aftermath of a severe loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he’ll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle’s headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn’t protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie.

When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers-each determined to see her child inherit a better life-will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.

As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What’s Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores every family’s unique organism: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

Today, I began reading “Corey Fah Does Social Mobility: A Novel” by Isabel Waidner. The book is about Corey Fah, a writer whose novel has just won the Fictionalization of Social Evils prize. Despite this achievement, the trophy and funds with the award still need to be in reach. The novel celebrates radical queer survival and challenges false notions of success.

Corey, their partner Drew, and their pet spider, Bambi Pavok, embark on a quest to find an elusive trophy with neon-beige color and UFO-like qualities. This journey takes them back to their childhood in the forest and includes a stint on a reality TV show. While facing the horrors of wormholes and time loops, Corey discovers the difference between a prize and a gift in a complex way.

Following the Goldsmiths Prize–winning Sterling Karat Gold, Isabel Waidner’s bold and buoyant new novel is about coming into one’s own, the labor of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself, and what ensues when a large amount of cultural capital is suddenly deposited in a place it has never been before.

Today, I read “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan, one of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, and the seventeenth book I have read from that list. “Small Things Like These” is award-winning author Claire Keegan‘s landmark new novel, a tale of one man’s courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family.

The story is set in 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

I found this short but well-written novel very impactful. The following quote explains the powerful impact of the need for meaning and purpose in our lives as Furlong walks in the snow after taking action after bringing home a young girl from a Magdalen laundry. How often can we ignore the small things like these and still look ourselves in the mirror?

“As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?”

As an international bestseller, ‘Small Things Like These‘ is a profoundly moving story of hope and quiet heroism. It’s a narrative that will make you admire the characters and stir your empathy, all crafted by one of our most critically acclaimed and iconic writers. The characters in the story are so relatable that you will feel understood and deeply invested in their journey.