Today, I began reading “Welcome Home, Stranger: A Novel” by Kate Christensen. The book tells the story of a woman in her fifties who returns home to Maine after her mother’s passing. The novel explores themes of grief, love, growing older, and family complexities. It raises the question: Can you ever honestly go back home?

Rachel is an environmental journalist living in Washington, DC. She has been estranged from her working-class family in New England for many years. Having gone through a divorce and being childless in her middle age, Rachel is a truly independent spirit who has experienced a lot of pain. She feels like her life is falling apart and is struggling to cope with big and small challenges. However, her life takes a different turn when she gets a call to return home for her mother’s funeral.

Then, everything falls apart.

Rachel is surrounded by a cast of characters who are sometimes comical, sometimes heartbreakingly earnest. Her sister is an arriviste, her brother-in-law is an alcoholic, and the love of her life has recently married her sister’s best friend. Rachel must face her past and come to terms with the sorrow she has long buried. She must also confront the ghost of her mother, who, for better or worse, made her the woman she is today.

Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now.

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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Victory City: A Novel by Salman Rushdie is an epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie. It is well written and was a page-turner from page one to the end. I highly recommend this novel and encourage everyone to read it.

Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is a testament to storytelling’s power. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. I was hooked when Pampa Kampana provided the seeds that created Victory City out of thin air.

David Remnick’s interview with Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker provided background I would have missed.

“The first kings of Vijayanagara announced, quite seriously, that they were descended from the moon,” Rushdie said. “So when these kings, Harihara and Bukka, announce that they’re members of the lunar dynasty, they’re associating themselves with those great heroes. It’s like saying, ‘I’ve descended from the same family as Achilles.’ Or Agamemnon. And so I thought, Well, if you could say that, I can say anything.”

Above all, the book is buoyed by the character of Pampa Kampana, who, Rushdie says, “just showed up in my head” and gave him his story, his sense of direction. Rushdie’s pleasure in writing the novel was in “world building” and, at the same time, writing about a character building that world: “It’s me doing it, but it’s also her doing it.” The pleasure is infectious. “Victory City” is an immensely enjoyable novel. It is also an affirmation. At the end, with the great city in ruins, what is left is not the storyteller but her words:

I, Pampa Kampana, am the author of this book.
I have lived to see an empire rise and fall.
How are they remembered now, these kings, these queens?
They exist now only in words . . .
I myself am nothing now. All that remains is this city of words.
Words are the only victors.

The Goodreads summary provides a brief overview,

In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga–literally victory city–the wonder of the world.

Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on Parvati’s task: giving women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry–with Pampa Kampana at its center.

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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“The Slip” is the debut novel by Lucas Schaefer, telling a compelling American story about a missing teenage boy, themes of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing. Navigating the ever-changing landscape of a shifting country, “The Slip” offers an audacious and daring exploration of sex and race in America. The narrative builds to an unforgettable climax in the center of the ring.

This novel is the winner of the Kirkus Prize for 2025  and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2025, as well as one of The Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2025.

Austin, Texas: It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident, and even tanner. Then one night, he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.

Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he’s been searching for. But it’s never that simple.

More than a decade later, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying a license bearing the wrong name and face.

Lucas Schaefer lives with his family in Austin. The Slip is his first novel.

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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.

I read Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman on the last day of 2022 as I was alone, and I have always admired Ms. Hoffman’s prose. The short story is a haunting short story of loyalty and betrayal, a young woman in early 1900s Massachusetts discovers that in navigating her treacherous coming-of-age, she must find her voice first. I know it is a book that Jan would have enjoyed reading, and I highly recommend it.

Alice Hoffman’s Everything My Mother Taught Me is part of Inheritance’s five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. I plan to read more of this series in 2023.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic Alice Hoffman crafts a beautiful, heart-wrenching short story. For fatefully observant, Adeline, growing up, carries an ominous warning from her adulterous mother: don’t say a word. Adeline vows never to speak again. Her only secret. After her mother takes a housekeeping job at a  But that’s not lighthouse off the tip of Cape Ann, a local woman vanishes. The key to the mystery lies with Adeline, the silent witness.

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.

Exciting, fast-paced, and emotionally charged, Atmosphere showcases Taylor Jenkins Reid at her finest: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and narrating a passionate and uplifting story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars. The book also explores themes of ambition, friendship, and the unknown, making it a compelling read for those interested in contemporary fiction and the exploration of space.

Joan Goodwin’s fascination with the stars has been a lifelong passion. As a thoughtful and reserved professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and a devoted aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, Joan’s life is content. However, her world is turned upside down when she stumbles upon an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan is filled with a burning desire to be among the select few to venture into space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts forge unlikely friendships and prepare for their first flights, Joan discovers a passion and a love she never thought possible. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything took a dramatic turn in an instant.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

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