Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief, by Megha Majumdar, a finalist in the fiction category for the 2025 National Book Award, tells two stories: Ma's frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay amid a worsening food shortage. The tale of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom.
by Megha Majumdar
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief, by Megha Majumdar, a finalist in the fiction category for the 2025 National Book Award, tells two stories: Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay amid a worsening food shortage. The tale of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom.
With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.
In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning, they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
A masterful new work from one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
Megha Majumdar is the author of the bestselling novel A Burning, which has been recognized by the New York Times and nominated for several prestigious awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. The book “A Burning” was recognized as one of the best of the year by various media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME Magazine.
In 2022, she received a Whiting Award. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, Majumdar holds degrees in anthropology from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. She is the former editor-in-chief of Catapult Books and currently resides in New York.
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by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
On the Rooftop: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, is a stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives—set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco. The first few pages moved glacially and then the story unfolded fully and became a page-turner that I highly recommend.
After hearing Ms. Sexton’s interview on Get Lit with All Of It, a monthly on-air, social media, in-person, and live-stream book club hosted by Alison Stewart of WNYC’s All Of It, I picked up the book. The novel had been on my to-read list.
The novel was loosely based on Fiddler on the Roof and it worked exceedingly well. Vivian is the overbearing mother and the daughters who have their own dreams and goals. With urban renewal, AKA Urban Renewal, as the backdrop, the novel was one that I could not put down.
The small section of the song that Esther writes so she can sing for her people, was a song I wish I could hear in its entirety. That Chole choose to sing it for final audition made it even more powerful.
You put words to the music inside my heart You showed me the world could be its own art I’d never felt myself so whole before I’d never known how much I could reach for.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.
Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.
The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, and another yearns to make her voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.
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by Mary Lawson
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson is set in northern Ontario’s rural “badlands.” The badlands are where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape of the farming Pye family. Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch-perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing – a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.
Crow Lake was a page-turner for me once I read the prologue.
Two families dominate the story.
On the one hand, it is the Greek tragedy of the Pye family. On their farm, “the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur—offstage.”
Kate Morrison has left her two brothers and sister at the lake to become a zoologist. The four siblings lost their parents and struggled to remain together. Their “tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive.
As Goodreads describes the novel,
In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning one’s expectations right to the very end. Tragic, funny, unforgettable, this deceptively simple masterpiece about the perils of hero worship leaped to the top of the bestseller lists only days after being released in Canada and earned glowing reviews in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, to name a few.
I highly recommend this novel and am looking forward to reading more from Mary Lawson.
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by Sally Rooney
Today, I dove into Sally Rooney‘s latest novel, “Intermezzo: A Novel,” which instantly captivated me. It’s a profoundly moving exploration of grief, love, and the intricacies of family life, with love at its heart. Reflecting on my journey through grief, I remember how Ms. Rooney‘s earlier work, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” resonated with me during my second year of processing loss.
It beautifully highlighted love’s enduring nature and reminded me that, even in the depths of sorrow, love’s essence never truly fades. Intermezzo focuses on the fact that, aside from being brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
In this poignant interlude, we delve into the lives of two brothers grappling with their profound grief, accompanied by those who care for them. It’s a raw journey woven with threads of longing, heartbreak, and the flickering light of hope. Together, they navigate the uncharted territory of loss, uncovering how much the human spirit can withstand before it shatters.
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by Mark Kramer
I started reading Borscht Belt Boy: Recollections of a Hotel Brat by Mark Kramer today. The book is the story of a young man who grew up in the heyday of the Borscht Belt. The author sent me a copy when I shared my 2023 reading accomplishments. I found joy in reading his memoir as the author, and I are almost the same age.
The author, the son of a Catskills Mountain resort hotel owner, describes his experiences growing up when hotels, bungalow colonies, and sleep-away camps were booming. Learn about the characters that populated this world, from the kids who worked in the dining rooms, the handymen recruited from the Bowery, to the chefs and maitre d’s.
Enjoy the author’s humorous description of the different kinds of people who summered in the mountains. Read fascinating tales of entertainers, including Buddy Hackett and Lenny Bruce’s experiences at the family hotel. There is a brief history of Catskills’ institutions, how the influx of Jews changed the landscape, and how the resort trade influenced race, religion, and class.
This lighthearted memoir will return fond memories to those who visited the Borscht Belt in their youth and enlighten those not lucky enough to have shared this particular time and place in history.
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 Katie Kitamura
A Separation by Katie Kitamura is about a young woman who has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. All I could think about from the opening page until I finished the book was how Jan and I, despite one messy period, never dealt with infidelity or separation. Our love was pure as the driven snow. The subject matter would typically not have interested me enough to read the book. However, it is written in a hypnotic manner that mesmerizes the reader into turning the next page.
I highly recommend this book.
Goodreads provides an overview.
As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to look for him, still keeping their split to herself. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. For the moment, it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them.
Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love.
A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished and transfixed.
In closing, I highly recommend this book.
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by Zadie Smith
I started reading The Fraud: A Novel by Zadie Smith today. The book is a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction that revolves around a legal trial that divided Victorian England. The story is set in 1873, where Mrs. Eliza Touchet, a Scottish housekeeper and cousin by marriage of a once-famous novelist, William Ainsworth, lives with him for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is interested in literature, justice, abolitionism, class, and her cousin’s wives.
However, she is skeptical of her cousin’s talent, Mr. Charles Dickens’ character, and England’s facades, in which nothing is as it seems.
On the other hand, Andrew Bogle grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation in Jamaica. He knows that every lump of sugar comes at a human cost, that the rich deceive the poor, and that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, a star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows that his future depends on telling the right story.
The “Tichborne Trial” captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. The trial involves a lower-class butcher from Australia who claimed he was the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title. The question is whether Sir Roger Tichborne is genuinely who he says he is or whether he’s a fraud. In a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what’s real is complicated for Mrs. Touchet and Mr. Bogle.
The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of “other people.” It’s based on historical events.
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.
