I recently recommended reading "Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel" by Jonathan Lethem. The story is set in 1970s Brooklyn, where a daily ritual occurs on the streets. This ritual involves exchanging money, surrendering belongings, and asserting power. Violence is promised everywhere and becomes a currency itself.
Read: October 2023
by Jonathan Lethem
I recently recommended reading “Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel” by Jonathan Lethem. The story is set in 1970s Brooklyn, where a daily ritual occurs on the streets. This ritual involves exchanging money, surrendering belongings, and asserting power. Violence is promised everywhere and becomes a currency itself.
Regardless of race, the street is like a stage in the shadows for the children. In the background, other players hide, including parents, cops, renovators, landlords, those who write the headlines, histories, and laws, and those who award this neighborhood its name.
Although the rules seem apparent initially, in memory’s prism, the roles of criminals and victims may appear to trade places. The voices of the past rise and gather as if in harmony, then war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its shimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget.
Jonathan Lethem has written this story with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, making it a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. He has crafted an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we’ve made. He is known as “one of America’s greatest storytellers” by the Washington Post.
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 Charlotte Mendelson
I began reading Charlotte Mendelson‘s novel, The Exhibitionist, today. The book tells the story of Lucia and Ray, two artists whose marriage starts to fall apart over a weekend. It explores themes such as art, sacrifice, family dynamics, queer desire, and personal freedom. Charlotte Mendelson has created yet another exceptional novel with The Exhibitionist, ranked as the year’s novel by The Times of London, and described as “furiously funny.”
The Hanrahan family is coming together for an important weekend. Ray Hanrahan, a well-known artist with a big ego, is preparing for his first exhibition in many years. His eldest daughter, Leah, is his biggest supporter. His son, Patrick, has decided to pursue his own path. His youngest daughter, Jess, has a big decision to make. Ray’s wife, Lucia, is also an artist but has always prioritized her roles as a wife and mother. She is keeping secrets of her own and must decide which desires to pursue as the weekend progresses and the exhibition approaches.
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 Susanna Clarke
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is about a man known as Piranesi who lives in a big house and explores the labyrinth of rooms and hopes of understanding the meaning. Is it any surprise that I would pick this book as my thirtieth of the year? As a widow, I journal and journey in a life I did not expect to live, and I still believe I will find meaning and purpose.
In addition, a labyrinth is one of the options we have discussed for the next phase of the work in Hanson Park.
Piranesi is a page-turner, but that does not fully describe the beauty of the world that Susanna Clarke created. I highly recommend this book as it is one of my best this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
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by Jennifer Haigh
Tonight I read Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh. A 911 call begins the story. A man reports his wife had died, but no one knew he had a wife. For thirty-two years, they had been married, and only one person had seen her, but only for a minute when she said: “supper was ready.” I read the first page and immediately found myself with a short page-turner that I could not stop reading. I recommend Zenith Man.
Actual events inspired this story. For many decades, many acquaintances of Jan and mine had no idea we were married. Once they found out, the response was, “we should have known as the two of you are perfect for each other.” But they knew we were married and had met both of us.
Being a widow, I found this phrase in the story emotional and very moving.
“She was a good woman,” Harold told Cob Krug. “I was lucky to have her. I promised to keep her in sickness and in health, and that’s what I did.”
Is there anything more that can summarize the love between two people?
I highly recommend Zenith Man, part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. Zenith Man is the fourth one in the series I have read. The previous three were Everything My Mother Taught Me, Can You Feel This?, and The Lion’s Den.
I have enjoyed all four and look forward to reading the final one.
Now that I have read Ms. Haigh’s short story, I have added her newest novel, Mercy Street, to my queue.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Whatever had been going on inside the shuttered old house, the couple who lived there kept it to themselves. Among the locals, there’s only chilling speculation.
Neighbors are shocked when Harold Pardee reports his wife dead. No one even knew the eccentric TV repairman was married. Within hours, horrible rumors spread about what that poor woman must have endured for thirty years. Until the Pardees’ carefully guarded world is exposed. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh delivers an endearing short story about our misguided perception of strangers, the nature of love, and the need for secrets.
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 Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver is a must-read page-turner! Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
With more knowledge about the devastation of an economy that works for a few and the opioid crisis, I felt as if I was reading about people I knew. Although the book focuses on the impact on boys, it also details the devastation that girls experience.
If Jan had read Demon Copperhead, she would have encouraged me to read it. It reminds us of the work we must do to repair the world.
As a widow, it was a reminder of the long road that we must all take even after we have hit bottom.
WNYC’s All of it hosted an interview with Barbara Kingsolver in which she speaks about Demon Copperhead and her writing.
Demon Copperhead is one of the NYTimes’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read three of them, The Candy House, The Furrows, and Checkout 19.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damage to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion and, above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
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 Emma Pattee
Today, I began reading “Tilt: A Novel” by Emma Pattee. Set over a single day, this electrifying debut novel features a potent new literary voice, according to Vogue. It follows one woman’s journey through a transformed city as she grapples with the weight of her past and holds fervent hope for the future. Tilt is a gripping narrative about our disappointments and desires, exploring the lengths we will go to for the people we love.
You and I were safe last night. Your father and I fought in the kitchen, but it felt like another universe.
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake strikes Portland, Oregon. She finds herself navigating a chaotic city without a way to reach her husband, a phone, or money.
As she goes through Portland’s wreckage, Annie encounters human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unexpected friendship with a young mother. Throughout her journey, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, unsatisfying career, and anxiety about becoming a mother. Determined to change her life, she needs to make it home.
Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She lives in Oregon.
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by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon
“The Future Is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land” explores the experiences of two lifelong peace activists, Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, who serve as guides in Israel and Palestine. Both have personally endured loss due to the ongoing conflict. They lead readers on a profound and transformative journey through this sacred yet tumultuous land, revealing the historical, political, and personal narratives that both divide and connect their communities and peoples.
“We do not see ourselves as Palestinians and Israelis, or as Jews and Arabs, but as human beings who believe in fostering a culture of dialogue, a culture of forgiveness, and a culture of peace. To those who see only division lines, we say: If you must divide us, let it be as those who believe in peace and equality and those who don’t… yet.”
Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon forged a bond of brotherhood when the world expected them to be enemies. Both have lost family to the conflict. Both have known the bitterness of righteous anger. Yet, they chose a different path.
In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been asked again and again: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.
This book is a rebuttal to a broken world and a bold challenge to the belief that more violence can ever bring security. Told with unflinching honesty, their story is proof that peace is not a naive dream, but a courageous choice—for reconciliation to heal the wounds of revenge, for partnerships to change a destiny of war, and for empathy to save us from drowning in sorrow.
Pairing unapologetic candor with inspirational prose, Sarah and Inon are sending an urgent message: the people have the power to make change. Peace is inevitable. For Palestinians, for Israelis, and for the world that awaits their example, it is not just possible—it is the future.
Aziz Abu Sarah serves as Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East. He is a peacebuilder, entrepreneur, National Geographic Explorer, TED Fellow, and a respected speaker and trainer in conflict resolution and responsible travel.
Aziz is also the co-founder of MEJDI Tours, a travel company aiming to transform tourism into a powerful tool for citizen diplomacy. He has received numerous accolades, including awards from the United Nations, the Institute of International Education, and the Explorers Club.
Recognized as one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan, Aziz has contributed opinion pieces to prominent publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al-Quds, and Haaretz.
Maoz Inon is the Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East. He is a peace activist from Israel and an entrepreneur. In recognition of his efforts, he has received the prestigious Franco-German Human Rights Prize and the Shared Living Award from Abraham Initiatives.
He has spoken before audiences on Capitol Hill, at universities across the United States, and in the European Parliament. Additionally, Inon has contributed articles to various publications, including The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and Haaretz.
He has also founded several initiatives aimed at fostering peace in Israel and the Middle East, including the Jesus Trail, Fauzi Azar Inn, and the Abraham Hostel & Tour brands.
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