New Book: O Beautiful

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Read: March 2023

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O Beautiful: A Novel

by Jung Yun

O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun, the critically acclaimed author of Shelter, has written an unflinching portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and the tortured realities of a deeply divided America. With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions, competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of beautiful but troubled land. I highly recommend O Beautiful!

I finished reading O Beautiful on International Women’s Day. It might have been coincidental, but in my humble opinion, it was the perfect book to read on this important day. Ms. Yun has written a novel that touches on the intersectionality of the core issues of our divided land. The misogyny, the racism, and the impact of capitalism out of control are all related and are affecting the quality of life in the early twenty-first century.

Elinor Hanson, the protagonist, is so vividly written that she jumps off the page and becomes someone we know as a family member. When she returned home to write about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota, I felt I had known her all my life. Unfortunately, the novel ended when she finally understood the issues and was in touch with her anger. I wish it would have continued so that the problems might have been addressed. Despite this, I highly recommend this novel.

O Beautiful is the twenty-first book I have read this year! My goal was twenty-three.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, struggles to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota.

Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers.

Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind.

The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and how she looks at the world.

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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Read: November 2021

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Black Sun – Between the Earth and Sky

by Rebecca Roanhorse

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

I have always enjoyed fantasy novels like Black Sun, and this is the first one set in the Pre-Columbian Americas.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as quickly as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Will Serapio be harmless or a villain? The answer, my friend, will be known when you read this book or perhaps the second one in the trilogy.

Before meeting and falling forever in love with Jan, I had dreamed of the life of an American Studies professor. Thousands of students are relieved to know I did not pursue that life. If I had opened that door, an area of focus would have been on Pre-Columbian Americas.

I recommend this book and will read the next two in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

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Read: April 2024

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Wild Houses: A Novel

by Colin Barrett

Today, I started reading “Wild Houses: A Novel” by Colin Barrett and was impressed by the author’s ability to blend dark humor and intense emotions. Colin Barrett, the award-winning author of “Homesickness” and “Young Skins,” has crafted a debut novel that takes readers on a rollercoaster ride of crimes committed out of desperation, abandoned dreams, and small-town secrets that won’t stay hidden. The story is presented with a wry wit that adds to its appeal.

The story is set in the quaint town of Ballina, located in picturesque west Ireland, as it prepares for its biggest weekend of the year. The simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum, painting a vivid picture of the town’s underbelly.

The story’s protagonist, Dev, is a reclusive man unwillingly drawn into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy when he answers the door and finds Doll, Cillian’s bruised, sullen teenage brother, in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. With the help of his dead mother’s dog, Dev is jostled by his nefarious cousins and is struck by spinning lights as he is goaded into their plan.

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can’t shake the feeling that something terrible has happened to her boyfriend, Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts, Nicky sets out to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.

“Wild Houses“ is a beautifully crafted and thrillingly told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence. It is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically acclaimed short story writer Colin Barrett.

Read: July 2025

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The Letter Carrier: A Novel

by Francesca Giannone

In the bestselling novel that has captivated readers in Italy, The Letter Carrier by Francesca Giannone depicts a small town in southern Italy that reflects the experiences of many others. It portrays the lives of women and men—husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters—as they strive to navigate the world while remaining true to their hearts. The Letter Carrier explores the universal theme of connection and examines the consequences that arise when those connections occur at the wrong time.

Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a Southerner, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a Northerner. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he, along with everyone else, can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue.

But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of, exploring ideas that some find threatening. She even wears pants, just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights, just like a man.

There aren’t many options for a woman with Anna’s sensibilities, so when she learns that the post office is hiring, she leaps at the opportunity. A female letter carrier? It is unthinkable! But Anna passes the postal exam and soon becomes the invisible thread connecting the town as she delivers letters between clandestine lovers, families waiting to hear news of loved ones away at war, and even helps those who can’t read.

Letters connect people, conveying both information and emotion. But for some in Lizzanello, letters are too little and too late.

Francesca Giannone holds a degree in communication science and studied at the CSC, the oldest film school in Europe, located in Rome. She has published several short stories in literary magazines, both in print and online. Currently, Giannone resides in Milan, but her heart remains in her hometown of Lizzanello, a seaside town in the Salento region of Italy. She hopes to return there to live one day.

Elettra Pauletto translated The Letter Carrier. After earning her MFA from Columbia University, she has split her time between writing about her experiences in Africa—specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Senegal—and translating fiction and nonfiction works from Italian and French into English. In both her writing and translations, she heavily relies on her background as a former political risk analyst who covered Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

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Read: June 2021

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Celestial Navigation

by Anne Tyler

Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler is a book I found on our bookshelf about a month after my wife passed away. The title and a mental note that my wife had recommended it made it an easy choice.

One of the main characters, thirty-eight-year-old Jeremy Pauling, had never left home. In the early stages of grief, I was nowhere near making a similar choice and remaining housebound. However, if I had been, this book would have caused me to reject that idea immediately.

After the death of his mother, he takes in Mary Tell and her daughter as boarders. The other boarders quickly realize that Jeremy is falling in love with Mary despite his fragility and inexperience with women.

To share more about the book would reveal details that might be spoilers.

For me, the book was a good read and one that reminded me that love is both beautiful and complicated. Although Jan and I shared passion was nothing like theirs, it was helpful to compare their love and ours when my loss seemed impossible.

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Read: October 2019

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Stony the Road

by Henry Louis Gates Jr

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a must-read book, especially with white nationalism on the rise.

I read this book when Jan began her chemotherapy. Although the book’s subject – the retreat from reconstruction – was one I studied in college, at times, I found it hard to focus on the material and my wife’s health at the same time. I stayed on the stony road as it is a subject we need to understand if we are going to correct the past failures.

As The New York Times wrote,

Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” an indispensable guide to the making of our times, addresses 2017’s mystifications. The book sets the Obama era beside Reconstruction and the Trump era beside the white supremacist terrorism of Redemption, the period beginning in 1877 during which Reconstruction’s nascent, biracial democracy was largely dismantled. Gates juxtaposes the optimism of Reconstruction, the despair of Redemption, and the promise of the New Negro movement — the effort by black Americans, starting around the turn of the 20th century, to craft a counternarrative to white supremacy. In doing so, “Stony the Road” presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism.

Growing up in the Jim Crow south, I was well aware of white nationalism. This book is an essential read if we are going to make America a multi-racial democracy.

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Read: June 2022

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The Brighter the Light

by Mary Ellen Taylor

The Brighter the Light by Mary Ellen Taylor was my eighty-ninth book since the beginning of 2019. After reading about Thomas Cromwell, I needed a change of pace. With the start of the Hurricane season, it seemed as good a time as any to read a novel by a fellow Southerner. That the book is also an “evocative dual-timeline novel detailing one woman’s journey to discover the hidden stories of her family’s seaside resort” seemed a perfect match.

I highly recommend this book. As a Southerner, I found the revealing of the hidden secrets accomplished in a style that makes this a page-turner.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

When a shipwreck surfaces, old secrets are sure to follow.

Or so goes the lore in Ivy Neale’s hometown of Nags Head, North Carolina. When Ivy inherits her family’s beachfront cottage upon her grandmother’s death, she knows returning to Nags Head means facing the best friend and the boyfriend who betrayed her years ago.

But then a winter gale uncovers the shipwreck of local legend—and Ivy soon begins to stumble across more skeletons in the closet than just her own. Amid the cottage’s clutter are clues from her grandmother’s past at the enchanting seaside resort her family once owned. One fateful summer in 1950, the arrival of a dazzling singer shook the staff and guests alike—and not everyone made it to fall.

As Ivy contends with broken relationships and a burgeoning romance in the present, the past threatens to sweep her away. But as she uncovers the strength of her grandmother and the women who came before her, she realizes she is like the legendary shipwreck: the sands may shift around her, but she has found her home here by the sea.

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New Book: O Beautiful

O Beautiful: A Novel

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