Today, I started reading The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler, translated by Katy Derbyshire. It's a vibrant story of love, companionship, and renewal in 1960s Vienna. With warm prose and tender humor, Seethaler has created a delightful parable about human existence, brought to life by unforgettable characters and a rich tapestry of narratives.
by Robert Seethaler
Today, I started reading The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler, translated by Katy Derbyshire. It’s a vibrant story of love, companionship, and renewal in 1960s Vienna. With warm prose and tender humor, Seethaler has created a delightful parable about human existence, brought to life by unforgettable characters and a rich tapestry of narratives.
In the summer of 1966, Robert Simon was in his early thirties and had a dream. Raised in a home for war orphans, he has grown into a warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined man. When the former owners of the corner café in Carmelite Market Square close the business, Robert sees an opportunity to realize his dream.
The café, dark and dilapidated, is located in an impoverished neighborhood of the Austrian capital. However, a new energy is beginning to fill the air, signaling a desire for renewal. In the newspapers that fishmongers use to wrap char and trout from the Danube, one can read about the great things to come, heralding a bright future emerging from the shadows of the past.
Inspired by this optimism, Robert refurbishes the café. His efforts pay off as customers arrive, drawn to a congenial space where they can gather, talk, read, or sit and reflect. Each visitor brings their passion, friendship, loss, and heartache stories. Some search for companionship, while others long for love or a place to feel understood. As the city transforms, Robert’s café becomes a haven—a refuge from which to observe life, mourn, and rejoice.
Robert Seethaler was born in Vienna in 1966 and is the author of eight novels. In 2017, he was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize with A Whole Life (FSG, 2016). He also works as an actor, most recently in Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth. He lives in Berlin.
Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German writers, including Christa Wolf, Heike Geissler, and Olga Grjasnowa. Her translation of Clemens Meyer‘s While We Were Dreaming was longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize. She was born in London and has been based in Berlin for over twenty years.
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by Fernanda Melchor
‘Hurricane Season‘ by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes, is a literary gem acknowledged by the New York Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The story opens with the discovery of a dead witch in a village, leading to an investigation into her murder. As the novel unfolds, it offers a unique perspective on the lives of the villagers, each narrating the story from their point of view.
This unique portrayal of the characters, each with flaws and virtues, uncovers new details and acts of depravity. Despite the characters being seen as irredeemable, Melchor extracts some shred of humanity from them, creating a lasting portrait of a doomed Mexican village. This deep connection to Mexican culture is a significant aspect of the novel that will surely resonate with readers interested in this topic.
“Hurricane Season” draws significant literary inspiration from Roberto Bolaño‘s “2666” and Faulkner‘s novels. Like these works, it is set in a world filled with mythology and actual violence that seeps into the surroundings, creating a connection that makes it more terrifying the deeper you explore it.
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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by James McBride
I started reading The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride today. It’s the seventy-first book I’ve read this year and the two hundredth since January 1, 2019. The novel’s narrative begins in 1972 when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development. They were surprised to find a skeleton at the bottom of the well. The identity of the skeleton and how it ended up there were long-held secrets that the residents of Chicken Hill kept.
Jewish immigrants and African Americans lived together in this run-down neighborhood and shared their aspirations and hardships. Moshe and Chona Ludlow resided in Chicken Hill when Moshe integrated his theatre, and Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state officials searched for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theatre and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who collaborated to keep the boy safe.
As the stories of these characters intertwine and develop, it becomes evident how much the individuals living on the outskirts of white, Christian America struggle to survive and what they must do to make it through. As the truth is ultimately disclosed regarding the events that occurred on Chicken Hill, including the involvement of the town’s white establishment, McBride illustrates to us that, even in the darkest of times, love and community – the very essence of heaven and earth – help us endure.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
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 Anne Applebaum
Today, I plunged into the captivating world of “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World” by Anne Applebaum. I listened to an engaging discussion between her and the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Jonathan Brent. Their insights left me eager for more, and I couldn’t resist making this book my next read. I’m thrilled to dive deeper into her thought-provoking perspective!
This compelling New York Times bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author paints a chilling picture of how autocratic regimes join forces to erode democracy globally. Applebaum sheds light on this pressing issue and offers insights on how we can unite to fight back.
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: An all-powerful leader is at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don’t stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc. aren’t linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather by a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan’s essay calling for “containment” of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to reorient their policies to fight a new threat fundamentally.
There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. So few of them have existed across human history; so many have existed for a short time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside and from the inside, too, by division and demagogues. Or they can be saved. But only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.
After finishing Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” this closing paragraph should be a call to action. Failure to respond to the challenge will doom our future to an unacceptable one. I recommend this book and encourage people to read it, discuss its contents, and take action to save our collective future.
When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!
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.
by Liane Moriarty
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty is a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest. The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other.
If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father? The four grown Delaney siblings face this dilemma.
This book is a page-turner. With all of the characters having issues unrelated to their mission mother, they have a life with many mysteries and rivalries. I sometimes wanted to know more about their lives instead of the missing mum.
Although I will not reveal the conclusion, it is clear how a missing parent could appear to be the crime of the century.
According to Goodreads,
The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it, their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?
The four Delaney children―Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke―were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups. In addition, there is the beautiful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.
One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that were all, she wanted.
Later, when Joy goes missing and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent. Two are not so sure―but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their most important match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.
I recommend this book.
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