Skylight Confessions: a novel by Alice Hoffman
In Hoffman's 19th novel, a young woman becomes the victim of the destiny she's created, leaving behind a splintered family. On the day of her father's funeral, 17-year-old Arlyn Singer decides the first man who walks down the street will be her one love. That night, Yale senior John Moody stops to ask directions, and Arlyn and John take the first passionate steps toward what will become a marriage of heartache and mutual betrayal.
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
This keenly observed comedy of manners, set amid the glitter of cultural Manhattan in 2001, also looks unsparingly, though sympathetically, at a privileged class unwittingly poised for the catastrophe of 9/11. Messud gracefully intertwines the stories of three friends, attractive, entitled 30-ish Brown graduates "torn between Big Ideas and a party" but falling behind in the contest for public rewards and losing the struggle for personal contentment. The vibrant supporting cast includes a literary seducer ("without question, a great man") and two ambitious interlopers, teeming with malign energy, whose arrival on the scene propels the action forward.
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
A compilation of short fiction journeys from the Scotland of the author's own family heritage and a ship en route to the New World, to a family odyssey from Illinois to Canada and in and around Lake Huron. In stories that are more personal than any that she’s written before, Alice Munro pieces her family’s history into gloriously imagined fiction.
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
A chance encounter between two families--the Donaldson's, and the Iranian-born Yasdans--at the Baltimore airport, as both couples await the arrival of an adopted daughter from Korea, prompts an examination about what it means to be an American while the lives of the two families intertwine over the years
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton
After being left brain damaged, with the mind of a seven year old, following a bicycle accident, Madeline, Aaron MacIver's beautiful young former wife, is cared for by Aaron and his second wife, along with two children of their own, in an insightful novel, narrated by Aaron's son Mac, that follows the MacIver family through four decades. Reader's Guide available.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.
Run by Ann Patchett
Boston lawyer and ex-politician Bernard Doyle has nurtured his three sons—Sullivan, 33, and African American Tip, 21, and Teddy, 20, brothers adopted 20 years earlier—since the death of his beloved wife, Bernadette, some 15 years ago. Then, one snowy evening, Tip, inattentive and annoyed at his father, is pushed out of the way of an oncoming vehicle by a woman, herself hit and badly injured, who turns out to be the boys’ birth mother and who’s been watching the boys for years, along with her 11-year-old daughter, Kenya. The drama of a single day is given an unreal quality by the snow that curtails normal activity, as these vividly portrayed characters struggle with their circumstances.
After this by Alice McDermott
The Keane family of Long Island, get swept up in the wake of the Vietnam War. When John and Mary Keane marry shortly after WWII, she's on the verge of spinsterhood, and he's a vet haunted by the death of a young private in his platoon. Jacob, their first-born, is given the dead soldier's name, an omen that will haunt the family when Jacob is killed in Vietnam. In vignette-like chapters, some of which are stunning set-pieces, McDermott probes the remaining family's inner lives. Catholic faith and Irish heritage anchor John and Mary's feelings, but their children experience their generation's doubt, rebellion and loss of innocence.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.Best picks by Deborah El-Warari