As Peg approaches middle age, her life is becoming chaotic. Her subpar husband has decided to leave and seek divorce. Her kids, in late high school and college, are approaching more independence and want little to do with her. A new colleague in her real-estate firm begins stealing her work. All these dynamics compound to bring out the worst in Peg. A drinking habit increases, and she makes the mistake of driving to the store…
Phoebe Stone, an English professor from St. Louis, wants to kill herself at a lovely oceanfront hotel in Rhode Island. However, upon arrival, she encounters a hotel full of people ready for a six-day vacation wedding. Like most suicidal people, Phoebe tells someone about her agony – the bride-to-be. They end up engaging in honest conversation, and the bride-to-be begs Phoebe not to ruin her wedding week. Phoebe ends up not killing herself and gets…
This classic investigates the American frontier in the early 20th century. The protagonist Alexandra inherits a family farm in her youth. Even though the frontier seems rough and not a place for success, she decides to stick with it. Sixteen years later, she has grown a life of material riches, yet her personal life is somewhat insulated. She is lonely amidst all the financial prosperity. The world around her is divided by ethnic groups of…
Kalista is a medal-winning runner training for her third Olympics when she discovers that her father is dying. She and her fiancé/business partner are in the middle of building a business, but amidst all the distractions, she realizes that her father deserves her attention most. In so doing, she rekindles childhood memories and reassesses what she values in life. As a short story, the script ends with most of those storylines still open and unresolved,…
Some people adore books that leave them with a warm feeling, but I adore books that leave me with tears streaming on my face. This book is one of the latter. Originally a bestseller in Sweden, it’s now translated into English (and other languages) for the world to contemplate. In the story, Bo is facing aging as his own body is breaking down. His wife is in long-term care with dementia, unable to recognize even…
Most Americans have read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird at some time throughout our lives. It’s the clearest account of Jim Crow’s effects on Southern American culture and of the power of a few upright people to fix it. Lee’s Alabama roots are well known, but she actually wrote the classic in New York City. Beforehand, she wrote a series of short stories with themes that forecast her great accomplishment. Posthumously, those stories have…
Ruthie Swain’s poet-father died recently, and she seeks to rekindle his memory through rereading his entire personal library. She ends up retelling his life and her grandfather’s life through this meandering yet meaningful tale of rural County Clare, Ireland. It concludes with deeply emotional moments all the way through the last chapter. I was moved to tears at multiple points, telling my wife, “I hate novels that make me cry because I love novels that…
When inventing plays, the ancient Greeks noticed stories often healed audiences of their psychological ills. Stories remain some of the first historic signs of civilizations the world over. Even today, weekends for many often consist of movies and/or fiction. What fascinates us so about them? Will Storr takes a gambit to explain this deeply human topic. He wants us to understand stories – and ourselves – better so that we can tell the next tale…
Noe, short for Noel, is a teenage orphan who recently moved from Dublin to live with his grandparents in a small Irish town. Just prior, he enrolled in a seminary with the thought of seeking a priestly calling, but dropped out. Instead, he is now trying to find direction in life. Suddenly, in his small community of Faha, it stops raining, and the sun comes out. The sun never stays out in this rainy realm…
Rami Ramanathan is a New Jersey teenager passionate about being the top-ranked tennis player in his age group. He is the only child of his surgeon-father and his stay-at-home mother. Suddenly, his family encounters grief, an emotion that Rami has not previously encountered, at least in as much depth, and that he has not seen his mother encounter. Death’s visit makes him grow up and see the world more clearly – as it is, not…