#22 Falling Man Don DeLillo

"This mind and soul, her's and everyone's, keep dreaming toward something unreachable. Does this mean there's something there, at the limits of matter and energy, a force responsible in some way for the very nature, the vibrancy of our lives from the mind out, the mind in little pigeon blinks that extend the plane of being, out beyond logic and intuition."

Jacket Copy: Falling Man, Don DeLillo's magnificent, hauntin novel about September 11, begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the altered lives of a few New Yorkers. First there is Keith, a lawyer who walks out of the rubble and back into the world of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their young son, Justin. In the weeks and months after that day, Lianne probes Keith's moods, tries to reconcile two versions of her shadowy husband. Justin turns furtive, speaks in monosyllables and stands at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss and grief, emotional landscapes reconfigured by the enormous force of history. DeLillo's love of New York--its pluck and verve, the history it carries, the sudden intimacies of strangers on its streets--makes Falling Man one of his most resonant novels, heartbreaking and beautiful.

Similar to: Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays


Highlights:
--The reason I compared this to Didion is for its spare but sharp prose. It's one of those short but sweet novels that says a lot in a very few words.
--The thing about this book is that I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it...it's an unpleasant book, so it's not something anything would really "enjoy" per se. But I feel like I know more about the world and about human nature from reading it, so in that sense, it's a great book.
--The use of the "Falling Man" performance artist as a metaphor for survivors of the 9/11 attacks was particularly genius. This is the image that will stick with me most from reading the book; it's what makes this book so haunting, long after you've finished reading it.

#21 By Nightfall Michael Cunningham

“who in the world despairs more exquisitely than the young, it’s something the old tend to forget”

Jacket Copy: Peter and Rebecca Harris: midforties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three year old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career- the entire world he has so carefully constructed. Like his legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we; live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.

Similar to: Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”; John Green; Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama; Philip Roth’s American Pastoral; James Joyce

Highlights:

--this book is about seeming minutiae. The little split second decisions we make all day long, that, while often appearing rather inconsequential, indeed do have effects that change the course of things. The novel traces the cause and effect patterns of several of these “small” decisions to their, inevitable and at the same time unpredictable, ends.

--this book suggests that what we generally consider beautiful and aesthetically pleasing is often missing that factor of true beauty: the ugliness within that makes the beautiful parts stand out by contrast. It posits that its not the virtues of people that ultimately attract us to them, but rather their vices, their flaws, their inconsistencies.

#20 The Radleys Matt Haig

Jacket Copy: Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have--for seventeen years--been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking--and disturbingly satisfying--act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara's trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage. The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain--and lose--when we deny our appetites.

Similar to: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Joss Whedon's "Angel"

Highlights:
--the metaphorical potential that the vampire plot mechanism holds is of course, very rich, and Haig makes use of it to a great extent. He tells the story in a way that allows us to relate to the characters, despite the fact that we are not, ourselves, vampires.
--although there have been a lot, a lot of stories written about vampires, and most of them are, admittedly, not worth reading, this book is one of the few that is well worth your time.