Another brilliant example of Evan Connell’s art, The Patriot deals with an American boy who grew to maturity with World War II. He had learned his father’s patriotism, and then, through the impact of firsthand experience, formulated his own.Melvin Isaacs, aged seventeen, became a Navy Air Force cadet in 1942. His course of training as a flyer was an education in fear and death, even though it had its wonderfully comic times a ...
A beautifully written book set in Marin County, Innocence is a philosophical novel that follows John Gegenuber, a former Episcopal priest who has given up his parish and vocation to become a real estate agent. After having corrective surgery for a cleft palate, John has been invited to go on a romantic weekend trip to a secluded country estate with Thalia, a young woman who has undergone the same cosmetic surgery.Their transformational weekend t ...
One Hundred Philistine Foreskins centers on the life of Temima Ba'alatOv, known also as Ima Temima, or Mother Temima, a charismatic woman rabbi of extraordinary spiritual power and learning, and an utterly original interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Temima is revered as a guru with prophetic, even messianic powers—one who dares to raise her woman’s “naked” voice even in the face of extreme hostility by th ...
Karen E. Bender burst on to the literary scene a decade ago with her luminous first novel, Like Normal People, which garnered remarkable acclaim.A Town of Empty Rooms presents the story of Serena and Dan Shine, estranged from one another as they separately grieve over the recent loss of Serena’s father and Dan’s older brother. Serena’s actions cause the couple and their two small children to be banished from New Yor ...
Two-Part Inventions begins when Suzanne, a concert pianist, dies suddenly of a stroke in the New York City apartment she shares with her producer husband Philip. Rather than mourn in peace, Philip becomes deeply paranoid: their life is based on a fraud and the acclaimed music the couple created is about to be exposed. Philip had built a career for his wife by altering her recordings, taking a portion of a song here and there, from recordings of ...
The lives of officers in an Air Force squadron in occupied Europe encompass the contradictions of military experience and the men's response to a young newcomer, bright and ambitious, whose fate is to be an emblem of their own. In Cassada, Salter captures the strange comradeship of loneliness, trust, and alienation among military men ready to sacrifice all in the name of duty and pride.After futile attempts at ordinary revision, Salter elec ...
Jan Karski, a young Polish diplomat turned cavalry officer, joined the Polish underground movement after escaping from a Soviet detention camp in 1939. He served as a courier for the underground, ferrying messages between occupied Poland and the exiled Polish leaders, before he was captured and brutally tortured by the Gestapo.Escaping from the Germans, Jan Karski was charged with the mission of his lifetime: to convey a message to the Allies ab ...
Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three-year-old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a mome ...
