Authors and Literary Works For You to Consider - a Blog Post by Mariana_Trench_

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10/8/2010 6:00 pm

Authors and Literary Works For You to Consider

1. Peter Høeg - "Smilla's Sense of Snow"

The novel is ostensibly a work of detection and a thriller, although beneath the surface of the novel, Høeg is concerned with rather deeper cultural issues, particularly Denmark's curious post-colonial history, and also the nature of relationships that exist between individuals and the societies in which they are obliged to operate. The protagonist Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen is a sympathetic and useful vehicle in this respect, her deceased mother being Greenlandic Inuit and her father a rich Danish doctor. Smilla's relationship with Denmark and Danish society, having been brought in childhood from the poverty and freedom of Greenland to the affluent and highly ordered society of Denmark, is strained and ambivalent.

2. Joyce Carol Oates - "The Gravedigger's "

Rebecca is the of Jacob and Anna Schwart, German-Jewish refugees from Hitler. In 1936, they flee to America with their two young sons, Herschel and August; Rebecca is born in New York Harbor while the family is still on the boat that brought them over. A former mathematics teacher, soccer coach and printer’s assistant, Jacob can find work only as a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker in the small town in upstate New York where the Schwarts have settled. Haunted by Nazi demons, his ego battered by prejudice and humiliation in his new life, Jacob torments his terrified wife and . Finally he erupts and commits an incredible act of violence, traumatizing Rebecca yet at the same time releasing her into the world and a new beginning.

3. Michael Chabon - "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay"

This is the 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. The novel follows the lives of the title characters, a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born writer named Sam Clay—both Jewish—before, during, and after World War II. Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the nascent comics industry during its "Golden Age." Kavalier & Clay was published to "nearly unanimous praise" and became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2007, The New York Review of Books called the novel Chabon's magnum opus.

4. Ann-Marie MacDonald - "Fall on Your Knees" & "The Way the Crow Flies"

Fall On Your Knees practically throbs on every page with its author's obvious love of language and sheer joy in the storytelling process itself. The story shifts continually back and forth in time and place as it relates the sprawling, multi-generational saga of the Piper and (to a much lesser extent) Mahmoud families of Cape Breton. Ms. MacDonald demonstrates an exceptional ability to sketch vivid, complex, and ultimately heartbreaking female characters, and her ear for the speech patterns of is positively uncanny.

The Way the Crow Flies opens in 1962 when the McCarthy family moves from Germany to their new home on a Canadian air force base near London, Ontario. Madeleine, eight and already a blossoming comic, is particularly close with her father, Jack, an air force officer. Her loving Acadian mother, Mimi, and older brother Mike round out this family, whose simple goodness reflects the glow of an era that seemed like paradise. But all that is about to change. The Cuban Missile Crisis is looming, and Jack, loyal and gullible, suddenly has an important task to carry out that involves a scientist--a former Nazi--in Canada. While Jack scrambles to keep his activities hidden from his wife, Madeleine too is learning to keep secrets (about a teacher at school). This novel is all about the fertility of lies, how one breeds another and another.

5. Tom Wolfe - "The Electric Koolaid Acid Test"

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the "nonfiction novel" tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. The book follows the Pranksters across the country driving in a psychedelic painted school bus dubbed "Furthur," reaching what they considered to be personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The novel also describes the Acid Tests, early performances by The Grateful Dead, and Kesey's exile to Mexico. In 1968, Eliot Fremont-Smith of The New York Times called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test "not simply the best book on hippies...(but also) the essential book."

6. Tom Robbins - "Jitterbug Perfume"

The major themes of the book include the striving for immortality, the meaning behind the sense of smell, individual expression, self-reliance, sex, love, and religion. Beets and the god Pan figure prominently. The novel is a self-described epic, with four distinct storylines, one set in 8th century Bohemia and three others in modern day New Orleans, Seattle, and Paris. The story begins as a powerful and righteous 8th century king named Alobar narrowly escapes regicide at the hands of his own subjects, as it is their custom to kill the king at the first sign of aging. After fleeing, no longer a king but a simple peasant, he travels through Eurasia, and eventually meets the goat-god Pan, who is slowly losing his powers as the world turns toward Christianity. In India, he meets a girl Kudra, who goes on to become his wife.

7. Orhan Pamuk - "Snow"

Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling the story based on Ka's journals and correspondence. This narrator sometimes provides the reader with information before Ka knows it or foreshadows later events in the story. Ka is a poet, who returns to Turkey after 12 years of political exile in Germany. A friend on a newspaper in Istanbul suggests that he go to the town of Kars to investigate the recent suicides of a number of young women in the area. As a result, Kars, near Turkey's eastern border of Armenia and Georgia, is a hotbed of controversy among local Muslims as suicide is forbidden in Islam.

8. Mary Roach - "Stiff"

For 2,000 years, cadavers -- some willingly, some unwittingly -- have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.

9. E.L. Doctorow - "Homer & Langley"

Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers – the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers – wars, political movements, technological advances – and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians... and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.

10. Kent Haruf - "Plainsong" & "Eventide"

''Here was this man Tom Guthrie. . . .'' That's how Kent Haruf begins the first sentence of Plainsong, and not until the last sentence, roughly 300 pages later, does he allow himself a rhetorical flourish so pronounced. Yet from simple strands of language and cuttings of talk, from the look of the high Colorado plains east of Denver almost to the place where Nebraska and Kansas meet, Haruf has made a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader. This man Guthrie; his two , Ike and Bobby; a pregnant named Victoria Roubideaux, shut out of her home by her mother; the old unmarried McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond, who take her in -- these and a woman named Maggie Jones and the small town of Holt are the world of ''Plainsong.'' Eventide, Plainsong, and all of Mr. Haruf's novels are all set in this same fictional town.

11. Jeffrey Eugenides - "Middlesex"

Eugenides decided to write Middlesex after he read the memoir Herculine Barbin and was unsatisfied with its discussion of a hermaphrodite's anatomy and emotions. The narrator and protagonist, Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie"), is an intersexed man of Greek descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which causes him to have certain feminine traits. The first half of the novel is about Cal's Greek family, and depicts Cal's grandparents migrating from a small village in Asia Minor to the United States in 1922—followed by their assimilation into the American society. The latter half of the novel, which is set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences while living in Detroit, Michigan.

12. Dennis Lehane - "The Given Day"

In “The Given Day” Dennis Lehane links the term to comically quaint Irish brogues but also demonstrates, through the gut-wrenching force of this stunning historical novel, exactly what it means. In 1919, as Mr. Lehane illustrates with such sweep and agility, World War I was ending, sending home soldiers who would reshape the labor market; the Spanish Influenza plague still raged; Bolsheviks and anarchists were branded the terrorists of their time; the Volstead Act was about to inaugurate Prohibition, creating whole new dimensions of caste and crime; and baseball players talking to game-fixers were laying the groundwork for the Black Sox scandal at the World Series. As for Boston, it was beset by an apocalyptic, groundbreaking police strike.

13. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - "Love in the Time of Cholera" & "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

The main female character "Love in the Time of Cholera," Fermina Daza, is the strong axis around which the story revolves. Fermina easily rejects Florentino Ariza in their youth when she realizes the naïveté of their first romance, and she weds Juvenal Urbino at the age of 21, the "deadline" she had set for herself, ultimately because he seemed to be able to offer security and love to her. By the end the love between Fermina and Florentino is allowed to blossom in their old age.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of six generations of the Buendia family and the changes that occur over more than 100 years in the town the family helped found. Our wants and needs are laid bare by Marquez's prose and the reader feels uncomforably naked in his presence. The epic nature of the story encompasses all of what it means to be human, yet scales it down to the context of one family. The concentration of such scope packs the novel with an incredible intensity that finally explodes at the ending of the novel.

14. Paul Harding - "Tinkers"

Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest of an epileptic smalltime traveling salesman. The descriptions of the father's epilepsy and the cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure are stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George returns to more melancholy scenes. The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship.

15. Rick Moody - "The Ice Storm"

The novel is set before, during and after Thanksgiving, leading up to a threatening ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, in 1973 during the height of the sexual revolution. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the several complications that arise throughout the novel, including their encounters and daily life. The Hood family is overridden with lies: Ben is currently in an affair with his married neighbor Janey, his wife Elena shoplifts, her ventures on her own sexual liaisons with both females and males of her age, including her neighbors Mikey and Sandy.

16. Ken Follett "The Pillars of the Earth" & "World Without End"

The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the time sometimes called the Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory against the backdrop of actual historical events of the time.

World Without End takes place in the same fictional town as Pillars of the Earth — Kingsbridge — and features the descendants of some Pillars characters two centuries later. The plot incorporates two major historical events, the start of the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death.

17. Jonathan Franzen "The Corrections"

If family is a machine for making you crazy, has there ever been a machine better oiled than the Lamberts? The elderly father, Alfred, is a retired railway engineer sliding into the mental and physical chaos of Parkinson's disease. Wife Enid fashions ever more ingenious varieties of denial. Chip is helping con men in Lithuania. His brother Gary is consoling himself with booze for the miseries of his own disintegrating home life. Their sister Denise, in the time she can spare from her career as a celebrity chef, makes reckless thrusts into other people's marriages. Their miseries are an opening onto the larger discontents of the society that they—we—live in, but Franzen keeps his terrible focus on the family. This can be a very funny book in places, but the laughs come hard, very hard.

18. A. S. Byatt - "Possession"

Part historical as well as contemporary fiction, the title Possession refers to issues of ownership and independence between lovers, the practice of collecting historically significant cultural artifacts, and to the possession that a biographer feels for their subject. The novel incorporates many different styles and devices: diaries, letters and poetry, in addition to third-person narration. Possession is as concerned with the present day as it is with the Victorian era, pointing out the differences between the two time periods satirizing such things as modern academia and mating rituals.

19. E. Annie Proulx - "The Shipping News"

The story centers on Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper reporter from upstate New York whose father emigrated from Newfoundland. Shortly after his parents' suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive wife Petal, and her lover, leave town. Days later, Petal sells their two daughters to a 'black market adoption agency' for $6,000. Soon thereafter, Petal and her lover are killed in a car accident; the are located by police and returned to Quoyle. Despite his daughters' safe return, Quoyle's life is collapsing, and his paternal aunt, Agnis Hamm, convinces him to return to Newfoundland for a new beginning. Quoyle's growth in confidence and emotional strength, as well as his ability to be comfortable in a loving relationship, become the book's main focus. Quoyle learns deep and disturbing secrets about his ancestors that emerge in strange ways.

20. Annie Dillard - "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. The book is about Dillard's experiences at Tinker Creek in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. In the book, Dillard records observations and thoughts on solitude, writing, religion, and the flora and fauna. Dillard has described it as a "book of theology". It is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden, based on his observations in a Massachusetts forest. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is often described as a series of essays; however, Dillard has insisted that it is a continuous work, as evidenced by her references to events from previous chapters as the narrative progresses.

21. Barbara Tuckman - "A Distant Mirror"

In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors.

22. Nicolson Baker - "Vox"

As a novelist, Baker often focuses on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness, and has written about such provocative topics as voyeurism and planned assassination. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. Baker's enthusiasts appreciate his ability to candidly explore the human psyche. Vox dissects the nature of a phone sex relationship, expanding upon the theme and presenting a realistic fictional account. For some readers, Baker's obsession with detail detracted from a hoped-for pornographic effect. Others, in reading the imaginative sex stories the two protagonists produce for one another, have perceived a budding romantic affection.

23. Salman Rushdie - "Midnight's "

Midnight's is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India, which took place at midnight on 15 August 1947. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India becomes an independent country and has telepathic powers. He later discovers that all born in India between 12 AM and 1 AM on 15 August 1947, are imbued with special powers. Saleem thus attempts to use these powers to convene the eponymous . The convention, or Midnight 's Conference, is in many ways reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by such a vastly diverse nation.

24. Theodore Dreiser - "Sister Carrie"

Sister Carrie shocked the public when it was first published, in 1900. In fact, it was so controversial, it almost missed being printed at all. In addition to the book’s theme of sexual impropriety, the public disliked the fact that Theodore Dreiser presented a side of life that proper Americans did not care to acknowledge. Even worse, Dreiser made no moral judgements on his characters’ actions. He wrote about infidelity and as natural occurrences in the course of human relationships. Dreiser wrote about his characters with pity, compassion, and a sense of awe.

25. Booth Tarkington - "The Magnificent Ambersons"

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class.

26. Ian McEwan - "Atonement"

An upper-middle-class girl in interwar England -- who aspires to be a writer -- makes a serious mistake that has life-changing effects for many. Consequently, through the remaining years of the century, she seeks atonement for her transgression - which leads to an exploration on the nature of writing itself. Time named it the best fiction novel of the year and included it in its All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels.

27. Chinua Achebe - "Things Fall Apart: A Novel"

First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several . He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy.

28. Su Tong - "Raise the Red Lantern"

This is the story of a rich man's fourth concubine and her relationship with the first three. Lotus is from a fairly wealthy and educated family that unfortunately suffers after the death of her father. She therefore agrees to become the concubine of Chen Zuoqian and at first enjoys her new life, being the apple of her husband's eye. Then the true nature of her life becomes evident when his interest begins to wane.

29. John McPhee - "Oranges"

You might think that a whole book on oranges was just too much, but I read this book as eagerly as if it was a mystery and I couldn't wait to see what was on the next page. It is worth reading for the writing alone, as McPhee's style brings the groves to life and makes you laugh aloud at times with subtle humor. In addition to a providing a detailed history of oranges--customs surrounding, growing, marketing, geography-- if you apply your close reading skills and critical thinking you may find that this work has deeper meaning. Could it also be taking on social issues such as poverty, ignorance, miscenegation, reproductive rights, and just plain old politics?

30. Stieg Larsson -
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
"The Girl Who Played with Fire," and
"The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest"

The original title of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in Swedish is: Män som hatar kvinnor – "Men Who Hate Women." This award-winning crime novel is the first in his Millennium Trilogy. At his death in November 2004, Larsson left three unpublished novels that made up the trilogy. An epic tale of serial murder and corporate trickery spanning several continents, the novel takes place in complicated international financial fraud and the buried evil past of a wealthy Swedish industrial family. The second and third installments of this compelling story delve more deeply into the character, history, and present circumstances of our heroine, while relaying additional, equally addicting mysteries.

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