Readers & Reviewers Report - A Look Back At Our Favorites
Reported by VIVIAN MORTENSEN
October, 2021
Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
By Grady Hendrix
Reviewed by KAREN BAKER
June, 2020
I saw this very intriguing title on a list of new book releases and thought I must check this out! I like books, book clubs and enjoy the occasional creepy thriller. The press blurb describes it as "Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula". That is a too simplistic description of this fun book.
Reviews of FAW's 2019-2020 Literature Award Winners
The Altruists by Andrew Ridker
The Municipalists by Seth Fried
Reviewed by IDA HAGMAN
May, 2020
Both of this years Adult Award winners have humor and offer messages of hope and connection. Because they should be read slowly to absorb the humor, they are perfect books for this time of social distancing. The Adult Awards Committee encourages members to buy and read these gems now.
The Altruists by Andrew Ridker is funny and touching novel structured around a family
reunion. This is a book about family dysfunction, selfishness, lack of self-awareness. It features
flawed characters who nevertheless are well drawn and quite compelling.
The Municipalists - Imagine a government agency that would collect data on cities and fund programs to
improve city life. Let's say people's commutes are getting longer or that employment is
stagnating or that high school test scores continue to drop. This agency would fund programs,
monitor results, and give advice to solve these issues. Wouldn't it be great if we had the
resources to do that, to nip problems in the bud? Imagine using our resources to improve
things, rather that react to emergencies? In his novel The Municipalists, Seth Fried has created
just such an agency, More...
Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar
By Ron A. Austen
Reviewed by TAMMIE BOB
May, 2020
Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar is the kind of book that makes being on the FAW Literature Awards Committee delightful (and if you're not, you should definitely consider joining us!) I opened this book with the odd title last September, not expecting to find much of interest, and was quickly pulled into a gritty neighborhood of North St. Louis through the exuberant language of its narrator, the nine-year old Avery Colt. Through linked short stories, I followed an ever-maturing Avery through young manhood, in a series of misadventures through which he tries to make sense of the adult world, which often makes no sense at all. I read many of the seventy-something books submitted for the Literature Award this year, and forgot most of them soon after I closed them. Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar has stuck with me these many months, and was a favorite of the committee as well. This gem of a book, above all is a great read. More...
Long Way Round: Through the Heartland by River
by John Hildebrand
Reviewed by KAREN PULVER
March, 2020
Those of us who enjoy traveling know that the more slowly you move, the more you will understand your surroundings. This theory is born out in Long Way Round. The author plans a trip around his native state of Wisconsin mapping out a route he can travel by canoe. This is not an extreme physical exercise challenge; he uses a small motor on his canoe and has friends meet him at crucial points to drive rather than to portage long distances. He is in no hurry and actually goes home to Eau Claire on occasion to refresh. Hildebrand camps in a tent, but also stays at friends' homes or in hotels. More...
The Guardians
by John Grisham
Reviewed by SHIRLEY BAUGHER
February, 2020
John Grisham's latest book, The Guardians, published in 2019, is based on a true story. A New York Times best seller, it tells of a young black man, Quincy Miller, in the town of Seabrook, Florida; wrongfully convicted of killing a local lawyer, Keith Russo. Quincy has spent 22 years in prison maintaining his innocence. But no one believes him; and he has no money for an attorney, no friends, no family, and no advocate in the outside world. In desperation, he turns to a group called The Guardians, a small nonprofit organization run by Cullen Post who is also an Episcopalian minister. More...
Leadership in Turbulent Times
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Reviewed by KAREN PULVER
December, 2019
The main thrust of the book involves the Presidents' handling of the major crises that occurred during their terms in office: for Lincoln it was the Civil War; for Johnson, the Vietnam War and the days following the Kennedy assassination; for FDR, the Great Depression, polio and beginnings of World War II; for Theodore Roosevelt, his personal health challenges, labor strikes, and bitter political treachery. More...
Literature Award 2019 - Other Books We Loved (But Couldn't Award) This Year
May, 2019
The Literature Awards Committee was lucky to receive many wonderful entries for our awards this year. These books generated excited discussion and created ardent fans among us. While we couldn't give every such book an award, we'd like to make you aware of some that provide a fine reading experience. More...
Aerialists: Stories
by Mark Mayer
Reviewed by ROBERTA GATES
April, 2019
Welcome to the surreal and sublime human circus of Mark Mayer's Michener-Copernicus-winning debut, Aerialists, a fiercely inventive collection of nine stories in which classic carnival characters become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world.
Mayer is especially skilled at rendering the lives of children, as four of his other stories demonstrate in the collection Aerialists. In Strongwoman, Junior, an 11-year-old boy whose dad has split, is forced to make room for a new person in his mother's life - in this case Klara, a female bodybuilder who bungee jumps, makes her own hot sauce, and wears "a magnetic bracelet that balances her blood flow." She is almost more than Junior can handle. More...
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
Reviewed by ROBERTA GATES
March, 2019
Our Readers & Reviewers choice for March is Celeste Ng's thought-provoking novel which pits two mothers against each other. Their conflict takes root when Mia Warren, a single mother with a teenaged daughter named Pearl, rents the upstairs of a house owned by Elena Richardson, a matriarchal figure who has four children, all of whom are only one year apart. Mrs. Richardson (as she is always called) is a proud and orderly person who thanks her lucky stars that her grandparents had the foresight to settle in Shaker Heights, the leafy and progressive suburb of Cleveland which is the book's setting. More...
Educated: A Memoir
by Tara Westover
Reviewed by ROBERTA GATES
January, 2019
Tara, the youngest of seven children, was born into a survivalist family so completely off the grid she didn't even have a birth certificate and did not attend school until she went to college. Her father was a paranoid man who out-Mormoned everyone else at their rural Idaho church. For him, being devout meant Tara could read nothing but the Bible and the Book of Mormon, needed to cover every inch of her body except for her hands and face, and could never, no matter how dire the circumstance, consult a doctor or nurse. More...
A Complete Synopsis of Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
Reviewed by TAMMIE BOB
November, 2018
Wide Sargasso Sea, first published in 1966, imagines the life of the first Mrs. Rochester, a character made famous over one hundred and twenty years earlier in Charlotte Brontë's classic novel Jane Eyre. The first Mrs. Rochester was the prototypical "madwoman in the attic," and in Jane Eyre, she is presented very poorly: a murderous, monstrous presence, a wild Creole unrecognizable as a human being. More...
Clock Dance
By Anne Tyler
304 pages, Knopf; 1st edition (July 10, 2018)
Reviewed by Vivian Mortensen
September, 2018
Willa is the "nice girl" who always smooths ruffled feathers. In her childhood, she soothes her little sister whenever her mother acts out. At twenty, traveling to meet her fiancé's parents, she has a disturbing encounter with a man sitting next to her on the plane. But when her future husband dismisses the incident, Willa goes along with him instead of creating a scene. Now in her sixties, Willa wonders if tranquility is enough. She lives with Peter, her current husband, on an Arizona golf course where the heat seems stifling. She wants to finish her college degree but can't get motivated. She'd love to dote on grandchildren but she's lost touch with her two unmarried sons. Her life is in a rut. More...
FAW Literature Committee Favorites 2017-2018
May, 2018
Each year the Literature Awards Committee reads and reviews dozens of books for selection of the current year award winners. Here are a few of this years favorites as reviewed by the Awards Committee members. More...
The Lord of the Rings
By JRR Tolkien
1178 pages
Reviewed by Christine Spatara
April, 2018
The Lord of The Rings, JRR Tolkien's famous trilogy published between 1954 and 1955, is perhaps one of the best-known fantasy adventures in English Literature. Comprised of three books - The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King - follows the adventures of Frodo, a young hobbit, who inherits a ring through no wish of his own and embarks on a treacherous journey with three of his friends that will save Middle Earth. More...
A Man Called Ove
By Frederol Backman
337 pages, Washington Square Press; Reprint edition (May 5, 2015)
Reviewed by Tammie Bob
March, 2018
The novel begins with a description of 59-year-old Ove struggling to communicate with a young man who is trying to sell him a computer. The conversation ends in frustration for Ove,who storms out of the store. Then begins a book-long sequence of explanations as to how and why Ove got to the point of needing and wanting to buy a computer. More...
Browsing: New Books by Past Young People's Award Winners 2011 - 2017
January, 2018
It is always fun to investigate what our past winners have been up to. Our Young People's Literature Winners have been busy writing new books. Here is a list of newer books from winners from 2011 - 2017, since their FAW award. More...
Before We Were Yours: A Novel
By Lisa Wingate
352 pages, Ballantine Books (June, 2017)
Reviewed by Karen Baker
December, 2017
I was looking for a new book to read while traveling and opened the website Goodreads.com to see what was new and recommended. I was in a bit of a hurry and ultimately chose Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. It had lots of stars (recommended) and I liked the pretty cover featuring two adorable young girls sitting on a suitcase. I was looking for a light and warm family story. Well, don't judge a book by its cover, as the subject matter of this novel is not pretty fluff. Instead I was drawn into the lives of itinerant shanty-boat children that are unlawfully abducted and placed in a children's home to be brokered out for adoption and profit. More...
Little Fires Everywhere
By Celeste Ng
Hardcover 352 pages, Penguin Press (September 2017)
Reviewed by Vivian Mortensen
November, 2017
In a perfect suburban community on a perfectly manicured lawn stands Elena Richardson watching her McMansion burn to the ground. She's stunned but not shocked. She knows the fire is arson and as the book unfolds, the reader too finds out what events triggered this drastic action. Celeste Ng, an FAW 2015 prize-winner, jumps back several months to when Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl arrive. The time is 1997 in upscale Shaker Heights, a planned community which prides itself on stability and lack of change. Mia is an artist who values her work instead of money and who moves from place to place as the muse strikes her. They settle in a rented house owned by Elena Richardson and soon Pearl befriends the four Richardson teens. Pearl has never encountered such wealth and consumerism that's essential to the Richardsons and in turn, they have never met anyone, especially Mia, who cares so little for clothes, televisions, fancy houses and everything else they consider necessary....This is Celeste Ng's second novel and FAW can be proud to see that she has gone from an emerging author to a polished, insightful writer. More...
A Gentleman in Moscow
By Amor Towles
Hardcover 480 pages, Viking (September, 2016)
Reviewed by Shirley Baugher
October, 2017
The year is 1922. The Emergency Committee of the People's Commissariat For Internal Affairs has just sentenced Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov to spend the rest of his life inside the luxurious Hotel Metropol in Moscow for writing the poem "Where Is It Now?", which dared to ask the question, "where is our purpose now?" In imposing the sentence, the prosecutor pronounced that the Count had succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class - and now posed a threat to the very ideals he once espoused. While the committee's inclination would have been to have Rostov blindfolded and put before a ring squad - or more mercifully sent to Siberia, inexplicably, the Committee sentenced the Count to a lifetime of incarceration in the Metropol. More...
The Devil's Highway
By Luis Alberto Urrea
Paperback, 272 page, Little Brown (2004)
Reviewed by Roberta Gates
September, 2017
The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea is a classic, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 2005. Devil's Highway was not just a critical success, but a bestseller that readers applauded for its searing portrayal of what Mexican immigrants face when crossing the border into the United States. Regardless of your feelings about immigration, Urrea asks you to take a second look at the issue by telling the stories of 26 men and boys who, in May of 2001, attempted to enter the U.S. via the so-called Devil's Highway, a route which crosses the southern Arizona desert, one of the deadliest regions of the continent. More...
Six Four
By Hideo Yokoyama
Hardcover,576 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First American Edition edition (February 7, 2017)
Reviewed by Shirley Baugher
April, 2017
Six Four is a book that succeeds on so many levels. It is a first rate detective story. It is a police procedural that informs readers of the painstaking steps that go into solving crimes-sometimes successful, sometimes not. It is an insight into the often-fractious relationship between the government and the press. It is an examination of the people's need to know versus the victim's right to privacy. It is study of family dynamics: how well do we really know those we love and how well do they know us? And, most importantly, it is a story of revenge. More...
Lucky Boy
By Shanti Sekaran
Paperback, 496 pages, G.P. Putnam's Sons; Reprint edition (September 5, 2017)
Reviewed by Shirley Baugher
March, 2017
There could not be a more timely novel than Shanti Sekaran's "Lucky Boy." The author shows us the human consequences of the deportation of illegal immigrants-even those who have come to this country with hopes of a better life for themselves and their children and who have worked hard to make that possible. Solimar Castro Valdez (Soli) is such a person. Her father sold everything he had to get her out of the dying Mexican village in which she lived and which offered her no future. He wanted to get her to California and the promise of a good life. The unscrupulous relative to whom he gave his money abandons Soli and she falls in with a band of thugs who beat and rape her. Among them, however, is a gentle soul who becomes the love of her life. He impregnates her but is separated from her before they reach their destination. Soli manages to make her way to California and to the apartment of another undocumented woman, her cousin Silvia. At first, Soli is lucky. She gets a job with a kind-hearted, successful couple, the Cassidys, who take her in and care for her even after the birth of her child, Ignacio-or "Nacho" as she calls him-the "lucky boy" of the story. More...
Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge
By Evan S. Connell Jr.
Paperback, 464 pages, Picador; New Ed edition (1991)
Reviewed by Roberta Gates
February, 2017
There are two sides to every story, and no one knows that better than Evan S. Connell, the author of Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge. These are not new books-Mrs. Bridge came out in 1959 and Mr. Bridge in 1969-but they've attained the status of classics and are well worth the read, especially by anyone who's ever wondered what's going on in the head of a spouse. Why? Because these dueling narratives show us that while the simple concerns of Mrs. Bridge appear insignificant to her husband, they're not-and vice versa. More...
LaRose
By Louise Erdrich
Hardcover, 384 pages, Harper; First Edition edition (May 10, 2016)
Reviewed by Ida Hagman
January, 2017
"Our son is your son now." These words are spoken by Landreaux Iron, one of the main characters in LaRose, Louise Erdrich's most recent novel. The novel follows the consequences of an unthinkable tragedy. The best novels, such as LaRose, attempt to answer the difficult questions of life such as how do we transcend grief, how do we make reparations, when and how can we forgive and love again. More...
The Trespasser
By Tana French
Hardcover, 464 pages, Viking (October 4, 2016)
Reviewed by Shirley Baugher
December, 2016
The Trespasser is first rate French. What begins as a routine "domestic" murder investigation, presumably the reason Antoinette Conway and her partner Stephen Moran are assigned the case, turns out to be anything but - and the reason that it falls into Conway's lap is likewise not routine. But that revelation comes late in the book. Conway and Moran are both part of the Dublin Murder Squad. Moran, a fresh-faced, like-able chap, is accepted by the other members of the squad. Conway is not, for a number of reasons. She is the only female on the group, she is black, and she is known for her hot temper and rash behavior. She is tormented mercilessly by the some of the detectives, none of whom will work with her, to the point of their stealing pages from her case files and urinating on the contents of her locker. They want her gone - and they are very close to getting their wish. She has been offered a job with a top notch security firm which she plans to accept once this case is closed. More...
Nutshell
By Ian McEwan
Hardcover, 208 pages, Nan A. Talese; 1 edition (September 13, 2016)
Reviewed by Christine Spatara
November, 2016
I read this book so quickly that I feel I should read it again. It grabbed me completely, and I was overwhelmed. Once I started, I could not stop reading. So, I binged until the early morning hours. This is one of those MUST READ books. More...
Enchanted Islands
By Allison Amend
Hardcover,306 pages, Nan A. Talese, 2016
Reviewed by Shirley Baugher
September, 2016
Have you ever dreamed of spending time on a faraway island with the person of your dreams? Well, Frances Conway did just that, and later wrote about the experience in her memoirs. Midwestern author Allison Amend, inspired by Conway's recollections, framed a novel around them which she called Enchanted Islands, the story of an independent American woman whose path takes her far from her native Minnesota when she and her husband, an undercover intelligence officer, are sent to the Galápagos Islands at the brink of World War II. More...
What's New with Our Past Award Authors?
by VIVIAN MORTENSON
March, 2016
As most of you know, FAW gives annual awards to emerging authors who have published no more than three books. Here are some of these authors' works published since they received our recognition. More...
Memoir of the Sunday Brunch
By Julia Pandl
Paperback, 256pp., Algonquin Books (November 13, 2012)
Reviewed by Roberta Gates
November 27, 2012
A tender and amusing memoir. The author, the youngest of nine children, writes with humor and pathos about her father, a well-known Wisconsin chef. All nine of the Pandl kids got their first taste of (unpaid!) work helping out with their father's Sunday brunches. More...
The Forgotten Soldier
By Guy Sajer
Hardcover, 508pp., Potomac Books Inc., 2000
Reviewed by Roberta Gates
Jan 15, 2012
I have a special interest in World War II and am always looking for diaries, letters or autobiographies that, I hope, will tell me the way it really was. Unfortunately, war stories are often boastful (we got those Japs) or just plain boring (pincer movements, etc.). But Guy Sajer's autobiography, entitled Forgotten Soldier, is neither. In fact, I would say it comes close to being a masterpiece in its closely observed moments, acute psychological insights and masterful writing. More...
