LaRose

LaRose by Louise Erdrich, 373 pages.
  I read this in 2016, when it first came out (but then didn't blog about it until the end of the year round-up) and then I re-read it, or rather listened, to it for book group this year. Her is what I said late last year: 

I don't think that I have ever disliked a book by Erdrich. For me, her latest ranks among her best, along with The Master Butcher's Singing Club, and The Round House, and also, I guess, A Plague of Doves. Erdrich is an imaginative, compelling, and enthralling sort of author. 

When Landreaux Iron takes a shot at a large buck he has been hunting all season, his sense of accomplishment dissolves as he realizes that instead of the buck he has accidentally shot and killed five-year-old Dusty Ravitch, his neighbor's child. Through the whole of the book the two families grapple with the loss of Dusty. LaRose, Landreaux's own five-year-old, takes on the role of son for both families. He is a connection for both families and is, in turn, connected to the LaRoses of generations past, whose stories are woven into the tale.
For some reason I felt compelled to read the one-star reviews of this book on Amazon and to see what sort of things would get good reviews from them. For some, non-readers apparently, five stars meant a really nice pair of yoga pants or a deep-fat fryer. Others who reviewed more books ranged from the crumudgeonly who liked nothing, to enthusiastic readers to whom this book did not speak. Nothing pleases all readers, but I still strongly recommend LaRose.

Look: Poems

 Look: Poems by Somaz Sharif, 98 pages.

A beautiful, powerful collection of poems. The poet was born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, and she gives us a different perspective on the war on terror, and the wars in the Middle East. With Sharif as our guide, the violence and the chaos are presented from the point of view of people and families who find themselves too close to it all.
The poem "Reaching Guantanomo" takes the form of a series of letters written to an unknown person named Salim, with many of the words and thouhgts redacted by an useen hand. Though the subsequent letters answer questions presumably asked, we see only part of one side of the conversation.
"Stateless Persons" recounts scattered conversations from far-off places, with no good news:

"Our phone would

rarely ring. I have no ear

          for the mu-

          sic here. They would

bury one then another, the eldest son dropping

in

the grave to

comfort the corpse, calling us

          months later

          because we were

exiles, were vagabonds, fugitives, past Sierras,

past

oil rigs

in Texas, or waiting for

          the windshield

          to clear of frost,

two expanding ovals where the Buick’s heat hit, our

eyes"

Sharif has given us a compelling and wonderful book of poems.

The Idiot

The Idiot by Elif Batuman, 423 pages.

Batuman's novel of a young woman at Harvard in the mid-1990s has an autobiographical feel. Her main character, Selin, the only child of Turkish immigrants to the US, is a little naive, sweet, hardworking, and little bewildered. Everything, from roommates to professors, and beer and cigarettes are new to her. The miniature portraits of Selin's classes, her classmates, and her professors are funny and bright, as are her curiosity and literal-mindedness
The book is relentlessly cheerful, even in it's saddest moments (Selin, in fact, observes her sadness and wonders about it) The Idiot is sort of an enchanting book. It seems like this should appeal to a wide-range of readers, it's just so good.

The Blood of Emmett Till

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson, 291 pages.
Historian Tyson was contacted by a relative of Carolyn Bryant. He was told that Bryant had appreciated some of his previous writing and that she would speak to him. The woman at the center of the crimes committed against Emmett Till admitted to the author that she had, in fact, lied in court. She admitted that Till had not grabbed her, that he had not uttered obscenities. He was just a youngster who did nothing to deserve the torture, beating, and murder visited upon him by Bryant's husband and his half brother. Difficult to read, but a very compelling story.

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir

The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy, 207 pages

The firs part of Levy's memoir recounts her life pre-2014, when she was young. She tells of her early loves,and of her writing, and eventually of falling in love with Lucy, the woman she would one day marry. But the book is centered around 2014, after she and Lucy wed, when she, Ariel, traveled to Mongolia while her life was, unbeknownst to her, already falling apart. While in Mongolia for a story as a staff writer for the New Yorker she suffers a miscarriage in her hotel room. This events changes her, and further revelations on her return home show her that her live had, in fact, already been irrevocably changed without her noticing.  Levy writes about all this in a surprisingly moving, yet matter-of-fact way, Sad but powerful.

The King of Elfland's Daughter

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, 240 pages.
The 1924 fantasy classic by Edward John Moreton Drax Plankett, the eighteenth baron, Lord Dunsany, was recommended by Neal Gaiman in his 2015 book, The View from the Cheap Seats. I read the book weeks and weeks ago, and I have held onto the book for a long time trying to think of something to say about it. It is an original and decent work of fantasy, but it didn't really grab me. 'Nuff said.