I read five books in November and enjoyed them all.
1) The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin: This book was written in a way that I enjoy- a 102-year-old narrator telling their story from their long-ago past. The book begins with the narrator Fiona, a well-respected poet, who was speaking to a group of students about her work. One student stood and asked a few questions about Fiona's work The Love Poem, which she had written 75 years ago. The student was a young woman named Luna after the last line of the poem. She said that her mother always wanted to know who was "Luna"?
Fiona began to tell the students the story about her family and the Pause that happened and shaped the family's life.
This is a well-written book and has much to say about love and betrayal and hope.
2) Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston: This book is a story about a family whose young son, Justin, had disappeared four years ago, and was then found. It tells the struggles and joys of each member of the family, the parents, Justin, and his younger brother. It is a rather sad story but well told.
3) The Extraordinary Life Of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni: this book is a great read. Sam Hill was born with red pupils, a rare disorder that made him "different" all of his life. He had a mother who was fierce in her determination to teach Sam that he was special, his disorder was "God's will". Sam didn't feel that way. He was called "Devil Boy" when he started school and no one would be friends with him, until one day Ernie Cantrell, the only black child in the school, joined Sam's class. He and Sam became fast friends, along with Mickie Kennedy, a girl who lived by her own rules.
This book is also one of looking back. Sam was looking back forty years at all that he let his eyes determine in his life and all that he had missed. He needed to change things.
This is a wonderful uplifting (but not sappy) story. I look forward to more of the author's writing.
4) The Sacrament by Olaf Olafsson: I had a hard time reading this book in the beginning-it goes back and forth in time, but, at least for me, in a not clear way. However, once I realized who was who in what time period, it was easier!
Years ago, a young nun was sent from France to Iceland to investigate some alleged crimes. While she was there, the priest at the school fell to his death. A young student witnessed the fall and told the nun and the police what he had seen. Twenty years later, that young student was a young man still haunted by what he had seen, and the num was sent back to Iceland to learn of what that young boy had not told about his witnessing.
Beyond that mystery, there is also the story of the nun that is told, about her life and her love for another. This is a beautifully written book!
5) The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel: Well, this seems a bit odd, but this is also a book about a woman (86 years old) recalling her past. As a young Jewish woman Eva Traub lived in Paris, where she escaped from in 1942. Her father had been taken by the Nazis, and Eva was able to forge papers for her and her mother to escape Paris before they would be found. They went to a small country town where the Resistance learned of her forging abilities and recruited her to forge papers for children to escape to Switzerland.
As Eva began doing the work, she realized that all of these young children would not remember who they really were, what their true names were. She and her partner found an old book in the library where they worked and developed a way to code the children's real names.
But after the war, the book had been taken by the Nazis. In 2005, one day at her work at her library in Florida, Eva saw a newspaper article about the efforts being made to reunite looted books with the rightful owners, and there is a picture of a man holding up The Book Of Lost Names, as Eva called it.
This was a good story and kept my interest all the way through!
