Happy New Year!

 

The Big Door Prize

 M.O. Walsh wrote The Big Door Prize, a comic novel set in a small town in Louisiana. The main characters are a happily married couple named Doug and Cherilyn. The local grocery store gets a new machine delivered called Dynamix. For only two dollars and a DNA sample the machine will give each customer a print out explaining their potential. Customers are told they have the potential to be a magician, a cowboy, or royalty. The people in the town take this machine very seriously. I thought the plot of this story was odd but the characters in it are charming and believable.

The Sympathizer

 I read The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen because it won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The story is narrated by a half Vietnamese, half French boy who grows up to be a spy for the North Vietnamese army while serving in the South Vietnamese army. He is a communist sympathizer. He is never really at home with one group. His father was a priest and his mother a poor servant girl. When Saigon fell he moved with the south Vietnamese army general to Los Angeles. The story is about the Vietnam war and is, at times, very difficult and painful to read.

After Francesco

After Francesco is a novel by a Minnesota author named Brian Malloy. I actually got an autographed copy. The story is about a gay man, Kevin, who moves to Minneapolis in 1988 after loosing his significant other to AIDS. He comes to Minneapolis to live with his aunt Nora who allows him in her house if he stays sober and goes to a support group. Kevin grew up in Minneapolis and he still has friends there. This historical fiction story is about the AIDS epidemic and is told with humor and grief. I am again reminded why I did not like Ronald Reagan.

 

Are We There Yet?

I read Are We There Yet? by Kathleen West and I couldn't put it down. Each chapter is the point of view of various seventh graders or their mothers or one grandmother. Teddy and Sadie were best friends in kindergarten. Their mothers bonded at school events. Now that Teddy and Sadie are in middle school and starting to get into trouble, their mother's friendship starts to fall apart. Alice is the mother of Teddy and she is probably the main character in the story. Each chapter was quick and left me wanting more information. 

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

After driving through Elmira, New York and staying at the Mark Twain Inn and later visiting Hannibal, Missouri and going to the various Mark Twain museums, I felt I should reread his classic book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I enjoyed. Right away young Tom, who hates work more than anything else, uses reverse psychology to convince white washing a fence is so much fun the young boys walking by should hand over their marbles for a chance to paint. Aunt Polly, Tom's guardian, loves the boy but doesn't want to show it because he gets into trouble so frequently and in such imaginative ways. After that Tom and his friends, Huck Finn and Joe skip school to build a raft and live on an island. They fish for food and play Robin Hood and pirates. After  a few nights on the island Tom sneaks back into town to learn that the town thinks the three boys have drowned in the river and are planning a funeral for Sunday. Tom goes back to the island where his friends are getting tired of the isolation and want to go home. He convinces them to stay hidden, go to the church loft before the service, and listen to their own funeral. In the book the town is called Saint Petersburg but the novel is based on the author's early years in Hannibal, Missouri. Twain really captures what it is like to be a barefoot boy in the years before the Civil War, telephones, electric lights and flashlights. I really enjoyed reading this story which was written for children but also for adults who can remember what it was like to be a child.

 

The Souvenir Museum

 Elizabeth McCracken published a book of short stores titled The Souvenir Museum. In the first of twelve short stories she describes a couple, Sadie and Jack, who travel to Ireland for a family wedding. Sadie meets Jack's family for the first time in a series of funny events for which Sadie is unprepared. In total there are 5 stories about Jack and Sadie. The other stores are odd and quirky and unexpected little gems. In one story a man who doesn't like birds takes his father on a birding expedition on an island to see puffins. The walk on the island is treacherous and the man is afraid his father is going to fall off a cliff. The father gets excited to see the puffins while the son wonders why looking at birds is more important than looking at his son. Later as the bird group are walking on a narrow ledge in a cave, the son panics and sits down blocking the entire group. The father helps his son to his feet. I enjoyed her witty short stories.