Fiction Pick of the Week: The Beginner's Goodbye

The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler 2012

It seems we can learn a lot from the dead especially when they come back for a visit to let us know what really happened when they were alive. Often our memory of events is quite different from others, and so it is for Aaron and his wife Dorothy who was felled by an oak tree. Their marriage and house collapsed in one brief moment as Dorothy sat alone in the sunroom. Dorothy,although dead,visits Aaron to reveal a side of him that he never acknowledged. His loneliness and deep grief during this period is a time for reflection and introspection guided by Dorothy’s revelations. This self- knowledge allows him to take the first steps away from sorrow and so embark on a new life.

This is Anne Tyler’s nineteenth novel and is an emotionally and artistically satisfying read from a much loved and admired writer.

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 2010

Erin Morgenstern describes all of her works as “fairy tales in one way or another”, and The Night Circus certainly can be seen as a dark and fantastical fairy tale. The story centres around two magicians and archrivals, Prospero and Alexander. For many years they have been playing a dangerous game which involves teaching their arts to protégés to determine who will come out the winner. The Night Circus takes place at the turn of the 20^th century, and the magicians have taken on a boy, Marco, and a girl, Celia, to play their game once again. The players don’t know the rules or even who their opponents are, but the game challenges them to create illusions and magic the likes of which no one has seen before.

Morgenstern studied theatre and is a visual artist, and this clearly comes out in her first novel. The descriptions of the magic, the costumes, and the circus are works of art themselves and you can clearly visualize the scenes. The book starts off more slowly but speeds up to an almost thriller-like pace by the end. Beautifully written for those who are willing to suspend belief!

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Flying Man

The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki

Maquil, a man of mystery, a career criminal, a free spirit, finds the tedium of earning a living an utter bore. He prefers instead casinos and cons. Crossing continents at a hectic pace since the age of 16 he emerged from Pakistan with a string of aliases and an ambiguous identity. A suitcase was always packed and at the ready so he could skip out with selfish indifference from his several wives and children on a moments whim to plot more money-making schemes. A maverick to the very end this compelling and multilayered character plays the game of his life in a story that is at times darkly funny and powerful.

Roopa Farooki was nominated for the Orange Prize for this astonishing, deeply moving story. For me this story is an absolute winner.

Fiction Pick of the Week: A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble 2011

To the many fans and followers of Margaret Drabble this collection of short stories is pure pleasure.

These 14 tales venture into the past four decades of her writing career to explore the complex psyche of independent women as they reveal their love affairs, their shattered marriages, their class origins, and their jobs. Her dry British humour is part of the joy of reading this collection. The stories showcase Drabble’s keen literary talent and present her complete short fiction for the first time in one volume. This may be the last new fiction we will read from the 72-year-old Dame Margaret Drabble as she retired from writing in 2009 to prevent as she says “repeating myself without knowing it which is what old people do endlessly.” These stories are a fitting end to a brilliant career.

Man Booker Prize Winner: The Sense of an Ending

On Tuesday night the Man Booker Prize was presented to Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending. Barnes has triumphed and won the prestigious Man Booker Prize after being shortlisted on three other occasions. This is a well-deserved win by a master of his craft.

Memory is a key player in this compelling book. The narrator begins to look back on the events of 40 years after receiving an astonishing inheritance. His memories of his friendships at school and with the women in his life were not always as they appeared on the surface. Shades of meaning, misinterpreted remarks and small gestures were seen by others in a whole different light.This short novella can be read in one sitting, but I was so intrigued by what I had read that I went back and read it two more times – something I have never done before. Each time it shed more light on the missing fragments of the narrator’s memory that altered with the passage of time to turn long-held truths upside down.

If you're on the holds list and want to check out Barnes's earlier shortlisted works, BPL has the following:

England, England

Arthur and George

Flaubert's Parrot

Fiction Pick of the Week: Started Early, Took My Dog

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

Set in Leeds, England this is the fourth book in what has become a series of literary crime novels featuring, Jackson Brodie a “semi-retired” private detective. His current client is an adoptee, Hope McMaster, who hires him to search for her roots, as it seems she has sprung from nowhere. Crimes and murders committed in the 1970s flip to the present where Tracy Waterhouse, who like Brodie is a former police officer, finds herself entangled in the web of intrigue that ensues.

Tracy makes a snap decision that in one rash moment places her on the other side of the law and consequently on the run. Brodie likewise makes a snap decision that is quite out of character when a small dog crosses his path.

Atkinson knits together the plots and subplots with extraordinary style, and her sense of humour lurks around the darkness of her themes. Her characters will chill you and thrill you. As a former winner of the Whitbread Award for Behind the Scenes at the Museum Atkinson has triumphed yet again. You really must read this book.

Fiction Pick of the Week: Half Life

Half Life by Roopa Farooki

What a compelling read! This is London based Roopa Farooki’s fourth book and this latest tale will delight lovers of literary fiction. Her previous nominations for the Orange Prize and Impac Dublin Literary Prize attest to a very gifted writer.
The story swirls around Dr. Aruna Ahmed Jones, an academic raised in Singapore but living in London. Aruna is a quirky character who is not easy to like as she self-destructs on alcohol, drugs, sex and cigarettes in an effort to find herself. She feels she doesn’t belong in Singapore or England.

Married after a brief encounter to an adoring, devoted doctor she abruptly abandons him one morning without a word of goodbye, clutching only her purse and passport as she boards a plane bound for Singapore and her former life. A sentence in a book she had picked up set her in motion: “It’s time to stop fighting and go home.” The secrets that come to light as she meets with her childhood friend, who was her lover, and his father provide a passionate and emotionally rewarding story as Aruna makes peace with the ghosts of her past.

Have you read our OBOB selection yet?

Our staff have! Here's what some of us at Burlington Public Library thought about the 2010 One Book One Burlington selection Water for Elephants:

"The story elicited many emotions throughout, but once into it, I definitely couldn't tear myself away from the book. Masterfully crafted - I felt it a privilege to read!"


“Circuses are full of the wonderful and fascinating, but behind the surface they can be dangerous and cruel – Sara Gruen delivers this and more as her story reveals all the gritty details of the depression-era circus.”


"I was afraid this book would be sad and depressing, given the 'flashback' aspect, which I don't always enjoy in a novel. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised! The main character was enormously engaging, both as a young man, and later in life. The others in the story were very memorable, and the 'inside scoop' on the workings of a traveling circus was fascinating. This story has really stayed with me...and not all of them do! It was a great read, and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone."


"While I don't using the word "compelling" very often when describing a book, this one certainly is worthy of that description. It is well researched and touches on numerous topics so should be of wide interest. I hadn't expected to like it as much as I did--it is unusual and unforgettable."


"I first read this book while traveling in the United States in 2006. I could not put it down; it has to be one of the best books I've read; it's a book that will stand the test of time."


"I loved this book and its description of life in a travelling circus. The characters were so real- including the animal ones- and I found myself taking every opportunity to pick the book up over the course of the day to find out what was going to happen next!"

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery 2008

A smart, sophisticated, character-driven book that can’t be rushed—its numerous literary, philosophical and psychological references demand time to be pondered and savoured. Alternately narrated by the 54-yer-old concierge of a posh Paris apartment building and the 12-year-old daughter of one of the resident families, both are deeply intelligent and therefore frustrated by the pretentiousness and ignorance of those around them. They have each developed their own coping mechanisms which are often bitingly satirical and offer sharp insight on the class consciousness of modern society. Things change, however, with the arrival of a new tenant in the building who sees through all the personality facades and attempts to bring to the surface the true nature of each character.

Fiction Pick of the Week: Noah's Compass

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler 2009

Liam Pennywell explains to his grandson, who is colouring in his Bible story colouring book, that Noah has “nowhere to go. He was just trying to stay afloat. He was just bobbing up and down, so he didn’t need a compass.” This “trying to stay afloat” is what Liam, age sixty-one is trying to do after he learns he has been unfairly downsized from his teaching job and then beaten unconscious by an intruder on the first night in his new apartment. He has no memory of the attack. The assault, and the resulting gap in his memory, is the impetus that sets him in motion at long last. In fact a lot of his life has gone by in a haze with no memories of what was happening to him or his family. He sets out on an examination of his past with the realization that he is still alive but had been living his whole life not really knowing where he was.
Anne Tyler, Pulitzer Prize winner, has written a sensitive, sympathetic and witty novel about a man learning to “stay afloat” without his compass.

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Postmistress

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake 2010

The year is 1940. While the war raged in Europe the United States sat on the sidelines.
Frankie Baird, an American woman radio journalist, working with Edward R. Murrow, broadcast to Americans from London during the height of the Blitz. She revealed to her listeners the horror and dislocation of the Jews as they streamed across Europe in an effort to make the U.S.A. pay attention and intervene in the war.
Meanwhile, in Frankie’s small hometown on Cape Cod two women, Emma and Iris listened to her broadcasts and realized that war would soon touch their lives too. Emma’s husband, the town’s doctor heeded the call to London to help the victims of the war. Iris, the postmistress, keeper of the town’s secrets ensured the mail moved freely across the miles—or did she? The lives of the three women collide when Frankie returns to her hometown no longer able to report on the atrocities, and haunted by the journalists code to “Seek the truth, Report it, Minimize harm”.
This is a beautifully written and captivating story that will stay with you long after you have read it.

Watch the trailer of The Postmistress here:

Fiction Pick of the Week: Tourists

Tourists by Richard B. Wright, first published in 1984, acquired by the library in 2008
If you enjoy reading literary Canadian fiction with an element of dark humour, I have just the book for you! This past week, I read the novel Tourists, which has been newly acquired by the library although it was actually written in 1984. I had enjoyed reading Wright’s Clara Callan and Adultery, and despite the fact that Tourists is quite different from these other two works, I found I could hardly put it down. The story’s setting alternates between Ontario and Cozumel and is narrated by Philip Bannister, a prim and proper boarding school teacher who finds himself on a torturous holiday in Mexico with his vampy wife Joan and the boorish couple Ted and Corky Hacker from Nebraska. Early on we discover that murder has occurred and the rest of the book relays how it all unfolded. Despite the dark subject, it is quite comical to witness Philip Bannister’s reaction to the lascivious behaviour of his wife and their new friends. The suspense builds along with Bannister’s repressed anger and paranoia and the final chapters of the book develop into a real page-turner!

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Believers

The Believers by Zoe Heller

The Believers is a dark and funny farce of politics and family life by Zoe Heller. Her last novel, Notes on a Scandal, was Booker-shortlisted, translated into 29 languages and adapted into an Oscar nominated film.
This new novel is fascinating and astonishingly well written. It is an unsentimental look at the beliefs we hold true about ourselves. Heller, herself an avowed atheist has written a novel about the challenge to the beliefs of a family of atheist, political activitists. The negative, sharp tongued utterances of Audrey, the matriarch, are so vitriolic and devilishly hilarious that she spares nobody who is within her range including her children. However, her belief system is shattered when the scandalous truth concerning her idolized husband of 40 years is revealed as he lies helplessly in a coma after succumbing to a stroke. The marriage was based on false beliefs .The helpless husband lying inert in the hospital bed exerts life-altering changes on the family. Rosa, the adult daughter, reared as an atheist activist flirts with Orthodox Judaism . Karla, the subject of years of maternal mean-spirited comments, turns her belief of herself as worthless into a belief in her own happiness. Lenny, the drug addicted wastrel, has his own crisis of faith as he attempts to turn his life around.
This is an engaging novel of ideas by a very assured and talented author.

Fiction Pick of the Week: Little Bee

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (2009) is without doubt one of the best books I have read this year. Little Bee is a 16-year old Nigerian girl who has a terrifying confrontation with some wild, crazed men wielding machetes with murderous intent on an African beach. Two English tourists, Sarah and her husband Andrew, become a part of this hideous event. This is a profound and deeply moving story of two alien cultures whose lives are irrevocably changed by those events . After a two-year incarceration as a political refugee in an English detention centre, Little Bee once again enters Sarah's life as she shows up unannounced on Sarah's doorstep in London, England. Little Bee is naive, and capable of great courage and hope but her presence in England profoundly changes the life of everyone she encounters.

This bittersweet novel with an emotionally charged plot and vivid characters is a very special book indeed that will cause you to think deeply and feel a desire to have the story go on forever.

Tuesday's Pick

Reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River still resonates 30 years after its publication. Salim, the narrator, is an outsider from the African coast. Intending "to make something of himself", he buys a business selling dry goods in an unnamed African town on an unnamed river. The novel describes the next 12 years of his life in the centre of Africa. The author uses a number of African, Indian and European characters to paint a picture of African society as the country undergoes a political journey from the colonial past to a post-colonial society  Beyond them all looms "the Big Man", the demagogic dictator of the country.
    I didn't realize until I'd finished, that it was the all pervasive sense of terror, a sustained atmosphere that is both dream-like and threatening, that kept me reading. Each character is trapped in an irrational web of social turmoil, pending terror and corruption. Africa is presented as a place that resists understanding. Particularly timely now as the Congo once more spirals into chaos!

Wednesday's Pick!

How does an illicit pig eating feast during the German Occupation of Guernsey Island, involving a neighbourly group of non-readers, turn into a literary society? The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows recounts the intriguing story behind the founding of this group of unusual characters. The story unfolds in an exchange of letters written to Julia, a young author, living in England after the war is over in 1946. These letters are so fresh, poignant and sometimes downright funny that Julia feels compelled to travel to Guernsey to meet the characters who had revealed their innermost secrets and stories to her in their correspondence. What she learns when arriving in Guernsey becomes not only the seeds for her next novel but a completely life altering experience as she is embraced by the warm hearted people. Your will be caught up in events that recount the little known history of the Guernsey Islanders as they lived life in the English Channel under the harsh Nazi Occupation. The novel is meticulously researched and shines a light on the power of endurance and resiliance of the human spirit in the face of hard times.

Wednesday's Pick!

October is a small quiet book by award winning Canadian author Richard Wright. It is a coming of age story set in WWII Perce, Quebec alongside a contemporary story of a man dealing with death. James Hillyer, a retired professor of Victorian literature, has flown to England to be with his daughter who has recently been diagnosed with cancer the same disease that took his wife a few years earlier. While walking down a London street he meets a man, Gabriel Fontaine, who he encountered as a young boy while summering in the Gaspe region. Gabriel is very ill and asks James to accompany him on a life altering journey. While preparing for the journey, James recounts the summer he met Gabriel and all the conflicting emotions that came with it. Wright slowly draws the reader into a fine story of love and loss.

Bonus Pick!

I was working this weekend, so I thought I would post a bonus review. This book is by Jane Urquhart, who also wrote Burlington's OBOB title The Stone Carvers!

A Map of Glass takes place in the Kingston and Prince Edward County area of Ontario, and tells the story of Andrew Woodman and his ancestors, whose fortunes rise and fall with the tides of Ontario’s history. Jane Urquhart excels at bringing to life the lesser-known chapters of our past, and the story of the Woodman family, spanning a fascinating two centuries of Ontario’s history, is well worth persevering through the more cumbersome first part of the story, about an elderly woman and young artist whom Andrew’s death has brought together.