Guest Reviewer Offers some Books on Family Life

Happy New Year to all! We end the year with some special reading recommendations from guest reviewer and Teen Librarian, Jan Chapman. She is sharing with us this week three great new books dealing with “family matters.”  We hope you will enjoy these titles. 

Happy reading from the !

The Invisible Bridge By Julie Orringer, January 2011, 597 pages.

If you relish emotional epic family sagas, don’t miss this one. Set in Hungary during World War II, the story focuses on three Hungarian-Jewish brothers whose lives prior to the war go in very different directions. The central character, Andras Levi, is an architecture student planning to study in Paris. He arrives from Budapest with a scholarship and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to a C. Morgenstern. C. Morgenstern turns out to be a lovely Hungarian expatriate who captures his heart from their very first meeting. But her secretiveness keeps their relationship maddeningly uncertain. Meanwhile, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena and their younger brother leaves school for the stage. After Andras finally persuades his love to marry him, Europe’s unfolding tragedy intervenes and forces them back to Hungary to try to survive in a world that has no use for Jews.  All three brothers are sent to labor camps where they must endure starvation, brutality and slave labor conditions.  This Holocaust story about enduring love, heartbreak, and survival will appeal to readers of De Berniere’s Corelli’s Mandolin, Lee’s The Piano Teacher, and Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.

Life, an Exploded Diagram By Mal Peet, October 2011, 385 pages.

Adult readers who love historical novels will enjoy this sophisticated teen novel about a family living in Great Britain just after World War II. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile crisis, this is a story about two young lovers who come from radically different backgrounds. Working class Clem meets and falls in love with Frankie, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Class divides them, but they must also find their way in a world that seems bent upon destroying itself. The book spans three generations and takes the reader from the end of World War II to the attack on the World Trade Center. The author paints a vivid portrait of life in England during these pivotal years. This richly detailed and beautifully written coming-of-age novel will resonate with adult readers who recall the terrifying uncertainty of the Cold War years.

The Weird Sisters By Eleanor Brown, January 2011, 320 pages.

Take one part small town angst and two parts family dysfunction. Stir together thoroughly. Add a dash of Shakespeare for flavor and you have this edgy, humorous contemporary novel about three sisters who must return to their small hometown to care for their desperately ill mother. Their father, a Shakespeare scholar, is more adept at making succinct literary allusions than coping with the reality of his wife’s illness. The cornerstone of the family, eldest sister Rose, has taken on most of the familial responsibilities. Although she’s the sensible one, she also is the most fearful, dreading any occasion that will take her out of her comfort zone. Bean is an attention hog who gets caught up in the New York social scene, incurring a fearful credit card debt. Cordy is the youngest of the three sisters and an amiable hippie drifter. Each sister must cope with both their mother’s illness and their inherent antagonism towards each other. But love wins out in the end and pushes them to each find their own path. Fans of Alice Hoffman will enjoy this quirky literary debut.