The Book Club: One will leave you in tears, another you’ll want to read twice
Editor s note The opinions of the smart well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables So we requested them and all Denver Post readers to share their mini-reviews with you Have any to offer Email bellis denverpost com Barbara Ellis How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney Biblioasis How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney Biblioasis In a small town in western Ireland Jamie O Neill is about to start secondary school a Catholic school run by a fanatic and filled with plenty of bullies looking for someone just like Jamie to persecute Autistic or genius or ultra mature it s hard to tell he started speaking at years old with full and elaborate sentences from Edgar Allen Poe Now at he wonders where the ability of a dead person is stored as he watches over and over a two-minute video of his mother who died when he was born At school he befriends his English mentor Tess and the two of them discover an ally in the woodshop instructor a personable loner of a man who convinces them that what Jamie demands preponderance is to build something How to Build a Boat is a deeply compassionate novel simple and regional but the language takes off with sentence and paragraph breaks that resemble poetry This book left me joyous and in tears Longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year stars out of Michelle Nelson Littleton Martyr by Kaveh Akbar Knopf Martyr by Kaveh Akbar Knopf A young Iranian immigrant newly orphaned struggles to find his footing and meaning in his life He embodies the clich d image of Iranian males a passionate poet having the certitude of being on the right side of history drawn to a fatalism around martyrdom to die for something larger than life He decides to write a series of poems devoted to martyrs and his work leads him to an unexpected discovery which seems a fated clich in itself Despite this novel s popularity I was disappointed expecting more somehow Goodreads Nominee for Readers Favorite Fiction stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver Clear by Carys Davies Scribner Rarely do I finish a book and then right now reread it but Clear is totally that good Eighteen-forty-three is a year of upheaval the Great Disruption in the Scottish Presbyterian Church that sidetracks the career of minister John Ferguson the eviction of tenant farmers like Ivar by Scottish landlords to replace them with more profitable and tractable sheep the rift in their marriage when John is compelled to leave Mary behind to accept a commission to remove Ivar from his island home I fell in love with each of these characters as they form unlikely relationships Davies pellucid writing made reading this small quiet book sheer pleasure Of note is the incorporation of vocabulary from Ivan s archaic Norm language a special touch that entranced me This is the best book I ve read this year stars out of Neva Gronert Parker Sweet Fury by Sash Bischoff Simon Schuster An homage to F Scott Fitzgerald s Tender is the Night Bischoff cleverly has her own privileged and flawed characters making a movie based on the Fitzgerald novel while mirroring the novel with a startlingly similar plot line in their own lives Or wait A slight shift of perspective turns this kaleidoscope of a story into a whodunit page-turner A gripping debut novel stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver An Unfinished Love Story A Personal History of the s by Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon Schuster Framed as a memoir of Doris Kearns Goodwin s marriage this history is based on hundreds of boxes of papers and memorabilia that speechwriter journalist Dick Goodwin saved It covers all the chaos of the s the Vietnam War the assassinations Lyndon B Johnson s Great Society the tensions between the Kennedys and the Johnsons and the McCarthy kids all from two insiders perspectives A fascinating read with great anticipated for discussion stars out of Jo Calhoun Denver
