My Food For Thought: 12 Books I Recommend
The Call , by Yannick Murphy (Harper, 2011). The format of his novel – it’s written as a veterinarian’s daily log, intrigued me. I started reading but wondered how a logbook can possibly “work” as a novel. How can the author develop a plot? But she did, and her format elucidates the main character’s psychology. The author‘s husband is a Vermont vet, and the book was a 2011 National Book Award finalist in fiction.
The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka (Knopf, 2011) another 2011 National Book Award fiction finalist. It, too, is written unconventionally: in the first person plural (“We”). I doubted this would work in a novel, but it does. This the story of “picture brides” brought from Japan to the U.S. early in the 20th century, by Japanese men seeking wives. The “we” form lets us see their commonality but also to appreciate their diversity, and their individual ways of coping.
A Star Called Henry, by Roddy Doyle. Jon and I both read this raucus novel while we were in Dublin. [Jon “It gave me a real feeling for what life in Dublin was like, and fit what I saw there”]. Henry and his brother Victor are street urchins whose one-legged assassin dad and crazy, alcoholic mother, had more kids than they can care for. The boys turn to robbery and are eventually recruited into Michael Collins’ revolutionaries. They take part in the Post Office rebellion against the British, and then face retaliation. Jon will read another in Doyle’s novel series on our post-Christmas reading weekend.
The Irish Famine, by Peter Grey (Thames & Hudson). This book was an eye-opener: the Irish Famine was not just a matter of a failed potato harvest, as I had always thought. The famine could have been averted if farmers were allowed to grow other crops but the British plantation owners insisted that they export all non-potato foods to Britain, while 1 million Irish died of starvation and sickness, and another 1 million fled the county for the U.S., cutting Ireland’s population in half and leading to a long period of poverty, which may have affected my great-grandmother, Winifred Flanagan Moore, born in 1850 in Mayo County.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Reb ecca Skloot (Crown, 2010). Scientists have been using “HeLa” cells since the 1950s. This is the story of an African American woman whose cells, after she died of cervical cancer, were reproduced by scientists who went on to develop the polio vaccine and other medical advances. [...]