Book picks similar to
Life Goes to the Movies by Peter Selgin
award-winner
fiction-bruised---trembling
here-is-new-york
published
The Forsyte Saga, The Modern Comedy, The End of the Chapter (the complete Forsyte collection, 9 books and 4 interludes)
John Galsworthy - 2010
Following the life of the duty-bound but passionless Soames Forsyte, stuck in an unhappy marriage with his quick-witted and sensitive wife Irene, his domineering uncle Old Jolyon, and his libertine cousin Young Jolyon, it exposes fully the realities of Victorian society of the day. The sympathetic and evocative picture it paints has made this trilogy.a classic.A Modern Comedy takes up where the Forsyte Saga leaves off, following the lives of the next generation of Forsytes: Jon Forsyte and Fleur Mont, living with the legacy of their parents misadventures. Written after "the great earthquake", as Galsworthy puts it, of World War I, the second Forsyte trilogy speaks of the changes in British society of the 1920s, depicted through the prism of the Forsyte family.The End of the Chapter is the third trilogy in the series, continuing the story of the Forsytes as the old Victorian society declines further under the onslaught of the Edwardian era.This material was NOT merely scanned from an ink-and-paper book, like many Kindle e-books are. All e-books offered by Di Lernia Publishers are hand-edited and checked for spelling and punctuation errors.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Ben Fountain - 2012
It explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad.Ben Fountain’s remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.
Late Nights on Air
Elizabeth Hay - 2007
Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet.
So Near
Liza Gyllenhaal - 2011
In the aftermath of a devastating loss, Cal and Jenny Horigan's marriage is unraveling. Both are plagued by guilt, unable to seek comfort from one another. Burdened by remorse, they begin to lose sight of the love that once anchored them-together with their sense of right and wrong.As the Horigans try different ways to deal with their pain, a new acquaintance seems to offer the support they desperately need-though at times they are unsure whether his guidance is leading them back to each other or further apart...
Altered Land
Jules Hardy - 2002
'I missed the turning over Battersea Bridge. I didn't know it would make a difference... that the manner of living seconds and minutes mattered' Joan is a single mother - beautiful, talented and desired. John is her adored son, her 'Merboy'. Growing up in the West Country, his life is lived outdoors, playing in the creek by their cottage in Devon, swimming, hunting for shells, collecting bits of old boats. On his thirteenth birthday, Joan treats him to a trip to London to buy his first pair of Levi's jeans. Unused to city driving, she takes a wrong turn. The repercussions of that moment's hesitation are devastating... Their story recounts the life-altering effects of that one moment. It is a story about a mother's heartbreaking love for her son and the different ways people survive damage. With sensitivity and compassion, Jules Hardy's lyrical prose explores the strengths and flaws of this unique relationship between a mother and her son, and vividly describes the altered worlds in which they must live. It is a wonderfully assure
The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides: Three Classic Novels in One Collection
Pat Conroy - 2016
“Robust and vivid . . . full of feeling” (Newsday). The Lords of Discipline: Will McLean begins his studies at the Carolina Military Institute during the Vietnam War era and must mentor the school’s first black student—while facing down the menace of a racist secret society. “A work of enormous power, passion, humor, and wisdom” (Jonathan Yardley, TheWashington Star). The Prince of Tides: When Tom Wingo learns that his twin sister has attempted suicide—again—he leaves the Low Country to visit her in New York and confront the family secret that haunts them both. “Conroy has achieved a penetrating vision of the Southern psyche” (Publishers Weekly). Deeply influenced by the author’s own experiences, with his Southern family and education at the Citadel in Charleston, these stunning novels represent the very best of Pat Conroy’s impressive literary career. The South Carolina–set sagas were made into blockbuster films—two of them earning multiple Academy Award nominations—and each is a rich, emotional journey into the inner lives of fascinating characters.
A Hole in the Heart: A Novel
Christopher Marquis - 2003
Love and marriage follow in short order, surprising Bean, who feels that her husband is not only the best thing to happen to her, but the only good thing.Then Mick vanishes leading amateur hikers--or "tuna" as the guides call them--up Mt. McKinley. Suddenly, Bean is thrown back upon herself and into the company of Mick's mother Hanna, an arthritic woman in her seventies who believes that "a little larceny is good for the circulation."The pair chafe at first, but eventually become partners in a road trip back to California. Mike's disappearance feels like a hole in the heart, they decide, and Hanna tells Bean to prize that hole; it's something no one can take away from her. With gentle humor, pathos, and boundless stores of hope, Marquis writes of Bean's struggle with early widowhood, loss, and moving on.An avid bird-watcher, Bean takes much of her wisdom from the Pemberton Guide to Alaska Birds. Like the globe-crossing birds she so admires, she has struggled to get aloft, but for a delicious, perhaps fleeting moment in this marvelous novel, we see her glide.Book Magazine selected Christopher Marquis as one of "Ten To Watch In 2003" for this "Proulxian saga." With its first-rate evocation of landscape and its affectionately drawn characters, A Hole in the Heart marks the publication debut of a prodigiously talented writer.
The God of Animals
Aryn Kyle - 2007
As the hottest summer in fifteen years unfolds and bills pile up, Alice is torn between dreams of escaping the loneliness of her duty-filled life and a longing to help her father mend their family and the ranch.To make ends meet, the Winstons board the pampered horses of rich neighbors, and for the first time Alice confronts the power and security that class and wealth provide. As her family and their well-being become intertwined with the lives of their clients, Alice is drawn into an adult world of secrets and hard truths, and soon discovers that people -- including herself -- can be cruel, can lie and cheat, and every once in a while, can do something heartbreaking and selfless. Ultimately, Alice and her family must weather a devastating betrayal and a shocking, violent series of events that will test their love and prove the power of forgiveness.A wise and astonishing novel about the different guises of love and the often steep tolls on the road to adulthood, The God of Animals is a haunting, unforgettable debut.
The Mint Lawn
Gillian Mears - 1991
Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past.That past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother's attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three, clever, receptive daughters.But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother's memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, the earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is Thomas the lure, who alone can appreciate Clementine's own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets.Already widely known and praised for her short stories, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy.
Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets
Viken Berberian - 2007
Moving between New Yorks Wall Street and the beauty of Corsica, Berberians novel is a literary rendering of Marxs Capital for the 21st century: where a fund trader makes his profits through the collapse of overseas markets--and ensures it with the aid of a hired assassin.
A Happy Marriage
Rafael Yglesias - 2009
Laced throughout with intimate recollections of moments of crises and joy from the middle years of their relationship, the novel charts the ebb and flow of marriage, illuminating the mysteries and magic of marital love.Neither sentimental nor cynical, and written with an intense devotion to character and emotional suspense, A Happy Marriage reveals a partnership that brings maturity and great pleasure to the lives of two people. Bold, elegiac, and stunningly vivid, A Happy Marriage will break every reader’s heart—and perhaps infuse some marriages with greater love.
Someone
Alice McDermott - 2013
Scattered recollections - of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age - come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice. Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another. Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn - McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.Membership
The Sellout
Paul Beatty - 2015
It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant.Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.
The Revisionist
Jesse Eisenberg - 2013
The play had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in spring 2013, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Kip Fagan.In The Revisionist, young writer David arrives in Poland with a crippling case of writer’s block and a desire to be left alone. His seventy-five-year-old second cousin Maria welcomes him with a fervent need to connect with her distant American family. As their relationship develops, she reveals details about her postwar past that test their ideas of what it means to be a family.
The Last Lovely City: Stories
Alice Adams - 1999
And a grouping of four stories at the end follows a divorced psychiatrist in an arc that constitutes a short novel. Included are: “His Women,” “Great Sex,” “Old Love Affairs,” and “The Drinking Club,” “Patients, “The Wrong Mexico, “ and “Earthquake Damage.”