"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz's first full-length fiction is a fully-realized piece, heartfelt, compassionate, and memorable. Our protaganist Oscar is a young Dominican living in New Jersey who is a "ghetto nerd": hopelessly overweight, endlessly focused on writing fantasy fiction. Unfortunately, Oscar is also completely smitten every time he sees even an average-looking woman.

This is a good novel because of the author's diction: it's hip, poetic in its rhythms, and startlingly effective. It puts us directly in the line of fire. Told from a friend's first-person point of view, "Oscar" wends its way from urban New Jersey to the third-world Dominican Republic. Oscar touches all he knows somehow - whether it's his friend's exaspertation or his sister's devotion. He's the final, living result of a curse on his family, and his realization of this is one of the driving forces behind the narrative.

This is promising stuff from Diaz. I look forward to future entries.

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"The Blood of Flowers" by Anita Amirrezvani

"The Blood of Flowers" presents us with the story of an unnamed female narrator trying to make her way into adulthood in the Iranian capital of Isfahan in the 1620s. Our protaganist has a gift for designing and making, or "knotting" carpets, and after losing her father at fourteen, she must move from her native village to the home of her uncle in the dazzling capital.

Our heroine suffers at the hands of her family, her friends, and the restrictive mores of the time. Yet she and her mother prevail, as a combination of events makes it possible for her to pursue her vocation to design and make carpets fit for the palace.

I felt as though our protaganist was a real and believable character, with the one objection that she was given a few too many 21st-century traits and ambitions. Characterizations are a strong suit for Ms. Amirrezvani, starting with her heroine. The plot was too contrived in places - never moreso than when her best friend - whom I could barely stomach, and who continued to enjoy our beloved carpet-weaver's devotion after so many cruel betrayals (inexplicable!) - this "friend" winds up marrying the man who had taken the narrator as a concubine. And the outcome held no surprises; it was as predictable as nightfall.

Presumably Ms. Amirrezvani aimed to show Isfahan at its zenith, and it was a good college try on her part. This fiction, though, was just barely polished enough to bring it off.

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"Then Came the Evening" by Brian Hart

How is it that so many debut novels are released that all have well-paced plot development, weighty themes, and such deep and fully realized characters? "Then Came the Evening" by Brian Hart represents yet another impressive debut effort in my list. I found "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl, and the stunning "In the Fall" by Jeffrey Lent in particular, to be exceptional. Also "The Monsters of Templeton" by Lauren Groff, introduced me to another new author worth following.

In "Then Came the Evening" Mr. Hart unfolds the story of the Dorners, a splintered Idaho family that reunites when the son comes of age and decides to rebuild and claim the abandoned homestead. His father has been incarcerated and does not even know of his existence until a short time before he sees him in prison on his way to the family land in Idaho. The son, Tracy, seriously injures himself while laboring on the house, and his mother, Iona, rushes to him from Spokane, while at the same time trying to detoxify herself. His father Bandy, very ill, is released from prison, and all three embark on the halting, winding path of repair and redemption at the family ranch. The fits and starts of this three-sided relationship is one of the main charms here. Mr. Hart shows a sophistication and a very humane touch while presenting this painful progress, where a slim hope begins to emerge. Fate intervenes when Bandy is extorted into doing the bidding of a so-called friend from prison, and our shaky hopes for his family begin to unravel.

The family farm to which these three damaged souls repair offers hope for themselves as individuals and as a group. As young Tracy begins to work on it, he invests his sweat and hopes and a good portion of his bodily health to this chance, this ideal. He has more energy for the task of redemption than either of his parents. They learn a bit from him, which is good as far as it goes, but it turns out Iona has a secret in the past that bears on the present, and finally overwhelms everything they are trying to build. The son benefits from the destructive but resigned impulses of his parents - he works hard and his future promises much more - quite a bit more than his parents ever hoped for.

Brian Hart has produced a debut work of fiction that promises an exceptional career. His characters come fully alive, his plot is sophisticated and seems inevitable (a very good characteristic in a plot), and he treats his family and other characters with a plain-spoken dignity, and an unblinking honesty. I found this piece to be a compulsive page-turner - I had not read a novel in a single day in some years. This piece rises above the run-of-the-mill with its set-piece morality and the ineluctable destiny toward which personalities and events take us. I recommend this book in no uncertain terms, and look forward to recommending future efforts from this impressive new author.

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"Popular Music From Vittula" by Mikael Niemi

What a very unusual piece of work! We're here in the far north of Sweden, getting a very close acquaintance with Matti, a young teenage boy whose exposure to Western pop culture must come from a Finnish radio station.

This book is partly a series of tall tales, part gothic horror, and all coming-of-age story. I thoroughly enjoyed the unfamiliar setting married to the universal themes of exploration and discovery when coming of age. Additionally, this work has some exotic features which add spice, like Scandinavian folk tales, and the electrifying effect when Elvis Presley's #1 hits reach town. Laurie Thompson's translation (from the Swedish, I think) is seamless, transparent, and wonderful.

I took note, while reading this, of the question of why music should come from female reproductive parts. Because vittula, the name of the town from across the border, is a Finnish word for ... well, let's just say the boy is an adolescent.

I recommend this book very highly. It's a quick, easy-to-read, very different and diverting romp.

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"Stillwater" by William F. Weld

"Stillwater" contains the very sympathetic portrait of sixteen year-old Jamieson Kooby during the summer before his home town is flooded under a reservoir. The author, William Weld, is a former governor of Massachusetts, and I don't know how much actual history went into the political and social occurrences in this story. Jamieson spends the idyllic summer riding flowing streams and having high times. Some of these high times involve a young woman, Hannah, who is touched with the supernatural. She remembers former lives from Colonial and Civil War times. As the damming proceeds she apparently drowns (maybe). Part muse, part oracle, and part vamp, she represents an ideal female companion, including having an extremely just and moral nature.

This story leaves the details of the politcal wrangling leading up to the stopping (stilling) of the waters, and concentrates instead on the effects on the lives of its cadre of young people. Water in motion means flowing lives and feelings. What really happens to Hannah? Her life means thrilling possibilities for Jamieson, and her death comes when the waters are stilled.

Weld creates beautiful portraits of the teens' lives, and we have an exceedingly sympathetic picture of the lead character. This is a fine story, put together with high skill. I am extremely pleased I read it.

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"Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell

I approached “Black Swan Green” shortly after a very memorable experience with “Cloud Atlas,” so I rushed ahead breathless and excited. “Black Swan Green” turned out to be a very different experience, which proved David Mitchell’s extreme versatility, and reinforced his rank as one of the world’s greatest writers.

Mr. Mitchell creates the (autobiographical?) character of Jason Taylor, a British lad trying to navigate the shark-infested waters of junior high, or whatever the local name for those grades is. Jason struggles to push his way into the upper echelon of school society, and seems to almost make it at one point, but otherwise is one of the faceless rabble that populate all grades at all schools. This is the story of a boy just prior to coming of age. It is compelling adventure, nevertheless.

Once I accustomed myself to the slang used in the U.K. at the time, I began to keep up a little better with this memorable ride. Jason, owner of a noble and courageous heart, suffers through the constant bullying by classmates in power. He knows the microcosm of his class is corrupt, stifled by intimidation and petty extortion. The description of his bid to overthrow this tyranny enraptures the reader who’s been paying attention, and leads to Jasie-boy’s first snog at the end of the school year.

Mr. Mitchell brings a crackling diction to this boy’s laments. He demonstrates that he can wield his language to make us want the best for his hero – we root for this appealing character, and the book finishes in a grand, satisfying manner. But the trials of the journey through this school year are real and harrowing, and I thank my lucky stars and my parents’ sacrifices for private schooling. This trip has neither the innovative flair (unless one considers the very inventive language) nor the sweeping apocalyptic vision of “Cloud Atlas,” but reaches the reader on a more completely personal level. “Black Swan Green” recounts the turning of a life from dark to promising, the graduation of a soul from passive to assertive, an ascendance of merit over selfishness. “Jasie-boy” Taylor is again, just as the highly diverting plots and loops and suffering heroes in “Cloud Atlas,” a reaffirmation of the reading life, a reminder of the simple joys and edifications of reading the right stuff. Make no mistake and waste no time! Take it up!

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