Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

I'm back with another new Y realistic fiction. First time author Jay Asher tells the story in two voices: Hannah's point of view was recorded on cassette tapes before she took her own life and is shown in italics; Clay's point of view, printed in regular type, is his reaction as he listens to the tapes and recalls the events that lead up to the tragedy.

The writing is amazing and reviewers have given it raves for the power of the story. I can't stop thinking about Hannah and I feel a true sense of grief that she couldn't find a way to make different choices. That's what kids need to "get" that they can't blame other people no matter how bad it is.

I need to read a funny book now.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

For a time before the outbreak of WWII, Franklin Roosevelt considered a proposal that would establish a temporary settlement for persecuted European Jews in the Alaskan panhandle. The plan fell through, but Michael Chabon uses the proposal as a “What If?” springboard, building the foundation for the architecture of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

Sixty years have passed since the Sitka, Alaska settlement, which saved millions of Jewish lives. (In Chabon’s version, two million Jews died in the Holocaust instead of six million.) Only now the Sitka district is about to revert to American rule, forcing its Jews to find yet another homeland. Just before the upheaval, Detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a chess prodigy/heroin addict who lives in the same rundown hotel as Landsman. With the Reversion imminent, Landsman is pressured to forget the case and move on (literally). To make matters worse, most of this pressure is coming from Landsman’s boss, who is also his ex-wife.

Imagine the style of any hard-boiled detective writer, preferably someone like Raymond Chandler, then toss in plenty of Jewish culture (including, of course, healthy doses of Yiddish) clashing with Native Americans, Americans, Filipinos and all sorts of bureaucracy . Add an outrageous sense of humor with sentences that are so well constructed it’s astounding. That’s a very small sampling of the delights to be found in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

(As an aside, I thought it interesting that Chabon abandoned the usual hard-boiled detective first-person narrative, choosing instead a third-person present voice.)

So does this Alternate History/Detective/Murder Mystery/Clash-of-Cultures novel actually work? Like Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, it doesn’t really matter who the murderer is. (And yes, you do find out who did it.) It’s all about the journey, not the destination. Sure, there were moments that I thought the story was close to coming off the rails, but Chabon is such a gifted writer I didn’t care. And I wasn’t disappointed. Highly recommended.

Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories by Jim Shepard

My first encounter with Jim Shepard was his incredible short story "Sans Farine" in The Best American Short Stories 2007 (which is also included in this collection). The story is narrated by an executioner during the French Revolution. The images and details feel so authenitic I almost wondered if Shepard really was an executioner in a past life. Or maybe he's a time traveler. Or just extremely well-read.

These first-person narratives aren't simply good stories with historical backdrops. Sure, you certainly get the feeling that Shepard was hanging out with a middle-aged Aeschylus at Marathon, was floating around with the first woman cosmonaut inside a Soviet capsule, was hauling a whaleboat through the Great Australian Desert in 1840. But there's much more.

Shepard gives the reader eleven wildly differing settings and times, yet wherever (and whenever) you go, conflict is conflict. It becomes very clear that Shepard understands just as much about relationships as he does about history. Many of these relationships are either between siblings or sons and fathers, but not all. Many are strained, many are broken, some are as shattered as a crystal vase dropped from the Sears Tower. But Shepard doesn't stop with relational conflicts. Each setting acts as its own character, providing added external conflict to heighten the internal conflicts.

Filled with dark humor, drama, tragedy, introspection and yearning, these tales stick with you long after you've finished them, refusing to go away. I couldn't read more than one at a sitting. I suppose some of that is due to the vast differences and settings of the stories. I mean, it's hard to jump from 1986 Chernobyl straight to Tibet's Chang Tang tundra. But these are stories to savor, anyway, stories you can get lost inside. Highly recommended.

Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather)

Death Comes for the Archbisop was first published in 1927, which is the year of my mother's birth. Not that this is significant to anyone else, but I did find myself conjuring the decade when my dear Irish mother and Cather's novelization of two French priests in the American Southwest first arrived in our midst. There is much to reflect upon in this novel: the natural beauties of New Mexico, the mysteries of the Catholic faith, the array of personalities, some admirable and others wayward, that make up the culture of the citizens and the clergy who populate its pages. Cather writes with a brushstroke - in her hand, the landscape and its inhabitants bec0me imminently present. Death Comes for the Archbishop is also the story of the enduring friendship between the Archbishop, Father Jean Latour and his assistant, Father Vaillant, who first met as schoolboys and together shared a lifelong pilgrimmage as missionaries in a foreign land.

If you need a good cry then Before I Die by Jenny Downham is the one to do it.

It's the 2008 version of Erich Segal's Love Story.

The Secret Between Us by Barbara Delinsky

They say we are only as sick as our secrets and Barbara Delinsky proves this to be true for small town doctor, Deborah Monroe and her daughter Grace. The book opens with a tragic accident and a lie of omission that changes the already fractured Monroe family.

There is a built in reading group discussion guide in the back of the book.

If you have patrons who like Jodi Picoult or want a story with a moral dilemma they might like this one too.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An Echo Falls Mystery

Based on a good review, I picked up a rather fat J mystery by Peter Abrahams. It was so good, I grabbed the second mystery in Echo Falls titled Behind the Curtain. I'm not the only one to love these, Stephen King has blurbs on both books!

They feature Ingrid, a 13 year old soccer player and lead actor in a local production. When she unwittingly hears a murder taking place in the house of the local crazy woman, her curiosity takes over and she tries to solve the mystery herself.

What did I love? This is the funniest 13 year girl I've come across in a long time. Just read the first chapter in her orthodontists office.

Not only does she become involved in police goings on, she also has concerns about her father's job and her older brother, who has lately become very muscular, bad tempered, and pimply.

I'm going to ask Pat Ferguson to look these over however because there was some language I thought might be better suited for Y.

Birgit