The best reader discussion question about Ian McEwan’s classic Atonement doesn’t appear at the end of the book, but it is this: Does an author have the right to give fictional characters the ending that “real life” denied them.
The novel is built around a single event, or, rather, the misunderstanding of that event, how it is reported, and the consequences that follow. A young girl struggles her whole life to make things right after her grievous error.
In the end, a writer can give characters the ending life denied them, but we readers will know the truth and harm, and nothing can change that.
A provocative, thoughtful book that kept me thinking long after I put it back on the shelf.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a…
Monica Wood is already one of my favorite authors. Here, she weaves a series of linked, quietly powerful stories about small-town lives, revealing how ordinary moments carry deep emotional weight and connection.
What I liked most is the subtle thread that runs between the stories. Just when you think - this has nothing to do with anything else - there it is, a sliver small as a blood vessel, connecting us to what has come before, or what will come later.
The favorite for me was of course about millworker Ernie, who learns he can’t control everything in his life, especially his wife’s serious illness. But he can build an arc in his backyard. This is his response. No one else understands, and he could care less. Great story in a great collection.
"Like Elizabeth Strout, her fellow chronicler of small-town Maine life, Monica Wood imbues her characters with the complexity and humanity of real people. Ernie's Ark is as true as life."-Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
In ten interlinking stories, the town of Abbot Falls reacts as Ernie Whitten, pipefitter, builds a giant ark in his backyard. Ernie was weeks away from a pension-secured retirement when the union went on strike. Now his wife Marie is ill. Struck with sudden inspiration, Ernie builds the ark as a work of art for his wife to see from the window; a vessel…
Buckeye jumped high on my list fast. Here’s why: - This is quiet, relatable storytelling. I’ve never felt that a novel needs constant action to be compelling. - The story and characters feel universal. War, fights with parents, infidelity, disease and family relationships are things everyone relates to. - The emotional stakes are high. Ordinary lives become extraordinary through the choices Ryan’s characters make and the consequences that result.
Bottom line: Big explosions don't need to make a sound.
One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything.
'Poignant, powerful' Independent 'Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental' New York Times 'It's not just a great Midwestern novel, it's a great novel, period' Financial Times
'I've been yearning for a novel that connects the American generations who dealt with our two Wars - one of Omaha Beach, the other of the Ia Drang Valley. Buckeye is that book, and it soars' TOM HANKS 'Funny and tender ... Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favourite writers' ANN PATCHETT 'I love this…
A disgraced journalist stumbles on a story that will let him reclaim his career, but redemption comes with a price: he must place his faith in the racist senator he once exposed as a murderer.
