Coming of age in the '70s, I set out to prove that I could do anything men could do as if it were my duty as a woman. This led me to become an exploration geologist, jumping out of helicopters in grizzly bear country. But I had a nagging feeling that I was neglecting what was meaningful to me. I struggled to even know what that was. My next career as a story analyst led me deep into the world of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and a fascinating exploration of how people find their best life. And I’m still enthusiastically exploring.
This was the first fiction book I read after completing my Master’s degree (aka an intense diet of scientific research). I can still feel my heart opening up as I was in Lily’s heart and head, facing her abusive father in the only world she had ever known.
When she branches out and finds a place of beauty and love among three sisters who keep bees, she starts to understand the rhythms of love and I started to feel love again. I gradually picked up the clues I needed to rebuild a life with beauty.
This book took me into a world of unconditional acceptance, so wonderful I actually wept with a longing I didn’t even know I had. I hated leaving Lily behind, but I think I hold a bit of her in my heart.
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina-a town that holds the secret to her mother's…
Reading this, at one point, I thought, “I’ve done that,” and felt a rush of shared humanity. After a botched kidnapping, a group, including a famous opera singer, become hostages. On the first night, one of the guards reaches out to touch her arm and she lays still and lets him. She knew, as I have, that this gentle longing would keep her safe.
I am grateful for how Patchett understands the art of being human in a deep yet familiar way. During the prolonged stalemate, the singer sings and organically seeds the compassion, creativity, and curiosity of captors and hostages alike. I enjoyed this optimism about what love can do and how the transition from a world of fear to a world driven by love can be believable.
Winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
The poignant - and at times very funny - novel from the author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth.
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing.
It is a perfect evening - until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves…
Never Ready is a story about the complexity of friendship and belonging, their fluidity and inherent loss.
As she curates her life, Henri discovers the mysterious strength of her families, the one she was born into, and the one she finds—but no one is ever really ready for goodbye.
I have a fascination with belonging, and this book explores this subject as if holding a flawed gemstone up to the light and marveling at its radiance. Hello Beautiful is centered on four sisters in a close Italian family and a man who grew up as an only child in a cold family. It gets interesting when these two families become joined by marriage.
Belonging is reveled in, longed for, not even dared to be longed for, and squandered as we follow their lives. I admire how it tenderly shows that these are all part of the journey towards authentic belonging. This story is so beautifully written that I felt nourished by the compassion that is infused into this quest to become our best selves.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
“Hello Beautiful is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It’s a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman…
From the first chapter, as I read Charlie’s letter to a friend, I wished I could meet the man this teenager would become. The magic of this book is that it is related entirely through journal-like letters. Charlie writes with so much authenticity, curiosity, and vulnerability that I’m glad he has three friends who hold him with love as he faces his demons and comes of age.
I found the ways he makes sense of the world fascinating, humourous, and admirable, and at other times heartbreaking. I sincerely admire Charlie’s strength as he manages to sustain vulnerability and a constant rope of connection to himself, even though it gets very thin at times.
A modern cult classic, a major motion picture and a timeless bestseller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story.
Charlie is not the biggest geek in high school, but he's by no means popular.
Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is attempting to navigate through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and music - when all one requires to feel infinite is that…
Can you imagine carrying around a more embarrassing book title? Despite that, I carry this nonfiction book in a ziplock bag to protect it. It speaks to me that loudly. This sleeper book from the 1970s delivers rare pearls of insight into how the world of love works. This dives into our poor behavior out of a need for love. It recounts group session dialogues that had me feeling I was there, swinging from cringe moments of self-recognition to ‘aha’ moments about an ex-boyfriend. I also appreciated how it upholds compassion for every person.
Beyond the beacons of personal insights, I’ve recently tried my hand at writing fiction, and this book supports creating characters that are flawed yet relatable and actually likable.
While Heroes look outward and bravely conquer their fears to make the world safer, Virgins look inward to discover who they are, separate from what everyone else expects from them, and bring that to life. This energy is contagious.
This book offers an archetypal structure for this new type of story. The protagonist can be male, female, or LBGTQ, and of any age, as long as they are on a quest to know they are of value just for being themselves, like a virgin forest. The book cites movie examples such as Ever After, Black Swan, Brokeback Mountain, and Bend It Like Beckham.
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
It’s 1969. Women are fighting for equality. Rosalee, an insecure sculptor, and Fran, a best-selling novelist, have their issues. Will their bitter envy of each other and long-held secrets destroy their tenuous friendship? Or will Jill, Rosalee’s granddaughter, and the story behind her emerald necklace bind them together?
