Here are 2 books that Countermelodies fans have personally recommended if you like
Countermelodies.
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This book was published in 2006 and I must have read a review of it around then. However, it got hidden on a bookshelf until this year. I'm so glad I waited to read it because in 2024, the references to Ukrainian history, cities, and towns has much more meaning for me than it would have when I bought the book. It's a funny, poignant portrayal of interesting and odd family dynamics sprinkled with much love for Ukraine and Ukrainians.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainianis bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel.
'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I had been wanting to read this for a long time, ever since I finished Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives. My immediate motivation to wade into this remarkable, very long book (893 pages) came from Patti Smith's Year of the Monkey (which I also recommend). This book is divided into five parts, and after I finished each part, I read another novel before starting the next part. I did this because I needed a break from the intensity of this book. It takes place in various cities in Europe, but mostly focuses on Mexico. On April 14, 2024, in an interview, Doris Kearns Goodwin was asked, "what is the most terrifying book you've ever read?" She replied, "2666 by Roberto Bolano." So, in addition to Patti Smith and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I'll add my recommendation of the most profoundly moving (and terrifying) book I've read in ages.
Santa Teresa, on the Mexico US border, is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls. Among them are three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; and a police detective in love with an elusive older woman. But there is darker side still to the town. It is an emblem of corruption, violence and decadence, and one from which, over the course of a decade, hundreds of women have mysteriously, often brutally, disappeared. Told in five parts, 2666 is the epic novel that defines one…
