Books like Reservation Road — picked by fans

I am recommending this work of fiction selected by The Compassionate Friends Sibling Grief Book Club. Ann, with grace, handles not only the sibling loss of a brother, a boy the sole survivor of a plane crash, but the depth and breadth of grief from the aunt and uncle Edward lives with. Edward’s aunt grieving the loss of an unborn child and her sister, says to Edward, “You’re not okay. We are not okay. This is not okay.” I’m certain other bereaved siblings can relate, “he mourns what his brother has lost.” I related to how in a family we handle grief differently and often are unable to communicate how we are feeling. 

In Ordinary People, the boating-accident death of the older teenage son shatters the family.

Conrad, the younger son who was also on the boat, is tormented by self-blame for his brother’s death. After a suicide attempt and a psychiatric hospitalization, Conrad is released. He is still beset with guilt and depression and begins outpatient treatment with Dr. Berger, a blunt yet also an empathetic psychiatrist.

I like the way he helps Conrad reconsider his unrealistic guilt and helps him look at the limitations of his mother, a parent unable to provide him the warmth and support he needs. I like the way Dr. Berger is portrayed as caring and skilled, an example of how psychiatrists effectively treat their patients.

Although not coastal, this book’s Palm Springs setting is full of swimming pools and a feeling of escape to somewhere new. I laughed, I cried, and I adored the dynamic between Patrick and his adorable niece and nephew.

Secondary characters, such as the three neighbors and other family members, added depth and emotion to the story. I seriously read this book in 24 hours!

In her fifteenth novel, Erdrich, a member of the Ojibwe tribe, attempts to answer the question, “Can a person do the worst possible thing and still be loved?” by showing readers how native American parents living on a reservation cope when the father, Landreaux, accidentally kills his best friend’s five-year-old son in a hunting accident. Landreaux is distraught, wracked with horror, guilt, and grief. After consultation and attending a sweat, guided by an old native custom, he gives La Rose, his and his wife’s youngest child–whose best friend was the deceased–to the bereaved parents and siblings in a version of justice. It’s a twist on an eye for an eye, intended to equalize the suffering and prevent the escalation and further death that can occur when acts of grief-fueled revenge begin. Now both families are suffering unbearable loss, and so is LaRose, a five-year-old boy.

I don’t know if there’s… show more.

Abbott Awaits follows the spectacularly ordinary life of a father with a two-year-old; husband to an insomniac, pregnant wife; and university teacher. Bachelder evokes beauty in the mundane, dazzling splendor in domestic tedium, and in the middle of cleaning up his daughter’s vomited-up raspberries, a revelation that gets to the heart of Abbot’s heart-crushing yet devastatingly funny tour of his wildly imaginative inner life: “The following propositions are both true: A) Abbott would not, given the opportunity, change one significant element of his life, but B) Abbot cannot stand his life.”

Ezekiel Farragut is a former university professor and current inmate at Falconer prison.

A drug addict and a murderer for killing his own brother during an argument, while incarcerated Farragut must wean himself from his addiction with methadone, and suffer visits from his profoundly disappointed wife. He is also involved romantically with a fellow prisoner—the captivating Jody, who all the guys want to screw.

When Jody successfully escapes, Farragut is left to contemplate how his own failures got him to this lonely place, and how to be a better man if he is ever able to leave it. This is where the grim, dreamlike beauty of Cheever’s best-known signature works shines through.

If you like this, also check out Blake Bailey’s biography of Cheever. The parallels between fact and fiction are fascinating.

The quiet endurance of grief. I love this small, meditative novella that captures the essence of grief as it continues to linger in the body, the mind, and the heart long past the comfortability of those around you.

While the story focuses on the main character, an aging, gay professor who has come to Washington, DC, for a visiting professorship after losing his mother to a long illness, each person encountered is grieving something in their own way (I truly love that Holleran mirrors the main character’s grief with that of Mary Todd Lincoln’s after losing her husband to an assassin but also still grieving the death of her son via a biography he’s reading).

What I find so beautiful about this book is that Holleran doesn’t go for the theatrics of grief. He keeps the story and the emotions calm, methodic, and persistent with such great care to craft… show more.

And then there was Campusland… Fast, funny, and brutal in its satirical account of today’s campuses, with their “safe spaces” and identity politics and administrators and students alike running amok, this is a book with an agenda (be forewarned) but which executes that agenda extremely well. Johnston really nails certain character types present on many liberal arts colleges and elite campuses, as well as the dynamics as those characters execute their own agendas. If you share the author’s agenda you will lap it up; if not, you will be enraged; but either way you will be entertained. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the campus scene for a while—prepare to be shocked.  

In a genre full of stories of almost infinite variety, this is one that caught my eye.

A middle-aged female professor of mathematics goes on a quest with her cat to track down a former student who is the only one who can save their world from destruction. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it? Except for the world-ending part.

And the fact that Vellitt’s path lies straight through a dreamscape out of the Lovecraftian mythos in this critique/homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. But you don’t have to have read the latter to enjoy the journey.

Vellitt is a marvelous character, the world-building is brilliant and the cat is the perfect addition that helps set the tone for a new and different kind of quest fantasy.

Helen McInnes books made their way into my family via those Readers Digest Condensed books that used to come in the mail. They were hard bound and heavy to hold, but it was fun to open them and explore new books. The only one I remember, though, is one by Helen McInnes. I had to go find the complete book because when they condense? You miss a lot. I recommend starting with her first book, Above Suspicion. I loved her characters right off. This isn’t one of those stories that starts with a big bang. The tension rises very slowly and you don’t realize you are being wound up like a spring until it’s too late to put it down. And cool factoid, the author was in the OAS in World War II. She knew her stuff.