character driven
A woman is stuck in a bad marriage. Bored with nothing to do and no friends, she joins a group of outsider librarians who deliver books to outside towns. Trouble always finds women on horses, especially when the town is filled with racists, the religious and closeted alcoholics.
Thank you to Gage Heyburn for recommending this book to me!
Are you emotionally ready for 800 pages of heartache? A Little Life [2015] by Hanya Yanagihara is set in NY and follows four friends - Willem, J.B., Malcolm and Jude - with different aspirations, privilege, relationships, and temperaments. Before taking a quiz to see if you’re a Willem or a Malcolm, let me say that this is not a boys version of Sex In the City. Or any version of it. A Little Life is excruciatingly painful to read. We watch them grow up, grow apart, be there for one another, disappoint each other. We also learn about their pasts and the pains, physically and emotionally, that influence who they become. Beautiful and harrowing, this novel is one that might take you a while to read but is worth the journey.
Thank you to Will Simpson and Andy Whalen for recommending this book to me!
An Englishman and a Bangladeshi walk into a bar. Again and again. Old habits die hard, and these two friends, bound together by WWII, can’t seem to move on. While several years have past, they now have wives and children, neighbors and in-laws - all with opinions of their own. Everyone is on the brink of disaster, including the city of London. But at least they have the bar, their usual orders, and the “incident” that keeps them together. White Teeth [2000] by Zadie Smith is as funny as it is moving.
I never knew failed suicide attempts could be so charming but here we are. A Man Called Ove (2012) by Fredrik Backman is about a stodgy old guy who just wants to die but his neighbors keep bothering him and somehow his suicide attempts keep getting foiled or put off. The story goes back and forth between the present and his past, revealing why he is the way that he is. Makes you wonder if that grouchy old neighbor of yours is hiding some rich stories.
READ if like character stories about curmudgeons