Lately, all the books I’ve read were novels told via connected stories—some short stories, some simply interesting ways to write. All three works of brilliant fiction that I shared on Good Day Alabama on WBRC Fox 6 this month were satisfying and just right for this busy time of year.
No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
What a cool book! This is the story of a book and ten lives that it changed completely. Alice had always wanted to be a writer, but it took a devastating event to push her to write the book she was always meant to write. That book, once out in the world, had profound effects on those who read it—including a homeless teenager trying to hide the fact that she’s homeless, a free diver who pushed himself too far, an actor driven to reclusiveness who finds a new career in narrating books, an artist angry with the world and her mother, a bookseller looking for love, a widower who needed a reason to live, and a book publicist who needs to die. Each of these people has their own fascinating story, but all are connected in ways large and small to Alice’s book. I listened to the audiobook—narrated by nine different readers—and it’s especially nice.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
I’ll be honest, this book took forever to finish. It’s pretty long, but it’s also worth the effort. Set in the late 1800s during New Zealand’s booming gold rush, it begins when a newcomer named Walter Moody stumbles upon 12 men who are meeting in secret to talk about a series of mysteries in their small frontier town. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute might or might not have tried to end her life, an enormous cache of gold was found hidden in a dead man’s house, another small fortune was hidden in the prostitute’s dresses. All these fates and fortunes are connected against a lively and interesting backdrop of shipping, banking, fortunetelling, Māori traditions, opium dens, politics, and gold boom and bust. Also, there are elements of a ghost story. This book won the Man Booker Prize about 10 years ago (I almost always love books that win this); it’s also a Starz miniseries.
Trust by Hernan Diaz
This book recently won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022 and it was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. It’s also a bit of a literary puzzle. The first part is a novella called Bonds about Benjamin and Helen Rask, a legendary Wall Street tycoon and an eccentric philanthropist. They have seemingly endless wealth (a product of luck and deceit) and, ultimately, a terribly tragic life. Then the book switches to a memoir-in-progress being furiously penned by a man named Andrew Bevel who believes the novella was based on his life. He is determined to set the record straight. The third book in this book is a complete memoir by Ida Partenza, a young woman from a poor neighborhood of New York who was hired as a private secretary to ghost write Bevel’s memoir. She ends up writing about her own lifelong efforts to untangle fact from fiction. The fourth part of this book is the diary of a woman who is a key character in all the other three parts. With this diary, she finally gets to tell her own story on her own terms. Trust is a novel that spans a century with glimpses into lives of the unbelievably wealthy and powerful and the less fortunate people who helped them build that wealth and power.
I link to Amazon to show you exactly what book I’m talking about, but I love to shop locally at Church Street Coffee and Books, The Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor, and Thank You Books in Crestwood. And I visit my local library often in person and online!
savor 