Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical busines...more
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, desp...more
Medical school dropout Victor Mancini comes up with a complicated but ingenious scam to pay for his mother's elder care--pretend to be choking in a restaurant and con the individuals who "save" him into giving him money--while he cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his sick mother, whose Alzheimer's disease hides the bizarre truth a...more
Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical busines...more
Rohinton Mistry’s enthralling novel is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, Nariman Vakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. His step-children, Coomy and Jal, ...more
Paul Auster, the unofficial bard of Brooklyn, returns to his home borough for this winsome tale of a resurrected life. Approaching 60, and bored with his suburban existence, Nathan Glass needs some cheering up. The book's first lines illuminate his mental state: "I was looking for a place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn." Nathan decides to mov...more
James Joyce's last work (1939), and by far most difficult (if not impenetrable) novel, is a long, gorgeous flow of words that has been described by some critics as the dreaming life of a man named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Others believe that the dreamer is actually Leopold Bloom, the hero of Joyce's ULYSSES. According to Joyce himself, FINNEGAN...more
Ashley Baxter keeps her family and God at a distance trying to prove she can survive on her own, until the tragedy of September 11 changes her life forever.
Old Goriot has raised his two daughters to be selfish, vain, and greedy; when as adults they treat him badly, repaying his indulgence of their whims with indifference and cruelty, Goriot realizes that they are only behaving as they have been trained to. In this brilliant but bleak novel, virtually every character has been corrupted in some way by m...more
Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, whic...more
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