THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE by Ayana Mathis

Oprah definitely has a penchant for books about long-suffering, strong women with dissolute husbands, and this is no exception.  On the other hand, Hattie is not your warm-and-fuzzy, nurturing mother.  When she loses her firstborn twins to pneumonia, she embodies tough love as she focuses on making sure her next nine (!) children survive.  Each chapter tells the story of one or more of her tribe:  one who is homosexual, one who was abused, one whose father is not Hattie's husband, one who uses his seizures to conjure up religious fervor, one who is mentally ill, one who has TB and has given up on life, and one who is given away in order to have a better life.  I had the sense that perhaps Hattie lost the ability to love after the deaths of her first two children, especially when she abandons all but one to start a new life with her lover, who may or may not be an improvement over her husband, as either a father or a provider.  I was not particularly fond of the structure, which was similar to OliveKitteridge, in that the chapters felt like loosely connected short stories.  I can handle the occasional flashback, but this novel jumps around in time more than most, and I finally decided just to ignore that aspect of it.  Also, I would have liked a little more closure with regard to the child that Hattie gives to her sister to raise.  Did the child really have a better life?  Did Hattie maintain a relationship with her?  In fact, the author leaves the reader hanging with regard to almost all of the children and their tribulations.  Most chapters are just a snapshot of a person's life at some critical point in time, and I suppose these snippets combine to give us a pretty full portrait of Hattie herself.  Still, she's a little inscrutable, not really loving, and not really lovable.

THE DOG STARS by Peter Heller

Bangley is a survivor; he has an arsenal and knows how to use it.  Hig has something that Bangley needs, though—the ability to pilot a plane.  In post-apocalyptic Colorado, these two men have an uneasy symbiotic relationship, as they fiercely guard their perimeter surrounding a small airfield against ruthless intruders.  After tragedy strikes Hig, the narrator, he flies off toward Grand Junction, where he picked up a radio transmission from the airport tower three years ago.  He's not exactly sure what his purpose is, but he has only enough fuel to get there; he'll have to fill up somewhere in order to make the return trip.  If you've read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Hig obviously has, which I found sort of bizarre, then you know how gut-wrenching this type of novel can be.  I found this one, however, to be refreshingly triumphant and almost upbeat, except for the aforementioned tragedy, and I would classify it as more of an adventure novel.  Each near-calamity brings our two heroes to a fuller understanding and appreciation for one another's skills and viewpoints.  Even when Hig is off on his mission to find other survivors, he imagines what Bangley would advise him to do in each dicey situation.  Much of the text is devoted to Hig's love of flying, which I know nothing about, but the feeling of soaring above the treetops felt uplifting, if you'll pardon the pun.  One of Hig's favorite things about flying is the ability to see the world below in miniature, with all the neat perpendicular roads and rows of houses.  The absence of human life is less obvious from his Cessna, and he can cling to the hope that there are human connections to be made out there somewhere.  Bottom line:  This is the best book I've read in ages.

FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen

I've always thought that good writing makes a book better but not necessarily good. In this case, however, I didn't find the story or the characters particularly compelling, but I kept reading to see what other tricks of the written word Franzen had up his sleeve. The first chapter hooked me completely, and, after that, there were just enough LOL moments to make it worthwhile. Patty and Walter Bergland live in a gentrified neighborhood in St. Paul with their perfect daughter, Jessica, and perfect son, Joey—both teenagers. Well, Joey is perfect up until the moment he decides to move in with his girlfriend, Connie, who lives with her mom and her mom's boyfriend. This event rocks Patty's world, and then we read her therapeutic autobiography, which, I might add, eventually falls into the wrong hands. Patty, a former college basketball star, is self-indulgent and depressed, not to mention unfaithful to her saint of a husband. She's always had a thing for Richard, Walter's former roommate, but it was difficult for me to see what either man found attractive in her. Some sections of the book I found to be just too wearing, particularly the coverage of Patty's relationship with the self-destructive Eliza. Walter's life is infinitely more interesting, as he becomes involved with a coal mining operation in order to reclaim the land eventually for a bird sanctuary—or something like that. His favorite cause, though, is zero population growth, and Walter fires shots at the Pope, even while contemplating making a baby with his young assistant, Lalitha. In one particularly amusing scene, Walter, Lalitha, and Jessica are brainstorming to come up with a name for their ZPG group, and Franzen's list of options is a scream. My favorite is "All Children Left Behind." Franzen makes the point that people love America for either money or freedom, and anyone who doesn't have money is more likely to relish various personal freedoms, even if they're harmful to the planet.

A FINE BALANCE by Rohinton Mistry

There's a sentence in the book that refers to the fine balance between hope and despair. Set in India in the 1970s, the book addresses other dichotomies, such as male/female, haves/have-nots, and lucky/unlucky. The four main characters are Dina, Maneck, Om, and Ishvar. Dina is a 40-something widow in India renting out a room in her ramshackle flat to Maneck, a college student. She also employs 2 untouchables, Ishvar and his nephew Om, as tailors to help make ends meet. Gradually, this foursome becomes a loose family, as Dina throws caution to the wind and offers living space on her veranda to the tailors. She succumbs to this inevitable arrangement to save them from the constant peril and uncertainty of living in the slums or on the streets. I think that this book could be reduced in length by a few hundred pages without serious harm, but I will say that I became immersed in the lives of the characters after spending so much time with them. Oddly enough, hope and despair do not align naturally along caste boundaries. Maneck has no real barriers to success, financial or otherwise, but he is somewhat morose and constantly at odds with his father. Dina occasionally has to stoop to relying on the good graces of her brother, who treats her like a servant, but at least she'll never be completely homeless. Om and Ishvar, on the other hand, despite their sewing skills, are invariably on the fringe, precariously teetering between an almost tolerable life and unimaginable suffering at the hands of those in power. Maneck sees life as a game of chess, but the tailors cannot comprehend a stalemate, much less the no-way-out concept of checkmate. Ishvar, the least showy character, is the one who keeps trudging forward, hoping for a better life for himself and Om, but thwarted at every move.

THE READER by Bernhard Schlink

The hype about the movie based on Bernhard Schlink's The Reader spoiled the plot for me, but the plot is not what's most compelling anyway. The book takes place in post-WWII Germany, where thirty-something Hanna comes upon fifteen-year-old Michael Berg, who is obviously ill. She walks him home, and, after getting over a bout of hepatitis, Michael visits Hanna to thank her. Thus begins an unlikely affair. (I'm reminded of The Last Picture Show without the comic element.) Moreover, Hanna harbors two big secrets that are wildly different in magnitude, but she guards them both equally closely. Hanna exits Michael's life abruptly but leaves a lasting impression, and then their lives cross again under very different circumstances while Michael is in law school. The book is largely about sins of omission, on the part of both main characters. It raises several disturbing questions, such as what constitutes betrayal and whether one should risk embarrassing a person in order to save him/her from larger consequences, when that person seems unwilling to save himself/herself. The biggest question, though, has to do with the Holocaust and what steps should or could the guards have taken to save the prisoners. Translations always seem a bit dispassionate to me, but in this case, emotional numbness is one of the primary themes, so that the absence of passion seems to be appropriate.

WHILE I WAS GONE by Sue Miller

Sue Miller's While I Was Gone is a sort of literary thriller and exemplifies how someone's youthful mistakes can hamper his or her credibility later in life. Jo is a veterinarian with a checkered past, married to a minister, Daniel. In her twenties, Jo abandoned her first husband and reinvented herself, spending a year under an assumed name in a mini-commune or group home. The utopia of the home was blasted apart when one of the female residents, Dana, was murdered. When Jo re-encounters Eli, a biochemist from the group home, the reader anticipates that he will shed some light on who killed Dana. Jo, on the other hand, has begun to fantasize about an affair with Eli. Besides being an engrossing page-turner, this book raises several intriguing questions, and the author spells them out without the annoying subtlety of obscure symbols. Can someone be absolved of murder by saving other lives? Why do we feel so burdened by our secrets that we have to share them, without considering their impact on our listener? Are thoughts of adultery just as unforgivable in a marriage as actually having sex with another partner? Celebrity divorce lawyers are addressing this last question as we speak.

TARA ROAD by Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy's Tara Road is the sort of book that you read while sipping tea by a cozy fire. It's literary comfort food with no big surprises. Ria Lynch, her handsome husband Danny, and their two children are residents of a gentrified Dublin neighborhood. Ria is the mother hen of a diverse cast of characters, mostly women, including Gertie, the wife of an abusive drunk, and the successful, beautiful, unmarried Rosemary. Everyone's problems are aired in Ria's bustling kitchen, but secrets figure largely into the relationships between the characters, especially secrets that could cause pain if they were revealed. Ria's world is blown apart when Danny leaves her for his young pregnant girlfriend, and Ria impulsively jumps at an opportunity to swap houses for two months with Marilyn, an American woman living in New England. Marilyn is the exact opposite of Ria and has become even more aloof following a tragedy that she can't bring herself to speak of. Each woman overcomes her grief in the other's home. It's a sweet, enjoyable read, despite its predictability. The unsavory characters are duly punished, and the good ones prevail.

A MAP OF THE WORLD by Jane Hamilton

Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World is about Alice, a school nurse whose life is derailed by a few minutes of inattention. Lizzy, a friend's child, drowns while in Alice's care. That tragic incident somehow catapults her into being falsely accused of child molestation, so that she is incarcerated for months. In the meantime, her dairy farmer husband tries to orchestrate her defense and find a way to raise the money for her exorbitant bail. This book is a reminder that we've all made careless mistakes, but most of us were lucky enough to avoid dire results. Oddly enough, Alice's jail time is in some ways her redemption, as her circumstances draw her out of a major funk brought on by guilt and shame. It also provides a means for her to atone for Lizzy's death. One of my favorite parts of the book is the middle section, told from Alice's husband's point of view, rather than hers. He is a much more sympathetic character than Alice, who is flighty and impetuous. The book really hits its stride, though, when the long-awaited trial finally takes place. The accuser, a 6-year-old who testifies from his mother's lap, and the accused get their day in court, and this section alone makes me want to see the movie.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I was a trifle disappointed in Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, especially since Oprah gushed about what a great love story it was. I thought it was more a story of obsession than a love story. Plus, I have a basic aversion to reading a translation. The flow of the language is lost, and I find myself occasionally wondering if a particularly odd phrase was translated too literally. The title sounds so morbid, but the story really has nothing to do with cholera. In fact, there's a lot of humor, although it might be funnier in Spanish. My favorite part was where Florentino was writing love letters for other couples and discovered that, in one case, he was repesenting both the man and the woman and carrying on a correspondence with himself. The ending was kind of chirpy, but I guess that's appropriate since one of the main characters dies at the beginning trying to retrieve a parrot. I know, bad pun. A better love story is Possession by A. S. Byatt.

EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

I was originally put off by both the title and the premise of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat, Pray, Love, but she reeled me in long before the end of the Eat section. I was so enamored of this book that I taped her Oprah segment and attended her lecture at The Georgia Center for the Book. To say that she has a few fans is an understatement. My biggest difficulty in reading this book was in putting aside my envy and replacing it with admiration for her spunk. Eat, Pray, Love is way more than your standard tale of a spiritual journey; it offers a chance to be enriched by the experiences of someone who traveled where most of us will never go--emotionally, spiritually, or geographically. Gilbert knows how to tell a story, especially about the people she met and the wisdom they shared with her, and now her readers. You can't make this stuff up.

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a fast read and lives up to the hype as his masterpiece. It's very dark and therefore may not be for everyone. It's a post-apocalypse story with virtually no women characters. Churning up memories of Stephen King's The Stand, it also shares some themes with the Mad Max movies and Will Smith's current I Am Legend, based on the Richard Matheson book, but its imagery is more effective than any of these. It's a very emotional story about a father and son in the bleakest of circumstances, and I highly recommend it. You'll have a lot of questions about what actually happened, but that's the author's way, I guess, of saying that it doesn't really matter, because it's not about how we got here. The form of the novel reflects the unstructured world being described, in that there are no chapter breaks. Not all complete sentences either (like this one). It won the 2007 Pulitzer for fiction. Don't miss it.

Cormac McCarthy also wrote All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men, plus about 8 other novels.