RUN by Ann Patchett

This is the second book I've read in recent years about a white father with two black sons. (The other was The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers.) In this case, though, the sons, Tip and Teddy Doyle, are adopted, and a chance encounter with their birth mother changes their lives irrevocably. They find that they apparently have a much younger biological sister, Kenya, who confesses that she and her mother have been keeping close tabs on the Doyles for years. These three siblings seem to represent mind (Tip), heart (Teddy), and body (Kenya), as she is already an Olympic-caliber runner who embodies all the best qualities of the two brothers. There is also an older biological son, Sullivan, who is a ne'er-do well just back from Africa and not all that welcome at home. Despite the fact that he's white like their father (and deceased mother, for that matter), he's the black sheep, so to speak. His fatal mistake, alluded to early and revealed later in the book, is more sad than shocking. Kenya is the tie that binds, though, wise beyond her years, as she uses her charm, compassion, intelligence, and no-nonsense level-headedness to help each family member rediscover his way. This novel is briskly paced and, although not as robust as Patchett's Bel Canto, Run has its own merits, as the family drama is more intimate, with fewer characters and a shorter time span.

DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT by Alexandra Fuller

This memoir, subtitled An African Childhood, zips along from adventure to tragedy and back again, without dwelling too long on the tragedies. The author and her family are white tobacco farmers during the violent transition period between white rule and black rule in Zimbabwe. The tragedies are the deaths of three Fuller children, one at birth, one from meningitis, and one by drowning. These types of deaths could have happened anywhere but seem almost inevitable in the hardscrabble world that the Fullers inhabit. The fallout is that Fuller's Mum, Nicola, sinks deeper into mental illness and alcoholism. Between bouts, Mum is capable and kindhearted, taking in strays and heading up an unofficial primitive medical clinic when necessary, saving the life of a slashed servant and going to great lengths to rehabilitate a tortured owl. When the going gets too tough, the family literally gets going, finding another estate to whip into shape in Malawi and then Zambia. Certainly they're poor, but Alexandra gets a glimpse of real poverty when she's asked to share a meal with a black family and realizes that her portion was intended to feed five people. The book is a study in contrasts in many ways. The sights, sounds, and smells of African wildlife are part of what keeps the Fullers there, despite the danger of mine blasts and guerilla gunfire.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup (republished as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE)

I loved the structure of this book. The plot is fairly well known by now: a teenage boy from the slums of Mumbai is arrested for cheating to win the top prize on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" He's an orphan with the name Ram Mohammad Thomas so that he can be a chameleon in whatever company his surroundings warrant—Hindu, Muslim, or Christian. Sprung from jail by a young female attorney, he tells her the pieces of his life that correspond to each question that he answered correctly on the game show. He has experienced some violent moments, including some that he orchestrated himself in order to protect a potential victim. In other adventures he's quite the clever picaresque hero, but he makes enough foolish mistakes to keep things lively. My favorite scene is where he pretends to be a Taj Mahal tourist guide after overhearing the spiel of an official guide. His mangling of the facts is absolutely hilarious, especially when he realizes that he can make quite a good living as an unauthorized guide. The kid may be the poster child for instant karma and gaining knowledge from life experiences, but it doesn't hurt to have a pretty solid memory capacity. Even though it's a foregone conclusion that he's going to answer all the quiz show questions correctly, the ending holds a surprise for the reader, as it offers the protagonist one more opportunity to punish a no-goodnik.

THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX by Maggie O'Farrell

This book grabbed me from about page 8 and never let go. The modern-day story is that Iris is seeing a married man but really has a thing for her stepbrother Alex. However, it's almost a subplot. The better story is, of course, about Esme Lennox, undeservedly held captive in a mental hospital for over sixty years. Esme is Iris's great aunt (her paternal grandmother's sister), but Iris's father is dead, and Iris has been led to believe that her grandmother Kitty was an only child. Now Esme's mental hospital is closing, and Kitty has Alzheimer's, thus leaving Iris to cope with the relocation of a possibly unstable relative that she didn't know she had. Lots of disturbing facts slowly come to light regarding Esme's girlhood and how she came to be "put away" as a teenager. Is she bipolar or schizophrenic or just merely ADHD? Certainly she is the victim of several unlucky events. The narrator or time period (or both) sometimes changes mid-page, but O'Farrell provides enough context clues to help the reader keep up. The only first-person narrator is the addled Kitty, and I thought this was appropriate, since she lives mostly inside her mangled brain anyway. Her musings always start mid-sentence and abruptly change to a different memory in the next paragraph. The ending is a little inscrutable, and I had to reread the last dozen pages to figure out what had happened.

THE CLEARING by Tim Gautreaux

I've almost forgotten what it's like to read a book primarily about men. Actually, this book is largely about the setting—a lawless swamp in Louisiana in the 1920s. Gautreaux's descriptions of the muck and rain made me feel that I needed to wring out the pages from time to time. The main characters are Randolph and Byron Aldridge, brothers whose father is a lumber industry tycoon. Byron, the elder, forever damaged by the horrors of WWI, has disappeared, until he turns up as the constable for Nimbus, the site of a cypress sawmill. Randolph leaves his wife and home in Pittsburgh to manage the Nimbus mill, which his father has purchased in the hope that Randolph can bring Byron back into the fold. The conflict between the brothers is rapidly overshadowed by the violent one-upmanship that ensues as they unite against the Sicilians, purveyors of entertainment in Nimbus—liquor, women, and a crooked card dealer. Randolph is at first appalled at Byron's use of bullets to resolve the frequent fights that break out in the saloon but soon realizes that sometimes one man has to die to prevent the deaths of a dozen others. At times I thought I was reading a slimy reenactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, complete with brothers as the good guys. The title refers to more than just what is left after miles and miles of cypress trees have been cut down. There's also the clearing of tensionsbetween the brothers and certainly the clearing of the debts paid after the Sicilians' increasingly horrific vendettas against the brothers in retaliation for killing one of their own. There are almost as few men left standing as there are trees.

THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB by Louise Erdrich

This saga, spanning the decades between the end of WWI and 1954, is rich in characters, rich in plot, and Louise Erdrich's writing is richly eloquent. Fidelis has returned to his home in Germany after losing his best friend in battle and marries his buddy's pregnant girlfriend Eva. Fidelis emigrates to the U.S. and gets as far as Argus, North Dakota, before his sausages run out. (He's a butcher by trade and brings sausages to fund his cross-country trip.) After he sets up shop, Eva comes over, and they raise a family. Meanwhile, two other characters, Delphine and Cyprian, are touring with their circus act in which Cyprian balances atop chairs stacked on Delphine's belly. The two of them settle down in Argus, Delphine's hometown, with Delphine's father, Roy, the town drunk, and masquerade as a married couple, although Cyprian is gay. The lives of Fidelis, Eva, Delphine, and Cyprian become intertwined, and Delphine's balancing act becomes a metaphor for how she becomes responsible for the well-being of so many men—Roy, Cyprian, Fidelis and his four sons. The book has its share of tragedies, but I really like that the story is told in a not overly sentimental style. There are also a couple of mysteries, including that of the 3 bodies Delphine and Cyprian find in her father's cellar and the mystery surrounding the identity of Delphine's mother. There is also at least one laugh-out-loud revelation after a healer visits Marcus, one of Fidelis's sons, following a near-tragedy that is the most gripping section of the book.

THEM by Nathan McCall

I have wanted to read Nathan McCall's Them every since it came out because of its Atlanta setting. The storyline was appealing—gentrification of an intown neighborhood, with a conflict boiling just below the surface, ready to explode at any moment. Barlowe Reed is an African-American renter on mostly-black Auburn Avenue. Sandy and Sean Gilmore are his new white next-door neighbors. Sandy inches into a tenuous friendship with Barlowe, but Sean becomes increasingly more fearful and belligerent as tensions build within the community, and reverse racial discrimination ensues. The repercussions are a bit like the movie Crash, where even the best-intentioned whites eventually succumb to fear of their black neighbors. The dialog is priceless, although some of the word spellings made it difficult to figure out what was being said. My favorite section, though, is the very beginning, where Barlowe expresses his aversion to the ubiquitous American flag a little too vehemently. I can totally identify with his frustration, as the flag somehow has come to symbolize support for U.S. policy in response to 9/11.