Father of the Rain by Lily King, 2009, * * * *

You know you are in for some heavy weather when a novel takes its title from the Book of Job "Hath the rain a father?"  Lily King's third novel, Father of the Rain, is a moving drama about a daughter's attachment to a destructive, but often disarmingly charming father and about how that bond is pelted by the storms of divorce and alcoholism.  Father of the Rain covers 34 years in the life of Daley Amory, bookended by the summer of Richard Nixon's resignation and President Obama's election in 2008.  The political markers are significant, spanning an age of cynical disenchantment with the Establishment to an augury of unexpected hope.  The novel is set in an affluent East Coast seaside town, where Gardiner Amory has a life that revolves around dogs, tennis, martinis, a swimming pool, and step families. A Harvard-educated broker, he is a racist, anti-Semite, and sexist.  King is skilled at zeroing in on the nitty-gritty dynamics of the intense father-daughter relationship, but it is her sympathetic ancillary characters and two strategic jumps in her narrative that add texture and save it from claustrophobia.

Breath by Tim Winton, 2009, * * * *

In Breath, Tim Winton, evokes an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one's limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. It is a story of extremes--extreme sports and extreme emotions. On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. Their mentor's past is forbidden territory and his American wife's peculiar behavior indicates an unknown illness, possibly physical or mental.  Winton excels at conveying the shadowy side of his country's beauty, the way even the most ordinary landscape can exert a paralyzing hold.  Tim Winton is the prolific Australian author of nine novels, three short-story collections, six children's books, and three nonfiction books.   This novel is a paean to surfing but it treats elemental themes of fear and friendship, loneliness and boredom, the lure and danger of life lived intensely, and the broken promises of adolescence sliding into middle age.  The sensitivities and vulnerabilities of adolescence are depicted here with deft and painful accuracy.

Room by Emma Donaghue, 2010, * * * * *

At the start of Donoghue's powerful new novel, Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier as a 19-year old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday.  They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard - the "Room" of the title.  To Jack, "Room" is his entire world.  It is where he was born and grew up and it's where he lives with his "Ma" as they learn, read, eat, sleep and play.  At night, his Ma shuts hims safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when the kidnapper , dubbed "Old Nick" by Jack,  visits. Seen entirely through Jack's eyes and childlike perceptions, the developments in this novel are astonishing.  Ma proves to very resourceful, creating exercise games, makeshift toys, and reading and math lessons to fill their days.  However,  she knows that this is not enough - not for her or her son.  She devises a bold escape plan that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck.  What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.  Although Donoghue brilliantly protrays the psyche of a child raised in captivity, the story's intensity cranks up dramatically when Jack is introdced to the outside world.  While there have been several true-life stories of women and children held captive, little has been written about the pain of re-entry.  Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between a parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, 2010, * * * *

Freedom is a close cousin to Franzen's previous novel - The Corrections -  a social-realist epic about a depressive, entropic midwestern family being swallowed and digested by the insatiable anaconda of modernity. The Corrections told the story of the Lamberts—Arthur and Enid and their three children. Freedom tells the story of the Berglunds—Walter and Patty and their two children. Instead of St. Jude (a proxy for St. Louis) we have St. Paul. Instead of a dubious get-rich-quick scheme exploiting the post-Soviet chaos in Lithuania, we have a dubious get-rich-quick scheme exploiting the war in Iraq. Like its predecessor, Freedom is heavy on psychology and extramarital affairs and earnest speechifying (capitalism, overpopulation, Israel). Freedom tells a lot of stories, and it spreads them over many decades and several continents. It tracks the rise of a rock star, the gentrification of a city neighborhood, the tragic death of a basketball career, the suburbanization of a nameless country pond, and the dirty birth of an international bird sanctuary. The book’s central drama, however, is an old-fashioned love story: the tumultuous lifelong relationship between Walter and Patty Berglund. Walter is a nature lover who works hard to suppress his anger and provide for everyone around him. Patty is a college basketball star who blows out her knee and becomes a housewife. Each fills certain gaping spiritual holes for the other until eventually, over the years, their relationship becomes hellaciously complex.  As the novel progresses, you see this relationship from many different perspectives—Walter’s, Patty’s, their son Joey’s, their friend Richard’s—and each view subtly tweaks the story, swinging blame, exposing motives, recasting villains as heroes and heroes as villains.  It made me think, many times, of one of David Foster Wallace’s favorite edicts about fiction: that the good stuff can make readers feel less lonely.

Ape House by Sara Gruen, 2010, * * *

Sara Gruen's last novel, the enchating circus-set Water for Elephants in 2006, became a bestseller primarily through word of mouth, and I expect that most book clubs in America have read it.  As this book opens, a family of bonobos is happily ensconced at the fictional Great Ape Language Lab at the University of Kansas.  They are adoringly cared for and studied by Dr. Isabel Duncan, who calls them her family.  Gruen delicately and profoundly brings life to that oft-quoted statistic -- Bonobos and humans share 98.7% of their DNA.  In this book, when it comes to the bst human qualities -- empathy, good humor, the ability to adapt, loyalty -- the apes win easily.  Gruen gives each of her apes a distinct personality, and just as with people, it gets to the point where all she has to do is to described a behavior, and we know which member of the pack she is talking about.  She exquisitely depicts their gentleness, humor and curiosity, as well as their tendency to pettiness.  The plot, however, doesn't really matter.  It involves a misguided animal rights group, a nasty explosion, a reality TV show, a journalist and a would-be author. Yet it is truly about the aples, the humans and their interactions and similarities -- sometimes mouth-gapingly shastly, sometimes hold-your-sides hilarious.  Gruen must have picked up a thing or t wo about the circus from Water for Elephants as she navigates the tightrope above the minefield topics of animal rights, evolution, and seriouis vs. tabloid journalism and more.

Still Life by Louise Penny, 2005, * * * *

The residents of a tiny Canadian village named Three Pines are shocked when the body of Miss Jane Neal is found in the woods on Thanksgiving. Miss Neal, the village’s retired school teacher and a talented amateur artist, has been a good friend to most of the townsfolk, so her loss is keenly felt,  At first, her death appears to be a tragic accident … it is after all, deer hunting season and it appears that a stray hunter’s arrow killed her.  Some folks, however, are suspicious and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Montreal Surete is called in to investigate.  His team soon finds that the seemingly peaceful and friendly village hides some dark secrets.  This is the first is yet another series that I was late to the game on and I can’t wait to read the second in the series A Fatal Grace.  The characters are delightful and Louise Penny makes mayhem seem delightful.  Still Life introduces readers to an engaging series hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces - and this series - with integrity and quiet courage, but produces a new writer of traditional mysteries in the person of Louise Penny.

Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian, 1981, * * * * *

Not everybody had a good time as an evacuee during the Second World War, but for eight-year-old Willie Beech, suddenly transferred from a deprived London background into the heart of the country, it is literally a lifeline. Willie is dumped on grumpy old Tom Oakley, the sharp-tongued widower, but he soon finds that Mister Tom is fair and friendly. Tom had heard of “ungrateful” and “wild” but Willie is different. He is so malnourished he can’t keeper a proper meal down, he wets the bed, he can’t read or write and he shivers and trembles a lot. Willie's needs are clear. And, to the intense interest of the entire village of Little Weirwold, Tom Oakley's stern manner melts slowly away as he takes on the task of raising Willie Beech. It's a voyage of discovery for both of them. Willie learns how it feels to have a proper home and friends, and Tom confronts the grief of bereavement which caused him to withdraw from village life all those years ago, when his young wife and baby son died.  The whole project nearly founders when Willie's mother recalls him to London. Returning reluctantly, Willie faces unspeakable horrors before he is rescued by Tom,  who travels through an air-raid in London to search for him.  This book is a gentle and moving story about the developing relationship of trust and love between Willie and Tom and is an engrossing and poignant story with sunlight to balance the darkness. I was amazed that I had never heard of the book before but would highly recommend it for adults as well as young readers.