1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I read this right after finishing Rabbit, Run, which was a hell of a lot less fun than I had hoped it would be. I was ready for a break, something less bleak and cerebral than Updike. This book did the trick. It is already on the fast-track to moviedom; I expect the result to be next year's The Blind Side. You know, the story that appeals to a broad audience and has a positive message about the ever-uncomfortable subject of race but still doesn't make white people feel too bad and all that. I have already decided that I want Anne Hathaway to play the role of Skeeter Phelan, the novel's protagonist and sometimes narrator. I know she's not blonde, but she is young and talented and, while she is beautiful, she is quite tall and is often a little awkward on screen. And we know from Brokeback Mountain that she can pull off a Southern accent. (Um, of course she can. It's the world's easiest accent.)
But all of that is beside the point. In fact, Skeeter Phelan is kind of beside the point of this novel, a fact that is either this book's greatest asset or one of its few weaknesses. I choose to believe it's the former, that Kathryn Stockett intentionally made the most gripping portions of this tale the chapters narrated by Aibileen and Minny, the African-American maids with whom Skeeter is collaborating on a book about "the help" of Jackson, Mississippi. While Skeeter is a likable enough heroine, her voice just cannot hold a candle to the gentle Aibileen's or the gutsy and hilarious Minny's. I can't imagine many people not enjoying The Help. Which explains why it has spent forever on the New York Times bestseller list. And why pretty much everyone I know has read it or has it on their "to read" list. If you are not one of those people, I recommend giving The Help a try.
2. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. Oh man, I loved this book. I want to teach it SO BADLY. It is the perfect high school classroom novel. I hope I someday get the chance to. This novel was published in 1979, and I can't believe I had never heard of it until a few years ago at an AP conference. I forgot about it until just recently, but I am so glad I remembered it. Kindred is about an African-American woman named Dana who, on her 26th birthday, is called back in time by her ancestor, a red-headed son of a slave owner named Rufus. Her job: protecting this boy from harm. Dana is called to Rufus periodically throughout his life. Some of her trips back into the antebellum South are long, and all are, for obvious reasons, dangerous, especially when her white husband accompanies her. This book is a perfect blend of science and historical fiction. It deals with slavery in an accessible way. I think that high school kids would really dig it.
I also recommend it to Governors Bob McDonnell and Haley Barbour. It seems they need to brush up on their nineteenth century American history.
3. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I picked this book up without knowing much of anything about it other than that it was on the bestseller list a few years ago. I learned that Ann Patchett is a Nashvillian and that this novel was about opera. I was only mildly intrigued, but I needed another book so that I could "Pick 2 and Get the 3rd Free" at Barnes & Noble. And so I got it. Free. What a bargain. This novel was exquisite. Part love story. Part ode to opera and classical music. Part multicultural hostage/Stockholm Syndrome tale. I loved every minute of it.
4. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb. Holy Cow, Wally Lamb is talented. I read She's Come Undone several years ago after a friend lent it to me. When I was done, she asked me, "Can you believe a man wrote that?" And no, I couldn't. He wrote the character of Dolores Price like he was a depressed, overweight, abused, suicidal woman. I felt the same sense of awe I did when I read Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex a few years later. How did that guy get that character? If I ever get to write a novel, I want the characters to be at least one eighth as real as the ones in these novels. And that includes the Birdsey twins of I Know This Much is True. I am only on page 354 of this 897 novel, but I am already dreading finishing it. It's the kind of book you just want to live in, you know? Those are absolutely the best kind too.
