Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead"

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022

I must have mentioned this a hundred times. I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan. I really love Barbara Kingsolver's books, so this was just the book for me, a modern version of my favourite Dickens book, "David Copperfield".

I am not necessarily a fan of rewritten classics. I always say, authors should have their own idea for a story and not pick up that of another one. However, this is just a story that deserves to be picked up and looked upon with fresh eyes. It's easy to say that was so long ago and isn't part of our lives anymore. But what if it is?

Barbara Kingsolver managed it perfectly to transform the story into the 21st century. We follow Demon aka David through his sad life where he slides from one problematic situation to the next - or is pushed.

So, even if you know "David Copperfield" inside out and know exactly what must be coming next, it still is a highly suspenseful novel, or maybe even because of that. You know what is coming but you wonder how she transformed the story. Brilliant.

I think this gives us a good view about today's problems, even in so-called first world countries, and a lot to think about. Something that Barbara Kingsolver does so well.

This might even become my favourite book of the year.

From the back cover:

"Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between."

Ivey, Eowyn "The Snow Child"

 

Ivey, Eowyn "The Snow Child" - 2012

I'm not a fantasy fan but I like magic realism and I like fairy tales. Some people will claim that is the same but I know real fantasy fans will agree. Now, this was a mixture between magic realism and fairy tale, it is based on an old Russian fairy tale but takes place in Alaska in the 1920s.

It is difficult to explain without giving too much away but the book description already says a lot. I liked the old couple and I loved the young girl. I liked the interaction between them and I also enjoyed the descriptions of the nature and the hard work people had to endure in order to make a living.

A great story about what could have been.

Book Description:

"Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart - he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone - but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees."

Eowyn Ivey was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Snow Child" in 2013.

Bellow, Saul "Humboldt's Gift"

Bellow, Saul "Humboldt's Gift" - 1975

I try to read the latest Nobel Prize winner for Literature and at least one former one every year. This was my fourth one since the last laureate was announced. I still need to get a copy of one of Abdulrazak Gurnah's books before the next announcements in October.

Apparently, this book didn't just get the Pulitzer Prize, it is also said that it won Saul Bellow the Nobel Prize. In his acceptance speech, he called on writers to be beacons for civilization and awaken it from intellectual torpor.

An intense book, there is so much to talk about. The relationship between Charlie Citrine, our protagonist, and his friend Von Humboldt Fleisher, a renowned author who takes Charlie under his wings. Whilst he is only at the beginning of this career, he tells us this story from the point of view when it has more or less ended.

When I was reading the book, I'd been wondering whether this might have been a biography, or at least partly a biography. I then found out, that this is a "roman à clef" (French for novel with a key), a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. Aha! In this case, it's about the author's friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz with Bellow being Citrine. Well, I'd never heard of Delmore Schwartz and now I have learned a lot about him (not just form the book, I also looked him up on Google and Wikipedia.) Very interesting, read the information in the links.

While this is probably a good account of Bellow's and Schwartz' relationship, the book also tries to come to terms with the constant changes in the world, especially in culture. The difference between the ideal world and the real one is a big topic in this book that was only supposed to be a short story but then ended up with almost 500 pages.

Brilliant storytelling with lots of fields covered: literature, culture, divorce, relationships, parenting, alcoholism, madness … and also all types of characters from all levels social classes, including a Mafia boss. Oh, and there's quite a bit of humour in the story, as well.

The Times mentions that "Bellows is one of the most gifted chroniclers of the Western World alive today." Apart from the fact that he has passed away in the meantime, I totally agree. So, if you're in for a great read, this is worth picking up.

From the back cover:

"For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around."

Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work" and the Pulitzer Prize for "Humboldt's Gift" also in 1976.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Chevalier, Tracy "The Last Runaway"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Last Runaway" - 2013

I have liked Tracy Chevalier, ever since my first novel written by her, "Girl with a Pearl Earring". I have since read more of her books but not enough, as it looks like.

Her story of an English Quaker girl who emigrates to the United States in the middle of the 19th century is absolutely fantastic. I think with today's background, we can all follow the feelings and thoughts of Honor Bright, we can sympathize with her actions. She was pretty brave to leave her home country to accompany her sister who was going to get married there. Even with the whole family, some would not have done that given the choice.

I think the author researched the background pretty well. None of us has lived at the time but I have read quite a few books about slavery, the Underground Railroad, Quakers, all important topics in this book. We get a long list of books that Tracy Chevalier used for background information which makes me believe that we can trust that it's true what she writes in her story. This is definitely a well written and believable book.

I liked Honor Bright but I liked Belle Mills and Mrs. Reed just as much, if not even more. I could even forgive some of the other characters for what they did. Today, this would be unacceptable but back then, this was how it was.

I also loved that they included a map. I mean, I know where Ohio is but I wouldn't have known where the towns mentioned are supposed to be.

At the end of the book, Tracy Chevalier mentions that it gives hope to us still, that in extreme circumstances we too would still do the right thing. Yes, let's hope that, at least for us, because we can see every day that many, many people don't do the right thing and applaud even those who don't.

At the end of the novel, the author gives some recommendations about further readings. I have read two of the four books mentioned and can only second that opinion.

On the Civil War:
Frazier, Charles "Cold Mountain" - 1997
Jiles, Paulette "Enemy Women" - 2002
Olmstead, Robert "Coal Black Horse" - 2007

On the Effect of Slavery:
Morrison, Toni "Beloved"

From the back cover:

"Honor Bright is a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset when she impulsively emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family. In this tough, unsentimental place, where whisky bottles sit alongside quilts, Honor befriends two spirited women who will teach her how to turn ideas into actions."

Robinson, Marilynne "Gilead"

Robinson, Marilynne "Gilead" - 2004

I like Pulitzer Prize winning novels. And I like Oprah books. This one is both and I'm not sure whether I did like it or not though I can say for sure that it could have been a tad faster, with a little more pace to it than it had. Granted, the story is supposedly told by an old man who writes to his son. He know he will not be around much longer and the son is still quite little, so he writes to his adult son in about twenty years.

Gilead is the name of the fictional small town in Iowa where the family Ames lives. John is a clergyman as well as his father and his grandfather were and he tells his son the story of their family and their town. It all flows from one event or even non-event into the next.

Given the profession of the protagonist who also functions as the narrator of the whole story, this novel is quite into religion. I am a Christian but not American and I have always felt there is a wide distance between the two beliefs, probably as wide as the ocean that separates us, especially between my Catholic Christianity and that of many American protestant denominations. I can follow a story that is based around religion, I can even read certain religious writings but reading about a whole life of a person who thinks he is better because he believes in the one and only way how to live your life and probably wanting to enforce it onto his son, well, it was a bit much.

The whole book sounded to me like the last sermon this guy was ever going to give and that his son was condemned to follow it letter by letter for the rest of his life.

The book was not what I usually experience with Pulitzer Prize winning novels. It happens rarely but it happens. Unfortunately. We can't always agree with everyone. And apart from the one author who didn't accept the Oprah nomination, I think this is also the first Oprah book I can't warm to.

Marilynne Robinson received the Pulitzer Prize for "Gilead" in 2005.

From the back cover:

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He 'preached men into the Civil War,' then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.

Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father - an ardent pacifist - and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision - not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten."

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

I don't know why I never did a Pulitzer Prize list here. I love lists and I keep them about everything. And I do like the Pulitzer Prize winning books, The last couple of years, I have always read the latest Pulitzer Prize winning book. And it was totally worth it.
The Prize is given to American authors who write something specific about American life. There are so many different categories, I always concentrate on the novel and will list only those. (If a year is missing, no award was given.)

So, here we go.

The prize is named after Joseph Pulitzer who born in Hungary into an impoverished Jewish family. He emigrated to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century at the age of seventeen where he enlisted to fight in the Civil War. He later became a politician and newspaper editor and left many legacies in his will, especially for journalism schools. One of them started the Pulitzer awards for journalism. Now, there are several in journalism, arts, letters and fiction, each of them has different categories. I will only concentrate on the prize for fiction here, although I might add the odd book for one of the other categories if I've read them..

According to him, "every reporter is a hope, and every editor is a disappointment."

Pulitzer Prize
1918: Poole, Ernest "His Family"
1919: Tarkington, Booth "The Magnificent Ambersons"
1920: No award
1921: Wharton, Edith "The Age of Innocence"
1922: Tarkington, Booth "Alice Adams"
1923: Cather, Willa  "One of Ours"
1924: Wilson, Margaret "The Able McLaughlins"
1925: Ferber, Edna "So Big"
1926: Lewis, Sinclair "Arrowsmith"
1927: Bromfield, Louis "Early Autumn"
1928: Wilder, Thornton "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"
1929: Peterkin, Julia "Scarlet Sister Mary"
1930: La Farge, Oliver "Laughing Boy"
1931: Barnes, Margaret Ayer "Years of Grace"
1932: Buck, Pearl S. "The Good Earth" - 1931
1933: Stribling, T.S. "The Store"
1934: Miller, Caroline "Lamb in his Bosom"
1935: Johnson, Josephine Winslow "Now in November"
1936: Davis, Harold "Honey in the Horn"
1937: Mitchell, Margaret "Gone With the Wind" - 1936
1938: Marquand, John Phillips "The Late George Apley"
1939: Kinnan Rawlings, Marjorie "The Yearling"
1940: Steinbeck, John "The Grapes of Wrath" - 1939
1941: No award
1942: Glasgow, Ellen "In this Our Life"
1943: Sinclair, Upton "Dragon's Teeth"
1944: Flavin, Martin "Journey in the Dark"
1945: Hersey, John "A Bell for Adano"
1946: No award
1947: Warren, Robert Penn "All the King's Men"
1948: Michener, James A. "Tales of the South Pacific"
1949: Cozzens, James Gould "Guard of Honor"
1950: Guthrie, A.B. "The Way West"
1951: Richter, Conrad "The Town"
1952: Wouk, Herman "The Caine Mutiny"
1953: Hemingway, Ernest "The Old Man and the Sea" - 1952
1954: No award
1955: Faulkner, William "A Fable"
1956: Kantor, Mackinlay "Andersonville"
1957: No award
1958: Agee, James "A Death in the Family"
1959: Taylor Robert Lewis "The Travels of Jamie McPheeters"
1960: Drury, Allen "Advise and Consent"
1961: Lee, Harper "To Kill a Mockingbird" - 1960
1962: O'Connor, Edwin "The Edge of Sadness"
1963: Faulkner, William "The Reivers"
1964: No award
1965: Grau, Shirley Anne "The Keepers of the House"
1966: Porter, Katherine Anne "Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter"
1967: Malamud, Bernard "The Fixer"
1968: Styron, William "The Confessions of Nat Turner"
1969: Scott Momaday, N. "House Made of Dawn"
1970: Stafford, Jean "The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford"
1971: no award
1972: Stegner, Wallace "Angle of Repose"
1973: Welty, Eudora "The Optimist's Daughter"
1974: no award
1975: Shaara, Michael "The Killer Angels"
1976: Bellow, Saul "Humboldt's Gift"
1977: no award
1978: McPherson, James Alan "Elbow Room"
- all works: White, E.B. "Charlotte's Web" - 1952
1979: Cheever, John "The Stories of John Cheever"
From now on, they also listed the finalists which I add if I read the book.
1980:  Mailer, Norman "The Executioner's Song"
- finalist: Roth, Philip "The Ghost Writer" - 1979
1981: Toole, John Kennedy "A Confederacy of Dunces"
1982: Updike, John "Rabbit Is Rich"
1983: Walker, Alice "The Color Purple" - 1982
1984: Kennedy, William "Ironweed"
- all works: LeSieg, Theo (=Dr. Seuss) "The Cat in the Hat" - 1957, "Wacky Wednesday" - 1974
1985: Lurie, Alison "Foreign Affairs"
1986: McMurtry, Larry "Lonesome Dove"
- finalist: Tyler, Anne "The Accidental Tourist" - 1985
1987: Tayloer, Peter "A Summons to Memphis"
1988: Morrison, Toni "Beloved" - 1987
1989: Tyler, Anne "Breathing Lessons"
1990: Hijuelos, Oscar "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love"
1991: Updike, John "Rabbit at Rest"
1992: Smiley, Jane "A Thousand Acres" - 1991
1993: Butler, Robert Olen "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories"
- finalist: Oates, Joyce Carol "Black Water"
1994: Proulx, Annie "The Shipping News" - 2003
1995: Shields, Carol "The Stone Diaries" - 1993
- finalist: Oates, Joyce Carol "What I lived for"
1996: Ford, Richard "Independence Day"
1997: Millhauser, Steven "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer"
1998: Roth, Philip "American Pastoral"
1999: Cunningham, Michael "The Hours"
- finalist: Kingsolver, Barbara "The Poisonwood Bible" - 1998
2000: Lahiri, Jhumpa "Interpreter of Maladies" - 1999
2001: Chabon, Michael "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"
- finalist: Oates, Joyce Carol "Blonde"
2002: Russo, Richard "Empire Falls"
- shortlist: Franzen, Jonathan "The Corrections" - 2001
2003: Eugenides, Jeffrey "Middlesex"
2004: Jones, Edward P. "The Known World" - 2004
2005: Robinson, Marilynne "Gilead"
2006: Brooks, Geraldine "March" - 2006
2007: McCarthy, Cormac "The Road" - 2006
- special citation: Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953
2008: Díaz, Junot "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"
- all works: Dylan, Bob "Chronicles. Volume One" - 2004
2009: Strout, Elizabeth "Olive Kitteridge"
2010: Harding, Paul "Tinkers"
2011: Egan, Jennifer "A Visit from the Goon Squad" 
2012: no award
2013: Johnson, Adam "The Orphan Master's Son" - 2012
- finalist: Ivey, Eowyn "The Snow Child" - 2013
2014: Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" - 2013
2015: Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See" - 2014
- finalist: Lalami, Laila "The Moors' Account" - 2014 
2016: Nguyen, Viet Thanh (Việt Thanh Nguyễn) "The Sympathizer" - 2015
2017: Whitehead, Colson "Underground Railroad" - 2016
2018: Greer, Andrew Sean "Less" - 2017
2019: Powers, Richard "The Overstory" - 2018
2020: Whitehead, Colson "The Nickel Boys" - 2019
- finalist: Patchett, Ann "The Dutch House" - 2019
2021: Erdrich, Louise "The Night Watchman" - 2020
2022: Cohen, Joshua "The Netanyahus" - 2021
2023: Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022
+ Diaz, Hernan "Trust" - 2022

Others:
1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943: Frost, Robert "A Boy’s Will" and "North of Boston" - 1913+14 (poetry)
1948: Williams, Tennessee "A Streetcar named Desire" - 1947 (drama)
1949: Miller, Arthur "Death of a Salesman" - 1949 (drama)
1981: Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl "All the President's Men" - 1974 (feature writing)
1990 and 2006: Kristof, Nicholas D. & Wudunn, Sheryl "Half the Sky" - 2009 (international reporting and commentary)
- "A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity" - 2014
1997: McCourt, Frank "Angela's Ashes" - 1996 (autobiography)
2008: Vargas, Jose Antonio "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" - 2018 (breaking news reporting)

Find all the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction here.

Frost, Robert "A Boy’s Will" and "North of Boston"

Frost, Robert "A Boy’s Will" and "North of Boston" - 1913+1914

I've mentioned it a couple of times that poetry is not my thing. But this ended up on my TBR pile for some reason, probably the gift of someone moving who didn't want to take it along and so it was among my classic books that I listed on my classics club list. And then it was chosen for our latest classics spin  where a number is drawn (number six) and we read that book from our list that carries this number.

I had only recently read Pablo Neruda's "The Captain's Verses" for my book club and hadn't intended to read another poetry collection for a while but well, I thought it was meant to be and started reading. Since I really get bored with any poem after a while, I tried to read it in very small pieces but that didn't change anything.

The only "poem" I could relate to was almost a short story, "The Death of the Hired Man" which you can read here on the page of the Poetry Foundation.

To be honest, most of the other poems made no sense to me and no matter how hard I tried to understand what the author wanted to tell us by it, I didn't get it. I guess, let those who like poetry enjoy them and let me stay with my chunky books.

From the back cover:

"The publication of A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) marked the debut of Robert Frost as a major talent and established him as the true poetic voice of New England. Four of his volumes would win the Pulitzer Prize before his death in 1963, and his body of work has since become an integral part of the American national heritage.

This is the only edition to present these two classics in their original form. A Boy’s Will introduced readers to Frost’s unmistakable poetic voice, and in North of Boston, we find two of his most famous poems, 'Mending Wall' and 'The Death of the Hired Man.' With an introduction by distinguished critic and Amherst College professor William H. Pritchard, and afterword by poet and critic Peter Davidson, and carefully selected bibliography, this edition stands as a complete and vital introduction to the work of the quintessential modern American poet."

Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943).

Another well-known poem by him, probably the best known is "The Road Not Taken" which is here on the Poetry Foundation page.

Whitehead, Colson "The Nickel Boys"

Whitehead, Colson "The Nickel Boys" - 2019

After having read his first Pulitzer Prize win "Underground Railroad", I was thrilled to hear that Colson Whitehead received this award for the second time. Deservedly, very deservedly.

Since I really enjoyed his last book, I knew I'd have to read this one, as well. It certainly was worth it. This is not only a story of a young black boy growing up in the sixties or a book about what happens to young delinquents when they get caught. No, this is the story about how you have no chance in life if you are born with the wrong colour. You get condemned for something you have not done and from there on it goes downhill. And nobody will help you to get up again.

I have read a lot of books about racism (see in my list "Anti-Racism") and prejudices and a lot of time you can experience what those who are condemned suffer. But Colin Whitehead has made it a lot clearer, almost as if you are in Elwood Curtis' position yourself. The details are so well written, you are there with the protagonist.

The judges called the novel "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption." Well said, very precise. Such a painful account of the life so many people still have to endure

A deep story that will leave nobody who has read it.

Colson Whitehead received the Pulitzer Prize for "The Nickel Boys" in 2020. He is one of only four recipients who were awarded the prize twice.

From the back cover:

"Elwood Curtis knows he is as good as anyone - growing up in 1960s Florida, he has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart. He is about to enrol in the local black college, determined to make something of himself.  But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is all it takes to destroy his future.  Instead of embarking on a college education, Elwood arrive at the Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school claiming to provide an education which will equip its inmates to become 'honourable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a nightmarish upside-down world, where any boy who resists the corrupt depravity of the authorities is likely to disappear 'out back'.  Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion: 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood naïve and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

When Elwood's idealism and Turner's scepticism collide, the result has decades-long repercussions.  The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven novel by a great American writer whose clear-sighted and humane storytelling continues to illuminate our current reality."

Patchett, Ann "The Dutch House"

Patchett, Ann "The Dutch House" - 2019

This book looked quite promising. It has all the ingredients of a best-seller. And a best-seller it is. I often try to stay away from books that create such a huge hype but I live in Germany and our small bookshops don't carry many English books, so they tend to have them available and I tend to buy them. LOL

The Guardian wrote in their review: "Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." Very true. However, that might be the reason why I couldn't warm to the book. I just did not like the stepmother. We were meant not to like her, I am sure. But - oh - the amount of times I could have kicked her. At least we learn how much influence an adult has on the life of a child and that this influence lasts for the rest of their lives.

No, I didn't really enjoy this book much but I can see why it gets so much attention. It's not badly written or anything like that but - not for me.

Quote:

"Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost has been taken from us by the person who still lived inside…"

From the back cover:

"At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested."

Ann Patchett was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Dutch House" in 2019.

McCarthy, Cormac "The Road"

McCarthy, Cormac "The Road" - 2006

I am a fan of dystopian novels. So, when my online book club suggested this one, I was all for it.

There are mainly only two people in this book, a father and his son. Most of the world has been eliminated, we don't know exactly why but it doesn't matter. What's important is the way people react. Nothing grows anymore, so people have to eat what's still available. How would you react in such a situation? That's the big question and we see all sorts of different people acting in all sorts of different ways.

This story is scary because we can all imagine an apocalypse and what earth would look like afterwards. And what is going to happen to those who are "lucky" enough to survive.

If you are interested in this topic, the book is fabulous, impressive, grand. Also a great book about the bond between a father and his son and what parents are prepared to do for their children.

My only criticism would be the author's weird spelling of "dont".

We discussed this book in our international online book club in January 2020.

From the back cover:

"The searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food - and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, 'each the other's world entire,' are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

Cormac McCarthy received the Pulitzer Prize for "The Road" in 2007.

Powers, Richard "The Overstory"

Powers, Richard "The Overstory" - 2018

After a bad choice last year ("Less" by Andrew Sean Greer), the Pulitzer Prize committee has redeemed themselves.

And what a book this was! Richard Powers put so much into this novel about environmentalists, you get to know every single character pretty well and can follow their reasons for their protests. I would have understood them anyway but I think also those people who usually don't care much about the environment or the fight about it, will understand why some people fight for it, even if they have to take up illegal measures.

We meet many different kind of people, successful scientists as well as those who can't find their place in society. We get to see their wishes and hopes, their aims and their aspirations.

This book makes you think, think about the trees and what becomes of them, think about the people who live with theses trees, think of those who destroy them. We have to think about the future of our planet and that includes taking care of animals, plants and trees, we cannot let them disappear, that would be the end of all of us.

A very passionate story.

My favourite quote:
"… when you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down."

I have never read a book by Richard Powers before but I think I will go and read more of his novels. A very interesting author.

The story reminds me of books by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favourite American authors.

From the back cover:

"An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers - each summoned in different ways by trees - are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.

In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours - vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? 'Listen. There’s something you need to hear.'"

Richard Powers received the Pulitzer Prize for "The Overstory" in 2019.

Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl "All the President's Men"

Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl "All the President's Men" - 1974

Wow, what a story. Unbelievable what a president can do! Or is it? If I look at the present incumbent, yet is more to come …

Watergate. It was always a name that elicited strong feelings in everyone. I have read a lot about it but not enough, I always wanted to read the book and now I have. I am glad I did. I think it is more current than ever and should warn many people to watch some people more than closely.

American politics is not my politics but as a world citizen I truly believe that it concerns us all. When something happens in America, it has a huge influence on the rest of the world. And that goes for many other big countries, too, only too few people realize that and think they are by themselves and whatever is decided in their country only counts for themselves.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.are heroes. They risked a lot for the truth. Even today, journalists sometimes pay with their lives for detecting certain stories.

The book also tells us what goes on behind the scenes, how a newspaper is run, how stories are written and how is decided what is published and what isn't. It's a tough job in a tough world.

I was not surprised about a lot of things, especially this paragraph:
"During their Watergate investigation federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns." It really seems that nothing has changed.

It looks like the book is in high demand at the time being. I had to wait almost six months to get it. There is hope. You would think that politicians would be able to learn their lesson through history. Unfortunately, not.  So, we all have to be even more vigilant.

I'm definitely glad I have finally read this book.

From the back cover:

"In what must be the most devastating political detective story of the century, two young Washington Post reporters whose brilliant investigative journalism smashed the Watergate scandal wide open tell the whole behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. 

The story begins with a burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972. Bob Woodward, who was then working on the Washington Post's District of Columbia staff, was called into the office on a Saturday morning to cover the story. Carl Bernstein, a Virginia political reporter on the Post, was also assigned. The two men soon learned that this was not a simple burglary.
Following lead after lead, Woodward and Bernstein picked up a trail of money, secrecy and high-level pressure that led to the Oval Office and implicated the men closest to Richard Nixon and then the President himself. Over the months, Woodward met secretly with Deep Throat, now perhaps America's most famous still-anonymous source. 

Here is the amazing story. From the first suspicions through the tortuous days of reporting and finally getting people to talk, the journalists were able to put the pieces of the puzzle together and produce the stories that won the Post a Pulitzer Prize. All the President's Men is the inside story of how Bernstein and Woodward broke the story that brought about the President's downfall. This is the reporting that changed the American presidency."

The authors were part of two Pulitzer Prizes won by The Washington Post for Watergate and the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973.

Vargas, Jose Antonio "Dear America"

Vargas, Jose Antonio "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" - 2018

This is such an interesting book that puts a face to all those "illegal immigrants". Even though the author is not your average undocumented citizen, he can express his problems and with that the problem of all the other immigrants who would love to be legal but just have no chance.

But it is also a story about all those who oppose immigration and it teaches us that the country could gain so much from making it easier to attain a citizenship. Many people live somewhere in countries where they weren't born and whose passport they don't carry. If you make it easier for those who really contribute to your country, or need your help, you might end up with an easier life for everyone.

The story is so honest and so well written, you realize that every single of those numbers is talking about a human being.

I think this should be read by many many people though I am sure those who need it most will not even look at it.

From the back cover:

"My name is Jose Antonio Vargas. I was born in the Philippines. When I was twelve, my mother sent me to the United States to live with her parents. While applying for a driver’s permit, I found out my papers were fake. More than two decades later, I am still here illegally, with no clear path to American citizenship. To some people, I am the ''most famous illegal' in America. In my mind, I am only one of an estimated 11 million human beings whose uncertain fate is under threat in a country I call my home.

This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book - at its core - is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but about the unsettled, unmoored psychological state in which undocumented immigrants like me find ourselves. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about what it means to not have a home."

Vargas authored or contributed to three Washington Post articles about the Virginia Tech shootings that were awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

LeSieg, Theo (=Dr. Seuss) "The Cat in the Hat"

LeSieg, Theo (=Dr. Seuss) "The Cat in the Hat" - 1957

An absolute classic. A children's book that is just as much enjoyed by the adult reading it to them as to the first reader who manages their way through the pages. It is not surprising that it still belongs to every kid's library after more than half a century. We can tell that nothing has changed, children still like to hear of mischief but love to learn from it to. An early "stranger danger" story but with a lot of fun.

So, whether you have little children or not, this is a cute book for the hidden child in all of us.

From the back cover:

"Join the Cat in the Hat as he makes learning to read a joy! It’s a rainy day and Dick and Sally can’t find anything to do . . . until the Cat in the Hat unexpectedly appears and turns their dreary afternoon into a fun-filled extravaganza! This beloved Beginner Book by Dr. Seuss, which also features timeless Dr. Seuss characters such as Fish and Thing 1 and Thing 2, is fun to read aloud and easy to read alone. Written using 236 different words that any first or second grader can read, it’s a fixture in home and school libraries and a favorite among parents, beginning readers, teachers, and librarians.
Originally created by Dr. Seuss, Beginner Books encourage children to read all by themselves, with simple words and illustrations that give clues to their meaning."

Theo LeSieg received the Pulitzer Prize for all his works in 1984.

Greer, Andrew Sean "Less"

Greer, Andrew Sean "Less" - 2017

So far, I have never read a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that wasn't interesting. I guess I had to come across one at one point. This was it.

If the author had expanded more on the fear of the protagonist of turning old, or even on the fear of being left alone since his boyfriend got married, this could have been a good story. Or if he had concentrated on the different events he visits in the different countries, it could have been a good "holiday story" or "summer read". But this way, it was nothing at all. The story jumps from the present into the past and while I usually like that, I still would like to know where I am at the moment.

According to the notes on the back cover, this book is supposed to be funny, hilarious. I didn't laugh even once.

The only difference between this book and chick lit? They don't talk about shoes all the time.

From the back cover:

"Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes - it would be too awkward; he can't say no - it would look like defeat. So, he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world. 

From France to India, Germany to Japan, Arthur almost falls in love, almost falls to his death, and puts miles between him and the plight he refuses to face. Less is a novel about mishaps, misunderstandings and the depths of the human heart."

Andrew Sean Greer received the Pulitzer Prize for "Less" in 2018.

Williams, Tennessee "A Streetcar named Desire"

Williams, Tennessee "A Streetcar named Desire" - 1947

I normally don't like reading plays. Having said that, this is a great story and it didn't even read as a play, the writing is so lively, you don't need the actors to make it come real. You can visualize the characters, the places, the action. A tragic story that makes us feel for the people, all of them.

A brilliant book.

From the back cover:

"Fading southern belle Blanche Dubois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness."

Tennessee Williams received the Pulitzer Prize for "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1948.

Jones, Edward P. "The Known World"

Jones, Edward P. "The Known World" - 2004

The story about a black farmer and slave owner at the time of the civil war.

One of the few Pulitzer Prize winning books that I didn't enjoy very much. Not because I dislike the subject in general, on the contrary, I believe we need to know about it as much as possible. I have read many books about slaves and slave owners etc. and most of them were highly interesting. But this book is not a novel but it also isn't non-fiction, it is blobs of non-fiction - and nothing new really - thrown together in order to look like a novel.

It reads more like a history book where you have to learn a lot of dates that are not related to each other.

I would certainly not recommend it to anyone who wants an "easy read".

Honestly, I have no idea why this book received the Pulitzer Prize. Maybe a black author was "due" again and so they chose this one. If you want a good and unique book about slavery, read last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead. "Underground Railroad" is certainly better. A lot better.

From the back cover:
"In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities."

Edward P. Jones received the Pulitzer Prize for "The Known World" in 2004.

Dylan, Bob "Chronicles. Volume One"

Dylan, Bob "Chronicles. Volume One" - 2004

Last year's recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I don't need his book to know he totally deserved it but he talks about his life and that is quite interesting.

As I wrote in my post "Nobel Prize for Literature 2016", I look forward to the day where the newest winner of the Prize for Literature is announced and - together with the rest of the world - I was very astonished about last year's announcement. Totally unexpected but well deserved, Bob Dylan received the honour in 2016.

Bob Dylan, the hero of my youth, has written so many brilliant songs with wonderful texts and I could probably go on and write about every single one of his songs whose lyrics I know by heart. But - as this is my book blog, I read his biography instead. The 75-year-old rock legend writes about his life. Or is he? I have read many comments that this is not written by him but that it is mainly a collection of what other people wrote about him.

However, I did enjoy learning about his life. I am not a reader of gossip magazines so I hardly ever know whether my favourite singers or actors are single, married, divorced, gay, have children ... Sometimes I find it out via Wikipedia but that is usually just in combination with a search for one of their films or songs.

Again, I love Bob Dylan's work. His lyrics are as important today as they were sixty years ago. The times were ready to be a-changing back then and it is time they are a-changing again. Let's all listen to his songs and make this a better world.

From the back cover:
"This is the first spellbinding volume of the three-volume memoir of one of the greatest musical legends of all time. In CHRONICLES Volume I, Bob Dylan takes us back to the early 1960s when he arrived in New York to launch his phenomenal career. This is Dylan's story in his own words - a personal view of his motivations, frustrations and remarkable creativity. Publication of CHRONICLES Volume I is a publishing and cultural event of the highest magnitude."

Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition" and a Pulitzer Prize for all his works in 2004.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Whitehead, Colson "Underground Railroad"

Whitehead, Colson "Underground Railroad" - 2016

I have read quite a few books about the Underground Railroad, the life of slaves and their slaveholders but never one that described the life of a fugitive as well as this one.

I have liked all the Pulitzer Prize winning books of the last years and this is no exception. A great story - Cora, a slave, who tries to run away from her abusive "master" - brilliant description of everyone involved, the slaves, their helpers, ordinary people who just think it's not right to own other human beings -  and their enemies - the slave holders, the slave catchers and just those people who think they are someone better because their skin is lighter. What can anything make you think the colour of your skin says anything about you other than that you get sunburnt so much easier the lighter your skin is.

Anyway, back to the book. The story is written from many perspectives, we even get to know the opponents well enough, not that it makes us more sympathetic towards them. None of the narratives is written in the first person. That way, we don't identify with any of them as we might have if it had been written like that but I still identified a lot more with Cora and the other slaves and victims than I did with the other side of the party. Always on the side of the underdog.

Before reading this book, I had never thought about the Underground Railroad as exactly that, a railroad underground, literally underground. But it makes a nice story background.

In any case, a brilliant book. I'd like to read more by this great author.

From the back cover:

"Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor - engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey - hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre- Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share."

Colson Whitehead received the Pulitzer Prize for "Underground Railroad" in 2017.

Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar"

Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar"- 1963

What an interesting read. I am not the biggest poetry reader, so I only ever heard of Sylvia Plath but never actually read anything by her. So, I was not unhappy when one of our book club members suggested this as our next read.

And what a book it is. I think everyone who thinks depression is not an illness and that people should just "snap out of it", "get busier so they don't think so much" etc., should read this. Although, I doubt that will ever happen.

Sylvia Plath manages to show us the inside of a young girl who goes from being an ordinary student who wants to become a writer to being possessed by the dark dog who doesn't want to leave her.

You can tell the author spoke from experience, She suffered from depression herself, committed suicide in the end, You can really understand, follow her way, her debilitating condition, her struggles, her tragedy. I am sorry she only wrote this one novel, she could have given the world so much more.

If you are interested in this topic, suffer from depression yourself or know someone who does, watch this video by the World Health Organization. "I had a black dog, his name was depression." And don't hesitate to look for professional help.

We discussed this in our book club in January 2017.

From the back cover:
"At last Sylvia Plath's only published novel is available in her own country, eight years after it was published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Ester Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful--but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Ester through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is rare in any novel. In this case, the work reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath's own tragedy that is publication must be considered a landmark in contemporary literature."

In 1982, Sylvia Plath won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for "The Collected Poems".