Part two of our Summer Reading Spotlight! Check out the newest in popular fiction and non-fiction at UVM Libraries. Be sure to visit Howe Library Lobby for even more titles on display.
Behind you is the sea : a novel by Darraj, Susan Muaddi
“Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families--the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars -- Palestinian immigrants who've all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for "dishonoring" their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations. Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.”
Die Möglichkeit von Glück : Roman by Rabe, Anne
"In der DDR geboren, im wiedervereinigten Deutschland aufgewachsen. Als die Mauer fällt, ist Stine gerade einmal drei Jahre alt. Doch die Familie ist tief verstrickt. In ein System, von dem sie nicht lassen kann, und in den Glauben, das richtige Leben gelebt zu haben. Bestechend klar und kühn erzählt Anne Rabe von einer Generation, deren Herkunft eine Leerstelle ist. Stine kommt Mitte der 80er Jahre in einer Kleinstadt an der ostdeutschen Ostsee zur Welt. Sie ist ein Kind der Wende. Um den Systemwechsel in der DDR zu begreifen, ist sie zu jung, doch die vielschichtigen ideologischen Prägungen ihrer Familie schreiben sich in die heranwachsende Generation fort. Während ihre Verwandten die untergegangene Welt hinter einem undurchdringlichen Schweigen verstecken, brechen bei Stine Fragen auf, die sich nicht länger verdrängen lassen. Anne Rabe hat ein ebenso hellsichtiges wie aufwühlendes Buch von literarischer Wucht geschrieben. Sie geht den Verwundungen einer Generation nach, die zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie aufgewachsen ist, und fragt nach den Ursprüngen von Rassismus und Gewalt."
translation: “Stine was born in the mid-1980s in a small town on the Baltic Sea in East Germany. She was a child of the fall of the Berlin Wall. She was too young to understand the change of system in the GDR, but the complex ideological influences of her family were passed on to the younger generation. While her relatives hid the lost world behind an impenetrable silence, Stine began to ask questions that could no longer be suppressed. Anne Rabe has written a book of literary power that is as insightful as it is stirring. She explores the wounds of a generation that grew up between dictatorship and democracy and asks about the origins of racism and violence.”
The moon that turns you back by Alyan, Hala
“A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection--a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form--small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement. These poems take stock of who and what can displace you from home and from your own body--and, conversely, the kind of resilience, tenacity, and love that can bring you back into yourself and into the context of past and future generations. Hala Alyan asks, What stops you from transforming into someone or something else? When you have lived a life in flux, how do you find rest?”
All-night pharmacy : a novel by Madievsky, Ruth
"Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace. On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister, Debbie, to Salvation--a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions--nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator's spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics. With prose pulsing like a neon sign, Ruth Madievsky's All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister or allow her to remain a relic of the past"
What big teeth by Szabo, Rose
“Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying incident, she goes to the only place she thinks is safe: the home she left behind. But when she gets there, she struggles to fit in with her monstrous relatives, who prowl the woods around the family estate and read fortunes in the guts of birds. Eleanor finds herself desperately trying to hold the family together in order to save them all, Eleanor must learn to embrace her family of monsters and tame the darkness inside her.”
The inheritance of Orquídea Divina : a novel by Córdova, Zoraida
“The stars have shifted. The earth has turned. The time is here. I am dying. Come and collect your inheritance. The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won't ever leave their home in Four Rivers--not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held on to so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, her limbs stretching into roots and branches, leaving them with more questions than answers. Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings and powers. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea's line. Determined to save what's left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, her descendants travel to Ecuador--to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back.”
すべて真夜中の恋人たち by 川上未映子 by Kawakami, Mieko
“真夜中は、なぜこんなにもきれいなんだろうと思う。
それは、きっと、真夜中には世界が半分になるからですよと、いつか三束さんが言ったことを、わたしはこの真夜中を歩きながら思い出している。＞
入江冬子(フユコ)、34歳のフリー校閲者。人づきあいが苦手な彼女の唯一の趣味は、誕生日に真夜中の街を散歩すること。友人といえるのは、仕事で付き合いのある出版社の校閲社員、石川聖(ヒジリ)のみ。ひっそりと静かに生きていた彼女は、ある日カルチャーセンターで58歳の男性、三束(ミツツカ)さんと出会う･･･。
あまりにも純粋な言葉が、光とともに降り注ぐ。
いま、ここにしか存在しない恋愛の究極を問う衝撃作。”
translation: “I wonder why it's so beautiful in the middle of the night.
As I walk in the middle of the night, I remember something that Mr. Mitsuka once said, ``I'm sure that the world will be cut in half at midnight.'' ＞
Fuyuko Irie, 34-year-old freelance proofreader. She is not good at socializing, and her only hobby is walking around the city in the middle of the night on her birthday. The only person she can call her friend is Hijiri Ishikawa, a proofreader at a publishing company she works with. She lived a quiet and quiet life until one day she met a 58-year-old man, Mr. Mitsutsuka, at the culture center...
Too pure words fall down with light.
A shocking work that questions the ultimate love that only exists here and now.”
All the lovers in the night by Kawakami, Mieko
“Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it. As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.”
L'évangile du nouveau monde by Condé, Maryse
"Le soir d'un dimanche de Pâques, un homme et son épouse découvrent un nouveau-né dans leur jardin. La beauté de l'enfant, prénommé Pascal, attise la curiosité. Une rumeur se répand alors laissant croire qu'il serait le fils d'un dieu. Une fois adulte, Pascal part en quête de ses origines pour comprendre le sens de sa mission."
translation: “On the evening of an Easter Sunday, a man and his wife discover a newborn baby in their garden. The beauty of the child, named Pascal, arouses curiosity. A rumor then spreads suggesting that he would be the son of a god, once an adult, Pascal sets out in search of his origins to understand the meaning of his mission.”
Lucky Red : a novel by Claudia Cravens
"Some years ago, in Dodge, I was a sporting woman. I didn't mind whoring-it can be good work in the right house-but it demands a great deal of keeping still, and I'm one of those itchy, fidgety sorts who's always looking out the window or glancing toward the door, so it was only a matter of time until I had to move on.' In the Spring of 1877, Bridget--sixteen years old and already disillusioned after caring for her alcoholic father--is orphaned while crossing the Kansas prairie. She arrives penniless in Dodge City, and, thanks to the allure of her bright red hair and country-girl beauty, is soon recruited to work at the Buffalo Queen, the only brothel in town run by women. Bridget takes to brothel life instantly, appreciating the good food, good pay, and good friendships she forms with her fellow "sporting women," even catching the eye of the town's Sheriff's Deputy, who offers the Queen protection and security. Then, Spartan Lee--the most legendary (and only) female gunfighter in the region--rides into town, and Bridget falls in love. Hard. Sick of having been pushed and pulled by other people's whims and decisions, Bridget resolves to claim her own destiny. But her quest for autonomy detonates a series of events that explodes the tenuous safety she's secured for herself and her friends at the Buffalo Queen".
The Bangalore detectives club by Harini Nagendra
"When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet--and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene. When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman's mansion. She soon finds that sleuthing in a sari isn't as hard as it seems when you have a talent for mathematics, a head for logic, and a doctor for a husband".
Bomba de humo by Laura Santolaya
“Lena tiene treinta y tantos, miles de inseguridades y su vida está en una eterna crisis. Trabaja en una agencia de publicidad y ve cómo sus días transcurren encerrada en una oficina, yendo a spinning, viendo series e ingiriendo comida precocinada. ¿Es eso lo que quiere para el resto de su vida? Undia sus amigos le organizan una cita a ciegas durante un curso de cocina griega. Al siguiente Lena despierta con una resaca monumental y decide cambiarlo todo: viajará sola a Grecia para aprender a cocinar. Desconoce que esa decisión será el plato más difícil de ejecutar de su vida.”
translation: “Lena is in her thirties, has hundreds of insecurities, and her life is in a never-ending crisis. She works at an advertising agency and watches her days go by cooped up in an office, going to spinning class, watching shows, and ingesting pre-cooked food. Is this what she wants out of life? One day, her friends set her up on a blind date at a Greek cooking lesson. The morning after, Lena wakes up with a monumental hangover and decides to change everything. She will travel to Greece on her own and learn how to cook. Little does she know that this decision will turn out to be the most difficult main course she'll ever prepare.”
Mugre rosa by Fernanda Trías
“En una ciudad portuaria asolada por una plaga misteriosa, una mujer intenta descifrar por qué su mundo se desmorona. No es sólo el acecho de la enfermedad y la muerte, las algas y los vientos pestíferos, los amasijos rosáceos que son ya lo único que se puede comer, sino el colapso de todos sus vínculos afectivos,la incertidumbre, la eclosión de una soledad radical. Con una prosa inquietante y rica en hallazgos poéticos, Fernanda Trías construye un universo extraordinario que descubre la inmensa belleza y el inmenso dolor que hay en la fragilidad de la vida y de las relaciones humanas.”
translation: “In a port city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to figure out why her world is falling apart. It is not only the stalking of disease and death, the algae and pestiferous winds, the pinkish bundles that are already the only thing that can be eaten, but the collapse of all their affective bonds, uncertainty, the emergence of a radical loneliness. With a disturbing prose rich in poetic findings, Fernanda Trías builds an extraordinary universe that discovers the immense beauty and immense pain that exists in the fragility of life and human relationships.”
Shubeik lubeik by Deena Mohamed
"A brilliantly original debut graphic novel that imagines a fantastical Cairo where wishes really do come true. Deena Mohamed brings to life a cast of characters whose struggles and triumphs are heartbreaking, inspiring, and deeply resonant. Shubeik Lubeik -- a fairy-tale rhyme that means "your wish is my command" in Arabic -- is the story of three people who are navigating a world where wishes are literally for sale. Mired as they are in bureaucracy and the familiar prejudices of our world, the wishes that are more expensive are more likely to work as intended. Three wishes sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Aziza learned early that life can be hard, but when she loses her husband and manages to procure a wish, she finds herself fighting unreasonable regulations and inequality for the right to have -- and make -- that wish. Nour is a privileged college student who secretly struggles with depression and must decide whether to use their wish to try to "fix" this depression. And, finally, Shokry must grapple with his religious convictions as he decides how to help a friend who doesn't want to use her wish. Although their stories are fantastical, each of these people wrestles with the very real challenge of trying to make their most deeply held desires come true."
Anita de Monte laughs last by Xochitl Gonzalez
"Who gets to leave a legacy? 1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By 1998 Anita's name has been all but forgotten--certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by progeny of film producers, C-Suite executives, and international art-dealers, most of whom float through life knowing that their futures are secured, Raquel feels herself an outsider. Students of color, like Raquel, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita's story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite"
Петровы в гриппе и вокруг него : роман by Алексей Сальников
“В декабре 2007 года, накануне Нового года, 28-летний автослесарь Петров заболевает гриппом. За ним заболевают жена и сын младшего школьного возраста. Когда сына ведут на ёлку в театр юного зрителя, Петров предаётся воспоминаниям о советском детстве — о том, как он взял за руку ледяную Снегурочку с неестественно белым лицом. Девушке Марине, изображавшей Снегурочку, он показался тогда очень похожим на любовника Игоря, от которого она ждала ребёнка.
Игорь — неотразимый трикстер, связующий миры живых и мёртвых. Когда он встречается с заболевшим автослесарем в общественном транспорте, вся жизнь Петровых переворачивается вверх тормашками, и становится всё труднее понять, где реальность, а где — гриппозная галлюцинация. С ними начинают происходить совершенно немыслимые в повседневной жизни вещи.
Роман, построенный на использовании несобственно-прямой речи, продолжает модернистскую литературную традицию совмещения двух планов повествования — фабульного реалистического и глубинного мифологического. На поверхностном уровне история рассказывает о событиях в жизни семьи автослесаря Петрова, как текущих, так и хронологически отстоящих от настоящего времени. На глубинном же уровне текста обнаруживаются многочисленные аллюзии к древним танатологическим и”
translation: “In December 2007, on New Year's Eve, 28-year-old auto mechanic Petrov falls ill with the flu . His wife and primary school-age son fall ill after him. When his son is taken to a Christmas party at the Youth Theatre, Petrov indulges in memories of his Soviet childhood - about how he took the hand of the icy Snow Maiden with an unnaturally white face. To the girl Marina, who played the Snow Maiden, he seemed very similar to her lover Igor, from whom she was expecting a child.
Igor is an irresistible trickster who connects the worlds of the living and the dead. When he meets a sick auto mechanic on public transport, the Petrovs' entire life is turned upside down, and it becomes increasingly difficult to understand where reality is and where a flu hallucination is. Things that are completely unthinkable in everyday life begin to happen to them.
The novel, built on the use of indirect speech , continues the modernist literary tradition of combining two levels of narration - the realistic plot and the deep mythological. On the surface level, the story tells of events in the life of the family of the auto mechanic Petrov, both current and chronologically distant from the present. At the deep level of the text, numerous allusions to ancient thanatological and other myths are found, in particular, about Hades and Persephone .”
地鐵站 = Underground station by 何致和著
“小說以地鐵站為舞台，以跳軌事件揭開序幕，細膩地刻畫現代人如何活著。
盜用公款的中年男子，被霸凌的國中女生，久病纏身的老兵，西裝筆挺的上班族……不同年齡身分的人，同樣選擇在生命中的某一天，走進某個地鐵站，然後在列車進站的瞬間跳下月台，用性命擋下列車。
葉育安是地鐵公司的主任，發生跳軌事件就需趕赴出事地點處理善後。每天工作努力解決別人的問題，對自己的問題卻束手無策：離過婚的中年男子，女兒正值叛逆期，母親患有失智症，……小說關照許多當代的社會問題：工作壓力、長照、人際溝通、憂鬱症、霸凌等等。在生與死的人生軌道之間，地鐵月台上擦肩而過的路人，等候下一班列車的乘客，或者徘徊再三的身影，不也是你我？何致和：「這本書裡有許多死亡，但我思考的事情剛好相反，想的是該如何活下去的問題。」”
translation: “The novel takes a subway station as the stage, kicks off with a rail-jumping incident, and delicately depicts how modern people live.
A middle-aged man who embezzles public funds, a junior high school girl who is bullied, a veteran who has been suffering from chronic illness, an office worker in a neat suit... People of different ages and identities also choose to walk into a certain subway station on a certain day in their lives. Then he jumped off the platform the moment the train entered the station and blocked the train with his life.
Ye Yuan is the director of the subway company. When a rail jump occurs, he needs to rush to the scene of the accident to deal with the aftermath. He works hard to solve other people's problems every day, but is helpless to solve his own problems: a divorced middle-aged man, his daughter is in the rebellious period, and his mother suffers from dementia... The novel focuses on many contemporary social issues: work pressure, long-term care, etc. photos, interpersonal communication, depression, bullying and more. Between the life track of life and death, the passers-by passing by on the subway platform, the passengers waiting for the next train, or the lingering figures, aren't they also you and me? He Zhihe: "There are many deaths in this book, but I am thinking about the opposite, about how to live."”
“這是一個誕生的故事，也將是一個逃亡的故事。
誕生和毀滅，其實離得很近。
人工女兒莉莉卡誕生之時，這座城市已經因為一場瘟疫而毀滅。父親「我」帶著女兒走進昔日文明的廢墟之中，展開一場個人記憶、創傷和文明的追尋之旅。
他們打開了一扇扇房門，隨意回轉時間，每一個房間都是時間的容器，盛裝一段私人記憶。父親教女兒辨識人類遺留下來的記憶和碎片，而至失落的文明，一一指認時間的遊戲裡，分屬個人、妻子，甚至同代人的記憶與創傷。
故事中亦搓揉了瘟疫來襲的災難想像，假想繁華的熱帶城市重新變成雨林，描繪人類繭居於房內的末日意象，一個人面對孤獨的時光、蛹化的成長，以及人造的浮華與虛無。
睽違九年，龔萬輝以個人首部長篇小說探討時間、記憶與孤獨，故事中的旅程亦將成為疫病下讀者開啟個人時間、記憶的一把金鑰──如果可以選擇，你會打開哪一扇門？”
translation: “This is a story of birth and will also be a story of escape. Birth and destruction are actually very close. When the artificial daughter Lilika was born, the city had been destroyed by a plague. The father "I" takes his daughter into the ruins of past civilization and embarks on a journey of searching for personal memories, trauma and civilization. They opened the doors one after another and turned back time at will. Each room was a container of time, holding a private memory. The father teaches his daughter to identify the memories and fragments left by mankind, and then to the lost civilization. In the game of identifying time one by one, the memories and traumas belong to individuals, wives, and even contemporaries. The story also plays with the catastrophic imagination of the plague, imagining a prosperous tropical city turning into a rainforest again, depicting the doomsday image of human beings cocooning in the house, and a person facing the lonely time, the growth of pupa, and artificial glitz. and nothingness. After nine years, Gong Wanhui explores time, memory and loneliness with his first novel. The journey in the story will also become a golden key for readers to open up personal time and memory during the epidemic-if you could choose, which door would you open? Door?”
Une façon d'aimer : roman by Barbéris, Dominique
"Quand Madeleine, beauté discrète et mélancolique des années cinquante, quitte sa Bretagne natale pour suivre son mari au Cameroun, elle se trouve plongée dans un monde étranger, violent et magnifique. À Douala, lors d'un bal à la Délégation, elle s'éprend d'Yves Prigent, mi-administrateur, mi-aventurier. Mais la décolonisation est en marche et annonce la fin de partie..."
translation: “When Madeleine, a discreet and melancholic beauty from the 1950s, leaves her native Brittany to follow her husband to Cameroon, she finds herself immersed in a foreign, violent and magnificent world. In Douala, during a ball at the Delegation, she 'in love with Yves Prigent, half-administrator, half-adventurer But decolonization is underway and announces the end of the game...”
The light at the end of the world by Siddhartha Deb
"Delhi, the near future: a former journalist goes in search of answers after she finds herself stripped of identity and citizenship and thrust into a vast conspiracy involving secret detention centers, government sanctioned murders, online rage, nationalist violence, and a figure of shifting identifies known as the "New Delhi Monkey Man." Bhopal, 1984: an assassin hunts a whistleblower through a central Indian city that will shortly be the site of the worst industrial disaster in history. Calcutta, 1947: a veterinary student's life and work connect him to an ancient Vedic aircraft. And in 1859, a detachment of British soldiers rides toward the Himalayas in search of the last surviving leader of an anti-colonial rebellion. These timelines interweave to form a kaleidoscopic, epic novel in which each section is a pursuit, centered around a character who must find or recover crucial but hidden truths in their respective time. Mirroring the future and the past, these narratives illuminate and reimagine Indian identity and history. The Light at the End of the World, Siddhartha Deb's first novel in a decade and a half, is an astonishing work that brilliantly reimagines the structure of one of the world's oldest civilizations." Part two of our Summer Reading Spotlight! Check out the newest in popular fiction and non-fiction at UVM Libraries. Be sure to visit Howe Library Lobby for even more titles on display.