Tony Earley, JIM THE BOY

Written in 2000, a charming story of a boy growing up in 1930s in a small town in North Carolina, with a heap of uncles and a single mother because his father (Jim the dad) died right before Jim the boy was born. It's told in third-person but focalized through the ten-year-old Jim's perspective. First line: "During the night something like a miracle happened: Jim's age grew an extra digit. He was nine years old when he went to sleep, but ten years old when he woke up. The extra number had weight, like a muscle, and Jim hefted it like a prize." But despite the wide-eyed boy's perspective that this first line suggests, Jim is no saint and this story isn't just sweet--it alludes to some fairly grisly pieces of American history, a mother who is too wrapped up in her husband's death, a horrible grandfather, the clash between mountain-folk and town-folk. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Glen Retief, THE JACK BANK: A MEMOIR OF A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD

This memoir is very engaging--and by turns harrowing, insightful, other-worldly. Retief's father is a computer programmer for the research department at Kruger National Park in South Africa, so among other things young Retief learns that there are 517 varieties of birds in the park and how it feels to come to school and find four lions on the basketball courts. The plot arc that governs the book, it seems to me, is Retief learning (or mislearning) about the links among sexuality, race, and violence and then unlearning them. So if at age 12 he links sexuality (and homosexuality) with violence because of the white prefect John who sexually and physically abuses him at his boarding school (I was physically wincing through this section), he unlearns the link later and begins to connect sexuality with love. Several times he writes about "that great cycle of apartheid violence--the apparatus whereby white boys are bullied when young so that they later they will know how to beat blacks into continued submission." I don't mean to make this sound like a "teaching" memoir--it's compulsively readable--but it provided a window into a world I don't know.

Helen Simonson, MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND

This novel reminded me of Jane Austen. Not only does it concern "three or four families in a country village" in England, but there is a gently satiric tone that recalls Austen. This novel, set in Edgecombe St. Mary, portrays an older gentleman (with a fairly obnoxious money-driven son, at moments as ridiculous as Mr. Collins) who falls in love with the Pakistani shopkeeper Mrs. Ali and sends shock waves through the town. Mrs. Ali is almost an Elizabeth Bennet, with a sharp-eyed wit. A friend told me the book was "too slow"; but I didn't find it so. It is not a "page-turner," but as in Austen's novels, the plot turns on small events, gestures, or a word spoken out of turn, with the utmost attention paid to delicate shades of feelings.

Garth Stein, THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN

I loved this book. Unexpectedly.

It's from a dog's point-of-view, which has been done before (and sometimes not very well). This "dog-teller" conceit provides a knowledge "triangle": on one side are the humans who know some things; Enzo provides a second side of the "truth" that only he can provide: Eve's not moody; she smells funny because she's got something wrong inside. Zoe's not willful because she's two; she's refusing to eat her chicken nuggets because they've gone bad. And what Enzo reports, we clever readers can piece together with what we know about the world (side #3) so we know even more than the dog! (Kudos to us.) Also, the governing metaphor of life as car-race has also been done before, although not so well or with so much good, feels real detail. (Tom Cruise in a bad movie ... ?)

But never mind what's been done before, differently, or not so well. This book is tender and true, with very few false notes. No perfect characters and several infuriating ones, whose worst comes out when they have to confront the worst. A very good read ... even for those without dogs. Bring kleenex.

Christina Haag, COME TO THE EDGE

A well-crafted memoir by the actress Haag who had an on-again, off-again romance with John F. Kennedy, Jr. This is not a prurient memoir, for those who are looking for the ugly "skinny" on the Kennedy family. This is Haag's story, and she begins with her affluent childhood and her schooling with the nuns at the Convent of the Sacred Heart on the Upper East Side; then her days at Brown and Juilliard for training in acting; her years spent taking parts in plays and bits in movies until she hit her stride; and her years of being, quite tenderly and deeply, in love. Most interesting to me, so far as insight into John Jr.'s psyche (which I must admit has never really captured my interest), was the episode when CH and JJr are vacationing in Jamaica. She has a broken leg; the two of them are in a kayak, without the rubber apron, without a bailer, quite ill-prepared. John pushes to try to make it to shore, to the beautiful beach, and despite her fear and resistance, they go. They nearly die trying to get in; then they nearly die trying to get back out. Afterwards, Christina is still shaken, angry and upset. "We could have died!" she tells him. "What a way to go," is his response.

C.S. Forester, MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER

I was looking for a tale about 1790s British nautical history and found it here. Swashbuckling popular yarn, complete with a gangly hero who proves his worth unexpectedly. Dated 1948.

Isabel Wilkerson, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS

This book tells the story of the great migration of six million Blacks from the South to the North over the course of about three generations. She slips back and forth between the biographical tales of three particular people (Ida Mae, who moved from Mississippi to Chiciago; George, Florida to Harlem; Robert, Louisiana to Los Angeles) and a general, well-researched historical discussion (that at times repeats). But the historical discussion is broad and astonishing. It addresses social, geographical, economic, and political aspects of race relations from 1920s-1970s; it also debunks several "myths" about blacks moving North that have unfortunately been taken, and perpetuated, for truths. Half-way through this book, I found myself amazed that race relations in this country are not worse than they are.