Summer Reading List 2019

Below is a list of dearly loved books compiled by members of the English Department. Your job this summer: in addition to reading the all-school book Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, choose one book from this list THAT YOU HAVE NOT READ BEFORE. You will be accountable for both books in your English classes in the fall, regardless of whether you have English at Brunswick or Greenwich Academy. There are so many good books here—have fun exploring and researching them. The English Department will be happy to help you choose! (You should of course feel free to read more than one!)

Richard Adams, Watership Down. This is an adventure story, with a twist. Hazel, a natural- born leader, takes control of a band of misfits to lead them from their devastated home to a new, safer place to live. Kind of like The Odyssey (only better), but with rabbits (that’s the twist!).

Chimamanda Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun. This novel creates compelling characters from all walks of life and shows how they connect during the tumultuous war in late 1960s Nigeria.

Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies. This highly readable and remarkable novel tells the true story of four sisters who resisted the government of General Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. It’s both sad and inspiring as each of the sisters narrates a different part of the novel.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk. Read this novel for the love story, for what it was like to live in New York City in the 1970s, and to better understand racism and false imprisonment—then and now.

Richard Blanco, Looking for the Gulf Motel. If you haven’t already read a book of poems by Richard Blanco, one of our visiting writers in 2018, start with Looking for the Gulf Motel. Then consider his newest collection, How to Love a Country, which includes his poem about the Pulse shooting and many others that explore what it means to be American.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre This novel tells a story of a poor orphan who grows up to be one of the bravest, most outspoken characters I know – she’s not even afraid of the creepy noises in the attic.

Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book. The term “people of the book” is one that has been used to refer to Jews and Christians, followers of Abrahamic religions. The people in this fascinating book all “follow” the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving Jewish illuminated texts and a priceless manuscript. Beginning with Hanna, an Australian book conservator called upon to restore the Haggadah, the novel works backwards in time and across Europe to the conflict zone of Sarajevo where the book was made in the 1300s.

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names. A coming-of-age story about a young girl named Darling. The first half of the book is set during Darling's childhood in Zimbabwe, and the second half of the book takes place after she immigrates to Michigan as a teenager.

Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower. This novel, by a rare African-American voice in the sci-fi genre, tells the story of Lauren Olamina, who, faced with the loss of her family in a world devastated environmentally and economically, sets off on a journey to safety. She picks up other travelers as she goes. If you liked The Hunger Games, you may like this.

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. A story about comic books for those with no interest in comic books, and the most unlikely superhero story you’ll ever read. This is one of those novels in which you become fully immersed, neglecting what’s going on in your own world for the pleasure of being in the book.

Junot Diaz, Drown. Before The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz wrote this fantastic short story collection. For aspiring fiction writers and for fans of Diaz's other work alike, Drown is a sure hit. Keep an eye out for Yunior!

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend—anything!. These look like tomes (they’re long) but Dickens was a popular writer—lots of action, coincidences, romance, and funny character names make them exceptionally readable and hard to put down. There’s even a character in Bleak House who spontaneously combusts.

Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See. This is a must-read for lovers of historical fiction and/or admirers of downright gorgeous sentences. It's the WWII-era story of a French girl and a German boy whose paths cross in occupied France. It's nuanced, it's moving...it's really something special. It's on the New York Times' "Best Books of 2014" list and won the Pulitzer Prize!

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River. This novel seems inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird and if you loved that book, you’ll probably like this one. It’s a great road trip story. If you like to imagine the possibility of miracles, this might be for you.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex. This is an epic novel that spans three generations of a Greek- American family from their tiny village overlooking Mt. Olympus to being firmly established in Detroit. Eugenides, an evocative storyteller, crafts distinctive, unforgettable characters.

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend. This highly readable (perhaps semi-autobiographical?) novel is the first in a quartet tracing the friendship between two girls in 1950s Naples, Italy. At times intense, at others funny, and at still others heart-breaking, this is one of the few novels out there that takes a sustained look at complicated women’s friendships.

Jonathan Safron Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. One of the most original books you will read, this novel combines different points of view, illustrations, and experiments with typography to tell the story of Oskar Schell, a precocious 9-year-old who pursues a mystery left by his father after he died suddenly in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. Along his journey across the five boroughs of New York, Oskar meets some amazing characters, including his long-lost grandfather who doesn’t speak.

Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. The narrator’s voice in this novel—angry, passionate, hilarious, bittersweet—is captivating. I won’t give away the plot entirely, but it involves a young woman trying to understand the disappearance of her sister many years before.

Jonathan Franzen The Corrections. Love Jonathan Franzen or hate him, it is difficult to argue that he is not one of the most important novelists of the last twenty years. I happen to love him: his propulsive, obsessive prose and the painful detail in which he renders his characters' many selfish, humiliating choices. In The Corrections, he tells the story of the Lamberts, a Midwestern family whose matriarch wants to gather her adult children for one last Christmas at home. This is not, however, a family-friendly novel. Decidedly not for younger students.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not for the faint of heart! This is a complicated but rewarding novel that follows one hundred years in Macondo, a fictional town in Colombia. Garcia Marquez is probably the most famous and most influential of Latin American novelists, bringing magical realism to wide audiences. Funny and tragic and incredibly inventive.

Roxanne Gay, Bad Feminist. Over the past couple of years, Roxanne Gay has emerged as an important thinker on subjects ranging from race to gender and from politics to Scrabble. This collection of essays captures her sense of humor and her fierce intelligence.

Lauren Groff, Florida. A collection of atmospheric, fierce, and beautiful short stories set in - you guessed it - Florida, this book is the perfect companion to summer evening spent on a porch watching fireflies. It's moody, funny, and haunting all at once.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. Quietly funny and then silently heartbreaking. This novel is in my top five (the movie, too).

Nalini Jones, What You Call Winter. A collection of interconnected short stories from the sister of a GA alum. They revolve around a small Catholic community in India.

Mary Karr's memoirs. Tough stuff, but so compelling. Real stories of an extraordinary childhood told in authentic, hilarious, poignant prose.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road. Crisscross America with the Beat generation in the classic novel. Kerouac’s prose reads like the bebop jazz he and his pals listened to as they raced across the American landscape in the late 40s. One draft of this book was typed nonstop on what appears to be an endless scroll of paper.

Stephen King, Skeleton Crew. Because summer reading should be fun and terrifying.

Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered. Kingsolver’s newest novel, and one of her best, goes back and forth between a family pulling itself together in 2016 and the story of Mary Treat, a real-life botanist who lived in the 1800s and corresponded with Charles Darwin. Through a surprising connection, both narratives include characters immersed in science and grappling with family and love.

Nathan Hill, The Nix. Inventive and imaginative, this novel traces the investigation Samuel Andresen-Anderson undertakes after his estranged mother is arrested for an absurd crime that captivates a politically-divided country.

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior. Hong Kingston's memoir was a favorite of mine in high school and college. She tells the story of her childhood in America and her mother’s stories of life in China, weaving myth with memory. Her writing is unflinching, confident, and surprising, and she is brilliant on cultural memory and haunting.

Nicole Krauss, The History of Love. A mystery that spans generations, and a puzzle for the reader to put together. There are some great characters in this innovative and engaging novel.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Funny book on writing and observations of life in general. Lamott makes writing approachable and instills confidence by reminding us of all the potential material we observe every day.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. Set on a distant and icy planet, this science fiction novel takes on big questions around gender and culture. What does it mean to be male or female? How do we interpret the actions and feelings of people whose manners are mysterious to us? Part anthropology, part folklore, part adventure-story, Le Guin’s novel will cool you to the bone in the summer heat.

Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men. Short but intense coming-of-age novel about a young boy in Tripoli, Libya, who comes to realize his father’s secrets might jeopardize the family’s future. Matar sheds some light on what living under Muammar Gaddafi was like for those who had the courage to disagree with him.

William Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge. You'll keep reading this author once you start. The writing feels like conversation with a wise, cultured friend.

Ian McEwan, Saturday. (Most appropriate for Jrs or Srs). This story is an interesting, philosophical account of one day – a Saturday – in the life of British neurosurgeon living in London post-9/11. I enjoyed spending time in the protagonist’s mind as he is a thoughtful narrator who leads a charmed life – until a tense encounter and home invasion change the entire tenor of the day.

Lorrie Moore, Self-Help. Moore is the queen of the funny/tragic pun, and, in Self-Help, she conquers the notoriously tricky second person. Though her later collection Birds of America is perhaps better regarded, when I was nineteen, Self-Help made me want to become a writer and remains my favorite of hers. (A warning: After you read the collection, you will likely think that I got the wrong message.) Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. Trevor Noah, who you might recognize as the host of The Daily Show, was born in South Africa to a white father and a black mother when it was illegal for people of different races to marry. This autobiography— inspiring, funny, sad, and always compelling—traces Trevor Noah’s unusual upbringing with his unconventional mother and provides insight into how he survived and thrived in a dangerous place and time.

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife. This magical novel is in many ways about story telling itself. The narrator learns of the mysterious death of her beloved grandfather and attempts to retrace his steps, remembering the stories he told her of his encounters with a “deathless man,” and imagining other stories about a tiger’s wife.

Tommy Orange, There, There. Beautiful, daring, and disturbing, this novel examines Native American urban life in Oakland, CA. Told from multiple voices, stories are braided in a complex, shared history that culminates in a shooting at the local pow wow.

Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird. Part fairy tale, part family drama, this prize-winning novel will involve you in the lives of three young women, beginning with Boy, who is the stepmother of Snow and the mother of Bird. Quirky and inventive, you’ll be entertained and provoked to ponder questions about love, transformation, race, family, & identity.

Angela Palm, Riverine. Winner of the prestigious Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, this memoir opens the window on Palm’s life growing up in Demotte, Indiana, a small town that was often flooded by the Kankakee River. Palm finally escapes her tough childhood, settles in the East, gets married, (and visits the GA Writers Festival), but is pulled back home to renew her relationship with a young man who is in prison for murder.

Morgan Parker, There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce. A bold poetry contemporary collection that uses pop culture references to meditate on the ways that race and gender intersect in our world. It includes poems such as "RoboBeyonce," "What Beyonce Won't Say on a Shrink's Couch," and "Freaky Friday Starring Beyonce and Lady Gaga." Beyonce is clearly used as the guiding symbol of the collection, but it's also about a whole lot more than just her.

Ann Patchett, Commonwealth. This novel traces fifty years in the lives of two families connected by a romantic encounter. Both funny and heart-breaking, and described as “impossible to put down” by the New York Times. Another of Patchett’s novels, Bel Canto (about a terrorist takeover of an embassy) is also a great read.

Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems. Read Plath’s poems for their brilliant, incisive language. No one uses words the way she does to examine troubling and ordinary experiences. After her early death, Plath became famous for expanding what women could write about in poems, such as “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” among many others.

Annie Proulx, Close Range. A tough, smart collection of short stories about life in Wyoming. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea. If you have read Jane Eyre, this novel is a must. Rhys sets her story in Jamaica, before the events of Jane Eyre, and adopts the perspectives of (spoiler alert) the woman in the attic and Mr. Rochester. Rhys's prose is gorgeous, and the novel will leave you reeling. A persuasive critique of Brontë’s novel and a wonderful introduction to Rhys's work.

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping. This is a beautifully written novel about Ruth and Lucille, two sisters who are raised by their eccentric aunt after their mother’s death. Haunted by a train wreck that killed the girls’ grandfather, the inhabitants of the small town of Fingerbone worry about the habits of this unconventional family.

Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer. Nathan Zuckerman, whose father is angry with him because of a story Nathan has written, travels to the home of his literary idol (and, he hopes, spiritual father) E.I. Lonoff. This novel makes for deceptively easy reading even as it grapples explicitly with difficult questions: What are the responsibilities of the Jewish writer to his family, community, and religious group? And what does the writer's work cost the ones he loves?

Rainer Marie Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke (Stephen Mitchell translation). You can spend a lifetime reading and thinking about The Duino Elegies. Strange and mystical.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things. A novel probably more appropriate for older readers. Beautifully written and conceived, sometimes painful to read, The God of Small Things follows twins Estha and Rahel before and after a tragedy involving their cousin Sophie. Rich and complex.

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo. Who knew that somebody could craft a new way of telling a story after a few thousand years of storytelling? Brilliant (but not smug), quite funny, and genuinely moving once you get the hang of it.

Marie Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette. This is zany, funny, heartwarming, and a real page-turner. Bee Fox is on the hunt for her mother, Bernadette, who has disappeared. Bee uses, among other things, emails, school memos, and other stray pieces of paper to figure out why Bernadette has gone missing and where she might be. Terrific!

Hampton Sides, In the Kingdom of Ice or Ghost Soldiers. For those of you who love non- fiction, adventure, and reading about the incredible strength and resilience of people under devastating stress, Sides’s books are ideal. In the Kingdom of Ice tells the true story of what happened to the sailors aboard the Jeanette as they traveled to the Arctic in the hopes of being the first to discover the North Pole. Suffice it to say, they did not return triumphantly. Ghost Soldiers is about Allied prisoners during World War II who survived the Bataan Death March only to suffer terribly in a POW camp. Chapters alternate between stories of the prisoners in the camp and the small band of American soldiers tasked with rescuing them.

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Not only a nonfiction account of the enormous impact of the HeLa cell, this book is also a memoir of Skloot’s creative process, including how she searched for the Lacks family, uncovered the history of poverty and racism behind the science, and ultimately formed a close relationship with the descendants of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells changed history.

Carol Shields, Unless. Told from the perspective of a woman whose daughter has chosen to become homeless as a kind of protest. Lots of good feminist thinking in here. A book I’ve found hard to forget, and I usually have no memory for plot.

Patti Smith, Just Kids. In this National Book Award winning memoir, Patti Smith paints a picture of what it was like to live in NYC in the late sixties and seventies. Before either of them was famous, she and Robert Mapplethorpe hung out together. The photographer was an inspiration for Smith’s visual and performing art.

Zadie Smith, Swing Time. This novel takes its name from a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movie, follows the lives of two black women who shared a love of dancing when they were growing up in London. Their paths separate, but never entirely diverge as one stays with dancing and the other travels to the US and Africa as an assistant to a famous performer.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden. This novel is timeless and sweeping. Steinbeck fully immerses the reader in the worlds of two families with intersecting lives. The characters are sometimes touching, sometimes terrifying, and always believable. This is an American novel that you don’t want to skip over. Steinbeck’s dedication at the beginning of the novel is enough to make you cry.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley. Makes you want to do a road trip. One of the only books I read twice in high school.

Kathryn Stockett, The Help. What was it like for black women to work as “help” in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, the year before Martin Luther King’s freedom March on Washington, DC? What risks did they take to share their stories with a young white woman who collaborated with them to write a book? Told from three fascinating points of view, The Help will make you laugh and cry.

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. This comedic novel, set in New Orleans, introduces a crazy cast of characters in high and low comedy situations.

Hannah Tinti, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. If you enjoyed The Good Thief last summer, this most recent book by Tinti might interest you. It’s more violent than The Good Thief—in part it’s the story of how the titular character (a ne’er-do-well) barely escapes death on multiple occasions—but it also includes a father-daughter relationship, a mysterious death, and a whale.

J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy. Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir, but it is also, as The Wall Street Journal notes, “a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America.” This book has become a must-read for those interested in understanding how we’ve come to where we are in this country. Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (Most appropriate for Jrs or Srs). This is a compelling story about twin brothers and their lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and New York City. It is a story about brother dynamics, parental inheritance, romantic love, and medicine. My doctor friends say Cutting for Stone is one of their favorite novels, but I also loved it. It is 650 pages, but I promise it does not disappoint!

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle: A Memoir. Imagine growing up with two crazy parents who have plenty of imagination and no money. Out of desperation, a child not only survives, but also grows up and flourishes as an accomplished writer.

Minette Walters, The Last Hours. Don’t be put off by the length of this book—it’s actually a quick read, and it’s a great choice for those who love both historical fiction and dystopian novels. The Last Hours tells the story of a small estate in southern England trying to avoid the Black Plague devastating nearby communities. Lady Anne, the wife of the estate’s owner, tries to manage her recalcitrant daughter and save the nearby villagers as what seems to be the end of the world takes place around them.

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones. This novel is about a poor, rural African-American community on the gulf coast set in the ten days leading up to a massive hurricane (possibly Katrina). The narrator is a teenage girl, who we quickly discover is pregnant. It's beautiful and sad, but has a redemptive, hopeful ending.