Absolution

by Alice McDermott

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    The setting is Saigon in 1963, towards the end of the beginning of America's escalation. The characters are mainly American officers' wives, mostly very innocent and well-meaning. Is philanthropy - the attempt at doing good really pure, or is it an act of contrition, aimed at resolving the conscience of the giver? Because the narrators are writing from a distance of many years, they can see the way officers' wives were treated as useless appendages - to be protected from the realities of their situation. This disregard has a great deal to do with the wives' attempts to help the Vietnamese citizens in whatever small ways they can.

    Alice McDermott is an amazing writer.

If you would like to know more about this book, or own it, please contact your local independent bookstore or this great place bookshop.org .

 The Wren, the Wren

by Anne Enright

W.W. Norton

    Three generations of a fascinating Irish family - Nell, the youngest, is finding her way; Carmel, her mother, is also searching for something; and Phil, their late father, a somewhat famous poet who left the family when his wife became ill. Phil said that all poetry is about unrequited love and that there is no other kind of love. The women are, many years later, coming to terms with his abandonment and discovering what love is beyond his poetry.

    This sounds dire, but it's not at all - filled with humor, beauty and poetry.

If you'd like to know more about, or own this book, please check your local independent bookstore or this great place bookshop.org . While you're there you may want to find a birds of Ireland book.

Growing wild on the sidewalk

 

 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

by Becky Chambers

Macmillan/TorDot

    This is a continuation of the story of Monk, Sibling Dex and Robot, Mosscap (if you haven't read A Psalm for the Wild-Built, please do so, right away) as they travel in Panga and Mosscap asks the question he is meant to ask the humans he encounters - What do you need? The answer is clearly more of this kind, gentle, thoughtful story.

   I do hope there's another to come.

If you would like to know more about this book, or purchase it, please check with your local independent bookstore or this great place: bookshop.org .