Favourite Books of 2008

Love Walked In Maria de los Santos
Cornelia is the over-educated manager of a coffee bar in Philadelphia whose singular voice narrates alternate chapters of this funny and touching novel; the other chapters are in third person, and focus on Clare, an eleven-year-old girl, who is trying to hold her life together as her single mother spirals into mental illness. Of course they eventually meet and this delightful novel takes some interesting turns. The characters are multi-dimensional and just the kind you’d expect to run into in a trendy café. Although the title makes it sound like a gushy romantic novel, this is so much more than that.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer
This was a ‘Heather’s Pick’ at Chapters/Indigo this fall and her description of it made me want to read it. When a friend said she had a copy I jumped at the chance to borrow it and I wasn’t disappointed. This novel in letters (a format I usually don’t love) works perfectly here. The letters start after the war when a man on Guernsey buys a second hand book that once belonged to Juliet, a writer in London, and he starts a correspondence with her. Soon she is exchanging letters with a number of people on the island about their experiences of German occupation. In places laugh-out-loud funny, and at times haunting, the author manages to combine a war story and love story and demonstrates the how reading can change our lives and our perceptions of who we are.

The Uncommon Reader Alan Bennett
In case you didn’t hear me recommending this book to everyone last Christmas, here I go again. Another book about the power of reading. In this one, the Queen goes around the corner of the palace to see what the corgis are barking about, only to find a bookmobile parked there. As she apologizes to the driver, she feels it would only be appropriate to take out a book…and thus the Queen begins the process of becoming a reader, much to the dismay of her family, her staff and politicians. Instead of talking about the weather, she takes to asking eminent politicians and commoners alike what they are reading…a difficult question for many. A delightful, short read that anyone would enjoy.

The Madonnas of Leningrad Debra Dean
A beautiful intertwining of two stories—Marina’s descent into Alzheimer’s as she struggles with the details of her present life and family, and her memories of her days in the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad. Although that all sounds depressing, the two stories are so lovingly, touchingly told that I didn’t want the novel to end. And when it did, I knew I had to make a trip to the Hermitage Museum at some time. For a first novel, this is spectacular. My favourite of the year.

Mr Pip Lloyd Jones
On an island in the Pacific, political trouble causes the evacuation of the white people, including the teacher in the small village. The only white man left, called Mr. Pip, sweeps out the schoolroom, and starts teaching with only one copy of Great Expectations. As the children love the story as Mr. Pip reads it aloud to them, others in the village start to tell their own stories. Again the power of reading to transform lives is a theme…coincidence I think not!!!

City of Falling Angels John Berendt
This non-fiction title has been out for a while, but I only read it this year with my school book club—and I thoroughly enjoyed his quirky tales of Venice. (Apparently there actually was a sign outside a damaged church saying to beware of falling angels!!) He starts at the fire that destroyed La Fenice, the opera house and he documents the labyrinthine process of rebuilding it, while living there for a year and learning the stories of the unique inhabitants of the Queen of the Adriatic. He explores the arts, politics and everyday life in the same personal style as his other non-fiction hit Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. After reading this I want to go back to Venice. My Canadian desire for order and good government (sort of joke these days!) would make it difficult for me to live in Venice, but it sure is beautiful and exciting to visit.