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 The
Odyssey Gallery
Pictures of recent events
The Odyssey Bookshop is one of five independent
bookstores participating in WAMC's Roundtable on Tuesday mornings,
just after the 10:00 news. People from the Odyssey will be on about once a
month, talking about our favorite books.
Click
here to see the list of the books we have talked about.
The Odyssey Bookshop
9 College St.
S. Hadley, MA 01075
413-534-7307
800-540-7307
fax 413-532-3654
email odysseybks@aol.com
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Elli's Picks
Click on any title to order
Back to staff
list
 THE
AIR WE BREATHE by Andrea Barrett. The tubercular patients taking
the fresh air cure in the Adirondacks in the weeks before the U.S. enters the
first World War people this meticulously researched and evocatively written
story, which concludes Barrett's four book narrative that began with Ship
Fever. Although from widely different class, national and ethnic
backgrounds, the patients speak with one voice, as anti-immigrant prejudice,
fear, and political repression escalates into violence. The result is an eerie,
disturbing, and exciting exploration of themes that consume our world today.
 MATRIMONY
by Joshua Henkin. College freshmen Julian and Mia fall in love at a small
alternative college very much like Hampshire, in a town very much like
Northampton. Their journey takes them – and us – to Ann Arbor and Berkeley
and Iowa City and Greenwich Village, through family crises and betrayals, as
they try to grow up into the adults they want to be, and the ones they can't
help being. Henkin's prose is fresh and never sentimental; his quiet story
grabbed my interest and kept it.
 MISTER
PIP by Lloyd Jones. Thirteen-year-old Matilda learns about the power of
storytelling from hearing Great Expectations read aloud as her small,
South Pacific island village is blockaded and besieged. The prose and the
narrative captivated me.
 THE
BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Díaz. Oscar is an overweight,
Dominican sci-fi nerd with an enormous yearning for love. He grows up in New
Jersey with his bewitching mother and his rebellious sister, under his family's
fukú, an ancient curse mixed up with Trujillo and serious bad karma. Written in
a wonderfully edgy prose, this book is captivating, irreverent, and profound.
 TRESPASS
by Valerie Martin. Chloe and Brendan Dale
are privileged American citizens, doing work they value, and living well. But
their world is also precarious: their country is at war and a poacher is killing
animals on their property. When their graduate student son Toby falls in love
with a foreigner, a Croatian refugee, the boundaries of the Dales’ known world
are threatened. This is an important book for our time, serious and disturbing,
that challenges us to think beyond the comfortable place.
 THE
PIRATE’S DAUGHTER by Margaret Cezair-Thompson.
The Jamaican proverb "Mouth open, story fly out" beautifully describes
this gripping saga of Ida and her daughter May, shipwrecked movie star Errol
Flynn, and a small bougainvillea-overgrown island off Port Antonio, Jamaica.
Cezair-Thompson weaves Ida and May’s efforts to figure out how to live their
lives in the turbulent 40’s and 50’s, with their country’s struggle for
independence.
 Karma
and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi.
I’m fascinated by stories of immigrant communities – the richness of
language and culture; the complicated generational conflicts; the mix of
grudging admiration and intense suffocation young people often feel for the
“old” ways; and the delicate balance between appreciating traditions and
inventing yourself from scratch. All these themes appear in Reddi’s stories,
in smooth and unerring prose that reveals character and conflict seamlessly.
Reminiscent of Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri, but different and wonderful.
 LOST
& FOUND by Jacqueline Sheehan
When her young husband dies suddenly, Rocky’s professional
knowledge is of no help. She leaves her home, her counseling practice, and moves
to a secluded Maine island and reinvents herself. Healing comes in strange ways,
and Rocky’s comes via a wounded black Lab she names Lloyd, a mystery, a friend
who sees sounds as vivid colors, and an anorexic neighbor. Even as a lukewarm
"dog person," I was captivated by Lloyd and by this book
 THE
POST-BIRTHDAY WORLD by Lionel Shriver
Sometimes
when a book’s structure is too “clever,” the characters suffer. Not so
here. Alternative narratives grow from the moment children’s book illustrator
Irina McGovern kisses snooker star Ramsey Acton. Or doesn’t. The parallel
universe structure provides a nuanced, complex, and surprising portrait of
infidelity and its consequences
 LIKE
TREES, WALKING by Ravi Howard
In 1981, Roy Deacon is a high school senior in Alabama,
working in the family mortuary business, when his older brother discovers his
buddy’s body hanging from a tree. People don’t get lynched in 1981. Do they?
This is a page-turner of a first novel, with agile prose and a powerful story.
 DIVISADERO
by Michael Ondaatje
"Who recovers from such events?" asks a character in this remarkable
novel. Ondaatje gives us two intertwined families, two fathers and their
daughters, separated in time and place, all trying to survive passion and
circumstance. A wonderful read. ~ Elli
 THE LAST TOWN ON EARTH
by Thomas Mullen
(Random House $23.95). The small lumbar town of Commonwealth, Washington, built
on utopian socialist philosophy, tries to isolate itself from the larger
community in hopes of avoiding the devastation of the Spanish flu epidemic of
1918. But, of course, it can’t. The response of the frightened townsfolk to a
“spy” at their borders makes for a very compelling story, and a
thought-provoking allegory about our world today.
 THE LAW OF DREAMS by Peter Behrens
(Steerforth 24.95). I’m not quite sure why this epic tale – of famine, loss,
and deprivation – kept me so hopeful, that things would get better on the next
page. Partly, it was because Peter Behrens convinced me that the historical
background – young Fergus survives the great Irish potato famine of 1847 and
escapes to Canada – was both accurate and utterly personal. Partly, it was
because Fergus was so hopeful, even as he learned that hope was probably
foolish. And partly, it was because the language in this debut novel just sings.
 THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN by Claire Messud
(Knopf $25). Messud just nails her three young Manhattan
characters: Marina, Danielle, and Julius are friends from Brown, they’re
approaching thirty, and they’re clever, entitled, and totally self-absorbed.
The book is part comedy of manners, but with a thoughtful subterranean theme of
people lost in the midst of opportunity and privilege. Messud’s writing is
lively, satiric, and sharp.
 CORONADO: STORIES by Dennis Lehane
(William Morrow $24.95). Nobody creates characters like Lehane—edgy and sharp,
dark and surprising. These stories push at the common expectations of short
fiction, and draw the reader into unsettling everyday worlds on the boundaries
of business as usual. Brilliant writing and powerful stuff.
 HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Random
House $24.95). Adichie successfully balances the political turmoil of 1960’s
Nigeria with three compelling point-of-view characters: a middle class Igbo
woman, a young village houseboy, and a white British citizen in love with an
African woman. After living with these characters through the military coup, the
battle for Biafran independence, and the devastating violence and starvation
that followed, I didn’t want to let them go at the end of the story. Lushly
written and emotionally haunting, this book contributes new faces to our
understanding of the human costs of race, class, and ethnic struggles in our
world.
 WHEN MADELINE WAS YOUNG
by Jane Hamilton
(Doubleday $22.95). The compellingly self-effacing voice of Mac Maciver narrates
this story about growing up with Madeline. She was married to his father before
her traumatic brain injury, then remained in the family as a perpetual child and
Mac’s “sister.” This is an unusual st
ory, fresh and tender,
illuminating the Maciver’s “family values.” I stayed up way too late to
finish it.
MONIQUE AND THE MANGO RAINS by Kris
Holloway (Waveland $17.95). When Kris Holloway
joined the Peace Corps and was sent to a small village in Mali, West Africa, to
work with midwife Monique Dembele, she expected poverty and a desperate public
situation, especially for women and children. She found that, of course, but she
also found a life-changing friendship that crossed cultural barriers in amazing
ways. This book is educational, it’s funny, and it will break your heart.
 SETTING THE
TABLE: The Transforming Power
of Hospitality by Danny Meyer (HarperCollins
$25.95). Danny Meyer is one of the country’s leading restauranteurs – of
Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Blue Smoke, and seven other
top-rated Manhattan eateries. I was surprised at how entertained I was reading
Meyer’s philosophy of “enlightened hospitality,” which goes against the
traditional business models. I enjoyed his story about how he grew into his
career of starting and running restaurants. The book reads easily – half
FoodLit and half personal memoir. Now I’m saving my pennies for a field trip
to Blue Smoke for authentic St. Louis ribs.
 ACROSS THE ALLEY
by Richard Michelson
(Putnam $16.99). A gorgeous and optimistic story about family expectations,
racial and religious differences, individual talents and dreams, and overcoming
prejudice. This book has haunted me for weeks, but in a good way, a hopeful way.
 PLAYING DAD’S SONG by D. Dina Friedman
(Farrar Straus Giroux $16). Emotionally strong but entirely unsentimental, this
book for middle grade readers is a gem. Gus is so real I could smell him –
worrying about the bully at school who calls him “pickleface,” hiding under
his blanket to mourn his father, learning to juggle to please his sister, and
through his oboe discovering for himself the healing power of music.
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