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Catherine Lim, The Song Of Silver Frond

One morning in Singapore more than 50 years ago, a wealthy, respected, handsome Chinese patriarch, head of a large household of three wives and many children and grandchildren, takes a walk by a cemetery. There, a young village egg-seller, Silver Frond, is amusing herself with a comic song-and-dance act based on popular gossip—about him. The meeting instantly changes their lives. With characteristic verve and wit, Catherine Lim traces the struggles of an unusual couple through the jungle of human quandaries and predicaments created by the force of tradition, and celebrates the ultimate triumph of an even more extraordinary force—love.

( paraphrased from the sleeve  by GoodReads,   392 pages )

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Catherine Lim, The Bond Maid

Set in Singapore in the fifties, the novel focuses on the story of Han. Sold as a slave into the House of Wu at the age of four, she forms a close bond with the heir of the household, but the idyllic childhood soon turns into a life of struggling against tradition and tyranny.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,   330 pages )

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Anita Brookner, Dolly

In her superbly accomplished new novel, Anita Brookner proves that she is our mast profound observer of women’s lives, posing questions about feminine identity and desire with a stylishness that conveys an almost sensual pleasure.

From the moment Jane Manning first meets her aunt Dolly, she is both fascinated and appalled. Where Jane is tactful and shy, Dolly is flamboyant and unrepentantly selfish, a connoisseur of fine things, an exploiter of wealthy people. But as the exigencies of family bring Jane and Dolly together, Brookner shows us that we may end up loving people we cannot bring ourselves to like — and that this paradox makes love all the more precious and miraculous.

( from the sleeve,  260 pages )

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Michael Dorris, Cloud Chamber

Ten years after his “dazzling” (San Francisco Chronicle), “unforgettable” (Newsday) bestselling debut novel, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris returns to the family at the core of that work to write the rich score of the “full-blown, complex opera of his new novel, Cloud Chamber” (Robb Forman Dew).
Opening in late-nineteenth-century Ireland and moving to Kentucky and finally to the high plains of Montana, Cloud Chamber tells the extraordinary tale of Rose Mannion and her descendants. Over a period of more than one hundred years, Rose’s legacy of love and betrayal is passed down from generation to generation until it meets the promise of reconciliation in Rayona, the indomitable part-black, part Native American teenage girl at the center of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.
Cloud Chamber is truly a tour de force, a powerful, rich tale about the energy and persistence of love.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,   316 pages )

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Michael Collins, The Keepers Of Truth

The last of a manufacturing dynasty in a dying industrial town, Bill lives alone in the family mansion and works for the “Truth,” the moribund local paper. He yearns to write long philosophical pieces about the American dream gone sour, not the flaccid write-ups of bake-off contests demanded by the “Truth.” Then, old man Lawton goes missing, and suspicion fixes on his son, Ronny. Paradoxically, the specter of violent death breathes new life into the town. For Bill, a deeper and more disturbing involvement with the Lawtons ensues. The Lawton murder and the obsessions it awakes in the town come to symbolize the mood of a nation on the edge. Compulsively readable, “The Keepers of Truth” startles both with its insights and with Collins’s powerful, incisive writing.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,   310 pages )

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Leif Enger, Peace Like A River

Once in a great while, we encounter a novel in our voluminous reading that begs to be read aloud. Leif Enger’s debut, Peace Like a River, is one such work. His richly evocative novel, narrated by an asthmatic 11-year-old named Reuben Land, is the story of Reuben’s unusual family and their journey across the frozen Badlands of the Dakotas in search of his fugitive older brother. Charged with the murder of two locals who terrorized their family, Davy has fled, understanding that the scales of justice will not weigh in his favor. But Reuben, his father, Jeremiah—a man of faith so deep he has been known to produce miracles—and Reuben’s little sister, Swede, follow closely behind the fleeing Davy.

Affecting and dynamic, Peace Like a River is at once a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration into the spirituality and magic possible in the everyday world, and in that of the world awaiting us on the other side of life. In Enger’s superb debut effort, we witness a wondrous celebration of family, faith, and spirit, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long, long time—and the birth of a classic work of literature.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,   312 pages )