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Book 17 for 2026: “The Silence of the Girls”, Pat Barker

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I read the second and third book of this trilogy first not realizing it was a trilogy until after I started the second one. Pat Barker won the Booker for another set of historical novels and this appears to be her preferred genre. Most stories about Achilles and the Trojan War focus on the viewpoint of the men fighting. This trilogy focuses on the women in and around Troy who have been captured by the Greeks and have become their slaves.

This novel’s voice is that of Briseis, who was once queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms before Achilles sacked it and murdered her husband and brothers. She is now Achilles’ slave, a battle prize. She realizes she must adapt in order to survive. She gets caught in a dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles’ with the former demanding to take her away from Achilles. Achilles refuses to fight, the Greeks start to lose, something has to be done or the Trojans will win.

Briseis is just one of thousands of women who are now the slaves of the Greeks. This is not only her story but that of all those other women who are now slaves, prostitutes, nurses, women who lay out the dead. This is their story as well as that of Achilles, Patroclus, and various other Greek men but from the viewpoint of Briseis.

Books 15 and 16 for 2026: “The Wrong End of the Telescope” and “The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)”, Rabih Alameddine

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This award winning author has a writing style all his own–both serious and very funny. How anyone can make serious topics so entertainingly funny is a unique gift. The setting of the first is the island of Lesbos when masses of Syrian and other refugees are landing and many NGOs go there to help the refugees. Mina Simpson is a Lebanese American doctor who goes on a two week trip there to help a friend who works for an NGO. Mina is a trans woman who has been rejected by all her Lebanese family except one brother with whom she is very close. He goes there to meet her. This is also the story of a refugee family, the mother of whom is dying from cancer, her small children, her husband, and the NGO people and others who do everything to help this family.

The second is his most recent novel and tells the life story of a philosophy teacher in Beirut. It starts in Beirut in 2023 then goes back to the Covid pandemic and the banking collapse in Lebanon from 2001 to 2021. Then it skips back to his childhood in 1960 to 1975, the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, and later to the port explosion that destroyed much of Beirut. This novel is Lebanese history from the viewpoint of this main character. We learn all about his mother, her best friend who seems to be some kind on international criminal gang leader, some of his students, classmates, and others. While much of it relates horrors of living in dire circumstances, it is also very funny. I found myself frequently laughing.

Note: I enjoyed these two books so much that I intend to read other novels by this author.

Book 46 for 2025: “Norwegian Wood”, Haruki Murakami

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This is the novel that shocked him by selling over a million copies and made him famous. It is the story of Toru, a young college student, whose two best friends from childhood change his life. One, his best male friend, commits suicide unexpectedly. Afterwards, the other friend, Naoko, a beautiful and mentally fragile young woman, and Toru spend their weekends just walking together all over Tokyo. As her mental health deteriorates, he increasingly falls in love with her and tries to help. Meanwhile, as Naoko becomes mentally more unstable, he meets another young woman, Midori, who is adventuresome, outgoing, and mentally stable. He does not want to give up on Naoko but is also drawn to Midori with whom he attends college.

The novel is written from the viewpoint of Toru. He tells not just about these women but also his very eccentric roommate at a dormitory and his friend, Nagasawa, who is very smart and disciplined but also quite immoral by Toru’s standards. Although the novel takes place in a Japan of several decades ago, Toru’s narrative and life seem quite modern and realistic.

One thing a reader from the US might notice is that all the characters go everywhere using public transportation. No cars are ever mentioned. Since several of the characters commit suicide, I decided to research the suicide rate in Japan. For decades the suicide rate of young people in Japan has been quite high and continues to be a concern there.

Although I am many decades older than all the main characters, I could not stop reading. This is a meaningful, very well written novel which I highly recommend. It is my second Murakami novel recently and I will read more.

Note: The version I read has the author’s notes from 2023 which are very informative and interesting. He apparently has to leave his home in Japan and go elsewhere, e.g. Greece, to write.

Book 44 for 2025: “Kafka on the Shore”, Haruki Murakami

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This is my first Murakami novel; it will not be my last. It’s fascinating and profound. A 15 year old boy, Kafka, runs away from home. His mother and older sister disappeared when he was four. He does not remember them. His father, a famous sculptor, ignores him. Although they live in the same house, they rarely see each other. After running away, he finds a private (but open to the public) library in another city and is taken in by the two people in charge of the library.

Nakata, another main character who is an elderly man, is not very bright due to a bizarre event that sent him to the hospital in a coma when he was a child. He talks to cats and makes fish and eel fall from the sky like rain. He becomes friends with another principal character, a young truck driver, who helps him out because Nakata reminds him of his grandfather.

The novel portrays the lives of these characters through their actions, dreams, and fantastical events. The unreal becomes real and people learn about their true selves through these events.

Book 42 for 2025: “Hope In A Time of Dying”, Len Leatherwood

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This autobiographical novel was written by a good friend of mine whose own family experienced some of the horrors of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. The main character, Hope Winterfield, and her husband make their living as antique dealers in Texas when her elder brother, Robert, a doctor with HIV, convinces them to move with their three daughters to the LA area to help him out. Because their antique business is not doing well and she wants to help her brother, they move, thinking that if it does not work out, they can move back to Texas.

Robert has an ex, Anthony, who is also his business partner, who hates Robert’s new love, the charming, handsome, younger man, Cody. Hope takes the job Robert has offered her, only to discover the dynamics surrounding the job, her brother, friends she has known for years, and many others are nearly overwhelming and that quite often nothing is as it seems. Added to all this is Hope’s difficult mother who often denies the realities of her own life. This is the tale of a family and complicated family dynamics where the main characters have to decide what it most important in life and what they should value the most and fight for.

Book 32 for 2025: “My Name Is Emilia del Valle”, Isabel Allende

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The last two books of hers that I read were set in the more recent times when Salvador Allende and later Pinochet were presidents of Chile. This one dates back to the 1800s and the Chilean Civil War. In 1866 a nun of Irish descent living in San Francisco has a passionate affair with a Chilean aristocrat and becomes pregnant. He abandons her; their daughter becomes the woman in the title of this novel. She is raised by a loving step father, an intellectual teacher from whom she learns to be independent and defy societal norms. At a young age she becomes the writer of short pulp fiction novels using a fake male name. The income from these helps her family live a reasonably good life.

Bored with writing these lucrative little books, she convinces a San Francisco newspaper to hire her as a journalist where she works along with a more seasoned journalist, Eric Whelan. Eventually, the two are sent to Chile to cover the civil war and violence occurring there. She sees this as not only an opportunity to satisfy her adventurous spirit but also an opportunity to find her biological father. She encounters dangers, almost gets killed, and sets off to find herself in the far southern reaches of the Chilean wilderness, learning from the indigenous people who live there how to survive in remote mountains.

Note: One of the places she goes was nearly impossible for non indigenous people to find during the 1800s and many never made it. Today, it is a popular area for hiking, camping, and exploring nature.

Book 29 for 2025: “Hang the Moon”, Jeannette Walls

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I had only read her memoir, “The Glass Castle”, previously and remember thinking, wow, even some intelligent, educated people can have very different ideas about how to live. I was looking for a book to read and found this novel, her most recent book published in 2023, at the local library.

The main character, Sallie Kincaid, is the daughter of the wealthiest man in a small town, well even the county, and he runs everyone and everything there. Sallie remembers little of her mother and knows little about what happened to her except she died after a violent argument with her father. He remarries and has a son. Sallie tries to teach him to be bold like she and her father are. This results in a horrible accident and her stepmother demands she leave. Her dad sends her to live with the poor sister of her mother where she remains until she is seventeen. Her dad sends an old friend from her childhood to bring her back to his place, the biggest, grandest house in the county.

It is Prohibition and ways of making a living that have always existed in this area of the mountain Southeast is now illegal. Slavery is over and women can vote but for most life has changed very little. Her stepmom dies, unforeseen tragedies occur, people are not who she thinks they are, and one awful thing after another ensues. This is one of those novels you keep reading because you want to know what happens. It is the story of Sallie Kincaid, a very strong, determined woman who survives and even thrives no matter what.

Book 27 for 2025: “Violeta”, Isabel Allende

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Although technically not a sequel, “Violeta” seems to be a sort of sequel to “A Long Petal of the Sea”. If you are interested in Chilean history just before, during, and after the demise of Chilean president Salvador Allende and the horrors of Pinochet’s rule which the CIA helped to implement, this novel is for you.

This is the story of one woman, Violeta, told from her viewpoint via a long memoir written for and to her grandson. She begins life as the youngest child of a wealthy businessman whose poor and risky decisions lead to the family’s downfall, forcing them to escape to the remote, far southern regions of the country. It is the tale of a strong, passionate, determined woman who lived a lifestyle far ahead of her time, other family members, the far right Hitler sympathizing German farmers who immigrated to the far south, and others she knew including a renegade pilot who flew contraband and “prisoners” for various nefarious groups. Although not a murder mystery or a work of fiction that could be called adventurous, the story of Violeta’s life is so fascinating that I kept wanting to read on and on.

Book 23 for 2025: “A Long Petal of the Sea”, Isabel Allende

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If you do not want to read history books but want to know some history, many of Isabel Allende’s novels will be perfect for you. The title of this one comes from Pablo Neruda; it is what he called his native land, Chile. Each chapter begins with a quote from several of his poems. The novel begins during the Spanish Civil War; one of the main characters, Victor Dalmau, is a medic for the Republican side. He and Roser, a pregnant young widow who was married to Victor’s brother who is killed, have to escape Spain to save themselves. The novel details their struggles crossing into France, how they are forced to marry in order to board the SSWinnipeg, a ship commissioned by Pablo Neruda to help Spanish refugees emigrate to Chile. With 2000 other passengers they arrive in Chile and make the best of their new life. World War II breaks out and their hope of returning to Spain diminishes.

Victor becomes a successful doctor, their lives become intertwined with that of a prominent Chilean family, Roser becomes a famous musician, traveling back and forth to Venezuela, and the socialist government of Salvador Allende is overthrown in a military coup with the aide of the US. Then Pinochet’s reign of terror comes, once again civil unrest affecting their lives.

The novel demonstrates how little control people sometimes have over what happens to them, how some are better at dealing with adversity than others, and how lies are eventually discovered. It is also a testament to personal character and strength.

Note: Isabel Allende’s father was a distant cousin to Salvatore Allende.

Book 26 for 2024: “The Burgess Boys”, Elizabeth Strout

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After winning the Pulitzer for her previous book, “Olive Kitteridge”, Strout continues her stories about people and families from a small town in Maine, the town of Shirley Falls. “The Burgess Boys” focuses on one family, the Burgesses. A freak accident which occurred when the children were under the age of ten has affected all their lives in one form or another. The boys, Jim and Bob–both lawyers, escaped to NYC as quickly as they could. Only their sister remained behind in Shirley Falls in the old family home which has become a rather dark and dismal place. Jim, a hyper successful, high powered attorney, has demeaned his younger brother Bob, a Legal Aid attorney, all their lives. The lifelong family dynamic is totally upended when the sister, Susan, calls them back for a family emergency after her teenage son commits a stupid, heinous act and gets himself in serious legal trouble.

Strout possesses a simple, straight forward, unique style of writing that seems perfect for telling family stories, illuminating human personal struggles, and illustrating the good and bad of modern life. If you have not read any of her work before, I suggest looking at the publication dates and reading them in order. The same characters keep reappearing and you learn about their lives as you go from book to book.