Современная зарубежная литература
Различные книги в жанре Современная зарубежная литератураOld Heart
Tom Johnson has turned 85 and has suffered a few “events,” though he knows his mind is sharp. His oldest son, who had Down Syndrome has died, and his remaining two children want to move him out of the homestead lake house and into a retirement home in town. What Tom wants to do is to find the only woman he ever loved, a woman he met in the Netherlands where he was stationed during World War II.And so he slips away, deftly covers his tracks, and begins his search for her in Eindhoven. While his children try to track him down and then have him extradited back home, Tom delves into love and loss and the value of memory. Soon he catches sight of a woman he believes to be Sarah, the love he lost almost a lifetime ago.He will have to fight for her affections and forgiveness, even as he fights for the legal right to stay in the Netherlands in the name of love and family and all the remaining rights of an old man.
The Metal Shredders
John Bonner is sure that anytime now he will recover from the sting of his recent separation from his wife. And he’s begun to wonder if he truly wants to spend the rest of his days running the family scrap-metal business, an operation where his employees are likely to have made the very license plates they now shred. His sister, Octavia, has just returned to Ohio from Boston to nurture the pain of her own broken relationship, and she is more certain: Following in the footsteps of their imperious father is a recipe for emotional disaster.But then two of John’s more eccentric workmen discover thousands of dollars stashed in the trunk of a car, the remains of a drug deal gone bad. The question of what to do with this unexpected cash draws John and his sister into the lives of their newfound collaborators, and sends them all on a surprising journey of high jinx and the heart.In The Metal Shredders, Nancy Zafris offers up a refreshingly wise, offbeat, and thoroughly convincing look at blue-collar America. Hers is a world rich in humor, steeped in closely held traditions, and filled with gently endearing, slightly crazed characters trying to discover just who they are. In the process they discover much about love, loyalty, family obligation, class—and yes, scrap.
What Changes Everything
Masha Hamilton’s fifth novel, What Changes Everything, is truly an American story, an exploration of our twisted, misguided, generous relationship with an enigmatic country. And it is told by a novelist of extraordinary talent who currently works in Afghanistan.What Changes Everything is the story of Clarissa who, in a gamble to save her kidnapped husband’s life, makes the best decisions she can in the dark nights of Brooklyn, boldly rejecting the advice of US authorities and against the wishes of her husband’s grown daughter. It is also the story of Stela, who owns a used bookstore in Ohio and writes letter after letter in hopes both of comprehending the loss of a son on an Afghan battlefield and of connecting with son who abandoned her in anger when his brother died. It is the story of Mandy, the mother of a gravely wounded soldier from Texas, a mother deeply saddened but somehow hopeful who travels to Kabul to heal wounds of several kinds. It is the story of Danil, an angry Brooklyn street artist whose life was derailed by a loss in this incomprehensible war half a world away. And it’s the story of Todd, a career aid
The Death of Fidel Perez
On July 26, 2003, the 50th anniversary of the Moncada Army Barracks raid in Santiago de Cuba, something unexpected happens. When Fidel Pérez and his brother accidentally tumble to their deaths from their Havana balcony, the neighbors’ outcry, “Fidel has fallen,” is misinterpreted by those who hear it. The misinformation quickly ripples outward, and it reawakens the city. Three Cubans in particular are affected by the news—an elderly vagrant Saturnina, Professor Pedro Valle, and his student Camilo—all haunted by the past and now forced to confront a new future, perhaps another revolution. Their stories are beautifully intertwined as they converge in the frantic crowd that gathers in La Plaza de la Revolución. By turns humorous and deeply poignant, The Death of Fidel Pérez reflects on the broken promises of the Cuban Revolution and reveals the heart of a people with a long collective memory.
Love Slave
A literary novel set in 1995 New York, Love Slave follows Sybil Weatherfield—her generation’s Dorothy Parker—and her strange friends as they defy chick-lit expectations (though they’re unaware that they’re doing so). Sybil is an office temp by day and a columnist by night for New York Shock, a chatty rag (her column is called “Abscess,” which is a wound that never heals). Her friends include a paper-pusher for a human rights organization, and the lead singer of a local rock band called Glass Half Empty. Full of cultural detail, mid-nineties observations, and early adulthood anxieties, it’s ultimately an ironic look at what it means to be a love slave.
The Bird Saviors
When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds: She must abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist–a field biologist studies the decline of bird populations. All the while, a growing criminal enterprise moves from cattle rustling to kidnapping to hijacking fuel tankers and murder as events spin out of control,.Set in a time of economic turmoil, virus fears, climate change, fundamentalist cults and illegal immigrant hardship, The Bird Saviors is a visionary story of defiance, anger, and compassion, in which a young woman ultimately struggles to free herself from her domineering father, to raise her daughter in the chaos of the New West, and to become something greater herself.
These Things Happen
A domestic story told in numerous original and endearing voices. The story opens with Wesley, a tenth grader, and involves his two sets of parents (the mom and her second husband, a very thoughtful doctor; and the father who has become a major gay lawyer/activist and his fabulous «significant other» who owns a restaurant).Wesley is a fabulous kid, whose equally fabulous best friend Theo has just won a big school election and simultaneously surprises everyone in his life by announcing that he is gay. No one is more surprised than Wesley, who actually lives temporarily with his gay father and partner, so that he can get to know his rather elusive dad. When a dramatic and unexpected trauma befalls the boys in school, all the parents converge noisily in love and well-meaning support. But through it all, each character ultimately is made to face certain challenges and assumptions within his/her own life, and the playing out of their respective life priorities and decisions is what makes this novel so endearing and so special.
Rocket City
Marilee journeys from Los Angeles to New Mexico to surprise her fiancé, Larry, who has taken a job on the Alamogordo Air Force Base to gain, in one of his antithetical Zen experiments, an understanding of peace. Sympathy for Enoch, a hitchhiking dwarf, disrupts her orderly plans. In a separate voyage, Figman, an insurance claims adjuster on the run, relocates to New Mexico after surviving a lethal car crash that results in an unfair lawsuit against him. Now prone to migraines and the conviction that he is dying, Figman embarks on new adventures. Late in the novel, these two distinct love stories converge on a highway in near collision.
Hollywood Boulevard
Ardennes Thrush is an award winning movie star who has suddenly and mysteriously quit acting at the height of her fame. She is in Hollywood, at the Hotel Muse, visiting Andre, her husband, who is a world-renowned director and is at work on his latest movie. Ardennes, a contemplative woman, is a bit of a voyeur, and as she watches the comings and goings in the hotel, she begins to realize that something is strange; perhaps she is being stalked. When a box of dead flowers arrives she calls the police. And when the detective arrives to investigate, their attraction is immediate, powerful, and quickly carnal.After their first encounter, desire, guilt and fear combine in Ardennes, and the tension rises in the strange, labyrinthine Hotel Muse. Then her stalker arrives at the door of her suite, pulls a gun, forces Ardennes to leave and locks her in a closet. While the detective searches for the actress, we watch rapt as Ardennes, in the darkest of narrow straits, not only tries to free herself but also ponders why this is happening to her, how she brought herself here, and what all the men in her life have had to do with it.At once a noir novel and a psychological thriller about the complicated emotions of a beautiful, modern celebrity, Hollywood Boulevard is downright compelling. And Ardennes Thrush is a character that readers won’t be able to take their eyes off of.
A Santo in the Image of Cristobal Garcia
The gentle-hearted Flavio Montoya returns,now as the aged scion of his family, still tendinghis sister Ramona’s fields and wondering how allof his family could have died before him. Whenthe mountains surrounding Guadalupe erupt inflames, the history of the village seems to be setloose in the smoke. The dead arrive and the silentspeak. When Flavio is accused of starting the firethat quickly threatens to consume the village, thedisaster becomes one more mystery that he mustfold into his own memory, though he cannot quiteunderstand any of it.A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García is abeautiful, funny, even epic tale of how all history isfinally personal.