April 2020

472 Main St., Ridgefield, CT 06877—203/438-2282—www.ridgefieldlibrary.org

Since 1944, the goal of the Notable Books Council of the American Library Association has been to make available to the nation’s readers a list of 25 very good, very readable, and at times very important fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books for the adult reader. These are the 2020 fiction selections. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. A performing arts high school serves as a backdrop for young love and its aftermath, exposing persistent social issues in a manner that never lets the reader off the hook.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. A gifted young man, born into slavery, becomes the conduit for the emancipation of his people in this meditative testament to the power of memory.

The Innocents by Michael Crummey. On an isolated cove along the Newfoundland coastline, the lives of two orphaned siblings unfold against a harsh, relentless, and unforgiving landscape.

Dominicana by Angie Cruz. In this vivid and timely portrait of immigration, a young woman summons the courage to carve out a place for herself in 1960s New York.

Everything Inside: Stories by Edwidge Danticat. This searingly emotional collection explores the complexities of the Haitian diaspora.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. A sweeping look at black British life through a symphony of female voices, young and old, conventional and iconoclastic.

Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. This debut collection captures and preserves the beauty in the lives of Latinas of indigenous descent working through change, violence, love, and family in a gentrifying Denver and the American West.

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner. This stylistically complex novel opens in 1990s Kansas and delves into themes including relationships, aggression, and masculinity.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. A summer road trip captures a moment when both a country and a family are in danger of splitting in two in this meditation on the immigration crisis and the role of artists bearing witness.

Lanny by Max Porter. This is the story of an English village, three people, and a child around which everything revolves. Inventive, raw and insightful, it is more to be experienced than just read.

Normal People by Sally Rooney. Two Irish high school students take up an intense relationship that wavers between love and friendship as they move on to college. The deceptively simple style plumbs the depths of human nature in a coming-of-age story of uncommon grace and power.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. In a letter from a son to his mother who cannot read, Little Dog unearths a family’s history rooted in Vietnam, also revealing his journey of self discovery.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. This powerful and unforgiving portrait of a school for boys in Florida sheds light on the cruel and dehumanizing legacy of the Jim Crow Era.

Lily King Novelist Lily King writes intimate and

perceptive character studies about young women and their families. With acute

psychological details, nuanced observations, and insightful discussions of complex emotions these leisurely paced stories examine how young women deal with

dysfunctional families, haunting memories, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment. King's

vivid, evocative, and lyrical prose is simple and direct, but it conveys both powerful and

subtle moments with keen precision. Writers & Lovers (2020) See Staff Picks Euphoria (2014) In King's nationally bestselling breakout novel three young, gifted anthropologists of the '30's are caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives. Inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. Father of the Rain (2010) Gardiner Amory is a New England WASP who is beginning to feel the cracks in his empire. Nixon is about to be impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life carefully negotiating her parents' conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, decadent, liquor-soaked life of her father. As she grows into adulthood, Daley rejects the narrow world that nourished her father's fears and prejudices, and embarks on her own separate life, until he hits rock bottom. The English Teacher (2005) Lily King's novel is a story about an independent woman and her fifteen-year-old son, and the truth she has long concealed from him. Fifteen years ago Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at elite Fayer Academy. She has since become a fixture and one of the best teachers Fayer has ever had. By living on campus, on an island off the New England coast, Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the outside world and from an inside secret. Annotations from BookLetters, Novelist, and ALA Notable Books.

Fiction News The Ridgefield Library’s Fiction Newsletter

Fiction in Hoopla ALA Notable Books 2020

Trace Elements: A Commissario Guido Brunetti

Mystery by Donna Leon. A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice

lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire

region in Donna Leon’s haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti

novel.

These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card.

A transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a

Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations. These

Ghosts Are Family explores the ways each character

wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent

identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result

is an engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught

in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more

personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.

Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré. After 25 years of recruiting and running double agents in Eastern Europe, Nat, a veteran M16 operative, fears that

he is about to be retired from the field. Offered the chance to try and turn around a hapless substation nicknamed the Haven, Nat reluctantly agrees, only to find himself facing

three simultaneous crises: his talented, but rebellious, second-in-command quits when her promising Ukrainian

project is mysteriously canceled by higher-ups, the Russians become suspicious of one of Nat's sleeper

agents, and most troubling of all, his young seemingly innocent badminton partner, appears to be involved in a treasonous plot. A master of the long

game, and outmaneuvering his superiors, Nat uses all of his persuasive powers and geopolitical experience to mount a counter offensive. Similarly,

le Carré uses this sophisticated spy novel to vent his indignation at the resurgence of Russian power three decades after the end of the Cold War.

Apeirogon by Colum McCann. McCann’s thought-provoking and moving new novel is based on the lives Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin. Rami is an Israeli whose 13-year-old daughter Smadar was killed in a suicide bombing. Bassam is a Palestinian whose 10-year daughter Abir was killed after being struck by a rubber bullet. Bound by loss, the two men became close friends and went on to co-found Combatants for Peace in 2007. In 1,001 chapters,

McCann incorporates ruminations on history, nature, and art as he immerses the reader in the human toll of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the stories of these men and their families. In the words of The New York Times Book Review, “Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener….

Writers & Lovers by Lily King. Casey Peabody is a 31 year-old writer who feels she needs to take a detour from the current trajectory of her life. She

mourns the sudden death of her mother, she has been working on the same novel for six years, her love life is in

turmoil, and even her job as a waitress in an upscale restaurant is in jeopardy. As she feels her life unraveling,

she is torn between the romantic attentions of an established older writer and a struggling young one, and she questions

what price she is willing to pay to pursue her art. With both humor and compassion, King provides a pitch perfect portrayal a young

woman trying to define her self-worth and her place in the world.

The Ridgefield Library’s FICTION Newsletter– Page 2

(Annotations from NoveList and BookLetters)

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. A historical novel based on the life of the National

Book Award-winning author’s grandfather traces the experiences of a Chippewa Council night watchman in mid-19th-century rural North Dakota who fights Congress to enforce Native American treaty rights.

Actress by Anne Enright. Katherine O'Dell is an Irish theater legend. As her daughter, Norah, retraces her mother's celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-kept secrets, both her mother's and her own. Enright takes readers to the heart of the maddening yet tender love that binds a mother and daughter.

Greenwood by Michael Christie. A magnificent generational saga that charts a

family's rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, and the conflicted relationship with the source of its

fortune–trees. From one of Canada's most acclaimed novelists. Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-

dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood, and blood–and the hopeful,

impossible task of growing toward the light.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler. The single mother of a mixed-race college student and a thriving business owner with a troubled daughter clash over a historic oak tree on their property line and the blossoming romance between their children.

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel. Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall. She traces the final years of

Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining

portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making

itself through conflict, passion, and courage.

The King’s Justice: A Maggie Hope Mystery by Susan Elia MacNeal. Can a stolen violin lead secret agent and spy Maggie Hope to a new serial killer terrorizing London? Maggie Hope started out as Winston Churchill's secretary, but now she's a secret agent–and the only one who can figure out how the missing instrument ties into the murders.

Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman. "Separation Anxiety is a hilarious, heartbreaking and thought-provoking portrait of a difficult marriage, as

fierce as it is funny.... My advice: Start reading and don't stop until you get to the last page of this wise

and wonderful novel.”–Alice Hoffman

For a more extensive list of new fiction, mystery, and science fiction and fantasy titles, visit our website at www.ridgefieldlibrary.org

New Fiction

Dorothy’s Picks

Staff Picks

Elise’s Pick