Liz's Ten Best of the Year (and so much better than Gianna's....)

Okay, to know me is to know how competitive I am, and it matters to me that almost 100 people clicked on Gianna’s Top 10 list. I know that people like Gianna…it’s just that I’m counting on you all to like me more. Don’t let me down, Liz Fans.

Here they are, my favorite books of the year from the side of the company I sell. Certainly there are books on Gianna’s side that I loved (Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, for example), but she stuck to her side, I’ll stick to mine. If we were on The Brady Bunch, we’d stick a stripe of masking tape down the middle of our bedroom. Without further ado:

1. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer. My favorite book of 2010 happened to be a book I read almost a full year ago, yet it still lingers in my mind and few stories have measured up to this epic. The novel tells the story of a family of Hungarian brothers during the 30’s and 40’s; it’s a love story, a war story, a Holocaust story, a family saga, a thriller, and a page turner. If there’s any justice at all in the world, this is the book that every book club in the country will be reading when the paperback releases in January. In 1937, Andras Levi travels to Paris to study architecture, where he meets and eventually falls in love with a Hungarian expatriate dancer. As World War II approaches, though, the couple must return to Hungary to renew their visas, a process complicated by the Nazi invasion of their country. Jews trapped in a Nazi-occupied country, Andras is reunited with his older brother, a medical student studying in Italy, and his younger brother, an actor who had opted to remain in Budapest, is shipped out to the Russian front. The story becomes one of survival and the strength of family as they fight to stay together. There are a ton of World War II books out there, but this one stands apart. The writing is impeccable and at so many points in her sweeping story Orringer could have taken a misstep, but the novel stays on track at every turn. If you like architecture, European history, love stories, adventure tales, family dramas, it’s all here. I simply love this book.

2. To the End of the Land by David Grossman. This pilgrimage story of three friends struggling to deal with the horrors of war should appear on every best of the year list. Grossman’s haunting novel chronicles the history of Israel and the personal costs of the continuing conflicts in that young nation through the intimate and immediate story of Ora, a mother panicked that her younger son will die at his military checkpoint, and the trip she takes walking across the country with an old family friend traumatized by the war in 1967. The novel is made all the more incredible because David Grossman’s own son died in the Israeli army as Grossman was finishing a draft of this book.



This cat is not a tiger.

3. The Tiger by John Vaillant. Two topics about which I’m obsessed—cats and Russia. How could I not love a book that involves both? This masterful account of an actual man-eating tiger hunting down villagers in the outer reaches of the already remote Siberia, and how the largest land predators struggle for survival in the face of increasing threats is a must read. Vaillant skillfully describes the conditions that surrounded this one incident of big cat/human relations (nothing like envisioning the remains of your hunting buddy fitting into a duffle bag) as well as the greater tribulations involved in surviving in Russia, both humans and tigers.

Jennifer Egan signs books
 at Texas Book Festival.

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I’ve already written on this little blog of ours that I believe that this book at least should have been nominated for the National Book Award, and the more that I think about it, the more it strikes me as truly brilliant. Linked stories loosely centering on a record executive, what distinguishes Goon Squad is the quality of Egan’s prose and her truly inventive experimentation with form without resorting to clever trickery or losing emotional resonance. There’s an argument to be made that Jennifer Egan is one of the ten best American writers working right now.

5. The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr. Fans of Erik Larsson and Devil in the White City take note—Douglas Starr’s newest book is every bit as good. Around the same time that H. Holmes was terrorizing the Chicago Fair, a serial killing vagrant named Joseph Vacher was wandering across France and leaving a trail of blood behind. A forensics expert named Alexandre Lacassagne worked diligently to link together the series of far-ranging murders (this in the days when police departments in neighboring towns, let alone across 1,000 miles of territory, didn’t share information) and in the process revolutionized the science of police detection. The Killer of Little Shepherds is a blend of history, true crime, and CSI thriller, and a terrific page turner. As an aside, an Italian rival of Lacassagne promoted the practice of phrenology (skull-measuring) as a means of determining criminal predilection, and based on my not-so-extensive knowledge of the practice I’m going to covertly measure Gianna’s head at our office holiday party; that woman is hiding something sinister.

6. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. The quirkiest novel I read this year is also one of the best. An adult fairy tale of sorts, this coming of age novel pushes the boundaries for family dysfunction and the angst and turmoil associated with being different. On her birthday, nine year-old Rose Edelstein discovers that she can taste the emotions of the people who prepare the food she eats, from her mother’s sadness to her outcast brother’s rage. Her brother, too, develops his own special gift. The empathy of children and the isolation of adolescence have never been told quite like this magical, haunting story.

7. How to Live by Sarah Bakewell. Already named to several best lists in Bakewell’s native United Kingdom, this philosophical meandering into the life and works of Montaigne takes a novel and accessible approach to the man who invented the concept of the essay. By asking the simple question “How to live?” and then answering it in a variety of ways pulling from Montaigne’s life and writing, Bakewell portrays a human, personable, flawed, funny, honest man who was at peace with the contradictions in his life. Four hundred years after he lived, Montaigne is made fresh, vibrant, and relevant to modern life in this enlightening book.

8. The Wave by Susan Casey. Waves are arguably the most destructive force on the planet, swallowing huge tanker ships and washing over oil rigs when the monsters really get to rolling. Half of Susan Casey’s book is a scientific exploration of the destructive power of monster waves, and the other half is a love letter to the thrilling world of big wave surfing and the (crazy?) surfers attempting to cruise upon the tops of 100 foot water walls. The Wave is fine adventure writing.

Anne Hathaway
and Jim Sturgess

9. One Day by David Nicholls. Rarely do I find myself so caught up in a story that centers around, well, love. Oh, and I dislike books that have gimmicky hooks in their storytelling because the gimmick often replaces the character development or emotional impact of a work. I really probably should have hated One Day. It’s a novel about Dexter and Emma, who go on one date in college, become friends, fall in love with others, and then fall in love with each other. It’s a novel with a gimmick—each chapter tells the couple’s story on one day, July 15th, over 20 years. It works, though. It’s not silly or forced, and the characters are compelling. I was rooting for them even as they made mistakes, and the whole time I was reading One Day, I kept thinking, “they have to make a movie out of this book.” Well, they are, and it’s starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess (he's dreamy).

10. Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides. I already knew the outcome, I already knew many of the details of the plot, so I was shocked at how suspenseful this history of the Muther Luther King Jr. assassination turned out to be. James Earl Ray, King’s killer, is a fascinating, horrifying figure, and the details of his crime and flight from the FBI read like the best thrillers. Oh, and there were a lot of things I DIDN’T already know. Did you know that James Earl Ray was an escaped convict at the time of the assassination? Or that he tried to break into the pornographic film business in Mexico and LA? This is riveting reading of great historical significance as well as a high action true crime story of the first order. Good stuff.

Reach Out and Touch (the Essence of) Someone

This Tuesday David Grossman's new novel, TO THE END OF THE LAND, goes on sale in the United States, published by Knopf. Grossman is a writer of worldwide critical acclaim and deserves a wider readership in this country (he's a bestseller in Israel, where he lives).

I sold this book to my bookstores months ago, and even though Knopf offered a special promotional allowance to encourage booksellers to take a chance on a long novel from a writer with slow sales in this country (his books were previously published by Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux), it was a struggle to convince stores that this book was something special, a book among books during the busy fall publishing season. And then Nicole Krauss, author of THE HISTORY OF LOVE and the upcoming GREAT HOUSE, supplied a blurb for Grossman's novel.

I myself am not much of a blurb reader. Publishers go to great lengths to secure praise-filled quotes from other established authors and supposedly these endorsements sway booksellers and the public to read a book they might otherwise have overlooked. I almost never read the blurbs myself and barely pay them any attention at all, except that they have become so ubiquitous that I do notice the emptiness of book jackets lacking quotes; they seem naked without the blurb. So for several weeks during the late spring/early summer, a stack of advance reading copies (ARCs) of TO THE END OF THE LAND sat in a stack in my office and I never even noticed the author blurb on the front cover. Then the book media did take note of the blurb.

“Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling, of existence itself, has opened in you that was not there before. To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude. David Grossman may be the most gifted writer I've ever read; gifted not just because of his imagination, his energy, his originality, but because he has access to the unutterable, because he can look inside a person and discover the unique essence of her humanity. For twenty-six years he has been writing novels about what it means to defend this essence, this unique light, against a world designed to extinguish it. To the End of the Land is his most powerful, shattering, and unflinching story of this defense. To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence; it is to be turned back, as if after a long absence, into a human being.”

Krauss was mocked for her ridiculous rave, with some book industry folks even questioning whether such an over-the-top endorsement would ultimately hurt review and media attention--not to mention readers'--for an otherwise worthy novel. I don't know about the rest of the country, but I can say that in poking fun at the Krauss quote, suddenly my booksellers paid attention to what is a long, literary work dealing with tough subjects in a country Americans seem to typically avoid (at least in literature). So thank you, Nicole Krauss, for letting a book touch at the place of your own essence; while I've never allowed a book to take such liberties with my essence, I admire your courage in admitting how TO THE END OF THE LAND changed your life.

Is this book as good as Krauss suggests? YES. It is a powerful odyssey of family, loss, sacrifice, and war, set in a country that has seen nothing but conflict since its founding. TO THE END OF THE LAND is the story of Ora, a woman estranged from her husband Ilan and the mother of Ofer, a son who unexpectedly re-enlists in the Israeli army when violence erupts between Israel and Palestine. Convinced that she will lose Ofer too, she flees her home, the constant media updates about the violence, and her chatty neighbors, and decides to take a pilgrimage through Galilee. She is not entirely alone on her journey, though; she convinces an old friend, Avram, to join her. Avram, a former POW of the Yom Kippur War who struggles with post-traumatic stress after he was tortured, is not the most obvious--or stable--walking companion, but as they walk across the countryside, Ora tells Avram the story of her family and her son Ofer. She is convinced that Ofer will die while standing guard at his checkpoint, but in telling his story to Avram, she is able to keep her imagined terror in check.

TO THE END OF THE LAND is indeed an incredibly moving book, one that has stuck in my head for months after reading it. Like all Israelis of a certain age, too, Grossman's own children served their stint in the military, and this real-life parallel will increase the media attention for this worthy novel. Indeed, the New York Times Book Review will give TO THE END OF THE LAND its coveted cover review slot next week. I can only hope that readers discover this wonderful novel themselves and possibly even allow it to change their lives...or even write semi-vulgar blurbs praising its essence.