Book Recommendations
Three Books I've Recently Read
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by VE Schwab, starts in France in the early 1700’s. A young woman in a small town wants to see more of the world. Her parents want her to marry and stay in town and do what everyone else does, but she can’t take it. She runs from her arranged marriage on the wedding day and retreats to the woods. Here she prays to any god who will listen, but the only one who does is a “god that listens after dark,” which she has been warned about. She wants freedom, and he gives it to her, but it comes with a curse. She will live until she asks the god to be released, and then he will have her soul. But while she lives, nobody will remember her from the moment she steps out of their sight.
It’s a wonderful story that moves through the centuries and ends up in modern times, with Addie trying to figure out how to survive, to make the best of her odd life, and to hopefully find a way out of her predicament. I loved it.
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, is a wonderful story about two children growing up at the beginning of World War II. An orphan in Germany becomes an expert at building and repairing radios. This saves him from a life as a coal miner, but puts him in the action of the war. A blind girl in France has to move in with her uncle. The Germans occupy the town, and his big transmitting radio in the attic becomes contraband. Her life and the boy’s life dance around each other and finally intertwine. It’s a great story!
Does everyone already know about The Handmaid’s Tale? I just finished it, and if you haven’t read it, it’s a winner. It’s a bit creepy, because there are some striking parallels to today’s politics. This is a dystopian story where women are subjugated completely, with the excuse being that fertility levels have dropped due to pollution. Authoritarianism has run amok, and it started with denying women access to money. Nobody but the elite are free in this story, and even they live in a system that isn’t exactly what they hoped for. It’s a warning, like 1984, and a prescient one, as it was written in 1985. If you are in the mood for a well-written dystopian novel that will make you think, give this one a read.
I hope one of these is a good recommendation for you. You can see more at my bookshop link, where I have four lists of books: Novels I love, Sailing Books, Books About Writing, and Other Books Recommended on my Podcasts. Check it out!