15. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Changez is the best Pakistan has to offer the world, brilliant, handsome, ambitious. Nothing can go wrong for him; he sprints through Princeton, best in his class, and easily obtains the best job in New York City and a beautiful American girlfriend.

And then 9/11 happens and everything does go wrong.

It’s the way this story is written that is so wonderful. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written with Changez speaking directly to an unidentified American in Pakistan, a conversation, a dialogue really, that extends the entire length of the book. It felt like Changez was talking directly to me, the reader, confiding in me the animosities, the hurts, the frustrations of those who grow up outside America’s borders.

Changez reveals the differences between himself, the outsider, and Americans. He tells us he has come to “savor the denial of gratification.” He is irritated with Americans and the “ease with which they spent money”, their “self-righteousness”. He admires his own ability to function both “respectfully and with self-respect,” something he sees Americans as unable to do. He resents Americans, who did not even exist as a people while his ancestors were building a rich civilization.

And what an ending. It’s been a long time since I read a book with such a powerful and satisfying ending.

11. So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor

 There are so many ways to begin this review, but, then, that’s always the hard part, isn’t it…beginning…. This is a book I want to shove in the hands of every reader I meet. “Read this one,” I might coax cajolingly. “It’s good. You’ll like it.”   Like the characters in this book, I have a hard time saying what I want to say. What I really want to say is that McGregor knows how to tell a story, not start to finish, but in little pieces, some from the middle of the story, one or two from near the beginning, and a few from the end. Somehow he manages to connect all the pieces together to make a whole puzzle; it is only when you look at it closely that you realize he has left whole chunks out, but it doesn’t matter at all.  

What I really want to say is that McGregor is—what—thirty? and yet he gets life, he gets marriage, he gets children, he gets grandchildren even. He sees the big picture in a way that most of us haven’t quite gotten at fifty, the sadnesses, the tiny bubbles of complete joy, the deep disappointments, the way we can turn mean, how we can forget with time, how hard it is to tell our stories, how hard it is even to know where to start.

Take care,

Debbie Nance

10. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Queen (yes, that’s the Queen of England) unexpectedly drops into a bookmobile and unexpectedly develops a love, a passion for reading.

That’s the whole plot behind this tiny novel.

And does she ever become a better person. She found, as she read more and more, that she could put herself into the place of someone else, that she could understand the feelings of others. “’At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,’ she said, ‘they tenderize one.’”

She grows to loath her other duties. Her meetings with the Prime Minister are tedious. She finds reading the opposite of briefings, she tells him. “Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”

But no one likes her reading. Reading made others uneasy. A conversation between the Queen and her private secretary:

“’I feel, ma’am, that while not exactly elitist it sends the wrong message. It tends to exclude.’

‘Exclude? Surely most people can read?’

‘They can read, ma’am, but I’m not sure that they do.’”

In the end, the Queen turns to writing, but books have had their say.

A fun little story for those of us who love books.