Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides (London: Bloomsbury, 2002)

“You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there’s it’s only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you’re time-travelling. In this life we grow backwards.”

A big, bold, hilarious saga that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family from 1920s Greece to Detroit in the swinging 60s to contemporary Berlin. The narrator of this epic tale is Calliope, whose grandparents’ unusual union meant that she was born a girl but, thanks to a rare genetic mutation, grows into a man – Cal, now 41, is recording his/her life story for science and posterity. Superbly detailed descriptions of people and places make them feel incredibly real and specific, but the themes explored by this imaginative book (race, war, religion, sexuality, gender, the immigrant experience) are universal.

Read an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides by Jonathan Safran Foer here.

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson (New York: Farrar, Strouss and Giroux, 2004)

“You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

Set in a small town in Iowa in 1956, and taking the form of dairy entries to his young son, Gilead tells the story of Reverend John Ames, a preacher in his 70s who knows he doesn’t have long to live. Ames mixes tales of everyday life, memories, and reflections about God with the history of his father and grandfather, both also preachers, during the American Civil War and WWI. Although slow-paced, this is a powerful book, revealing the old man’s deep religious beliefs and profound love for his family through simple prose and gentle humour.  Deserving winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.



Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook here.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett (New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009)

“I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.”

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel looks at the relationships between white women and their African-American maids in early 1960s Mississippi. The story is narrated in turn by Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young university graduate who has returned to her hometown to find a job as a  journalist; Aibileen Clark, a maid and nanny employed by one of Skeeter’s good friends; and Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s best friend who keeps losing jobs as a maid because of her sass. All three women must work to complete interviews for a secret book about the lives of “the help” and their role within the  families that employ them as the atmosphere of dangerous racial intolerance in Jackson heats up around them. Stockett uses plenty of convincing Southern vernacular (Law, sho’ nuff, y’all) to convey a strong sense of time and place, and the tone of this piece of historical fiction remains optimistic despite its serious themes.

Visit Kathryn Stockett’s official website here.

March

by Geraldine Brooks (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005)

“Her face weary but smiling. I felt the grip of her will like a gaff plunged deep in me: she had been determined to see this day. She would have me back in the boat, she would keep this craft, our family, afloat, together, not matter how damaged my state, or her own, no matter how uncertain the seas.”

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, March retells Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women from the point of view of the girls' absent father, an abolitionist chaplain whose conscience forces him to leave his family in New England to serve in the American Civil War. Captain March’s journey spans several decades and covers, through flashbacks, time spent in the South before the war and his subsequent courtship of his beloved Marmee, as well as the brutality and injustices he witnesses both on and off the battlefield in 1862. The second part of this historical love story is told by Marmee herself, who nurses March back to health in Washington then brings him home, where he must reconnect with his daughters who have no idea what he has been through. The misunderstandings and sacrifices that characterise the March’s married life are described in affecting detail, and Brooks’ use of contemporary letters and journals as source material lends a sense of real period accuracy.

Click here find out more about American Civil War in literature.