CityView Magazine

38 | Januar y 2020 Russia, the CIA plotted to smuggle the book out. It makes its way into print around the world, and copies also get back into Russia. ese women helped make it happen! "Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving" by Mo Rocca Mo Rocca is a writer, radio and TV humorist and an actor. He says he has always loved reading obituaries about well-known people who changed the world. But he felt that not every notable life got the journalistic sendoff it deserved. Well, in typical Mo Rocca fashion, he corrects that oversight! His interesting and always humorous essays about artists, entertainers, sports stars and political figures will surely make you laugh while he shares things about them that you may not have known. And he even writes "Mobits" about dead sports teams, dead countries, the dearly departed station wagon and dragons. Yes, dragons. "The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett Patchett's newest book has been called a fairy tale by the critics. She uses the power of fairy tales to grapple with some of the eternal truths of human life — kindness and cruelty, love and hate. is story is a family saga with a heroine, her devoted brother, and their evil stepmother. But unlike a fairy tale, these characters are distinctive and believable. e title refers to the house their father buys for their mother, without her input. He loves the ostentatious house in the suburbs, but she hates it and eventually leaves her family. us begins the evil stepmother part of the story. In writer Ann Patchett's hands, this book is so much more than this simple plot. "Red at the Bone" by Jacqueline Woodson e story begins at the coming-of-age party for Melody, a 16-year-old African-American teenager at her grandparents' home in Brooklyn. It continues with a look at what brought this middle-class black family to this moment, celebrating the daughter who was the unexpected product of a teenage romance. e book is rooted in the black experiences of multigenerational love and upward mobility. However, it is also a universal American saga of striving and failing and trying all over again. Jacqueline Woodson's wonderful novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child. It looks at the ways in which young people must sometimes make decisions about their lives even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. "Normal People" by Sally Rooney In her second novel, Sally Rooney writes about Marianne and Connell, who are young teenagers when we first meet them. At school, Connell is popular and an athlete. Marianne is oeat, withdrawn, and friendless. She's from a wealthy family, while his mother cleans her family's mansion. ey reconnect at Trinity College in Dublin, where Marianne finds her footing in the new social world and Connell hangs back, shy and uncertain. roughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell seek out other people until they are suddenly drawn back to each other. When she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. "The Water Dancer: A Novel" by Ta-Nehisi Coates Young Hiram Walker was born into slavery. When his mother is sold, Hiram loses all memory of her but gains a magical power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. is brush with death creates an urgent desire in Hiram to escape from the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the evil splendor of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, and from the coffin of the deep South to a dangerous deception in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he le behind endures. To do so, he must first master his magical gi and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss. "Olive Again" by Elizabeth Strout If you read and loved "Olive Kittredge," you must read Strout's new book. In the first book we learn that although Olive is flawed and can be harsh and unkind, she has a remarkable capacity for empathy. It's an empathy, however, without sentimentality. In this new book, we find Olive struggling to understand not only herself and her own life, but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. ose include a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, and a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept. roughout, the unforgettable Olive continues to startle us, move us, and inspire us "to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can."

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