American Gods
So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. Even so, the next thing that happened, happened like this:
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Reasons to Live / The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
When I go to sleep, I sleep on the side of the bed my mother used to sleep on. Sometimes, at dawn, I wake up and find myself in the pose my mother died in — lying on her side, her arm reaching from under her head as though she were doing the sidestroke in a pool, the pills she had swallowed weighing her down like so many pebbles in her pockets.
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The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
During a snowstorm in late 1964, Dr. David Henry and his wife rush to his small clinic in the middle of the night to give birth to their first child. The delivery unexpectedly produces boy / girl twins, and David immediately recognizes the signs of Down’s Syndrome in the little girl.
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Girl With a Pearl Earring
Van Ruijevn takes an instant interest in Griet and sexually harasses her. She narrowly escapes and vows to avoid him in the future, but Van Ruijevn demands that Johannes paint the girl for him, using the commissioned portrait as a ruse to further intimidate Griet. Vermeer can hardly refuse, as his livelihood depends on giving the patrons of the arts what they desire. To make matters yet more uncomfortable, Johannes has decided that Griet should wear his wife’s beautiful pearl earrings when she sits for him.
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The Book Thief
Death explains that there are certain humans that he takes special notice of, and that he first saw Liesel when he came for her brother’s soul and witnessed her stealing her first book. Dubbing her “The Book Thief”, Death keeps an eye on her throughout her life as he comes for other people that she is close to.
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High Fidelity
Using a device which has been employed countless times in such stories, Rob decides to revisit each of the women who made the list of his top five breakups and discuss the reasons that it ended with each of them. The results are fairly enlightening, and Rob begins to rediscover his own autonomy and the ambition he had when he was just himself. He begins to open up to the potential friendships in his life, and hate himself a little less. Using a breakup as a means to self-discovery is certainly not a ground-breaking setup for a story, but this one is witty, endearing, and well-done.
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Life of Pi
Pi tells his story to the authorities (who are looking to understand why the ship sunk), but they don’t believe a word of it. Undaunted, Pi makes up a second story; this one much more believable including his mother, a ship’s cook, and a sailor substituted for the animals, and asks which they prefer. They prefer the story as told the first time (although they still do not believe it), and Pi remarks that it is much the same way with God – that those who choose not to believe miss out on the better story.
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The Reader
It has been argued that Hanna’s literal ignorance (illiteracy) is a metaphor for our generation’s ignorance of the enormity of the Holocaust. Once she remedied her ignorance, she was unable to live with herself when it was coupled with her real-life experience of the Holocaust. While I agree with the aphorism ‘those who remain ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it’, I disagree that Hanna would be unaware on a human level of the atrocities being committed.
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
One thing I can say about the story is that Henry’s interaction as an adult with Claire as a little girl is very much part of the love story, rather than being creepy. It could easily have veered into a grotesque, Humbert Humbert-ish parody of a May-December relationship, but it doesn’t.
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The Color Purple
She begins by blindly following the vengeful God of her fathers, casts off her entire past in an effort to find who she is, and rebuilds her relationship with God to fit with who she has become. Her later relationship to God is more spiritual than religious “People spend all their time trying to please God. Us don’t realize that God trying always to please us too. I think God don’t like it when us walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.” (paraphrased) A reference, of course, to the title.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Dawsey reveals that he is a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – a group formed as a lark when he and several neighbors were caught breaking curfew by the Nazis, and in part to conceal a secret roast pig. As time went on, however, the society became important to all of them as a way to distract themselves from the Occupation, and strong friendships were forged.
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Gods Behaving Badly
Combining what we know of the Greek Gods and modern society, a hilariously entertaining world is created where the Gods of Olympus live together in London in a filthy, dilapidated old house, and work day jobs to pay their rent. Artemis (Goddess of the Hunt) is a dog walker, Apollo (God of the Sun) is a television psychic, Aphrodite (Goddess of Love & Beauty) is a phone sex operator, Dionysus (God of Wine and Merriment) owns a nightclub, and Eros (God of Love) has converted to Christianity, much to the chagrin of his family.
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Atonement
Briony is, like many young and imaginative teens, a little selfish and very much wrapped up in her own world. She is in the phase between childhood and adulthood where she understands little of the adult world, but imagines it vividly and knows just enough to be dangerous.
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Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Biff and Jesus (known by his friends as Josh) lead the lives of normal Jewish little boys, save for the fact that Josh can raise the dead (mostly lizards, to freak out his friends.) At the age of twelve, however, when most boys are beginning to learn trades under their fathers and train for their adulthoods, Josh is told by an angel that he is the son of God, and that his destiny is to become the savior of all mankind.
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