February is a good time for contemplative reading. Outdoor temptations are minimal at best. It's too early to garden and only one or two flocks of robins have been spotted. There's still plenty of time to curl up by a fire with a cup of something cheery and read a "good" book. The authors listed below have received a number of well-known awards for their work. The prizes range from Pulitzer's and National Book Awards to Booker's and the prestigious Nobel. So drop in the library to check one or two out before the robins, geese, daffodils and tulips cause you to "wander lonely as a cloud."

Reviewers say this is Atwood's most purely entertaining novel, but not at the expense of her remarkable ability to layer plots and develop intriguing characters. In this book, three unique story lines (a science fiction tale, a story of two sisters in the 1930's, and a potboiler account of an illicit affair) unfold at breathtaking speed and manage to come together at the end in a satisfying way that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

Disgrace

Coetzee, J. M. F C673d 1999 Booker Prize

With this novel Coetzee makes literary history by becoming the first author to win two Booker Prizes. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Disgrace is the painful story of an arrogant, twice-divorced college professor who loses everything and tries to recoup by moving from the city to his daughter's farm. In this remote region, racial fortunes are reversed as just a few whites coexist with an understandably bitter black culture. This bleak novel is considered a subtly brilliant commentary on the nature and balance of power in Coetzee's homeland.

The Hours is both an hommage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own novel. As Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he seamlessly intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway . In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. Cunningham uses the 1925 novel as the link between these women's lives.

The author's own amazing story forms the basis of this novel of immense wisdom and profound beauty. In 1983, Gao was diagnosed with lung cancer just as he was preparing to flee Beijing to avoid arrest for his counter-revolutionary writings. Six weeks later, a second set of tests revealed no cancer at all. On the heels of this extraordinary redemption, Gao embarked on a fifteen thousand kilometer journey through the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China. Soul Mountain interweaves the stories of the countless memorable characters he encountered with the narrator's own poignant inner journey and search for freedom.

China's Cultural Revolution is the setting for another of our award-winners. Jin's latest book is a novel of manners in the tradition of Henry James, but here the manners are enforced by the Chinese government. In simple, precise prose, Jin tells the story of Lin Kong, a Chinese army doctor, and his eighteen-year, unconsummated affair with a nurse at his hospital. Society demands that the two have no relationship, (even hand-holding is forbidden,) until Lin obtains a divorce from his wife. Each summer, Lin returns home to Goose Village to persuade Shuyu to grant him a divorce. Each summer Shuyu agrees, but recants as soon as she faces the judge. This haunting tale of thwarted love is a powerful indictment of repressive societies.

This beautifully written collection of short stories is populated with richly imagined characters whose lives will resonate with anyone who has left home, fallen in love, or experienced what it means to be an outsider. India is the common thread to these stories, but the hopes and dreams of the characters are universal. You will find yourself wishing that these stories would stretch into novels.

In this contemporary morality tale cleverly disguised as a comic novel, the death of gorgeous and feisty Molly Lane causes serious difficulties for her lovers (and her husband.)

This novella stars an aging professor named Cabassac. For a brief, idyllic time he was married to Julieta, one of his students. When she dies, he discovers that eating the rich flesh of truffles brings Julieta back to him in his dreams. Desperate to prolong his reverie with his wife, he neglects his career, estate, and all his daily obligations to find the keys to the underworld where his wife dwells.

In 1876, a group of Polish émigrés, led by Poland's greatest actress, starts a utopian commune in Southern California. Based on the true story of a remarkable woman's amazing life, Sontag succeeds masterfully in turning history into riveting fiction.

Clifton's poems are wonderfully musical and should be read aloud to best enjoy her keen sense of rhythm and to appreciate the sound, tone, and texture of her words. With crystal clear language, Clifton celebrates African American life through writing about grace, character, and race in a personal and familiar way.

Non-Fiction Winners

Considered by many reviewers to be the most significant work yet on the postwar era in Japan, this beautifully written book compellingly explains how American forces during six years of occupation imposed a revolution that transformed ancient imperial Japan into a democracy through the implementation of a new constitution that granted the Japanese people unprecedented freedoms.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is the true account of the tragic event that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick . In 1819, the Essex sailed from Nantucket with 20 seamen only to be attacked and demolished 15 months later by a sperm whale as large as the ship. Adrift for more than 90 days and using only celestial navigation, the crew was driven to the edge of man's physical and psychological boundaries.

Prepared by Sue Gail Spring
with generous help from Amazon.com
& the New York Time Review of Books
February, 2001

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