What's New in Fiction: Novels under the Radar

Patricia read that I talked about this at my latest author event on the 17th, and I promised I would post it. These are books I've enjoyed and found to be under-appreciated by the 'powers that be' in the publishing/media.  I include a first or early line that shows the author's style and a short summary of the plot.                                        
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE by Sebastian Barry (2008)

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize

“The place where I was born was a cold town. Even the mountains stood away. They were not sure, no more than me, of that dark spot, those same mountains.”

An old woman in an asylum and the psychiatrist administrator form an unusual friendship while he assesses her ability to live on her own when the hospital has to be closed. (Rural Ireland in the 1930’s.)

THE END OF THE ALPHABET by CS Richardson (2007)

Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book

“Those who knew him described Ambrose Zephyr as a better man than some. Wanting a few minor adjustments, they would admit, but didn’t we all. His wife described him as the only man she had loved. Without adjustment.”

At the diagnosis of fatal illness, a husband directs his final journey with his wife. A love story that reveals secrets of making the most of your life. (London and the world.)

HOME by Marilynne Robinson (2008)

Finalist, National Book Award

“ “Home to stay, Glory. Yes,” her father said, and her heart sank.”

While Glory Boughton takes care of her dying father, her brother Jake comes home and complicates the comfort home ought to give.

IN HOVERING FLIGHT by Joyce Hinnefeld (2008)

“Scarlet would have expected her mother to choose to die in her own ramshackle cottage in Burnham, windows open to each morning’s raucous dawn chorus.”

As her mother dies of cancer, an adult daughter tries to understand her parent’s rift and her mother’s abandonment of her family for an ideological cause.

DIZZY CITY by Nicholas Griffin (2007)

“That’s what they were now, the color of moss and mud, thousands and thousands of soldiers walking in one another’s footsteps. I am different from that lot, thought Ben.”

A shell-shocked WW I British soldier escapes to New York city. Haunted by his friends, the deserter tries to learn how to be a con man.

THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER by Jeb Rubenfeld (2007)

“But if a man wants meaning—the meaning of his dream, his secrets, his life—a man must re-inhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain.”

Freud’s visit to New York in 1909 coincides with the investigation of a society murder in which his psychoanalyst protégées, including Carl Jung, become advisors to the police.

THANKSGIVING NIGHT by Richard Bausch (2007)

Finalist, Library of Virginia Fiction Award

“It’s the dog days of summer nineteen ninety-nine. And God is coming.”

Three families in Front Royal become intertwined when elderly aunts can’t get along and the nephew gets caught in an out-of-control affair.

THE USED WORLD by Haven Kimmel (2008)

“Thirty one days was either no time at all or quite long indeed, and to try to determine which she woke herself up and began counting, then drifted off again and lost her place.”

The proprietor of a small town antique mall struggles with her friends to sort out doubt and faith in finding their place in the world.

THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY by Haven Kimmel (2002)

“It wasn’t given to Langston Braverman to know the moment she became a different person; she only knew later, looking back on the afternoon a simple storm arrived and stayed for days, the afternoon she first saw the children.”

An ineffective small town minister is forced to ask for help from a failed PhD candidate who has come back to her parents’ home still grieving for her brother who disappeared ten years earlier.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo (2008)

“No sooner did I agree than we were marooned in a sea of guidebooks that my wife now studies like a madwoman.”

A couple in small town New York decide to go to Italy for vacation, only to find that even a temporary departure upsets the balance of their lives with their neighbors and family.

RUN by Ann Patchett (2007)

“Bernadette had been dead two weeks when her two sisters showed up in Doyle’s living room, asking for the statue back.”

A snowstorm accident in New England threatens the Doyle family hierarchy, revealing hidden truths about race, generations, country, and community.

FINE JUST THE WAY IT WAS by Annie Proulx (2008)

“It was the time of year when Berenice Pann became conscious of the earth’s dark turning, not a good time, she thought, to be starting a job, especially one as depressing as caring for elderly ranch widows.”

Short stories about Wyoming folk who struggle to transcend hardscrabble life on the plains.

A FIGHT IN THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE by Cary Holladay (2008)

“She’ll help him hear. She’ll whisper to him and hold him up to the breeze until he hears her voice and the wind.”

A young white woman, abandoned by her husband after only a few months, buries herself in a small town, letting herself be captivated by unrealistic dreams of rescuing a deaf black baby from his impoverished grandparents.