Readers' Advisory: Contemporary Realism

"Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling. A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out from a pulsing metropolis. We're invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories: stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise his life. Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amid "history's own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles," but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. [Publisher] #College #Faculty #Identity #Nigerians #Photography #Racism #Realism

After a falling out, Cora and Julia reunite for a long-planned road trip through Brazil. As they drive from town to town, the complications of their friendship resurface. By the end of the trip, they must decide what the future holds, in a queer, coming-of-age debut novel that has been celebrated in Brazil. #Bildungsroman #Friendship #Sex #Women 

"On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home when she spots a man precariously standing on the edge of a bridge. Without a second thought, Tallie pulls over and jumps out of the car into the pouring rain. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agrees to come back to her house, where he finally, reluctantly, shares his first name: Emmett. Over the course of the emotionally-charged weekend that follows, Tallie makes it her mission to provide a safe and comfortable space for Emmett, although she doesn't confess that she works as a therapist. However, Emmett is not the only one who needs help - and he has secrets of his own. Alternating between Tallie and Emmett's perspectives as they inch closer to the truth of what brought Emmett to the bridge, This Close to Okay is an uplifting, powerful story of two strangers brought together by wild chance at the moment they need it the most." #Divorce #LifeChanges #SuicidePrevention

"Federico and Lourenço are brothers. Their father is black, a famed forensic pathologist for the police; their mother is white. Federico--distant, angry, analytical--has light skin, which means he's always been able to avoid the worst of the racism Brazilian culture has to offer. He can "pass" as white, and yet, because of this, he has devoted his life to racial justice. Lourenço, on the other hand, is dark-skinned, easygoing, and well-liked in the brothers' hometown of Porto Alegre--and has become a father himself. As Federico's fiftieth birthday looms, he joins a ludicrous yet chilling governmental committee in the capital. It is tasked with quelling the increasingly violent student protests rocking Brazil by overseeing the design of new piece of software that will remove the question of race from the hands of fallible, human, prejudiced college administrators by adjudicating who does and doesn't warrant admittance as a non-white applicant under new affirmative-action quotas. Before he can come to grips with his feelings about this initiative, not to mention a budding romance with one of his committee colleagues, Federico is called home: his niece has just been arrested at a protest carrying a concealed gun. And not just any gun. A stolen police service revolver that he and Lourenço hid for a friend decades before. A gun used in a killing. Paulo Scott here probes the old wounds of race in Brazil, and in particular the loss of a black identity independent from the history of slavery. #Brazil #Brothers #Colorism #CulturalHeritage #EnglishPENAward #MixedRace #Racism #eBook

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch -- "Scout"--Returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past -- a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience. #AgingParents #GoingHome #Sequel (To Kill A Mockingbird)

"Fosse's portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable."'Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewThe Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Asleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjrgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjrgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers'two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. I is Another calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are' And why do we lead one life and not another' #Literary #NobelPrizeWinningAuthor #NorwegianLife #Neighbors #SmallTown #eBook

"For seventeen-year-old Denver, music is everything. Writing, performing, and her ultimate goal: escaping her very small, very white hometown. So Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean Mercury Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights--plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it. Until they're not." [Publisher] #BlackGirls #BlackTeens #Exploitation #SoundRecordingIndustry

The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Asleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjrgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjrgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers'two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. Written in hypnotic prose that shifts between the first and third person, The Other Name calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are' And why do we lead one life and not another' Through flashbacks, Fosse deftly explores the convergences and divergences in the lives of both Asles, slowly building towards a decisive encounter between them both. #BookerPrizeLongList #NobelPrizeWinningAuthor #NorwegianLife #Painters #Widowers #eBook