Classic review: A BELL FOR ADANO

Title: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

Book Beginnings quote: 

Invasion had come to the town of Adano.

Friday56 quote:

The Major worried all day about the the order and wondered what he could do about it. He slept very badly during the night, because of his worry. 

Summary:  After the Invasion of Sicily in July of 1943, American forces occupied Italian villages deemed necessary for military reasons as they moved further north up the European continent. Major Victor Jopollo is the AMGOT representative (American Military Government of Allied Territories) in a small coastal, Sicilian village, Adano. As the highest ranking officer, he is tasked with assisting the villagers as they shift their thinking from fascism to democracy. One of the tasks he tries to solve is finding a replacement bell for the city's main palazzo. The old bell, which helped direct the activities of the villagers' lives for 700 years, had been confiscated by Mussolini to be melted down and made into weapons. 

In a series of closely knitted episodes Mr Hersey presents a dramatic and rapid picture of what Jopollo was up against in his day-to-day task of trying to eradicate the poisonous, black taste of fascism and restore the people of Adano the feeling of self respect they needed to become better citizens. Major Joppolo had a genius for transforming his good intentions into achievements. The tragedy of the story is that he was not permitted to complete his job. (Jerry Mangione, New York Times Book Review, Feb. 6, 1944)

Review: John Hersey, a war correspondent, published A Bell for Adano in early 1944, just six months after the Invasion of Sicily. The war wasn't over, yet Hersey could see he had an important story to tell. A story about how best to plant and represent democracy in Europe after the was won for the Allies (which he believed would happen.) Using good men like Major Victor Jopollo, an Italian-American who had the initial advantage of knowing the native language and an understanding of the psychology of the people. More than that, Jopollo had a strong desire for the people of Adano to learn the ways of democracy -- by helping them and teaching them how to help themselves. Hersey, who practiced "new journalism" fused storytelling devices of the novel with nonfiction reportage. A Bell for Adano is written is a crisp, easy-to-read style which I found charming, funny, and enlightening. No wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1945.

It is a noteworthy book for several reasons. First, the book was published before the war was over and was made into a movie that very year. I am sure the American public were thrilled to have some good news stories about the war. Secondly, Jopollo is such a good person, and a fine representative of American values. Unfortunately he runs afoul of aa American General who is not such a fine person, who doesn't think about representing democracy abroad. But it takes a long, funny, circuitous route for the General's wrath to finally reach the Major. In the meantime, the reader is treated to a series of episodes involving a whole cast of Italian characters (and sometimes caricatures!) I was surprised how much I enjoyed the book.

In fact, I liked the book so much I am attempting to talk my hubby into reading it, too.

Rating: 4 stars

Book challenges satisfied: Classics Club Spin Selection and Pulitzer Prize Challenge:

-Anne

Predicting the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction --- a compilation

As you know, I am attempting to read as many Pulitzer Prize winners, past and present, as I can. Therefore every year at this time I start holding my breath wondering which book will win the coveted fiction award. Unlike most other book award-giving organizations (National Book Award, Women's Prize, Book Award, Stella Award, etc.) the Pulitzer Prize Award does not give us any hints which books might win by publishing a long list and then a list of finalists. Nope. On May 6th, this coming Monday, the award will be announced along with two finalists. This gives everyone room to speculate but no one really knows and so there is a lot of guessing going on right now.

Just a little bit of information on the Pulitzer Prize for fiction before I jump in with my compiled list of possible contenders. To qualify, the author must be an American, published the previous year, and preferably dealing with American life. Several times in the past, the award went to an author who was previously a finalist, but that is not a for sure indicator.

So which book will win? I checked the internet and found these people who made predictions and have compiled their answers.

1. Greg at Supposedly Fun

• Favorite to win: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.
• Second choice: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride
• Third choice: North Woods by Daniel Mason
• Possible winners:
• Absolution by Alice McDermott
• Blackouts by Justin Torres

2. Eric Karl Anderson

• Favorite to win: Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
• Possible winners:
• North Woods 
• Blackout  

3. Ben Reads Good

• Favorites to win:
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store 
• North Woods
• Tom Lake (I think this is his favorite, but I'm not sure)
• Possible winners:
• The Faraway World: Stories by Patricia Engel
• Mobility by Lydia Kiesling
• Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Anti-choice (Ben hopes this book won't be picked):
• This Other Eden by Paul Harding

4. Literature Lust

• Picked: North Woods 

5. Electric Lit

• First choice: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
• Second choice: Blackouts
• Third choice: Chain Gang All-Stars
• Fourth choice: North Woods

Betting lines (Yes, betting lines) -- OLBG and BetUs

• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store / 3 to 1 / 25%
• Tom Lake / 4 to 1 / 20%
• North Woods / 5 to 1 / 16.7%
• Absolution / 7 to 1 / 12.5%
• Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez / 7 to 1 / 12.5%
• Many others....

Of all these books, I've only read Tom Lake and Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. I loved both books and would be very happy if either of them won. Here is a bit of what I gleaned from reading/listening to these other folks:

     Tom Lake. Ann Patchett has been a finalist before for the Pulitzer with her book Dutch House so that should move her up in the line for that reason. She also has done a lot to promote reading and authors with her involvement in her Nashville bookstore. Does she deserve to be rewarded? 

     Blackouts won the National Book Award in 2023 so that usually means, according to past practices,  the committee is less likely to offer the book their award, too. Though it deals with the erasure of queer history, a timely and needed book.

     The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store: McBride won the NBA for his book Lord God Bird, but that was several years ago, so it shouldn't hold him back any from winning the Pulitzer this year. 

     I haven't read North Woods but it sounds pretty fantastic and the author has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer in the past with his story collection, A Registry of My Passage Upon This Earth (2021). Does this place him ahead of the pack equal with Patchett? 

     Mobility is apparently a book about climate change so it may get the nod for its relevance. 

     Biography of X is supposed to be very creative. This book made it onto the Atlantic's list of 135 best American stories, published this month. It is the only one of the books I've mentioned here or from this year to make the list.

    The Chain Gang All-Stars is pretty niche, but the committee often goes for out-there choices. Think Less or The Netanyahus for examples. I bet I'd like this one since it is touted as an adult Hunger Games. 

     The Faraway World is short stories, so it might not win just because of the form, or it might win since it's been ages since a book of short stories has won. The last time was in 2000 for The Interpreter of Maladies. See the problem? 

     Ben at 'Ben Reads Good' made one hopeful anti-choice: This Other Eden. The author Paul Harding won several years ago for The Tinkers, which I really, really didn't like. This Other Eden is told in an unusual (read confusing) way about a made-up island off the coast of Maine which expelled all it's black and mixed race inhabitants because, um, they could? It is a distressing story and one which likely be a very unpopular choice if picked.

     I can't remember what anyone said/wrote about Absolution or Vulnerables, so I won't act like I know something I don't.

     How can one predict? Last year was actually an outlier with the two frontrunners being co-winners: Demon Copperhead and Trust. Perhaps this year the committee will swing the other way and give the award to a book no one is talking about.

     Now we wait for the announcement: Monday, May 6, 2024.

-Anne 

Ranking Pulitzer Prize winners into tiers.

Click on image to make it larger. Updated June 2024.

The other day, when I had other things I should have been doing, I started messing around instead with a tiered ranking site called Mural after watching Greg on Supposedly Fun on his YouTube channel. Greg introduced the idea of creating a tiered ranking for the Pulitzer Prize winners he's read, 41 books. I thought that I'd like to create a tiered ranking for all the Pulitzer's I've read, 44 books (notice whose read more-- brag, brag.) I then spent several hours messing around with the form to come up with the chart you see above. 

Greg's chart has six categories: Best, Great, Good, Meh, Oof, and Awful. As I started creating mine I decided "awful" was too harsh for my chart since I recognized that even though I don't particularly like a book, say Tinkers by Harding, I recognize it's literary merit. Greg's "Oof" category matches my "Has not stood the test of time." I used to love Gone With the Wind, for example, but now see it as a very racist book which has probably caused damage not only to a whole race of people but also to our country in general. Roots was read by everyone in the 1970s but now information has come to light that the author plagiarized another's work, at least thirty-five times! The others in this category just don't stand up to time and to history. 

I read the six books in my middle categories quite a while ago. Impressions were left behind in my memory so I'd consider rereading all of them but it is unlikely I will. There are so many other books I want to read for the first time.

Honestly, I usually think all of the Pulitzer winners are great. Notice how top heavy my chart is. I realize now that I don't have a category for an average evaluation. Ha!

I really struggled with which books deserve the moniker: "Best". My favorite Pulitzer Prize winner, To Kill a Mockingbird, was a no-brainer. It was the best, in my mind, but should it hold this spot alone? I decided to include Beloved by Toni Morrison, for its literary brilliance, and The Grapes of Wrath for its accurate accounting of a very dismal time in American history.

In the other two categories of Great and Very Good I tried to rank my choices (left to right), so I acknowledge that I like Lonesome Dove a bit better than The Orphan Master's Son. But honestly, I like them both very much!

Your turn. 

• Have you read any of the Pulitzer Prize winners? 
• Do you agree with my tiered ranking? 
• Disagree? 
• Have you read others winners not on this list that you would recommend? Let's discuss.

Note: If you click on the image it will make it larger so you can see the tiny book covers better. 😄

 

-Anne

Review: TRAIN DREAMS

Back in 2012 the Pulitzer Prize committee did not select a winner from the three finalists. It sent shock waves among the whole national book community. How dare they not select a book? Book sellers were counting on the increased sales that come when a winner is announced. The Pulitzer Jury members were outraged. They had been reading books all year and were solidly behind the three finalists, believing any of them would make a tremendous choice. The Pulitzer Prize committee doesn't tell what process they use to select their books, how the voting went, or, in this case, why they opted to not select any of the books. It wasn't the first time the Pulitzer Committee decided to NOT name a winner, but it was the first time in over forty years, harkening back to the 1970s, which made it all the more shocking. After reading this article, "Do Book Prizes Owe Us a Winner Every Year? A Deep Dive Into the Pulitzer Prize Controversy of 2012," I decided I would read one of the finalists to fill out  my reading of the 21st Century winners.

The three finalists in question, all published in 2011, were Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, published posthumously. Swamplandia! sounded a little too much to me. Too crazy, too original, too odd. David Wallace Foster committed suicide in 2008. The Pale King was the novel he was working on at the time of his death. His editor was able to pull together the pieces and publish it. But it was unfinished.

“The Pale King” was, of course, unfinished, but so are a number of great works of art. We have only fragments of Sappho’s poetry. Chaucer was a little more than halfway through “The Canterbury Tales” when he died... It seemed, too, that a Pulitzer for “The Pale King” would be, by implication, an acknowledgement not only of Wallace but also of Michael Pietsch, the editor. As a novelist, I well know how much difference an editor can make—and there’s no major prize given to editors. The best an editor can hope for is mention on the acknowledgments page, when, sometimes, that editor has literally rescued the book.

-Michael Cunningham, “Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year” Part 2

I found myself dreading the idea of reading The Pale King based on its summary. Fortunately I had one more option, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. The Wikipedia summary for this book captures it pretty perfectly: “The novella details the life of Robert Grainier, an American railroad laborer, who lives a life of hermitage until he marries and has a daughter, only to lose both wife and child in a forest fire, and sink into isolation again.” A booktuber described the book, weighing in at only 116 pages as a "short sharp shock."

I opted for the audiobook version of Train Dreams and was immediately rewarded for my choice by discovering that the narrator was Will Patton. He is one of my very favorite book narrators and is perfect to read about an Old West character with his raspy, gravely voice. The opening scene involves Robert Grainier and other other men torturing a Chinese laborer, attempting to drag him to his death. When the man escapes, Robert is sure he was cursed by this experience and later in life reflects with shame upon it. When Robert wasn't working on the railroad, he would often make enough money to live on by logging. He also was very handy and later became a delivery man, running a team of old horses with his wagon around the area where he lived in the Idaho Panhandle.

As I started listening I immediately felt an affinity to both the story and to the setting. My maternal grandfather attempted to homestead a dusty plot of land in Oregon in the early 1920s, not too far from Idaho. He, like many men of the era, was good at everything. Though his homesteading dream was not completed, he did ultimately build two different homes on his own while and his job was building roads as a civil engineer. My paternal grandfather helped build the Panama Canal and the Bonneville Dam. He started out at a carpenter's assistant and moved up to be the supervisor. Our nation was built on the strength and toughness of men like my grandfathers and like Robert Grainier. My husband put himself through college by working as a logger for several summers and falls in between terms. His stories of his experiences logging in the woods paralleled the stories of Robert Grainier. There is an old man on the logging team, Arn Peeples who is a humorous old coot who is always entertaining the crew...

My husband had several older men on his crews who sounded very much like Arn Peeples. My husband has been mimicking the funny sayings from Sam, the crew's equipment operator, all the years I've known him. The book and the characters really spoke to me on a personal level.

"[Train Dreams] was magnificently written, stylistically innovative, and—in its exhilarating, magical depiction of ordinary life in the much romanticized Wild West—a profoundly American book" (Michael Cunningham). And keep in mind the Pulitzer’s mandate that the fiction prize should be awarded to a work “by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” Homesteading, railroads, logging, forest fires, and small-time rural life, what could be more American than Old West stories?

So Train Dreams didn't win the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, but I encourage you to read it anyway. It is truly a "short sharp shock" of a story and I loved it.

-Anne

Review: TRUST

This past week my husband, daughter, and I listened to the co-Pulitzer Prize fiction winner for 2023, Trust by Hernan Diaz. In a nutshell it is the same story, or parallel stories, told from four perspectives. Spoiler alert: Disclosure of more plot details than most reviews is necessary to differentiate the four versions.

Trust opens with the text of Bonds, a (fictional) novel written by Harold Vanner, about a wealthy recluse, Benjamin Rask, who makes a killing in the 1920s stock market and is viewed as an investing savant. Rask's wife, Helen, is also a bit of a recluse and she eventually dies of a mental health treatment. Rask is devastated but will go on.

The second section of Trust is the outline of an unfinished and highly self-aggrandized autobiography of Andrew Bevel, a New York financier and widower, whose life parallels the story of Harold Rask in Bonds. We learn in the third iteration that Bevel wanted to write his autobiography to set the story straight about details of his late wife Mildred's life. Bevel hires Ida Partenza to assist/write his autobiography but doesn't allow her to do any independent research, particularly when it comes to the details of Mildred's life and her passions. When Ida manages to dig up a few details, Bevel says she cannot use that material in the book, preferring to represent Mildred in the most sweet, quiet, and demure ways. The autobiography remains unfinished because Bevel dies before its completion. Years later when Ida is asked to write a new piece on the famous Bevel couple, she finds a diary which tells a fourth, completely different account in Mildred's own words.

Who is the reader to trust? Are all the stories partially true so one needs all four to piece together the information? These questions got me thinking about the definitions of the word 'trust.' Here is what I found in Merriman-Webster:

Reading through all these definitions of the word TRUST, I feel certain that Hernan Diaz did the same thing as he was creating his masterpiece. How many different riffs on the word 'Trust' could he place in one book? Maybe he challenged himself to include them all. Certainly each narrator, even the fictional novelist Vanner, asks the reader to believe their version of the story. Though a novel, everyone in New York knew that Bonds was really about the Bevels, so believed what they read even though it was presented as fiction. Because of this Bevel hired Ida Partenza to write his story and the story of his late wife. He relied on Ida to keep his confidences. In his version of the story Bevel admitted he had to entrust the care of his wife to professionals at a Swiss Sanitorium. You get the idea. Only when we, the readers, hear from Mildred through her diary, do we realize our trust has been misplaced. Very clever!

Whenever a book wins a Pulitzer Prize I always want to know why the committee chose this book over that book, or in this year's case why co-winners were chosen. The Pulitzer Committee said about Trust --

A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king. From Pulitzer.org’s 2023 winners page

And for comparison, the same committee said about Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, the other 2023 co-winner --

A masterful recasting of “David Copperfield,” narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them. From Pulitzer.org’s 2023 winners page

(My husband just stopped by and read through my review. When he got to this point about the two Pulitzer winners he remarked, "One book is about capitalism in America and the other is about what capitalism causes, poverty.") I guess the selection committee couldn't make up their mind which was the more American story.

 

As I said earlier, we listened to the audiobook of Trust narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marno, and Orlagh Cassidy. All did a remarkable job narrating their role and thankfully none of them used that irritating speaking quality of dropping their voice, making it hard to hear over road noise. All three of us liked the book but felt a bit challenged by the form. Was our confusion caused by only hearing the text not seeing it on the printed page? If you are considering reading Trust, remind yourself that all four parts are not equal in terms of readability (listenability) but all build on the earlier section. Parts one and two are necessary to appreciate parts three and four.

Trust is 416 pages long, qualifying it for the Big Book Summer Challenge.

-Anne

Review: THE NETANYAHUS: AN ACCOUNT OF A MINOR AND ULTIMATELY EVEN NEGLIGIBLE ACCOUNT IN THE HISTORY OF A VERY FAMOUS FAMILY

Title: The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Account in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen

Book Beginnings quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary: The Netanyahus is a fictionalized account of an actual event involving the famous Natanyahu family. In this novel, the father of Israel's longtime prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Benzion Netanyahu interviews for a teaching position at Corbin University (fictional)and Rubin Blum, a professor of American History is asked to be the head of the hiring committee not because of his expertise but because he is Jewish.

The day that Benzion Netanyau arrives for his department interview and guest lecture it is snowing very hard. Unbeknownst to Blum who made the arrangements, Netanyahu arrives with his "horrible wife and children" who are all unprepared for the weather and have monstrous manners.

In preparation for the interview, Blum reads up on Jewish history, as viewed through Netanyahu's eyes which differs from what other academics see as history of the Jews in the Iberian peninsula, what many of us know as the Spanish Inquisition.

As dry as this summary sounds, the book is really quite humorous and I found myself enthralled by the story and the Jewish history I learned along the way. I also found Cohen's indictment of the snobbery of American academia to be refreshing.

Review:  In an afterword Joshua Cohen explains how come he decided to write a fictionalized story about a real family. He once interviewed the famous literary critic Harold Bloom, who relayed his encounter with the Netanyahus family when Benzion arrived for an interview at Cornell University. He elaborated very little. This is what Cohen remembered:

[Bloom] was asked to coordinate the campus visit of an obscure Israeli historian named Ben-Zion Netanyahu, who showed up for a job interview and lecture with his wife and three children in tow and proceeded to make a mess. Of all of Harold's tales, this was the one that stuck with me the most, perhaps because it was one of the last he ever told me, and following his death in 2019, I wrote it down, and in the process found myself having to invent a number of details he'd left out, and, due to circumstances I'm about to explain, having to fictionalize a few others.

So this book, The Netanyahus, is based, more of less, on an actual event. This, to my way of thinking, makes the story even funnier and more interesting. (And explains the subtitle, which, as you know, is a rare feature for fictional books.) I decided to read The Netanyahus because it won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is Cohen's sixth novel and from my limited research I've learned that he has made a name for himself as a sartorial writer. As you can see from the two samples, he writes long, complicated sentences, too. Though I felt that his sentence structures added to humor. I listened to the audiobook, read by three readers: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld . Oddly, I don't recall there was more than one narrator. I'm guessing their narration led to making the sense of humor so evident in the book.

I know that these types of books don't appeal to everyone, but if you are curious about what makes an award-winning novel, here is an excellent and very different option to feast on.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.
The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. 
Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material.  

-Anne

Review: THE HOURS

Back in 1925 Virginia Woolf published a masterpiece of literature: Mrs Dalloway. It was very avant-garde for the time in the modernist style where time, perspective, and point-of-view are delivered in a non-linear format. Mrs. Dalloway, originally titled 'The Hours', is considered by many to be one of the best English-language novels ever written. And I haven't read it.

But I just finished The Hours by Michael Cunningham which takes the Mrs. Dalloway story, dusts it off, and gives it a modern (for the late 1990s) update. In the original, the action takes place in a 24-hour period. In the opening scene Woolf's main character, Clarissa Dalloway, is preparing to host a party that evening and she decides to go buy the flowers herself. In Cunningham's version, one of three main characters, Clarissa, is also planning a party and she also decides to buy some flowers. And so begins the similarities with the original novel.

The Hours is a story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, preparing a party for a long-time friend who has just won a literary award; Laura Brown, who lives in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb and worries that she is going slowly mad; and Virginia Woolf, who is living with her husband in a London suburb after she had experienced a mental breakdown. It is here that she begins her work on Mrs. Dalloway. Eventually at the end of the book all three of the stories coalesce and intertwine in such a thoughtful and graceful way. It was a perfect ending after a rather depressing tale.

Author Michael Cunningham not only tells the Mrs. Dalloway story through his three characters but he also weaves factual aspects of Virginia Woolf's life into the story, starting with her suicide in 1941 and working backwards, showing both her brilliance and her tentative grasp on reality. Cunningham also imagines what must have been going through Woolf's mind as she created her masterpiece.

I decided to read The Hours now as part of my march to read past Pulitzer Prize winners. I'd long wanted to read it but kept putting it off since I hadn't read the original and felt I would miss something without it. Well, I may have missed something but it wasn't too noticeable as The Hours stands up fine by itself. Before starting this review, however, I did visit Shmoop and read through the introduction and summary of Mrs. Dalloway. Even with that short amount of homework I was able to see the similarities between the two and which secondary characters played which roles. That was fun. For example in The Hours, the man for which the party is being thrown is Richard. He is dying from AIDS and is just about withering away to nothing. In Mrs Dalloway a similar character named Septimus has returned from the war (WWI) and is shell-shocked, just a skeleten of his former self. Both men meet a similar fate. 

Of the six Pulitzer Prize winners I've read this year so far, The Hours is my favorite. I'd watched the movie starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julieanne Moore several years ago and it seemed to run through my head as I read. Either the movie stuck to the book closely, or I only remembered highlights which kept shining through my memory. The book is also blessedly short, 226 pages. I am so tired of trudging through long tomes. It was like taking a vacation, reading such a short book.

Oddly I was not able to find a statement from the Pulitzer committee as to why they selected The Hours for the 1999 prize. One can only guess why they thought it was fabulous especially since one of the finalists that year was The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver.

I give The Hours 4.5 stars.

-Anne

Are these the 'Best of the Best' Pulitzer Prize novels?

This week I've been reevaluating my Pulitzer Prize Challenge, thinking perhaps I should abandon it and just make an attempt to read the current winner each year and not worry about going back and attempting to read past winners. With this idea running through my head it occurred to me that perhaps I should check out which books are considered the best and make an attempt at reading those and leaving the others.

What I discovered after doing a little research here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, these eighteen Pulitzer Prize winning novels were mentioned the most (at least three of the seven lists) as the best of the lot. (Note: only two lists were compiled in 2020 all the rest before that date, thus few recent winners were even mentioned, obviously.) I've now read all the eighteen books on this 'Best of the Best Pulitzer' list I've created and have decided to continue reading as many of the past winners as I can.

The 'Best of the Best' Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961, six lists)

I read TKAM for the very first time in 2003. I loved it instantly and wondered what took me so long to get to it. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Roses Pritchard. Her voice, with a sweet southern accent, is now the voice of Scout to me. My review, of sorts.

First line: "When he was nearly thirteen years old, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988, six lists)

I read Beloved in 2010 and I wished I'd been part of a college lit class so to discuss all the symbolism. It blew me away but I found that I needed/wanted help to understand it. After I'd book-talk this for my students many were attracted to the idea of its ghost story but sadly I'm not positive any of them actually ever finished it. My review.

First line: "124 was spiteful."

3. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983, six lists)

As a high school librarian I made an attempt to read most of the books that were recommended for students to read before they graduated. This one, read in 2009, didn't make as big of an impact on me as the play we saw in New York City starring Cynthia Erivo in 2018.

First line: "You better not tell nobody but God."

4. The Interpreter Of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000, six lists)

One of the reviewers on Book Riot picked The Interpreter of Maladies as her favorite Pulitzer over TKAM because she's read this short story collection over and over and it always speaks to her. I found all the stories very memorable. (My review)

First line: "The  notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight p.m."

5. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940, six lists) 

I wasn't able to tell from the seven lists if this is anyone's favorite Pulitzer, or if it is just one book that it is agreed everyone should read. As often happens with me, the hardest part of reading this classic book was starting. What I appreciated so much was how Steinbeck was writing about such big events in US history in real time. Profound. (My review)

First line: "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."

6. Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994, five lists)

I was surprised to see this book on five of the lists because I thought I was the only one who loved it. It is so quirky and odd. I read it in 1997 the first time and several times since. Looking back through my blog I see I never reviewed it. But I did mention it many times on my 'lists of favorites' over the years.

First line: "Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of upstate towns."

7. The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981, five lists)

TCOD is one of the funniest books I've ever read experienced. Hilarious! Actually, I recommend listening to the audiobook to get the full impact of the story set in New Orleans. Ignatius J. Reilly is possibly the most memorable character in literature. (My review from 2013)

First line: "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

8. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015, four lists)

I not only love this book but I've done a lot with it: two book clubs meetings, an evening event with the author and I wrote two reviews of it. Check out both of them here and here.

First line: (Leaflets) "At dusk they pour from the sky."

9. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2001, four lists)

Why does TAAOKAC deserves a spot on the 'best of the best' list? One reviewer said she was dazzled by it. "It wasn't just its technical perfection—physical description, character development, perspective, time shifts, dialogue, metaphor—and [Chabon] deployed them gracefully, without apparent effort, with inflections of 1940s New York and the language of comic books." (My review.)

First line: "In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini."

10. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921, four lists)

Edith Wharton was the first female to win a Pulitzer for a novel, and only the third overall. It has stood the test of time with its story of unfulfilled/scandalous love. I read this masterpiece in 2016 as part of the Classics Club Spin challenge. (My review.)

First line: On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

11. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003, four lists)

Such a complex book about many seemingly unrelated topics: life as a transgender individual, the Armenian genocide, and the Detroit riots of 1968. I listened to the audiobook in 2007 and it has improved in my memory since that time to almost epic proportions.

 First line: "I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan, in August of 1974."

12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007, four lists)

After my husband has read this his description of unrelenting dread and the nearly hopeless struggle of a father and son who survived an worldwide apocalypse was a bit off-putting, making me not so eager to start it. But I was profoundly touched by the love each had for the other. In the end love is all we will have. (My review.)

First line: "When he woke in the night and the cold of the night he'd reach and touch the child sleeping beside him."

13. The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972, three lists)

I am a Wallace Stegner fan and have enjoyed everything I've read by him. I read TAOR in 1995 and confess that my memory of it is a bit hazy though I do recall being swept up in the story and the setting.

First line: "Now I believe they will leave me alone."

14. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2008, three lists)

This book fairly blew me away. First, who is the narrator? I couldn't figure it out until well into the book. Then all the mysticism or fuku connected to Dominican Republic and some history of the island. Oscar is a marvelous, quirky character. I'd be remiss not to mention the footnotes. Be sure to read them. All of them. (My review)

First line: "Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody's going on about -- he wasn't no home-run hitter or fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots in his jock."

15. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953, three lists)

I was in junior high in 1971 or '72 when I read TOMATS so I have only the vaguest of memories of it. I do recall thinking it was a pretty good story after all the torture of reading it for class was done. That said I am not a big fan of Hemingway's sparse style of writing so I doubt I'll reread this one to see what I think of it as an adult.

First line: "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

16. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011, three lists)

The BookRiot reviewer said, "I loved her book, a funky retro-current account of the music industry meets the e-age and the excellently funny chaos that ensues from there." I listened to the audiobook so I think I missed what made this book so unique in terms of format. (My review)

First line:  "It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel."

17. The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999, three lists)

The Bookriot reviewer said hands down The Hours is the best Pulitzer. "Cunningham writes beautifully, and he does a wonderful job of getting in the heads of three very complex women: Virginia Woolf herself; Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife; and a Clarissa Dalloway-esque character, Clarissa Vaughn." As I read the book, I kept picturing the movie. (My review.)

First line: (Prologue) "She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too warm for the weather."

18. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986, three lists)

Having just read Lonesome Dove last year, this wonderful book is very fresh in my mind. Just about every line is quotable and I can picture all of the action in my head. At 800+ pages in length I 'lived' in the old West for weeks while I read it and I didn't want to leave when I was finished. So I gave it to my husband and had the fun of reliving the book through him. (My review.)

First line: "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake -- not a very big one."

Now I recognize that this list is sorely out-of-date already. The most recent book to make it onto the list is All the Light We Cannot See from 2015. We've had six years of awards since that date and surely one or more of the most recent books should have at least been in contention for this 'best of the best'  list. I also realize that the lists I drew from were actually just lists of opinions. As my husband and I were discussing my final eighteen titles, he remarked that there are probably very few people alive who have read all 90+ Pulitzer Prize fiction winners, and unless a person had read them all they shouldn't be making a 'best of the best' list. Good point. And that would be me. I've only read 40 and that number includes a few of the finalists. What if one of the best books is just one we haven't read yet? One of the reviewers in the Book Riot article said she'd only read six Pulitzer winners. That is a fairly small field to pick from. So my research is flawed. Very flawed. But as I look over this list and compare it to the whole Pulitzer list, I bet I'm not very far off. Accept this project for what it is -- me trying to decide which of all the Pulitzer winners should I make an attempt to read before I close out my personal Pulitzer Challenge.

Update, July 4, 2023 --- I've completed reading all of the books on this list and linked my reviews.

What is your favorite Pulitzer Prize winning novel?

What books from the master list are conspicuously missing? See full list here.

Sources used to create this list:

• 30 Best Pulitzer winners, Paste, May 3, 2017

• Ranking the Pulitzer Winners for Fiction, Dish, April 16, 2018 (all ranked, I used top 20)
  

• The Best Pulitzer Prize Winners, Ranker, Feb. 10, 2020  (Many ranked, I used top 20)
  

• Our Favorite Pulitzer Prize Novels, BookRiot, April 18, 2014

• Pulitzer Winners to Add to Your Summer Reading list. Bustle, June 9, 2015 (Thirteen on the list, but three are nonfiction)

• Pulitzer Prize Winning Authors You Must Read, Inside, April 19, 2017 (Ten listed) 

• Literary Lists: Best Pulitzer Prize Winners, May 14, 2020 (Ten)

Decades represented:

1920s-1; 1930s-0; 1940s-1; 1950s-1; 1960s-1; 1970s-1; 1980s-4; 1990s-2; 2000s-5; 2010s-2

-Anne

And the Pulitzer Prize for literature goes to...

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction:

The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

"A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption."

Here is my review of the book, which I read for book club in September of 2019. It was a hard book to read because the subject, based on facts, is very alarming and upsetting. But it is such a well-written, thoughtful book. It really mustn't be missed.

The Pulitzer Prize committee also named two finalists:

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett (Harper)

I adored this book. My review is here.

 

"Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. At the center of this past is the odd, but alluring Dutch house."

 

The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

I haven't read this book yet, but it does sound compelling.

 

"This is the story of a family's struggles and strengths, and the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the new right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men."

I always want to read the best of the best. Pulitzer Prize winning novels never seem to disappoint me.

-Anne

Review: Gilead

Thirteen years ago (I looked it up) a dear friend suggested to our book club that we read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. She cited as her rationale for the choice that it was her favorite, or one of her favorite books. I got the book and made a stab at reading it but doubt that I got much more than thirty of so pages into it before abandoning it. The book was just so slow, lacked plot, was written in journal style so it had no quotation marks to indicate dialogue (a pet peeve.) I recall nothing of the book club discussion.

Several years ago I decided, after reading two fantastic books that ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize for literature, that I would go back and read several previous winners. When I perused the list I noted that Gilead had won the prize in 2005. I added it to my list of Pulitzers' to read, since I must have missed something the first time around. (Here is my personal Pulitzer Challenge list.)  Later I found a copy of it at a used bookstore and I purchased it in hopes that proximity would spur me to action.

Last month I started a reading challenge to read 'My Own Books' and Gilead was selected as one of the first ten books I hoped to read for the challenge. It has taken me thirteen years but I can finally say--- I have read it and, surprisingly, love it, too. Before starting, I found this fantastic review written by Lee Siegel for New York Magazine. Without this review I don't think I would have understood the book or been as open to its message. I urge you to read it now or after you finish reading the drivel I write here.

Siegel begins his review with a paraphrase of a T.S. Eliot quote stating that a person can not fully understand Dante's Inferno unless they are a believing Catholic. This prepares us that Gilead will likely be a book best understood by believing Christians. The protagonist of the novel is John Ames. He is an aging Congregational minister who has been given a poor health report. He decides to write down his thoughts and prayers for his young son who is six years old, since it is unlikely he will be around to see the boy grow to manhood. In this diary/journal Ames hops around from remembrances of his youth, the history of his family which include stories of a grandfather who fought in the Civil War and was active in what is now called the Bloody Kansas battles, and moral advice he hopes his son will heed.

Robinson is unapologetic for her own faith and beliefs and readers will find in Gilead a book that reads like a meditation or a handbook on Christian thought. For an unbeliever the book will likely be plodding and plotless, for a believer, a solace and a reminder how one can grapple with their own life of faith. If there is a plot to be had it runs along two veins. The first, how will his young wife and child cope once he is gone. He loves them both so much and wishes he had many. many more years to be with them. At one point in the text he writes to his son, "I imagine your child self finding me in heaven and jumping into my arms, and there is great joy in that thought." The afterlife is never in question in Gilead.

The second plot vein runs to his conflict with his best friend's son who was named after him, John Ames Boughton, Jack for short. Jack, now a man, has come home because his father's health is also failing. His presence brings up all kinds of feelings of disgust in John Ames, the pastor, for things that Jack did long ago. When Jack seeks his namesake out for advice and confession, the elder is forced to confront old prejudices and find a way to forgiveness. This process is so redemptive, perhaps it saves both men.

Gilead spoke to my heart on many levels. How, as a Christian, can I work out my human frailties in a way that honors God and others? What kind of legacy am I leaving my daughters and grandchildren?

Because I want to remember them, I've included a few of my favorite quotes, which will also give you examples of Robinson's exemplary writing skills.

The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life that little incandescent you see in people then the charm of a time strokes them or the humor of it. "The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart." That's a fact (53).

The book is full of little thoughts like this one about the twinkling of an eye. Ames wanted his son to know him at a personal level which includes things that cause him joy. Do I do the same thing for my daughters and let them in on things in which I delight?

As you read this, I hope you will understand that when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of my happiness, I do not remember grief so much as I do peace and comfort---grief, but never without comfort, loneliness, but never without peace (71).

Surely this is what is means to lean on Christ. We will experience grief and loneliness, but there will always be comfort and peace. Ah, such a hopeful claim.

Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God in the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense (124). 

This metaphor also interests me and gives me pause to think and reflect on my life and my actions.

I fell to thinking about a passage in the Institutes where it says the image of the Lord is in anyone is much more than reason enough to love him, and that the Lord stands waiting to take our enemies' sins upon Himself. So it is a rejection of the reality of grace to hold our enemy at fault (189).

Forgiveness is hard, but it helps to think of the other in light of God's love, not our own.

Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. "He will wipe the tears from all faces." It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required (245-6).

Here, also, is a mystery of God. How can he love us all and give us exactly what we need? Who knows? But knowing is not required to be comforted by these words.

With the reading of Gilead I have finished my third book for the 'My Own Books' challenge and another Pulitzer Prize winner to cross off my list. The book will be donated to my church's library.

Do I recommend you read Gilead? I'll let this review speak for itself.