by Danielle Christopher
This has been one of the best years for books. I had a hard time narrowing down my best five. So, I had to expand it to six. I would love for you to add your choices in the comments for the best reads of 2011.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides
Madeleine Hanna is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.
Leonard Bankhead suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and Madeleine finds herself in a rollercoaster relationship with him. At the same time, Mitchell Grammaticus resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is meant to be his mate.
With wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides creates a motivating fresh read that reads like an intimate journal.
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugvan
In 1940, during the aftermath of the fall of Paris, Hieronymous Falk, a rising cabaret star, is arrested in a café and never heard from again. He is twenty years old, a German citizen, and black. The only witness to that day is going back to Berlin fifty years later. He knows he must face to find out what happened to the star.
Giller Prize winning Half Blood Blues weaves the depths of horror and the burden of loyalty, and if you don’t tell your story, someone else might tell it for you. And they just might tell it wrong.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it. His henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. Eli begins to question what he does for a living.
Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Told by a compelling narrator, it is a violent tale through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. But behind the night circus scenes is a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their teachers. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved. From the cast of extraordinary circus performers, to the patrons hanging in the balance, the plot suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay
Connie’s niece, Anne, tells the story. In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day.
As the novel moves deeper into the triangle of principal- teacher-student, it opens out into other emotional triangles involving aunt, niece, lover, mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Until a sudden, capsizing love thrusts Anne into a newly independent life.
Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, and with interviews from more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues; Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose ferocious drive revolutionized six industries. Jobs knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written or even the right to read it before it was published. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.