The Friday after Thanksgiving is the most popular day of the year to go shopping. Window displays are inevitably full of holiday suggestions before the last turkey is gobbled.
In congruence with this preemptive spirit, here are the beginnings of a literary shopping list for the gift-giving season. Books are usually relegated to the loathed category of presents given by great uncles or godmothers, but I suggest reconsidering them as viable options. They last longer than the current iPod model, are reasonably easy on the pocketbook, and there is something to be said for the personal touch of a handwritten inscription.
David Mitchell, the author of the recent story of adolescence, "Black Swan Green," wrote the much more ambitious novel "Cloud Atlas" in 2004. While "Black Swan Green" is rather lovely, "Cloud Atlas" is an adventure.
It begins, rather tamely, as a traveler's ship journal in the 19th century. Mitchell captures the writing style of the period almost too precisely; the narrator is reserved and the narrative reluctantly picks up its pace. Once it begins to gain momentum, this section of the novel stops mid-sentence, literally. There is no time for frustration however. The next part launches the reader into the Belgian countryside and the arrogant wiles of Robert Frobisher, who has designs on almost everybody's bed.
The sudden switch to new narratives continues throughout the book. Mitchell tells six different stories in as many different narrative modes, though it becomes clear early on that there is a common thread tying together the lives he describes.
The variety of genres that the novel includes makes the book a perfect choice for someone who refuses to read science fiction or detective stories on principle. Mitchell employs more traditional modes of storytelling to begin with, and by the time the sci-fi has arrived, it is too late to insist that you detest androids. The fates of Luisa Rey and Robert Frobisher are already of vital importance and the open-ended stories beg the question of how they could have anything to do with the mysterious Sonmi-451.
"All the King's Men," by Robert Penn Warren, is the perfect purchase for friends who are looking to get their feet wet in politics or journalism. This fantastic novel chronicles the good intentions of Willie Stark, an intelligent and ambitious southerner whose purposes are perverted by the political system.
The novel has a wonderful, distraught feeling to it, which is somewhat reminiscent of the noir films of the era. Jack Burden is the morally conflicted narrator, wary of the power the Stark is wielding, but infatuated with the purity of his original purpose. The precarious nature of power is beautifully toyed with, and the nuances of individual involvement are brought to the forefront.
There are long?suffering wives, betrayals, and blackmail in this novel, but these events are managed in a manner that casts them as complexities of human nature as opposed to tawdry plot twists. Warren effectively captures the almost soporific quality of the south and this slightly drowsy tone deepens the tension.
"The Last of Her Kind," Sigrid Nunez's most recent novel, begins during the tumult of the '60s. Ann is a daughter of affluence who is ashamed of her background. She specifically requests a roommate at Barnard who is as different from her as possible. Ann wants to expunge every remnant of privilege her birth has brought her and she is willing to do so at anyone's expense. Georgette George, the narrator of the novel and the first in her family to attend college, winds up as her roommate and reluctantly becomes Ann's friend. These qualifications set the stage for a predictable conflict of upbringing, but Nunez takes the premise much further.
Nunez's novel is one of social hierarchies and she handles her subject matter with intelligence. There are multiple layers and intertwined narratives in this book.
The repercussions of the '60s bring into focus a number of harsh realities including love, prison, mental disorders and loss.
Nunez dips and weaves through her narrative and the last hundred pages continue to bring surprises. Ann is a character of fascination, an aberration in her intensity of conviction, while George grounds the novel as the more ordinary and believable protagonist.
The decades this novel encompasses reveal much about America, and when our generation of college students is held up against the youth of the Civil Rights Movement, LSD, and Woodstock, it is hard not to notice the differences, for better or for worse.