JOHN MONAHAN IS FALMOUTH 'S "GO TO" GUY TO FIND OUT ABOUT CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ADULT FICTION.
SEE HIS LATEST REVIEW BELOW:

A Free Life
by Ha Jin
paperback 672pgs.
vintage

Ha Jin's new novel, A Free Life, is a wonderfully meticulous and subtle account of a Chinese Family's experience as immigrants in the United States. The acclaimed author's lengthy work received mixed reviews upon it's initial publication in this country. I believe this is due in large part to it's pointed avoidance of melodrama, in favor of a deliberately paced accounting of the banal details of life's everyday struggles. This thoroughness may not provide a conventionally satisfying dramatic experience but it does authentically portray the rhythms of life and is genuinely moving it this respect.
It tells the story of Nan Wu, his wife Pingping and their son Taotao and their struggle to make ends meet after their immigration to the U.S. in aftermath of the Tainanmen massacre. Nan Wu and Pingping share a fragile relationship complicated by it's lack of romantic love, their bond being forged primarily by their commitment to raising their child. Nan Wu's struggle may be difficult for some readers to sympathize with as he constantly pines for his lost love to the detriment of his marriage and struggles with his ambition to write poetry while facing the practical demands of supporting a family. Yet these concerns are precisely what render the narrative an authentic portrait of life's real tribulations and provide an emotional thread to bind the largely episodic narrative together. A Free Life is Ha Jin's first novel written directly in English and this gives it's language a simplicity which some may find awkward, yet it's crucial in giving the work an authentic clarity. New in paperback, A Free Life is a long and in some ways demanding work that moves at a slow pace but it rewards one's attention thoroughly and leaves the reader pining for more at it's conclusion.

-john

Elegance of the Hedgehog

Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery
Translated by Allison Anderson
325pp. paper $15.00

This book has been a bestseller in France and Lola from our Falmouth store is fast making it a best seller right here.
Read her review below:

The book I'm most excited about right now is "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," by Muriel Barbury. (It's published by Europa Editions, and they have never bored me. Not once.) "Hedgehog" is a wonderful book -- one person might read an engaging story of an unlikely friendship between the concierge of a tres chic Parisian condo building and a 12 year old girl. Another person will realize belatedly that s/he thinks something about philosophy, unthought before the book. Another person will internalize it all and try to figure out whether she or he is a hedgehog or a fox. (Many Tolstoy references, subtle, and not so, in this book. The author doesn't give you a trail, but I will: Archilochus, Tolstoy, Berlin. I forced my book group to read this. To a person, they said thank you. And I was really grateful to have friends to discuss it with. This was my absolute favorite fiction of 2008.

A great young adult recommendation by Karen Keyte, manager of the Falmouth Books Etc. Who says nothing exciting every happens in Maine?

Need
by Carrie Jones (ages 12 & up)
Bloomsbury USA  
Zara White collects fears the way other people collect baseball cards or state quarters. She memorizes the names of obscure phobias and repeats them to herself, the better to ward off her own fears. “It’s a lot easier to understand things once you name them,” Zara thinks. “It’s mostly the unknown that freaks me out.”
Once an avid runner and a passionate supporter of Amnesty International, Zara’s world changed dramatically with the death of her father (“My stepdad, really. I call him my dad. He was my dad. He raised me.”) After a couple of months of watching Zara stumble through life like a zombie, her mother has decided to pack the high school junior off to Maine to live with her grandmother, ostensibly to "get her spunk back."
Almost immediately, Zara notices a several strange things about the tiny town of Bedford: it's very cold, colder than you’d expect; the boys all seem to be taller than average; almost all of the students at her new school are fast runners; and, oh yeah, it may be infested with pixies.
Just to be clear, we're not talking the Tinkerbell kind of pixie here. We're talking pixies that use glamours to disguise themselves as humans so that they can use local teens to feed their terrible needs.  
Luckily for Zara, her new friends Issie, Devyn and Nick (as well as her grandmother, Betty) are made of stern stuff.  She’s going to need all the help she can get when the evil lurking in the Maine woods comes calling for her.