The Nix by Nathan Hill
620 pages

What's it about?
Samuel is abandoned in childhood by his mother, Faye, and never quite gets over it.  This story flashes from the present day, back to 1968 Chicago where we learn more about what may have prompted Faye's decision to leave her family.
 
What did it make me think about?
This novel is deeply ambitious.  I can see why it was so well reviewed.  The writing is thoughtful and the book explores the many ways our world is changing and how these changes are affecting the millennial generation.  A subject I find fascinating.  However I just didn't really love this book.  I did not find the characters that compelling.  Maybe it was my mood.  

Should I read it?
 This book seems like a Man-Booker award winner.  I assume it will win lots of awards- and deservedly should.  It is also really timely- with it's look back at the disenchanted generation of the 60's.   It is absolutely worth reading (see the beautiful quote below), but somehow it still wasn't a favorite of mine.   I felt like it touched my mind, but left my heart a little cold.

Quote-
    "For Alice, the small true part of her was that she wanted something that deserved her faith and devotion.  When she was young, she saw families retreat into their homes and ignore the greater problems of the world and she hated them: bourgeois cogs in the machine, unthinking sheeplike  masses, selfish bastards who couldn't see beyond their own property lines. Their souls, she thought, must have been small and shrunken things.
       But then she grew up and bought a house and found a lover and got some dogs and stewarded her land and tried to fill her home with love and light and she realized her earlier error:  that these things did not make you small. In fact, these things seem to enlarge her. That by choosing a few very private concerns and pouring herself into them, she had never felt so expanded. That, paradoxically, narrowing her concerns had made her more capable of love and generosity and empathy and, yes, even peace and justice. It was the difference between loving something out of duty–because the movement required it of you–and loving something you actually loved.  Love – real, genuine,  unasked- for love– made room for more of itself, it turned out. Love, when freely given, your duplicates and multiplies."

If you like this try-
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Here I am by Jonathan Safron Foer
A Little Life by Tanya Yanagihara
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson

 7 stars

 
The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang
351 pages
 
What’s it about?
It is 2008 and Charles Wang, an immigrant from China, loses his vast fortune in the economic meltdown.  He gathers his wife and starts to drive across the country- gathering his children as he goes.   His goal is to get them all together and then go claim his ancestral lands in China.  This is part road trip story, part an economic crisis story, and part an immigrant story.  One thing is for certain- Charles Wang makes for an interesting story!
 
What did I think?
I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through America with the Wang family.  They were a hoot!
 
Should you read it?
This story was fun, interesting, and the author had a point of view. I recommend it!
 
Quote-
“All across the country, one by one, foreclosed house by shuttered business, in cold bedroom and empty boardrooms, and cars turned into homes, people had the same thoughts. 
                  I couldn’t rescue myself.
                  I will never win.
                  My failure will always be epic and my sorrow will always be great.
                  I alone among all people am most uniquely cursed.
In the intervening weeks, as they slowly began to poke their heads out of their private failures, each would come to find that the curse was, in fact, not theirs alone.  Instead, it was spread across the country: a club, a collective, a movement, a great populist uprising of failure in the face of years of shared national success.”
 
If you like this try-
The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Ahmid
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

​9 stars

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
322 pages
 
What’s it about?
In the early 1960’s Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party with a large bottle of gin.  By the end of the party Burt Cousens and Beverly Keating cross a line they choose not to back away from.  Their actions that afternoon will have repercussions for both families in ways they can not foresee. This novel explores the next five decades in the Cousins’ and Keatings’ lives. In this novel Ann Patchett takes an unflinching look at a blended family.  
 
What did it make me think about?
 Ann Patchett does not back away from a difficult subjects.  In "Commonwealth" she explores the pain, and bonds of a blended family.  In particular-  I found the relationships between siblings over time really interesting.  

Should I read it?
Ann Patchett never disappoints.  I found the first third of the novel slightly disjointed, but I enjoyed this book anyway.  If anything I wish the book had explored some of the characters in more depth. Albie was so interesting and I never really got to know him well enough.  This book is easy to read, and as always Ann Patchett has something to say.
 
Quote-
“ These days he worked for company out in Walnut Creek that made bicycles. He liked that.  Christmas he sent his mother a plane ticket so that she could come and sit around a tree with him and his daughter and his wife. Sometimes the popcorn and the fireplace and the endless hands of Go Fish would overwhelm her and she will have to excuse herself and go to the bathroom just to stand beside the sink for a minute and cry.  Afterwards she'd rinse her face and dry off again, coming back to the living room h=good as new.  It what she had hoped for but never for a minute what she'd expected."

If you liked this try-
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

8 stars