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Odyssey Gallery
Pictures of recent events
The Odyssey Bookshop is one of five independent
bookstores participating in WAMC's Roundtable on Tuesday mornings,
just after the 10:00 news. People from the Odyssey will be on about once a
month, talking about our favorite books.
Click
here to see the list of the books we have talked about.
The Odyssey Bookshop
9 College St.
S. Hadley, MA 01075
413-534-7307
800-540-7307
fax 413-532-3654
email odysseybks@aol.com
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Elli's Picks
Click on any title to order
Back to staff
list
 STATE OF WONDER
by Ann Patchett begins when a vague airmail letter informs pharmaceutical researcher Marina Singh that her friend and co-worker Anders Eckman died in the Amazon jungle, where he was investigating a research project funded by the company employing them both. Marina is sent to find out exactly what happened to Eckman, to retrieve his body, and to ferret out the progress of the research led by her former medical school teacher, the brilliant and evasive Annick Swenson. A complicated mixture of dramatic plot involving killer anacondas and cannibal tribes, amazingly tactile and rich descriptions of the jungle, and thoughtful contemplation of the ethics of pharmaceutical development, and the lifelong effect a teacher can have on her students make this another first-rate read from a veteran author. ~ Elli
 TOUCH
by Alexi Zentner, is extraordinarily strong in setting, in this case a small village named Sawgamet in northern British Columbia. Stephen is an Anglican priest returning to visit his dying mother in the wilderness village settled by his grandfather Jeannot. Rich details of the rough town, the wild forest and terrifying weather, and the dangerous logging life are combined with a multi-generation love story. The novel shifts back and forth between Jeannot’s memories, Stephen’s boyhood, and his return to bury his mother and take over his stepfather’s church. It shifts back and forth as well between the boom to bust history of the town and Jeannot’s evocation of the wood witches and forest spirits. This is a haunting and gloriously satisfying read. ~ Elli
 SAY HER NAME by Francisco Goldman. In this luminous story of love and loss, Goldman blurs the lines between memoir and novel, between reality and fiction. This made for a slow start but then gathered speed and carried me along on an amazing journey. His prose is magical, so I kept reading and eventually I didn't care which parts actually happened since it all felt so real and vital. A heartbreaking yet inspiring story, beautifully told. Read it. ~ Elli
 THE
REVENGE OF THE RADIOACTIVE LADY by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's wacky, it's fun, and I suspect this is the antidote for some of the deeply depressing fiction I usually love to read. Full of oddball characters who take the reader on a wild ride through grief and revenge and multiple surprises, this novel is written in well-crafted prose that never clunks. The borderline-ditsy but definitely gutsy main character Marylou and the various quirky members of the Spriggs and Coffey families are still with me. I hope they hang around for a while. I like their company. ~ Elli
 THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS by Randy Susan Meyers. I became totally caught up in the lives of Lulu and Merry and their struggles to deal with the past and create a future. They are two wonderfully complex characters, and I loved watching them in their stubbornness and their growth. The writing is strong, the story compelling. You might think that a novel about two girls whose father killed their mother is way too depressing to enjoy – but despite the shattering event that opens the novel, the story is told in fresh and lovely prose and shimmers with healing, sisterly love, and hope. ~ Elli
 THE WIDOWER’S TALE by Julia Glass. When retired librarian and long-time widower Percy Darling allows his barn to become a preschool to help out his older daughter, his solitary life is transformed and the ripples affect his love-life, his family and his community. Narrating through the sharply drawn perspectives of Percy, his grandson Robert, a Guatemalan gardener, and a gay teacher at the preschool, Julia Glass tells a compelling tale of family loyalty and betrayal and the often unexpected consequences of our actions. As always, Glass renders her characters with wit, insight, and generosity for their human quirks and faults. ~ Elli
 THE
SIGNAL by
Ron Carlson ($14.00) Even though this is sort of a “guy book” —
all about fishing and crime in cowboy land — I loved Carlson’s
language and was totally taken with his characters. When Mack and his
estranged wife Vonnie backpack into the Wind River Mountains for their
tenth annual trip to say goodbye, Mack is less than honest with her; he’s
also tracking a signal to retrieve a piece of equipment needed by some
bad guys. In the beauty of the mountains, they find peril at the hands
of humans and their personal demons. ~Elli
 THE
GOLDEN AGE by Tahmima Anam ($13.99) When her college-aged
children get involved in resisting the brutal response to Bangladesh’s
efforts at independence, Rehana Haque gets caught up in the freedom
fighting as well, and her life is changed forever. This is a beautifully
written first novel, an account of political upheaval through the lens
of one family. ~Elli (Browse)
 THE
COLOR OF LIGHTNING
by
Paulette Jiles ($14.99) Jiles offers the reader several windows on life
in Texas Indian country at the close of the Civil War. There’s Britt
Johnson, a freed black man who travels from Kentucky to start a new life
but loses his family to an Indian raid. There’s Britt’s wife, Mary,
captured by the Comanche. There’s Samuel, sent by the Philadelphia
Quakers to bring a nonviolent peace to the region. There are no easy
answers in this book, but there is great storytelling about a largely
unexplored moment in our nation’s history. ~Elli
 THE
OUTCAST by Sadie Jones ($13.99) As we watch young Lewis Aldridge’s drunk
mother drown and his distant ex-military father marry a timid younger
woman, we know Lewis is in big trouble. An outcast, in fact. He is
simply a train wreck, self-destructive and angry; no one in the post-war
middle class British suburb can help, except his awkward neighbor Kit.
This beautifully written tale of their friendship is filled with secrets
and is utterly compelling. ~Elli
 LITTLE
BEE by Chris
Cleave ($14.00) This stunning novel alternates between two point-of-view
characters: Little Bee, a teenager from a small, oil-rich Nigerian
village, and Sarah, a well-to-do British editor, wife, and mother. They
meet on a Nigerian beach when Sarah and her husband are on vacation and
Little Bee is running for her life. Although the reader doesn’t see
the details of that meeting until late in the book, we know that the
event is brutal and pivotal, keeping the narrative tension high. We also
know that whatever happened on that beach binds these women together in
profound and complex ways. ~Elli
 THE
WRITING ON MY FOREHEAD by Nafisa Haji ($14.99) Many of us are defined, at least partly, by
the cultural clashes in our lives, and Saira, the Muslim-American
protagonist of this debut novel, is no exception. She spends her teen
years rebelling against her Indo-Pakistani parents’ wishes and as an
adult begins to understand the power of the clashes – of family,
traditions, and political events – that make her a unique person.
Wonderful characters, a gripping story, a satisfying ending. ~Elli
 THE
FAMILY MAN by Elinor Lipman
($14.95) I think this is my favorite Lipman novel so far (okay, so maybe
I’ll call a tie with The Inn at Lake Devine). Henry Archer is a
wonderful character – successful and lonely and gay. His estranged
step-daughter Thalia is a perfect foil – impulsive and quirky. Their
adventures together in re-creating family ties are both laugh-out-loud
funny and poignant. ~Elli
 DAY
FOR NIGHT
by Frederick
Reiken ($24.99) This brilliantly constructed novel from multiple points
of view magically and eloquently links swimming with manatees in Florida
with a brain-damaged young man held hostage in Utah, connects a fugitive
radical woman with a Kibbutz on the Dead Sea. Beautifully written,
magnificently cerebral, entirely compelling. ~Elli (signed copies
available)
 THE
RED THREAD by Ann Hood ($23.95) There’s a Chinese legend that our children are
connected to us by an invisible red thread. In Hood’s most recent
novel, the stories of six adopting couples are intricately woven with
the stories of the six Chinese women forced to give up their babies.
Poignant, beautifully written, and very moving. ~Elli (signed
copies available)
 THE
AIR WE BREATHE by Andrea Barrett. The tubercular patients taking
the fresh air cure in the Adirondacks in the weeks before the U.S. enters the
first World War people this meticulously researched and evocatively written
story, which concludes Barrett's four book narrative that began with Ship
Fever. Although from widely different class, national and ethnic
backgrounds, the patients speak with one voice, as anti-immigrant prejudice,
fear, and political repression escalates into violence. The result is an eerie,
disturbing, and exciting exploration of themes that consume our world today.
 MATRIMONY
by Joshua Henkin. College freshmen Julian and Mia fall in love at a small
alternative college very much like Hampshire, in a town very much like
Northampton. Their journey takes them – and us – to Ann Arbor and Berkeley
and Iowa City and Greenwich Village, through family crises and betrayals, as
they try to grow up into the adults they want to be, and the ones they can't
help being. Henkin's prose is fresh and never sentimental; his quiet story
grabbed my interest and kept it.
 MISTER
PIP by Lloyd Jones. Thirteen-year-old Matilda learns about the power of
storytelling from hearing Great Expectations read aloud as her small,
South Pacific island village is blockaded and besieged. The prose and the
narrative captivated me.
 THE
BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Díaz. Oscar is an overweight,
Dominican sci-fi nerd with an enormous yearning for love. He grows up in New
Jersey with his bewitching mother and his rebellious sister, under his family's
fukú, an ancient curse mixed up with Trujillo and serious bad karma. Written in
a wonderfully edgy prose, this book is captivating, irreverent, and profound.
 TRESPASS
by Valerie Martin. Chloe and Brendan Dale
are privileged American citizens, doing work they value, and living well. But
their world is also precarious: their country is at war and a poacher is killing
animals on their property. When their graduate student son Toby falls in love
with a foreigner, a Croatian refugee, the boundaries of the Dales’ known world
are threatened. This is an important book for our time, serious and disturbing,
that challenges us to think beyond the comfortable place.
 THE
PIRATE’S DAUGHTER by Margaret Cezair-Thompson.
The Jamaican proverb "Mouth open, story fly out" beautifully describes
this gripping saga of Ida and her daughter May, shipwrecked movie star Errol
Flynn, and a small bougainvillea-overgrown island off Port Antonio, Jamaica.
Cezair-Thompson weaves Ida and May’s efforts to figure out how to live their
lives in the turbulent 40’s and 50’s, with their country’s struggle for
independence.
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