Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

This is the last of the fiction books I had bought for Aruba. It was also one of the greatest books I had read in a while. Every now and then I miss a book that America loves (for example Life of Pi) and this is one of those.

This book is narrated by an old man in a nursing home. He is watching a circus get set up in his town and recalling his life in as a worker in a circus during the Great Depression. I loved the story and how well it was written. I knew nothing about circus life and felt like it was reading about life in a different country. I also appreciated learning about life during the Great Depression. Clearly, Gruen did an incredible amount of research on these topics. Finally, the way the past and present were woven together was better than in any fiction I've read recently.

Highly recommended!

The Gravediggers Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

I had never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates which is kind of strange, given how prolific she is and how much of a staple American author she is. I picked this one up for our trip to Aruba, but just got to it now.

Reading this book was ok, I liked it but did not love it. In retrospect, however, I think it's really well-written with an exceptionally good character portrait of the main character Rebecca. Rebecca is the daughter of immigrants who flee WWII and end up in upstate New York. Her father, a mean, unhappy man, becomes the town gravedigger. His personality haunts her for her entire life, including her choice of partner and style of raising of her son.

It was not easy to read in that some terrible things happen to Rebecca, and Oates does a good job of creating tension. But it is a memorable book and I'd be interested in reading other books by Oates.

Inheritance of Loss by Kirin Desai

This book had been on my list for a while and I thought it was one of those classics that I would love once I got into it. I wouldn't say I loved but I can see why it is so well-respected.

The book follows the lives of a small village of people living in India, near the Nepali border. As the politics around them heat up into unrest and war, the lives of these people begin to unravel in parallel. One of them has a son who has immigrated to the U.S., and his life there is no better.

Well-written with intriguing characters, this book kept my attention. I thought it was a great "time and place" book, with excellent descriptions of both people and settings.