The Assistant by Bernard Malamud tells the story of Frank Alpine and Morris Bober, an Italian drifter and a Jewish shop owner who, after Morris offers Frank a job, work together to keep the tiny store from collapsing due to encroaching competition in the neighborhood. At the beginning of the book the author describes Morris's daily routine. He runs a little dingy shop in Brooklyn that hasn't seen much success, and suffers from clinical ailments related to stress and old age (Morris is sixty). His one life's allowance is a nap he takes every day, during the afternoon. He can barely support his wife Helen and his daughter, Ida, which is especially problematic in Ida's case, being that she wishes to attend university. Morris attempts to shield her from the reality of their situation, but in reality he is terrified he won't be able to afford to send her to school. Malamud depicts Morris as a good man that just can't seem to get a break. He allows all sorts of concessions on behalf of his customers. Some open credit lines, for instance, that they fail to repay. His generosity brings him pain. Things take a turn for the worst when Morris is robbed one night near closing time. One of the men--who we'll meet again later--hits him in the head with his pistol, claiming his cash drawer is far too empty for a day's work and accusing him of hiding money. This leads to Morris taking in an overview of his life and deeming it a series of failures. Soon after the robbery, however, Frank comes into the shop. Though Morris doesn't know it, Frank was one of the men who robbed the store the previous night. Not the one who hit him, however. Morris, taking pity on the young drifter eventually gives him a job, seeing that he's been surviving on next to nothing on the streets. Ida isn't happy about the news, especially since things are so bad already. But soon enough, when the injury Morris sustained in the robbery begins to open back up again and bleed, Frank takes over the store and runs it in the boss's stead. To the family's surprise, the business actually picks up with Frank at the helm. Ida is still suspicious of the man, distrusting him not only because of he's not Jewish, but because she's afraid he'll steal from them. She is also wary of the way he looks at their daughter, Helen. And not without good reason. Frank is caught spying on Helen while she is nude in the bathroom. After that, however, Helen actually begins to fall for Frank. She rebukes him at first, but is interested in making him into an honest man. At first, Frank seems ready to go straight, and empties his wallet of all the money he's stolen from the register since he started working for Morris. He takes one dollar back, however, so that when he meets Helen in the park later that night, the two can take a taxi home. When he does, however, this Morris catches him in the act and banishes him from the store. Frank goes to meet Helen in the park anyway with the aim of expressing his love. She arrives first, however, and is ambushed by Ward Minoque, the rough man that robbed the store with Frank in the beginning of the book. He tries to rape Helen and is only saved by Frank showing up to disrupt the situation last minute. Directly afterwards, however, after a spat between Frank and Ward, Frank ends up raping Helen himself, overcome with psychotic desire. Soon afterwards, it is revealed that the Bober's grocery wasn't doing well because of Frank, but because the neighborhood competitor, a delicatessen, had fallen ill. When that delicatessen ends up shutting down in turn, a bigger, newer store opens in its place, leading Morris to believe he'll soon be bankrupt. Morris goes upstairs for his nap and leaves the gas on his bedroom heater turns on without lighting it. He says he did so accidentally, but the narrative insinuates he was contemplating suicide. He is saved from his fate only when Franks shows up at the last minute. He then resumes control of the store, attempting to rectify the wrongs he has committed. In the final pages of the book, Frank confesses to Morris that he was one of the men that robbed his store. After exiling Frank again, Morris dies of pneumonia after shoveling spring snow. At the funeral, Frank falls into Morris's grave and reemerges a changed man. He then takes over the store and works at an all-night coffee shop to keep the income flowing. He confesses his love for Helen and offers to pay for her education. He then has himself circumcised and at the end of the novel, symbolically, at least, becomes a Jew.
Hank, Leland, Kip and Ronny were all born and raised in the same Wisconsin town — Little Wing — and are now coming into their own (or not) as husbands and fathers. One of them never left, still farming the family's land that's been tilled for generations. Others did leave, went farther afield to make good, with varying degrees of success; as a rock star, commodities trader, rodeo stud. And seamlessly woven into their patchwork is Beth, whose presence among them—both then and now—fuels the kind of passion one comes to expect of love songs and rivalries.
Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world. The result is a shared memory only half-recreated, riddled with culture clashes between people who desperately wish to see themselves as the unified tribe they remember, but are confronted with how things have, in fact, changed.
There is conflict here between longtime buddies, between husbands and wives — told with writing that is, frankly, gut-wrenching, and even heartbreaking. But there is also hope, healing, and at times, even heroism. It is strong, American stuff, not at all afraid of showing that we can be good, too — not just fallible and compromising. Shotgun Lovesongs is a remarkable and uncompromising saga that explores the age-old question of whether or not you can ever truly come home again — and the kind of steely faith and love returning requires.
It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
A compulsively readable, emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller that draws comparisons to Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, or Before I Go to Sleep, this is an electrifying debut embraced by readers across markets and categories.
Three simple words, in a letter accompanying her parent’s will, tear Nisha’s carefully ordered world apart. Raised in England, by her caring but emotionally reserved parents, Nisha has never been one to take risks.
Now, with the scrawled address of an Indian convent begins a search for the mother and family she never knew and the awakening of childhood memories long forgotten.
The secrets, culture and people that Nisha discover will change her life forever. And, as her eyes are opened to a side of herself she didn’t know existed, Nisha realizes that she must also seek answers to the hardest question of all – why?
Weaving together the stories of Nisha, Shilpa and Devi, The Forgotten Daughter explores powerfully and poignantly the emotional themes of motherhood, loss and identity – ultimately asking the question of what you would do out of love for your children?
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.
