Friday Finds

Friday Finds is hosted by Should Be Reading.

Here are a few new finds I discovered this week at my new library job. (This is going to be bad for my TBR stacks -- I can tell) .

The Convalescent; Jessica Anthony

(the cover is awesome on this one. It is a 3/4 cover and the colors/photo is so very vivid).

(AMAZON) Starred Review. Anthony's compulsively readable debut novel stars Rovar Pfliegman, who sells meat out of a bus in Virginia. Rovar is a peculiar, troll-like man: he is short and hairy, has not spoken since childhood, keeps a pet beetle and lives in the same broken-down bus that houses his meat business. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Rovar is his precarious singularity. He is the last of the Pfliegmans and, by his own account, he is falling apart. Although he halfheartedly seeks treatment for his various ailments, he seems far more bent on fulfilling the destiny of self-destruction all Pfliegmans (according to Rovar) are subject to. Rovar's explanation of his family sprawls deep into the past, probing beyond his chaotic childhood all the way back to the origins of the Pfliegman clan in premedieval Hungary. Along the way, the narrative nods to all sorts of greats—Kafka, Rushdie, Darwin and Grass, to name a few. But Anthony's style—funny, immediate and unapologetically cerebral—carves out a space all its own.

 Tinkers; Paul Harding

(AMAZON) Starred Review. Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest son of an epileptic small time traveling salesman. The descriptions of the father's epilepsy and the cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure are stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George returns to more melancholy scenes. The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship.

Blooms of Darkness; Aharon Appelfeld 

(this one I just found on Amazon)

(AMAZON) In this powerful novel from award-winning Israeli writer Appelfeld, two discarded souls form an unlikely bond in the chaos of occupied Ukraine during WWII. When the Jews are being rounded up, 11-year-old Hugo's mother hides him with her childhood friend, Mariana, a prostitute in a brothel. Locked in a closet every night, Hugo hears Mariana at work and disappears into dreams and visions about his family and friends. Mariana takes loving if sporadic care of Hugo and slowly she becomes Hugo's whole world. Hugo returns Mariana's kindness by lifting her spirits as her moods swing from frivolity and disregard for the destruction around her to deep depression about the indignities she endures. Mariana is an exhilarating tragicomic heroine, a woman who is both alcoholic, manic-depressive, and believer in a God she long ago abandoned. The lean, spare prose does not shy away from harsh realities. A simple story that encapsulates the joy and sadness of a coming-of-age novel with the trauma of a world in the midst of destruction.

What did you discover this week?