Professor’s Book Corner

Posted by admin on Nov 18, 2009 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
This is a strangely haunting and humorous story of an English detective who returns to the place of his birth to resolve a twenty-year old mystery: the disappearance of his parents in Old Shanghai. Like Ishiguro’s earlier Remains of the Day, the best part of this book is the main character Christopher Banks who is so preoccupied by his own place in the 1930s world of English upperclass citizenry that he misses or misinterprets much of what is going on around him as Japan invades China. Not the storyline you would expect for a funny (droll) book, but Ishiguro makes it work. I’ve loaned out more copies of this novel than any other.

Unless by Carol Shields
When I learned of Carol Shields’ death through the Readers Digest front page proclamation that the newly-published Unless was her last book, I cried. Unless is the story of Reta, an ordinary Ontario mother whose life is interrupted when her nineteen year old daughter Norah suddenly drops out of college to take up sitting on a street corner in Toronto. This is such a believable story, with its humour and angst and everyday concerns; it pulls you in like a member of the family.

Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped my Faith Survive the Church by Philip Yancey
I found this account of Yancey’s struggle with the contradictions between his early encounters with a racist, legalistic religion and the good news of the Gospel both refreshingly honest and hopeful. While some of his mentors were also friends, most are writers whose influence came through reading their work. Not only did I learn much about Yancey, I also learned new insights about writers like Leo Tolstoy, C. Everett Koop, G.K. Chesterton and Henri Nouwen. And it made me ponder and value anew how much we can learn from others, personally or through their writing, whose lives model life-enhancing faith.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
This novel is among the best of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Set in Oxford in the 1930s, Gaudy Night takes Harriet Vane back to her old college where, believing she is the target of mortal malice, calls on the services of the aristocratic Lord Peter Wimsey to assist. Perhaps what I appreciate most about Sayers’ novels is that they are characterized by suspense, intelligence and wit rather than violence. I would (and do) encourage my own children to read them.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Amy Tan is one of the few authors whose new releases I will purchase in hardcopy form because I can’t wait to read them. Growing up in Chinatown, the main character, Jing-mei Woo only begins to grasp the complexity and value of her mother’s pre-immigration life in wartorn China after she is asked to join three of her mother’s friends in their weekly mah-jong game after her mother’s death. Like many of her novels, The Joy Luck Club is told from the perspective of an American-born writer in San Francisco whose Chinese heritage is a source of childhood embarrassment and angst until a family crisis brings her to look more closely at her Chinese past. I don’t know why I find this symmetry between author and subject so important, and appealing; perhaps it makes me think I am gaining insight into a sub-culture that I don’t belong to, along with simply enjoying a well-written story.