Three Recent Reads:

All of which I'd recommend:

Torch by Cheryl Strayed. Beautiful story of a family's grief. Classy, elegant writing; full range of emotions and characters.

Halfway House by Katherine Noel. Sharp, poignant rendering of a young girl's mental illness and its affect on her family. The writing is fresh and evenhanded.

and lastly The Professor's Daughter by Emily Raboteau, an accomplished, artful novel-in-stories. One of the characters is a brilliant young boy sent to private school on a scholarship and brutally harrassed by his white classmates; one of the characters is another brilliant boy who sees color in sounds and who suffers a senseless accident; and one of the characters is a young woman caught in between:

"My father is black and my mother is white and my brother is a vegetable."

Side note: all three talented authors were fellows at Bread Loaf this year.