A notable tourist attraction in Thailand is the bridge “over the River Kwai”—part of the Death Railway built during World War II by the Japanese using the labor of Allied POWs under atrocious conditions. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Australian Richard Flanagan, follows the Australian contributors to this grandiose project, as well as its Japanese administrators, many of whom were destined to become prisoners themselves.

Dorrigo Evans is a hard-drinking and philandering Aussie military doctor. His resemblance to Errol Flynn fails to prevent his capture by the Japanese. (An unintended irony: the Khmer Rouge most likely captured and killed Errol's son, Sean.) Torn from Amy, the love of his life, Evans ministers to fellow POWs suffering from cholera and similar ills. Acclaimed a war hero upon his release, he finds, like many veterans, that life after war seems tepid.

Evans’ foil is Tenji Nakamura, who was part of the Japanese plan to conquer India via rail—dreams which went up in atomic vapor. Nakamura scrapes together a life in the aftermath, all the while fearful of the noose meant for war criminals.

The Death Railway story has already been told several times over (including in a novel that inspired the award-winning film The Bridge Over the River Kwai). So The Narrow Road to the Deep North is light on plot and even historical detail, instead becoming a winding eulogy to Australia's servicemen and the war era—a topic personal to Flanagan since his own father was one of those Australian POWs. It is also literary in a self-referential way. The novel's title is taken from Basho, and Tennyson's "Ulysses" serves as a motif, as does Kipling's "Recessional.” The result can be exhilarating, but it can also trivialize the grim historical reality behind it.

Even so, Flanagan is to be lauded for the empathy he shows to both prisoners and wardens. Their handiwork can be seen to this day in the land then known as Siam. "Lest we forget," as Kipling put it.

Someone is setting fire to the houses of Pomeroy, New Hampshire, in Sue Miller’s latest novel, but that’s beside the point. The important thing is that Francesca “Frankie” Rowley has returned from a long sojourn in Africa as an aid worker and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Besides, the thing that lights her fire is Bud Jacobs, the local newspaper editor whose life is just as up in the air as hers is. The two launch a passionate affair even as everyone else’s summer home is being torched.

But there are other things that concern Frankie, who’s a little, er, burned out from both the futility and tiny, ephemeral triumphs of her work in Africa. She’s moved back in with her parents and neither she nor they know whether the move is permanent. Moreover, her father, who has never been attentive to Frankie, her sister Liz or their mother Sylvia, is sinking into dementia.

Miller’s skill as a writer has always allowed her readers to stick with a story no matter how self-absorbed her characters are. Part of this success is because Miller (Lake Shore Limited, The Senator’s Wife) tends to focus on intelligent women forced to choose between passions and duties that seem irreconcilable. Should Frankie stay near her parents, who need her? Should she stay with Bud? Should she return to Africa, where she can do her best work and where there are no doubt other men waiting?

The Arsonist is a worthy snapshot of the dilemmas faced by certain women of a certain time and how they choose to tackle them.

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred-Year House is an appealing mixture: part archival mystery, part ghost story, part historical novel, starring a house with as much personality as Manderley or Hill House. Told in reverse chronology, it unfolds as a kind of bookish scavenger hunt, uncovering clues and putting pieces of the fictional puzzle in place.

The house in question is Laurelfield, a historic estate on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore. Built as a private home for the Devohr family, it was briefly an artist’s colony and then a private home once again. Since the story is told from the present to the past, each segment reveals a new facet of the house’s history or an important clue to a character’s identity.

The story begins in 1999, with husband and wife Doug and Zee living in the coach house at Laurelfield, thanks to the generosity of Zee’s mother, Grace, whose family owns the estate. Doug is supposed to be completing a biography of obscure poet Edwin Parfitt, who was a resident of the artist colony at Laurelfield, but he is instead secretly ghostwriting a young adult series. After Zee’s stepfather invites his son and daughter-in-law, Case and Miriam, to move into the coach house with the other young couple, Doug finds himself infatuated with Miriam. When Miriam agrees to help Doug locate the colony archives, they discover long-held secrets that threaten Doug’s marriage and the existence of Laurelfield as the 100-year history of the house and its residents is slowly unfurled.

Both the story and the telling of The Hundred-Year House are more ambitious than Makkai’s acclaimed first novel, The Borrower, but this novel is similarly infused with a respect for literature and literary culture, as well as a wry sense of humor. Though no one character ever knows all the house’s secrets, the reader does, and putting all the facts together is half the fun of this clever and utterly delightful work of fiction.

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If the dystopian coming-of-age novel has been the inspiration for many a Hollywood blockbuster in recent years, the increasingly ubiquitous genre more closely resembles literary fiction in critically acclaimed author Chris Bohjalian’s Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.

For readers who discovered Bohjalian after his luminous Midwives became an Oprah’s Book Club selection, the prolific author’s latest novel will not disappoint: He once again reveals an uncanny talent for crafting a young female protagonist who is fatally flawed, but nevertheless immensely likable.

Emily Shepard is a high school student struggling with a typical adolescence—until her comfortable life is torn asunder after a catastrophic meltdown at a Vermont nuclear plant, where her parents are employed. As Armageddon annihilates the once idyllic Northeast Kingdom, Emily’s father, who was once disciplined for drinking on the job, and her mother, who is also renowned for her alcohol-fueled escapades, become scapegoats.

Orphaned and alone, Emily joins the ranks of homeless teens wandering the streets of Burlington, her intelligence and passion for poet Emily Dickinson coexisting warily alongside a tawdry life riddled by drugs and prostitution. Indeed, it is Emily’s inherent integrity and capacity to endure that proves her salvation.

Although Bohjalian’s latest novel is unflinchingly raw in its depiction of homelessness and the devastation of a nuclear meltdown, it never feels preachy or maudlin. Instead, it resonates with a message of hope, truth and the fragility of life.

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Every one of us has a handful—at least—of Nagging Questions That Seemingly Can’t Be Answered. Some of them are spiritual or existential, some of them concern the future or the past, some of them relate to half-remembered relationships or half-forgotten events. And like loose fillings, they just get in our grill and tantalize us. Our daily ability to cope with the frustration of their existence in some ways defines us, or at least describes us, as adults.

In Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, McSweeney’s founder (and 2012 National Book Award finalist for A Hologram for the King) Dave Eggers breaks out of the blocks at record-setting pace, depositing the reader, his protagonist and a captive astronaut in an abandoned building without even so much as a how-de-do. And then things begin to get strange. Because Thomas, his rookie kidnapper-turned-inquisitor, doesn’t merely have baggage; he’s towing a whole fantasy freight train in the crazy-quilt mass of his misfiring synapses.

At first, Thomas merely wants to probe the mind of an astronaut acquaintance he once considered a hero. But riddles, like potato chips, are addictive, and Thomas can’t content himself to stop with the first one. Without giving away too much of the plot, Thomas actions begin to resemble the plate spinners one used to see at the circus or on “Ed Sullivan,” racing against time and gravity at the ragged edge of composure.

Eggers has written this slender novel entirely in dialogue, and not in the way one is used to seeing it. To wit, this interchange between Thomas and Kev (the astronaut):

—See, this bends my mind. Cornerback on the football team, 4.0. MIT for engineering. Then you speak Urdu and become an astronaut with NASA and now it’s defunded.

—It’s not defunded. The funding is going elsewhere.

—Into little robots. WALL-Es that putter around Mars.

—There’s real value to that.

—Kev, c’mon.

A couple hundred pages of that may seem a bit like a five-mile sprint, but it’s actually a groove fairly easily settled into, and it nimbly underscores the urgency of the circumstances.

Leave it to Eggers to play up the situation’s moral ambiguity as well, much as he did in last year’s The Circle. Virtually every character in the book combines nobility and culpability, and while their grays may not present themselves in 50 shades, at least none of them are painted in black and white.

In terms of pacing, Your Fathers would seemingly advance itself as a terrific beach read, but the plot lends itself to a little overcast. That said, it deserves to be shortlisted for the summer, an outstanding travelling companion for a coast-to-coast flight . . . especially if you’re stuck in a middle seat.

Thane Tierney lives in Los Angeles, and never, ever flies cross-country without at least three books in his carry-on.

James Joyce’s Ulysses is a novel that is both highly celebrated and much hated. Termed “diffuse” and “pretentious” by the likes of Virginia Woolf, the dense book is the subject of much debate within the literary community, with some dismissing it and others embracing it (but very few fully understanding it). Either way, it’s inarguable that Ulysses has made an indelible cultural mark since its publication in 1922. And the release of Maya Lang’s debut novel, The Sixteenth of June, provides more evidence of its lasting influence.

Just as in Ulysses, the main story within The Sixteenth of June takes place over just one day and comprises death, sex, drunkenness and scatology. The three main characters are Leopold and Stephen Portman (brothers named by their parents after the two chief male protagonists in Ulysses) and Nora, Stephen’s best friend and Leopold’s fiancée. Stephen and Leopold come from a family firmly entrenched in the 1 percent, while Nora’s background is modest. Like Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom, Nora (whom Lang gives the name of Joyce’s real-life wife) is a talented opera singer. But she’s recently abandoned her aspirations as she grieves the death of her mother. Meanwhile, the funeral of Leo and Stephen’s grandmother is the first event bringing the three together on the 16th of June 2004. The second: the centennial Bloomsday bash thrown by Leo and Stephen’s parents, which celebrates the anniversary of the day depicted in Ulysses.

The story is a love triangle of sorts: Stephen, the brooding academic, thinks Nora is too good for Leo, a simple frat-boy type who loves his corporate job and just wants to settle in the suburbs and start breeding. Nora, mourning her mother’s loss in a self-destructive manner, is so numb she doesn’t know what she wants. Much will be revealed by the end of this day, of course, although not much actually happens (another nod to its inspiration).

While Lang’s prose displays real talent, the characters don’t leave a strong impression, and it all feels a bit like an academic exercise rather than a story that can stand strongly on its own. The reader needn’t be familiar with Ulysses to appreciate this book, but recognizing the references would likely make it more entertaining for some.

Following the success of his critically acclaimed debut, The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman returns with an ambitious new novel, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers. Along with a plucky protagonist named Tooly Zylberberg, Rachman whisks readers away on a whirlwind jaunt around the globe, through the waning days of the 20th century and into the dawn of the 21st.

We first meet Tooly in a quiet little town in Wales, where she owns a charming bookshop on the path to bankruptcy. As is soon made clear, Tooly has a past full of secrets she is reluctant to share and, if she is being perfectly honest, portions of which are a bit of mystery even to herself. Her peripatetic childhood is all a bit of a blur; a ragtag band of characters who are little more than strangers—including conmen and Russian bookworms—form the closest thing to a family that she has.

After leaving so many people and places over the years, Tooly is perfectly content to keep her past behind her. But when an old love manages to track her down, Tooly is sucked back into a life filled with people she never thought she would see again. In order to unlock the puzzle of her own life, Tooly embarks on a journey around the world, uncovering long-buried secrets that will bring her to a new understanding of the factors that shaped her.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers builds up steam slowly—the first half lays the groundwork for the revelations to follow—and readers might initially find the jumps in time and ever-mounting number of questions frustrating and confusing. This simply means, however, that when all the pieces do fall into place, it is all the more satisfying. Rachman has crafted a story in which the quiet moments are just as important as the loud ones and nobody is exactly as he or she first appears. Readers would be wise to approach this book like they would a maze: Getting a little lost along the way is practically guaranteed, but it’s also part of the fun. With The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, Rachman has produced a meaty novel that isn’t afraid to ask big questions or take risks; the result is a story that is both thoughtful and thrilling.

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As the United States exits two protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that nearly 100,000 defense-related Americans remain in Japan, a country with which the U.S. ceased hostilities nearly 70 years ago. The American bases occupy about one-fifth of Okinawa, an island unfortunate to have served as a rampart for the Japanese mainland during the war and as an aircraft carrier for the Americans after it. Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird attempts to bridge the gap between these two phases in Okinawan history.

Luz is a modern American army brat, in Okinawa because of her gung-ho military mother. In her crass way, she tries to navigate global transience and her own mélange of ancestries. The other narrator is Takimo, a wartime Okinawan teen convinced that Japan is invincible and that her emperor is divine. She is forced to suffer all manner of privation on the road to disillusionment with the imperial cause.

That these two eventually become connected Hollywood-style may go without saying. But the contrasts between them are fascinating. During World War II the Americans were hardly innocent of demonizing the Japanese, but Takimo reminds us that the demonization went both ways. Luz, for her part, gets a schooling in East-Asian ancestor worship and filial duty that helps her better accept her mother’s idiosyncrasies and the premature death of her soldier sister.

Once herself an American in Okinawa, Bird knows her subject; the novel displays keen appreciation and sympathy for the Okinawans and their culture. The prose could benefit from more showing and less telling, as the cliché goes, but the voices of the girls are convincing.

The American presence in Okinawa remains controversial, whether because it desiccates a vibrant island or because soldiers there occasionally go berserk and assault the locals. Above the East China Sea provides welcome context to the news reports from an island whose pivotal place in global power politics remains mostly unexamined.

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Writer Kaui Hart Hemmings had a lot to live up to with her second novel: Her best-selling, polished debut, The Descendants, was made into an Oscar-winning film starring George Clooney. With The Possibilities, she delivers on her early promise while making a striking departure setting-wise, moving from the tropical islands of her native Hawaii to the snowy mountains of Colorado.

After Sarah St. John’s 22-year-old son Cully dies in a skiing accident, she struggles to return to life. Her job as a co-host of a Breckenridge travel show (the kind of cheesy production that is shown on hotel TV channels) suddenly seems meaningless. Her widowed dad, who has been staying with her, seems to be making that arrangement permanent. And Cully’s dad Billy, whom Sarah never married, is back in the picture in a confusing way. Then a lovely but mysterious young woman named Kit shows up at Sarah’s house, with news that will send the family reeling.

Sarah hits the road with Billy, her dad, her best friend and Kit, heading to a memorial service at Cully’s college. This motley crew finds out a lot about themselves and each other, and they’re forced to make some difficult choices. And yet, Hemmings manages to make this road trip as hilarious as it is touching, punctuated with knockout dialogue.

Hemmings has a unique voice—both sensitive and humorous. In her hands, Sarah is all-too-human, a middle-aged woman who struggles to redefine herself after losing the child she raised mostly on her own. “I close my eyes and imagine his possibilities, the different hues of his self, what his face would look like in ten years, the kind of man he would be,” Sarah says. “He never had the chance to become himself. He never had the chance to be anyone else.”

While The Possibilities is a book ostensibly about death, it is at its core really about life—in all its messy, funny, hurtful, confusing and transcendent moments.  

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Kaui Hart Hemmings about The Possibilities.

Joshua Ferris, who previously examined the culture of the contemporary workplace (Then We Came to the End) and family life (The Unnamed) turns his attention to social media in To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. At first, the novel seems to be a satiric look at the way Facebook and Twitter could be used to hijack a person’s identity. But as the main character heads toward an existential crisis, it is clear that Ferris is also exploring how technology both connects us and reinforces our isolation.

Paul O’Rourke is a dentist with a successful practice in Manhattan. His long workdays are punctuated by feelings of unrequited love for his ex-girlfriend (also his receptionist), religious disagreements with his long-term hygienist Mrs. Convoy and frequent cigarette breaks. His evenings are scheduled around Red Sox games. He has put off using the Internet for personal or professional use, so when a professional-looking website appears, purporting to represent his dental practice, O’Rourke is both puzzled and angered by this inroad into his privacy. His outrage only increases when an active Facebook page and Twitter account appear, also under his name. But when the nature of the content turns personal, he can’t resist emailing back to the virtual Paul O’Rourke.

Once Paul engages with this fictional doppelganger, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour quickly becomes a farce aimed at identity theft, the lure and limitations of religion and the importance of shared belief. Paul is a lifelong loner, from a troubled family, so his yearning to be part of a community is counter-weighted by huge emotional risks.

As in his earlier novels, Ferris is both laugh-out-loud funny and even profound, often on the same page. Paul’s self-absorption can be wearying at times, but his journey to self-awareness is designed to be both amusing and thought provoking, allowing readers to take their own existential ride.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.