AWAY, by Amy Bloom

Away is an interesting immigrant story set in the 1920s, about a Ukrainian Jewish woman, Lillian Leyb, who emigrates to NYC to escape the latest pogrom and by sheer determination situates herself as a mistress to some well-connected theatre people. The first half of the book explores her adaptation process and strange success. The story shifts significantly when a relative arriving in NY tells her that her daughter, whom she assumed was dead, had in fact been rescued by a villager and taken to Siberia. Lillian decides to break off the mistress role and travel across the US to Alaska to then make her way to Siberia. The journey, fraught with difficulty, pushes the plot forward, to an interesting ending. The book is quite successfully told, with lots of atmosphere and even pathos.

For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/books/review/Thomas-t.html?_r=0

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are Completely Beside Ourselves is a surprising and moving growing-up narrative with a twist. Karen Fowler's novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. Although it is rather straightforward in the retrospective telling of the childhood of the protagonist, Rosemary Cooke who is now a university student, the unusual aspect of the story (can't mention it if I want to avoid spoiling the plot) adds interest. It is movingly told and has a tragic aspect as well. Worth the read.

For a review of the book from The Telegraph, click here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11160844/We-Are-All-Completely-Beside-Ourselves-Karen-Joy-Fowler-Man-Booker-2014.html