AFTER MIDNIGHT, by Irmgard Keun

After Midnight is a deceptively simple little tale that turns out to be a riveting insider's view of daily life in the early days of Nazi controlled Germany. The narrator is the very ordinary and somewhat naive 19 year old Sanna Moder, who is more concerned with her looks, friends and love life than in manouvering the complicated and dangerous politics of pre-war Germany. The book is full of satirical jabs at the Nazi ideology and power structure but at the same time takes a rather critical view of the way her compatriots coped with living in the frankly crazy Nazi system. It gives insight on the ways individuals respond to an absurd and nefarious political system, and some of the responses are not very pretty. Keun's life was amazingly courageous and her response to National Socialism as a writer is a beacon of integrity.

For a review of this book from NPR, click here: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/136682441/a-midnight-tale-of-the-rising-third-reich

WORLD'S FAIR, by E. L. Doctorow

Doctorow is well-known for evocative portraits of bygone eras in America in books such as Ragtime and Billy Bathgate - feeding off popular and sometimes nostalgic attitudes without sentimentality.  In World's Fair, he does a masterful job evoking the vanished New York of the 1930s as seen through the eyes of the child protagonist, Edgar. The childish world view in the narrative rings true, and the metaphor of the 1939 World's Fair hovers over the novel and provides its climax. It's a loving portrait of a city and an era by a masterful writer. Very enjoyable.

For a review of the novel from The Guardian, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/15/worlds-fair-el-doctorow

LOOK AT ME, by Jennifer Egan

Look At Me has been described as the wild older sister of Jennifer Egan's acclaimed novel A Visit From The Goon Squad.  Written ten years before Goon Squad, Look At Me is a very interesting and at times almost brutal novel about two women named Charlotte: one a 16 year old starved for love and the other, the main character, a successful fashion model who has a disfiguring car crash and ends up with an acceptable but completely different face, rendering her "invisible" and in search of her future and identity. The older Charlotte is not a very simpathetic character, but she is a fascinating one. There are links between the two Charlottes, both through history (the 16 year old is the daughter of her long-lost best friend in high school) and theme (both are searching for identity and love). The portrait of Rust Belt decline in Rockford, Illinois (the Charlottes' hometowns) rings true and is an appropriate metaphor for the decline of several characters in the novel. You can decide whether the ending delivers the novel's potential, but all in all, it's a strong and riveting story.

For a review of the novel from The Independent, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/16/jennifger-egan-look-at-me

UNDERGROUND, by Andrew McGahan

Many of us are not exposed to Australian writers and I'd say McGahan is a great one to start with. His political satire Underground is based on the outrageous premise (well, maybe not that outrageous, given the state of the world) of a post-democratic security state in Australia set up after a brazen N-bomb destroys the capital city of Canberra. The story is told as a death-row memoir, narrated by Leo, the brother of the Australian prime minister. It's fast paced and unpredictable, with plenty of satirical swipes at the US and Aussie power structure, culture and people. It's a defiant statement on a serious theme, but is broadly humorous and very enjoyable. Leo's character, and how he talks about his twin brother the pm is very funny. It's a book well worth reading.

For a review of the book from The Australian, click here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/underground/story-e6frg8no-1111112374816 

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, by Jennifer Egan

I'm excited about this book - a very entertaining, clever, moving and boldly experimental book that centers on the "goon squad" of Time and how it affects everything. Several main characters are traced through various times in their lives, interacting with other characters and their spouses, offspring, siblings, etc. The complex narrative zooms back to the late 1970s punk scene and forward to a futuristic 2020s version of New York, across generations, love relationships, marriages, partnerships,etc. The book is neither a collection of short stories nor a conventional narrative, but it holds together very well and is in fact cyclical. It was strongly praised when published last year and a very impressive book indeed.

For a review of the book from the Guardian, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/13/jennifer-egan-visit-goon-squad

UNDERWORLD, by Don DeLillo

Underworld is DeLillo's masterwork, written in 1997 (note the Twin Towers on the original book cover). It's an astonishingly beautiful mosaic of 20th Century America, told in a series of vignettes revolving around the lives of a colorful variety of characters of all types. There are plot connections, for example, the way the characters are linked by the initial event at the Dodgers-Giants baseball game in 1951 and the development of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. It's also very wide ranging, both in time and space - at 800+ pages, truely epic in scope.It's a book that must be experienced and savored - funny, moving, profound, it rings very true. The language is crystalline, the best of anything he's written - and he's written lots of great stuff. The book is right up there with the strongest books of the past 50 years.

For a review of the book from NY Times, Click here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/14/daily/underworld-book-review.html

NEED, by Nik Cohn

Nick Cohn is the well known pop-culture critic and writer, best known for having written the journalistic piece on which the blockbuster 70's disco movie "Saturday Night Fever" was based. Reading his1994 novel Need is an interesting experience -  something like having an extended  hallucination. The overall the effect is vivid and intense, fascinating and mostly pleasurable. Set in the midst of a heat wave in New York City, it is the story of the unravelling of 4 characters with odd and disfunctional pasts that keep intruding on the main narrative, and an apocalyptic "event" that shakes everyone's world.

Click here for an overview of Cohn's creative life, from NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/nik-cohn-fever-dream.html?pagewanted=all