Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Buried Giant’ asks whether it's better to “forget” the past or to turn and face it

In The Buried Giant, his first novel in ten years, Kazuo Ishiguro poses the question: is it better to forget the past or turn and face it? The question applies to individual people, tribes, clans, races and nations.

The Buried Giant is set in post-Arthurian Briton just after a war between the Britons and the Saxons. A great mist (as one of the characters calls it) has settled over the land, erasing memories of the past, even of events that occurred a day or two before.

Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple, have a vague recollection of having had a son although neither of them can remember much about him or why he left their village and went to live in another one. They set out on

Harlan Coben’s ‘The Stranger’ has a great opening line

“The stranger didn’t shatter Adam’s world all at once.” So begins Harlan Coben’s twenty-fifth mystery novel, The Stranger.

Adam Price is a former prosecutor turned eminent domain lawyer (and pardon my irrelevant aside: I can’t think of any area of the law more boring, but I digress). He loves his life: his wife Corinne, his two boys, his house, his friends, his suburban New Jersey town. As a fellow “lacrosse dad” crows, “We’re living the dream!”

Then, a stranger walks up to Adam and reveals the “terrible secret” Corinne has kept hidden for some two years. It rocks Price to his core.

Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila’ completes a trilogy “unlike anything else in American literature”

Photo by Ulf Anderson / Getty Images

Marilynne Robinson’s Lila is one of three “exquisite books [that] constitute a trilogy on spiritual redemption unlike anything else in American literature.” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post, 9/30/14).

Lila is a companion book to Gilead (which won a Pulitzer and a National Book Critics Circle award) and Home (which won the Orange Prize). Now comes word that Lila, a finalist for the National Book Award, has won the National Book Critics Circle Award as well.

Set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, the three books tell the intertwined stories of the Ames and Boughton families. In Gilead, the Rev. John Ames, one of a long line of preachers and still living in his grandfather’s house, is dying and urgently trying to finish a letter to his

2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction announced and Atticus Lish takes home the big one

Atticus Lish has won the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction with his novel, Preparation for the Next Life.

In announcing the award, PEN/Faulkner describes Lish’s book as “a document of the undocumented and an unlikely love story between a Chinese Muslim immigrant, Zou Lei, and a traumatized Iraq War veteran, Skinner… [which] forces readers to look squarely at a host of the failures plaguing contemporary American society. Lish’s prose is dogged and steadfast as he describes his characters’ raw reality and the desperate lives they struggle to lead.” (penfaulkner.org)

Lish will be honored on May 2, 2015 at an awards ceremony. He and the

Anthony Doerr’s ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ wins the 2015 Pulitzer for Fiction

Fiction

Congratulations to Anthony Doerr, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for his novel, All The Light We Cannot See. The judges called Doerr’s book “an imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology." (Reviewed in this blog 3/6/15)

Other finalists for the prize in fiction were Richard Ford for Let Me Be Frank With You; Laila Lalami for The Moor’s Account; and Joyce Carol Oates for Lovely, Dark, Deep.

Poetry

The prize for Poetry went to Gregory Pardlo for Digest. Other finalists were Alan Shapiro for Reel to Reel and Arthur Sze for Compass Rose.

Publishers Weekly: The Most Anticipated Books of May 2015

PW asked its review editors to pick the most notable books being published in Spring 2015. Listed below are the ones coming out in May, by category: Fiction, Mystery/Crime/Thriller, SciFi/Fantasy/Horror, Young Adult and History. May should be a merrie month, indeed.

Fiction
Kate Atkinson’s A God In Ruins is a companion to her Life After Life. It’s the story of Ursula’s younger brother, Teddy, “would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband, and father.”

Mystery/Crime/Thriller
Jason Matthews’ Palace of Treason is a sequel to Red Sparrow. A Russian Intelligence Agent, Capt. Dominika Egorova, is working for the CIA.

Luis Alberto Urrea’s enthralling ‘The Water Museum’ leaves me speechless

The stories in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Water Museum are mostly set in the Southwestern and Western parts of the U.S. Urrea was born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother and his stories reflect both cultures – and the ways in which they bump up against each other.

Having closed the book a while ago, I have been trying to think of the right words to describe it. “Riveting” is so overused that it’s lost almost all meaning. “Brilliant?” Yes, but not sufficient. “OMG, Dude! Look at you!” comes closer to my reaction.

Michael Shaub was more articulate in describing it: “… [W]hile not all of the 13 stories in Urrea's new collection are dire, they're all realistic and unsparing, as unflinching and hard-hitting as they are beautiful.” NPR (4/8/15)

“Mountains Without Number” is quiet, wistful, nostalgic, sad. New Junction is a dying town, nestled alongside cliffs on which high school