Heft by Liz Moore

This was a book that I loved. Well written with characters to make your heart melt, this novel centres on the lives of Arthur Opp an obese ex - Academic who hasn`t left his home in 20 odd years and Kel Keller. Life however has a way of rebounding on you through those you knew in a prior life and this is what happens in this story.. in the form of Charlene Keller an ex-student of Arthur`s whose life is riven with conflict and sadness and who maintains a connection with Arthur which leads to the dominoes that have propped up and enabled Arthur`s solitary existence to topple.
The characters in this book are beautifully drawn and resonate with all their life experiences and issues, with their understanding or lack of, with their compassion and with preternatural wisdom in the case of  Kell, Yolanda and Lindsay. Arthur is a delight and has a very big heart, even if it makes him rather uncomfortable at times and in many ways it is this discomfort that makes you understand him, each of the characters has shared experiences, and it is the entwining of these shared experiences that links them so richly to each other and enables the possibility of resolution to be brought into their lives.
Never dull, it was for me a page turner with plenty of humour, it especially brought out to me how the diversity of life experiences can build bridges.
Available from the Library system and soon available here in Trade Paperback.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

The writer Joan Didion knows all about grief, its many forms and its many machinations, it has struck repeatedly those she has known and loved and often at a very young age. Her husband John Gregory Dunne died at their dinner table while daughter Quintana was in the ICU Unit at John Hopkins Hospital seriously ill, Joan wrote a magnificent book called The Year of Magical Thinking which described in a heart wrenching yet beautiful, exquisite, prose the path that that first year took her down and how she survived it.
This book tells the interweaved, interconnected story of the life and early death of Quintana against the backdrop of her parents story,their shared lives and the joys, challenges, fears and overwhelming love that the adoption of Quintana brought to their lives, a life that as Joan tells it was privileged, not always easy but on balance could truly be called well lived. Although Quintana`s death at 38 could hardly be called fair and  her life certainly wasn`t long, it was packed with experiences that could only have bequeathed to her a rich tapestry on which she hoped to paint the rest of that life with her husband Gerry.
Didion`s description of how the rug was pulled out from under Quintana on the cusp of a new life, newly married and suffused with a rare happiness tells us with startling clarity how cruel the fates can be, how unexpected can be the hand of death and how powerless we really are to prevent it.
Didion paints her own portrait of loss and in words that dance on the page, they are carefully chosen and they are purposeful, many are not easy to read, their poignancy can bring tears but oh how she shares the life of Quintana with an honesty and rare bravery, she links it so beautifully with other lives ended early such as Natasha Richardson and  with the lives of family and friends many still living all who contributed, good, bad and indifferently to Quintana`s and her parents lives.  As much as she shares death, she shares life. As a young woman I wouldn`t have read or understood Joan Didion with much alacrity but now with a dose of maturity I have read her writing and been enhanced by the lessons she has shared, to say this book gets you thinking is an understatement. Would Joan Didion see herself as a Teacher of Life Lessons, probably not but she is and she has much more to share. Brilliant, touching, moving and elegant, the thought I am left with is  that as Joan writes she realises, the fear we are left with is not for what we have lost but for what we still have to lose. So true whatever our own experience.

the book thief by Markus Zusak

This may be one of the best books I have ever read.
First published in 2005 its subject was just not my thing and so I never ever picked it up, it was recently a Book Club Pick so I nabbed a copy and never put it down.
Set in Germany during WWII, it tells the story of Liesel, her family, neighbours and her wonderful love affair with books. Narrated by Death it is lyrical, captivating, horrifying and redeeming, the words dance, they skip, they rush, they drag, they pull you along into a time and a place that is so hard to describe, na time when the normalcy of humanity is turned on its head, infected with hatred and yet such grace. Such dignity and such compassion run right alongside all the Nazi atrocities with beautifully drawn characters no matter their views and actions and it shows us that fear of the magnitude of that which Hitler inflicted on all Germans can result in behaviour that only the strongest can survive. It also shows us that Hitler failed to wipe out the power of love and compassion and even in the hardest of times a kind of life was lived and that joy could still be found.
The books power lies in its ability to entrust the reader to challenge their own perceptions, to absorb life experiences that are not their own and to realise the magnificent power of the written word.
If you haven't read this book, please do.