Rachelle's Book Selections

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

NATIONAL BESTSELLERPULITZER PRIZE WINNERNational Book Critic's Circle Award FinalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the YearThe Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington PostThe searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.


2. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

Chuck Palahniuk, author of the dangerously brilliant Fight Club, pulls no punches in his latest novel, Choke. Once again, Palahniuk invites us to experience the underground, church-basement-dwelling world of the 12-step program. Only this time we're not in for testicular, bone, or skin cancer; this time we're dealing with sexual addiction. Not that former med student Victor Mancini has a problem, 'cause he doesn't. But when it comes to getting a little action, where better to go?

In Choke, as in all of Palahniuk's work, we hear the echoes of writers as diverse as Jonathan Swift, Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bret Easton Ellis. But Palahniuk's voice is so unique, and his perspective so specific and fresh, one can hardly call his fiction derivative. Brazenly addressing our sexual excesses, our obsession with death, and our yearning for love, Palahniuk paints a horrific but ultimately fascinating portrait of the 21st-century psyche whose effect is much like bearing witness to an accident: Gruesome as it is, it is impossible not to look. (Cary Goldstein)

3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini's follow-up to The Kite Runner does not disappoint. Set like its predecessor in war-torn Afghanistan, A Thousand Splendid Suns uses that tumultuous backdrop to render the heroic plight of two women of different generations married to the same savagely abusive male. Born out of wedlock, Mariam was forced to marry 40-year-old Rasheed when she was only 15. Then, 18 years later, her still childless husband angrily takes an even younger wife. Hosseini renders the story of Mariam and her "sister/daughter," Laila, with persuasive detail and consummate humanity. Their abject situation leaves them no emotional space for idle philosophizing; their resistance is from the very core of their being. Truly must-read fiction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years -- from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding -- that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives -- the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness -- are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love -- a stunning accomplishment.