With thousands of titles available and new books added weekly, including bestsellers, there are always great choices to both read and recommend on the shelves at the library.
A World Elsewhere, published last August and a 2011 Giller nominee, is the latest from Canadian writer Wayne Johnston, author of the acclaimed Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
In this new novel, we meet the flawed protagonist Landish Druken and his rich schoolmate, Padgett ‘Van’ Vanderlyden, an American railroad heir. The eccentric pair become friends at Princeton University, but their relationship sours intensely following an academic scandal that sends Druken back home to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Here he is thrown in to a life of abject poverty when his wealthy father disowns him. Matters are complicated when Druken feels compelled to adopt a young boy named Deacon following the death of the boy’s father.
Two years later, a desperate, moneyless Druken, with Deacon in tow, seeks reconciliation and employment with his old school mate now living at the lavish Vanderland estate in North Carolina. The re-union, however, is far from conciliatory and fraught with tension as truths are revealed and a villainous past is exposed.
One of this book’s remarkable qualities is the writing and how Johnston effortlessly employs wit and wordplay in contrast to uncovering the malicious motivations of life.
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is an evocative love story wrapped in 1920’s period tourism. The central character is Hadley Richardson, the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. It is through her eyes that we witness her marriage to the iconic American writer.
The story is set during the Jazz Age and takes place, as the book’s title states, mostly in Paris, making this familiar terrain for anyone who has read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.
Though this is a fictionalized account imagined through the central character, the author has obviously researched the subject meticulously with much based on factual detail. The result is a convincing story resting on the palpable atmosphere of sparsely furnished artists’ garrets, smoky cafés, and friendships within the literary world of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, and James Joyce.
As an aside, a film to see that complements this book is “Midnight in Paris”, the recent movie by Woody Allen.
In addition to new books, the library holds countless classics and overlooked older titles that make worthwhile reading. 
The Way of a Boy – a memoir of Java by Ernest Hillien is one such book. Published in 1993, it was Maclean’s #1 non-fiction choice that year as well as the Editor’s Choice Selection of The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and The Financial Post.
It is the beautifully written and poignant recollection by the son of a Dutch father and a Canadian mother whose life is transformed by war when Japanese troops arrive at the tea plantation that is his home in the mountains of Java.
Hillien’s vivid account of what follows in prison camps is delivered through the innocent eyes of youth, detailing everyday life in a manner that exposes not only the ravages of deprivation but the strength and beauty of human relationships in horrific times.
The epilogue sees a middle aged Hillien, now in Canada, providing a glimpse of modern day Java and the recovery of the island, the people and himself.
Watch for more recommendations here soon.
