Explore Books suggests three works of fiction and adventure

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Explore Books in Aspen recommends NAMES OF BOOKS HERE.

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From the publisher: From the acclaimed author of “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and a deceptively simple old man. Now with a new introduction by the author.

Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

From Philip Psaledakis, bookseller: This book is a surprising read in terms of plot, aesthetics, and insight. Murakami’s magical realism takes you on a journey through a world of everything from talking cats and ghosts to music theory and philosophy to Freudian sexual encounters and gender relations. If you want to try something different, something you probably haven’t read anything similar to, I can’t recommend this book enough.

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From the publisher: Set in suburban Melbourne in the early 1980s, “The Children’s Bach” centers on Dexter and Athena Fox, their two sons, and the insulated world they’ve built together. Despite the routine challenges of domestic life, they are largely happy. But when a friend from Dexter’s past resurfaces and introduces the couple to the city’s bohemian underground — unbound by routine and driven by desire — Athena begins to wonder if life might hold more for her, and the tenuous bonds that tie the Foxes together start to fray.

A literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s perfectly formed novels embody the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Drawn on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, “The Children’s Bach” is a beloved work that solidified Garner’s place among the masters of modern letters, a finely etched masterpiece that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.

From Clare Pearson, book buyer: Like many others encountering her work for the first time, I was blown away by Helen Garner’s writing. “The Children’s Bach” is somewhat limited in its character scope and plot, but truly grand in the way that it manages to capture the experience of living. I found myself saving so many excellent lines.

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From the publisher: The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.

From Elizabeth Ridlington, staff: My dad loves outdoor adventure and disaster books; I like books that remind me to marvel at nature’s awesomeness. We both enjoyed this well-researched story. Conditions on ships crossing the Atlantic in 1856 were unpleasant even in good circumstances, and the author describes with sensitivity the horrors experienced by passengers and crew members on one ship that struck an iceberg. I have a new appreciation for the wildness of the Atlantic and the risks faced by anyone who sailed across it before modern technology.

Type of Story: Review

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