Explore Books suggests a couple of debut novels and a classic

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 the tale of a Vietnamese family, a man’s dying remembrances and realist fiction from George Eliot.

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From the publisher: The debut novel from the author of “The Emperor of Gladness” is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. 

At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

From Annika White, bookseller: A beautiful and poetically written book, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is a son’s ode not just to his mother but to the Earth, to history, to his first love, to himself. This book weaves our world together. From a colony of ants in a garden in Virginia to the generational trauma inflicted by the Vietnam war, this book leaves nothing untouched and shows us just how elusive, fleeting, and devastatingly beautiful life is.

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From the publisher: In this deluxe 10th anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces the beautiful novel that begins with an old man who lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past, where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, “Tinkers” is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.

The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel — the first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since “A Confederacy of Dunces” received the award nearly 30 years before — is as extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family’s history, Paul Harding began writing the book when his rock band broke up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published, the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare the novel’s remarkable success “the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent memory.”

That story is still being written as readers across the country continue to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and passionate audience.

From Mo Kirk, membership coordinator: Tinkers, for me, was a meditative read.  Dealing exclusively with a dying man’s final thoughts, it’s a fragmented journey through memory, from childhood in rural Maine to the sounds in the room. The prose was so beautiful, I chose to pause and reread sections to sit with them a while longer.

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From the publisher: A triumph of realist fiction, George Eliot’s “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life” explores a fictional 19th-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives is played out by the novel’s complexly portrayed characters—until the arrival of two outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium. Every bit as powerful and perceptive in our time as it was in the Victorian era, “Middlemarch” displays George Eliot’s clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.

From Philip Psaledakis, bookseller: Are you somebody who likes (or loves) Jane Austen? Have you read all her books? Do you know somebody in a similar situation? Well, this book is for you. George Eliot, like Jane Austen, writes epic romances. However, unlike Jane Austen, George Eliot is a master of the slow burn and offers us a surprisingly different take on love. On top of this, “Middlemarch” is sprinkled with meditations on poetry, philosophy, and art that make it an altogether enlightened read. Treat yourself, your loved one, or your friend this holiday season to this beautiful edition of a horizon-expanding book! 

Type of Story: Review

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