Two books to round out the year and both were excellent.
Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi is the story of Sitara, a young girl orphaned by the Afghanistan communist coup in 1978. She is “saved” while the rest of her family is slaughtered. She lives a comfortable but anxious life, then thirty years later a chance meeting gives her an opportunity for accountability. My favorite part of the story follows how she is sheltered by an American diplomat and her mother, and how they are able to get her out of Afghanistan and become family.
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau was so good it ended up tied for 5th place in the year’s top 10. It's a coming-of-age story set in the 1970's. The title character is a 14 yo summer nanny for the daughter of a therapist who is treating a famous musician for drug addiction. The family is completely different from her own - no perfunctory rules, no judgments, no structure. Her eyes are opened and there’s no unseeing the racism, discrimination and other societal tensions surrounding her. The real star of the novel is the young daughter Izzy who acts and speaks with complete abandon, the way a child should. My favorite excerpt “Until I met Jimmy, I hadn’t understood that people you love could do things you didn’t love. And still you could keep loving them.”
Year in Review
I read/listened to 30 books in 2023 and here are my top 10:
- Carrie Soto Is Back
- Remarkably Bright Creatures
- The Midnight Library
- Lessons in Chemistry
- The Golden Couple
- Mary Jane
- The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion
- One Night on the Island
- Vacationland
- Pineapple Street
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