The Rocky's holiday books gift guide: Fiction

Rocky Mountain News

Published December 5, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Rocky critics offer their favorite fiction titles of 2008, selected and condensed from reviews that have run throughout the year.

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A Case of Exploding Mangoes, by Mohammed Hanif (Knopf, $24). In this brilliant debut, Hanif embellishes a real-life event - the 1968 plane crash that killed Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq - into a darkly comic story that's rich in detail, resonant prose and cleverly fashioned characters.

A Mercy, by Toni Morrison (Knopf, $23.95). Although not as elaborate as much of the Nobel Laureate's other work, this slim novel still packs a punch. Reaching back to the 1600s, it explores the forces of greed, obsession, jealousy and plain bad luck as they conspire to disrupt the harmony of a household of interdependent women.

Alfred & Emily, by Doris Lessing (HarperCollins, $25.95). In an eloquent fiction-nonfiction hybrid, the Nobel Laureate imagines the peaceful lives her parents might have led had WWI not broken them, juxtaposing that story with a factual examination of her parents' actual lives in Rhodesia.

America America, by Ethan Canin (Random House, $27). In this story wrapped in unselfconscious but wise and poetic prose, a young, working class boy is taken under the wing of a wealthy man who is backing a powerful senator's presidential bid.

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, $26). The author of Prep and The Man of My Dreams outdoes herself in this bold experiment inspired by the life of first lady Laura Bush. The fictionalized story incorporates many well-known events from Bush's life, offering fascinating, complex characters that resist stereotypes and preconceptions.

Art in America, by Ron McLarty (Viking, $25.95). When a failed middle-aged writer takes a position as playwright-in-residence in a Colorado mountain town, he arrives to find the place in the midst of a water dispute that's gripping the national media. Cowboys, environmentalists, reporters, police and others create a stew of colorful characters in this story with rapid-fire dialogue and winking good humor.

Beside a Burning Sea, by John Shors (New American Library, $14). With lyrical prose, Boulder author Shors re-creates a tragic place in time, artfully telling the story of nine characters on a hospital ship who swim to a nearby island after their ship is attacked by Japanese bombers during WWII.

The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard (Harper Collins, $24.95). Bayard resurrects famous French criminal-turned-detective Francois Vidocq for this fast-moving tale that brings 1818 France vividly alive. When the name of a medical student is found in the pocket of a murder victim, Vidocq's inquiries set him on a hunt for the long missing and presumed-dead son of Marie Antoinette.

The Boat, by Nam Le (Knopf, $22.95). Vietnamese-born Le delves into his heritage and craft with exceptional self-confidence in this debut story collection featuring a diverse cast of characters and settings.

Come With Me to Babylon, by Paul M. Levitt (University of New Mexico Press, $24.95). Sharp dialogue and fully realized characters highlight this historical story detailing the struggles and disillusionment of a Jewish family after its emigration from Russia to New Jersey.

The Commoner, by John Burnham Schwartz (Nan A. Talese, $25.95). A beautifully told novel based on the life of Empress Michiko of Japan, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. Here, a commoner woman suffers a nervous breakdown after marrying the crown prince and later helps her own commoner daughter-in-law escape the brutally rarefied prison of the palace.

The Deportees and Other Stories, by Roddy Doyle (Viking, $24.95). Alive with the joys and sorrows of the human condition, Doyle's stories explore Ireland in the era of globalization.

Dinner With Osama, by Marilyn Krysl (University of Notre Dame Press, $20). A collection of eight compelling stories that combine a powerful social conscience with a good-hearted faith in people.

Duma Key, by Stephen King (Scribner, $28). At the height of his storytelling powers, King relates the tale of a millionaire injured in an accident who discovers, while recuperating on a tiny island off the coast of Florida, that he can paint a person's future. Any number of Gothic horrors soon rush in, making for gripping reading up to the last page.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery; translated by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions, $15.95). Barbery skillfully draws readers into this affecting story about two absolutely believable characters: A self-educated 54-year-old concierge in a Paris apartment building who feels overlooked, and a precocious 12-year-old who intuitively recognizes a kindred spirit in the woman.

The Eleventh Man, by Ivan Doig (Harcourt, $26). Doig's 12th, and arguably best novel so far, takes place during WWII, when 10 members of a close-knit, undefeated Montana college football team enlist and another teammate is plucked from military duty and assigned to write their stories for small-town newspapers across the country. Filled with seamless prose, an intensifying love story, and all the drama of war.

The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $26). Rushdie stuffs the real and imagined, historical and fanciful into this spectacularly entertaining read in which one story leads to the next - with everything ricocheting between Florence at the height of the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal Empire of India under the rule of Akbar The Great.

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3, by Annie Proulx (Scribner, $25). Proulx's third collection of stories set in Wyoming features characters and scenarios as painfully real as they come. But the author manages to temper even death with a touch of humor, creating a memorable read that's wise to life's many ironies.

The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane (William Lehane, $27.95). A sprawling, self-assured novel featuring a large cast of both real and imaginary characters that tracks the bloody Boston police strike of 1919. While grappling with the political and social forces that drive men to violence, Lehane uses his story as a prism through which to question our own times.

Goldengrove, by Francine Prose (Harpers, $24.95). In this quiet, meditative novel, Prose teases out the threads of human connections played out under extraordinary circumstances as she tells the tale of a young woman's accidental drowning and its effect on her family.

The Grift, by Debra Ginsberg (Shaye Areheart, $23.95). Twists abound in this entertaining tale of a woman con artist who doesn't believe she has psychic abilities, but is willing to fool others into thinking she does - until she suddenly finds that she can see the future after all.

The Hakawati, by Rabih Alameddine (Knopf, $25.95). Like A Thousand and One Nights, this magic carpet ride of a tale embeds stories within a story to create an intricately woven tapestry centering on a man who rejoins his Beirut family as his father is dying and recalls for them the stories his grandfather once told.

His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey (Knopf, $25). It's impossible not to care about the characters in this moving tale concerning the 7-year-old son of radical hippies and the woman who abducts him.

Homecoming, by Bernhard Schlink (Pantheon, $24). An intelligent , gentle voice guides readers through the journeys of a German man who develops a fascination with a story he finds among his grandparents' writings. As he follows his curiosity, he uncovers fragments of truth about the father he never knew.

The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb (HarperCollins,$29.95). When a high school English teacher's wife witnesses the Columbine high school shootings and suffers post-traumatic stress syndrome, the teacher struggles to regain his footing. Lamb does an extraordinary job of narrating some of the most terrifying tragedies of the past 10 years, while revealing a quiet thread of hope through the chaos.

The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt (Houghton Mifflin, $24). At once quirky and fanciful, intelligent and profound, this debut is based on the life of inventor Nikola Tesla and a friendship he develops with a fictional young chambermaid who works at the hotel in which Tesla lived out his final years.

Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, $28). In this collection of 13 stories, King faces down horrors far more terrifying than his usual supernatural fare: dead-end jobs, midlife crises, enlarged prostates and the onset of Alzheimer's. He throws in a few of his traditional frights, just for good measure.

The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry (William Morrow, $24.95). Barry's novel centers around "lace readers, " women who make lace and see in it the past, present and future. Crackling with suspense, the story takes place in Salem, Mass., in the wake of the disappearance of a young woman.

The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, $24.95). A young writer becomes obsessed with the story of a man of similar background who had been mistakenly shot years earlier. As the man is drawn to search for the truth, Hemon spins a meditation on life, death and the bonds between even those who've never met.

Lush Life, by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.99). Blistering dialogue and a convincing urban landscape mark this story about an assault on Manhattan's Lower East Side and what happens as conflicting accounts of the event arise.

More Than it Hurts You, by Darin Strauss (Dutton, $25.95). This novel examines the way racial, religious and other biases color the judgments of even sophisticated, liberal people. Written by the author of best-selling Chang and Eng, it tells the story of a couple in turmoil after the mother comes under suspicion of harming her baby.

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin, $21.95). Set in the Jim Crow South of 1946, this debut revolves around a woman's struggle to raise her children on a rustic farm and the complexities that occur when two war veterans return to town, refusing to play by the old Southern rules.

Now You See Him, by Eli Gottlieb (William Morrow, $23.95). Suspenseful, insightful and beautifully written, this story by Boulder author Gottlieb is narrated by a character who describes his best friend's fall from grace and death. As the details of the story evolve, layers of deceit unravel, leading to an horrific realization for all.

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, $24.95). Love and acceptance are the underlying themes of this powerful story. Told in a series of 13 narratives, it focuses on a stubborn and painfully honest woman who has almost no sense of self until it's nearly too late.

Orange Mint and Honey, by Carleen Brice (Random House, $13.95). Colorado author Brice offers a bittersweet tale of a young woman who reunites with the mother who neglected her when she was a child - only to find that her mother is now a stable, loving parent to a 3-year-old.

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, by Tobias Wolff (Knopf, $26.95). Ten new stories and 21 classics that prove that Wolff has been at the top of his game for a long time.

The Palace of Illusions, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Doubleday, $23.95). A complex, beautifully wrought tale based on the Mahabharat, a traditional Indian epic set between 6,000 and 5,000 BC. Divakaruni focuses the oft-overlooked woman in the story, a princess who marries five brothers whose struggles include years of exile and a bloody civil war.

The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins, $25.95). This panoramic novel centers on a North Dakota lynching, reaching backward and forward in time to try to understand what, if any meaning the ugly occurrence has.

Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26). Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this story set in 1838 concerns a ship traveling from Calcutta to deliver Indian prisoners and indentured servants to penal colonies in Mauritius. The large, ambitious novel brings extraordinary people and exotic places to life memorably.

The Senator's Wife, by Sue Miller (Knopf, $24.95). A page-turning, engrossing character study of two women whose lives intertwine: one the aging wife of a philandering senator, the other her neighbor, a young woman struggling with her new role as mother.

Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian (Crown, $25). An intense, fascinating journey involving a motley crew of characters struggling to make their way across the Polish countryside to reach British and American lines during World War II.

Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday, $24.95). As he focuses on 600 men gathered to participate in the largest sex event in porn history, Palahniuk spins a humorous and unsettling look at abuse, celebrity, self-esteem and the quest for identity.

So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger (Atlantic Monthly, $24). An eloquent and worthy successor to the author's 2001 best-seller Peace Like a River. Set in 1915, it revolves around a man struggling to write a follow-up to his wildly successful adventure novel, who ends up heading West with a fugitive - and finding more adventure than even he could have dreamed up.

Song Yet Sung, by James McBride (Riverhead, $25.95). A haunting, suspenseful novel, replete with atmospheric detail, that follows the struggles of a slave girl on the lam and explores the complicated, unexpected loyalties that often resulted from the slavery system.

Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan (Viking, $23.95). When a high school girl disappears one night, the effects reverberate throughout her family. O'Nan skillfully inhabits each of his characters, offering a poignant look at human emotion in the face of inexplicable loss.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Ecco, $25.95). Westminster author Wroblewski spent 10 years on this sprawling debut, and the results are more than evident. He has created a richly described story loosely based on the plot of Hamlet and revolving around a mute boy living on a Wisconsin farm that breeds and trains dogs.

The Third Angel, by Alice Hoffman (Shaye Areheart, $25). Featuring fascinating characters and a bewitching style, this powerful work of magical fiction centers on three women during three different time periods, each of whom have stayed in the same haunted London hotel.

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, $25). Lahiri digs deeper into her signature subject matter, offering quietly powerful stories about the complex relationships between Bengali immigrants to the U.S. and their American children .

Wild Nights!, by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco, $24.95). In this clever story collection, Oates masterfully imagines the final days of five literary giants - Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway - mixing known facts with her own musings and impressively mirroring their distinctive voices.

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