I couldn’t pick three books from the TBR Book Jar this month because the there was no room to fit it into the car for my holiday around Scotland. Fortunately I have all the books listed in a spreadsheet so I asked Mr BookTalk to pick three random numbers for me.
Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf
This was Haruf’s last novel, and I think may have been published posthumously after his death in 2014. I bought on the strength of recommendations from several book bloggers who saw that I’d enjoyed his earlier novel Benediction. Our Souls at Night is a poignant tale of two neighbours in a small town in the mid West who are brought together by loneliness.
Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie
Another novel about relationships. This time in the form of a close friendship between two girls in Karachi until an impulsive action one night disrupts their plans for the future. Fourty years later, the past intrudes on their new lives and successful careers in London. Can their friendship survive this new challenge?
Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulish
I feel very guilty that this book is still on my unread shelf. It was a gift from a former work colleague who knew I was trying to read more internationally and wanted to recommend something from her own country. Mulish is apparently considered one of the “Great Three” of Dutch postwar writers, an author who injected a lot of philosophy and political views in his novels. The plot for Discovery of Heaven according to the Goodreads summary …
… begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together, They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end. Abounding in philosophical, psychological and theological inquiries – yet laced with humour that is as infectious as it is wilful – The Discovery of Heaven convinces us that it just might be possible to bring order into the chaos of the world through a story.
And the vote goes to …….
Which of these three books I read is going to be up to you! In previous months I’ve made the decision myself but I’m drawn to the idea used by Fiction Fan who uses a poll of readers. I hope the poll is going to work — I’ve never used this plug in before.
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