17. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

One winter morning, shortly before daybreak, tenant farmer Lloyd Wilson is shot and killed by his neighbor and best friend, Clarence Smith. Set in the 1920s in rural Illinois, this tragic tale is narrated by a man who fifty years later is looking back at his friendship with Cletus Smith, the murderer’s oldest son. While remembering their painful childhoods – the narrator lost his mother to pneumonia in 1918 and Cletus lost his father when he committed suicide after killing Lloyd Wilson – the narrator also focuses on the growing friendship between the Wilsons and Smiths. When Clarence and Fern Smith move into the area, Lloyd Wilson is the first to greet them and help them move in. After helping on their farm over the months, Lloyd finds himself slowly becoming attracted to Fern, and she soon begins an affair with him. The four adults begin a slow descent into tragedy, with everyone’s lives soon destroyed.

This is a small, simply and beautifully written book of a rural tragedy. Maxwell originally published this in its entirety in The New Yorker, where he was the fiction editor for many years. The sparse farmland setting is a perfect backdrop to this heartbreaking work.

16. The Slow Moon by Elizabeth Cox

On an April evening in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, Sophie Chabot and her boyfriend Crow Davenport sneak out of a party and head to the woods to have sex for the first time. When Crow realizes he has left his condoms in his car, he makes the mistake of leaving Sophie in the woods alone. Returning twenty minutes later, he finds Sophie barely conscious in the wooded area, where she has been beaten and gang raped. Afraid that authorities will think he committed the crime, Crow flees the scene and heads home, where his parents find him washing mud off of himself. When Sophie can’t remember who attacked her, Crow is arrested and brought to trial for her rape. The author, Cox, then goes back in time to events and friends of the main characters to show that secrets and lies are commonplace in the small Southern town.

This novel would be a great read for teens as it deals with many issues young people routinely face. There is also a poignant story line about Crow’s parents and how they deal with Crow’s father having an affair with his sister-in-law. For readers of Jodi Picoult and Alice Hoffman.

15. Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire

Sarah Clark first meets Daniel Carr when she is a 14-year-old student in Australia and he is her 38-year-old English teacher. Raised to succeed academically, Sarah outperforms all the other students and is drawn to Daniel to discuss literature no one else her age is reading. Daniel soon seduces Sarah, and she becomes addicted to him and refuses to stop seeing him. When Daniel suddenly moves his family to Brisbane for another teaching job, Sarah is convinced she will never love again. Fast forward years later, and Sarah is still searching for a man like Daniel Carr. Now self-destructive and admitting to sleeping with hundreds of men, Sarah also binge drinks and uses drugs. Her only close childhood friend, Jamie, becomes her pawn, and she embarks on a sexual relationship with him also, with disastrous results. When she finally meets Daniel Carr again in a bar, their violent sexual relationship begins again.

This is an extremely raw, violent, and explicit novel. The characters are pained and very damaged, and engage in dangerous relationships and acts. While the beginning of the book (which focuses on the school girl Sarah) is often powerful, as the novel progresses the sexual violence and degradation darkens the novel tremendously. Billed on the back cover, as a modern Lolita, I found it nothing like the great classic, although it did make me want to re-read Lolita, which is one of my favorite books. This novel is for fans of Chuck Palahniuk and the stories of Mary Gaitskill.

14. The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier

One fall afternoon in 1990, Bouillier was asleep in his apartment wrapped up in a blanket with all his clothes on, when his telephone rang. He immediately sensed it was a woman who walked out on him without any warning two years before. Without answering why she left, she asks Bouillier to accompany her to a birthday party as a mystery guest. Her friend, the contemporary artist Sophie Calle, likes to celebrate her birthday each year with as many people as she was old, plus a mystery guest to stand for the year she was about to live. Although confused as to why he was asked by his ex, and going through periods of self exploration, he attends the party and still does not get answers to the questions he is seeking from his former love. After the party however, walking the streets of Paris, he finally begins to make sense of his life and how he has been living over the recent years.

This is an odd, quirky, little book that is easily read in about an hour. Written as a memoir during this time period of his life, Bouillier won the Prix de Flore in 2002. I found it very lyrical and very French and could easily see it as a French movie. I first read about it on a web site I get many reading suggestions from, Ayelet Waldman’s wonderful booklog:

http://www.ayeletwaldman.com/booklog/

13. Never End by Ake Edwardson

The city of Gothenburg, Sweden is suffering from a sweltering heat wave. A young girl who has just graduated is raped in a park, and shortly after she goes to the police, another girl is found dead in the same park, this time a victim of attempted rape and murder. Both girls had something placed around their necks during the rapes – possibly a dog leash. Detective Erik Winter is called in when the scenes start to look like an unsolved rape and murder that plagued the area five years ago. Could all of these girls have something in common that will help police catch the man?

Ake Edwardson’s Erik Winter novels are best-sellers in Europe and are just starting to be released in the United States. Last year’s Sun and Shadow is also very good, and deals with murders happening around Y2K. Edwardson builds his suspense slowly, like the oppressive summer heat, and his obsession with solving these cases is palpable. This time around Edwardson also develops more of the secondary characters, like Winter’s police colleagues and Winter’s wife and daughter, so readers are drawn into many characters. For readers of Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum.

12. The Memory Keeper's Daughter

During a fierce blizzard in the winter of 1964, orthopedic surgeon David Henry can’t get his wife, Nora, to the hospital in time to deliver their child. The pair makes it to his clinic, where they are met by David’s nurse, Caroline Gill, who helps David deliver his child. A healthy son, Paul, is born, yet Nora continues to labor, and David quickly realizes Nora is going to deliver another child. Putting Nora under anesthesia again, he delivers a daughter, Phoebe, who has Down’s syndrome. Wishing to spare his wife the devastating news, and reliving his pain of losing his sister at a young age, David instructs Caroline to take Phoebe to an institution and tells his wife their daughter died.

When Caroline sees how bad the institution is, she flees Lexington, Kentucky with Phoebe, and goes to Pittsburgh to start a new life. While she and Phoebe flourish over the years, Nora and David never recover from that fateful night. David never reveals his lie to his family, and yet the marriage crumbles, with Paul unable to grow close to either parent.

This book continues to be popular with readers. A favorite among book groups, it raises serious moral and ethical decisions people make in their lives. While an interesting premise, and the fact that it is based loosely on true events, the novel does suffer from a lot of redundancy and like life, true resolution never completely occurs. For readers of Jodi Picoult and Chris Bohjalian.

11. Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lise Haines

This novel follows two childhood friends, Mattie and Jane, shortly after Jane’s beloved grandmother dies. Mattie is a Chicago art appraiser who has been secretly in love with Jane’s husband, Mike, since college. When Jane’s grandmother’s house needs to be cleared out after her death, Jane invites Mattie to help appraise items. Shortly after going to Santa Barbara, Mattie finds herself living Jane’s family life when Jane drives off in her grandmother’s 40-year-old Jaguar. While Jane’s two young daughters struggle to make sense of their mother’s abrupt disappearance, Mattie finds herself falling in love with Mike again.

Mattie is a hard character to sympathize with and is a very passive person. Jane appears to only think of herself, and disregards her husband and children a little too easily. I kept hoping this book would get better, but was left mostly disappointed by it. For readers looking for more books like this, All is Vanity, by Christina Schwarz is a much better look at one friend taking over another friend's life.