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Recommendations based on Fall on Your Kneesby Ann-Marie MacDonald
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The Way the Crow Flies
by Ann-Marie MacDonald
A girl growing up in the Cold War era, struggling to make sense of the secrets and lies that surround her.
The optimism of the early sixties, infused with the excitement of the space race and the menace of the Cold War, is filtered through the rich imagination of high-spirited, eight-year-old Madeleine, ... (Goodreads)
A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
A gripping story of four unlikely lives intertwined in the tumult of India's caste system.
The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi . Mistry was generally critical of Indira Gandhi in the book. ... (Wikipedia)
She's Come Undone
by Wally Lamb
A young woman's trial-filled journey to self-acceptance and self-preservation.
Dolores Price is heartbroken when her handsome, but irresponsible father, Tony, leaves their suburban home for another woman. She and her mother, Bernice, move into her uptight Catholic grandmother's ... (Wikipedia)
A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews
A teenage girl navigates life in a strict Mennonite community while dealing with family dysfunction and questioning her faith.
The novel is set in a small religious Mennonite town called East Village, generally considered to be a fictionalized version of Toews' hometown of Steinbach , Manitoba . The narrator is Nomi Nickel, ... (Wikipedia)
The Book of Negroes
by Lawrence Hill
A gripping tale of resilience and courage, tracing the life of a woman kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery in North America.
The Book of Negroes (based on the novel Someone Knows My Name) will be BET's first miniseries. The star-studded production includes lead actress Aunjanue Ellis (Ray, The Help), Oscar winner Cuba ... (Goodreads)
I Know This Much Is True
by Wally Lamb
A man's journey of self-discovery, coming to terms with family trauma and understanding his identity.
The novel takes place in Three Rivers, Connecticut in the early 1990s. Dominick Birdsey's identical twin , Thomas Birdsey, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia . With medication, Thomas is able to ... (Wikipedia)
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
A story of redemption and transformation amidst a hostage crisis.
Set in an unspecified South American country, , the story begins at a birthday party thrown at the country's vice presidential home in honor of Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large ... (Wikipedia)
We Were the Mulvaneys
by Joyce Carol Oates
A family unravels after a traumatic event shatters their close-knit bond.
Michael and Corinne Mulvaney are the parents of four children: Michael Jr., Patrick, Marianne, and Judd. Living in a picture perfect farm in upstate New York , the Mulvaneys own a successful roofing ... (Wikipedia)
Icy Sparks
by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
A young girl with Tourette's syndrome navigates life in rural Kentucky during the 1950s.
The story focuses on a grown-up Icy Sparks recounting her childhood and adolescence struggling with accusations of Tourette's Syndrome . The novel begins with Icy Sparks, a 10-year-old girl living in ... (Wikipedia)
Stones from the River
by Ursula Hegi
A dwarf girl navigates life in a small German town during WWII, facing discrimination and secrets.
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780684844770 From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Floating in My Mother's Palm comes a stunning novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary ... (Goodreads)
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
A moving story of two siblings growing up in India, exploring love, politics, and class.
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car ... (Goodreads)
Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
A sweeping journey of two twin brothers and their search for identity, belonging and family.
The story is told by the protagonist, Marion Stone. He and his conjoined twin Shiva are born at Mission Hospital (called "Missing" in accordance with the local pronunciation), Addis Ababa , in ... (Wikipedia)
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
A tale of the consequences of a child's mistake, and how its effects ripple through generations.
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents Jack and Emily Tallis. Her older sister Cecilia has recently graduated from ... (Wikipedia)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
Exploring the lives of diverse characters in a small Southern town, unearthing secrets and desires.
The book begins with a focus on the relationship between two close friends, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos, deaf-mutes who have lived together for several years. Antonapoulos becomes mentally ... (Wikipedia)
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
An exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, and the power of human nature.
The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character called "Snowman", living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers . Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named ... (Wikipedia)
Empire Falls
by Richard Russo
A small town's citizens struggle to find meaning and find their place in a rapidly changing world.
Set in the decaying, nearly bankrupt, small town of Empire Falls, Maine, this is the story of the unassuming manager of the Empire Grill, Miles Roby, who has spent his life in the town. The town, and ... (Wikipedia)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden
Two Cree snipers fight in WWI, one returns home addicted to morphine, the other lost to the war.
It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is ... (Goodreads)
And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini
Interconnected stories of family and love, tracing the consequences of decisions made throughout life.
The novel opens in the year 1952. Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
A man's attempt to rebuild his life in a small Newfoundland town, discovering compassion and joy.
The story centers around Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York , whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland . Shortly after his parents' joint suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive ... (Wikipedia)
Suite Française
by Irène Némirovsky
A story of love and loss set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France.
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. By the early l940s, when ... (Goodreads)
The Other Boleyn Girl
by Philippa Gregory
A historical fiction recounting the rivalry between two sisters vying for the love of King Henry VIII.
In 1521 England, Queen Catherine of Aragon's failure to provide King Henry VIII a male heir has strained their marriage. Thomas Boleyn and his brother-in-law Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, plan ... (Wikipedia)
Alias Grace
by Margaret Atwood
A psychological thriller that examines the true story of a 19th century Canadian murderess.
Grace Marks, the convicted murderess, has been hired out from prison to serve as a domestic servant in the home of the Governor of the penitentiary. A Committee of gentlemen and ladies from the ... (Wikipedia)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
A boy's search for faith, set against a backdrop of unlikely events.
The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary expatriate from the United States, having settled in Toronto , Ontario , Canada and taken on ... (Wikipedia)
Back Roads
by Tawni O'Dell
After his mother's imprisonment, a young man struggles to care for his three younger sisters in a small Pennsylvania town.
Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking beer and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead he's marooned in the ... (Wikipedia)
Vinegar Hill
by A. Manette Ansay
A struggling family moves in with the husband's parents in a small town, facing tension and secrets that threaten to tear them apart.
In a stark, troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilt and pain, and the tormented souls who ... (Goodreads)
No Great Mischief
by Alistair MacLeod
A saga tracing a family's journey through generations of displacement and displacement.
Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief , the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it. ... (Goodreads)
The Stone Angel
by Margaret Laurence
An elderly woman reflects on her life and relationships with family, friends, and society.
In a series of vignettes , The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar Shipley, a 90-year-old woman struggling to come to grips with a life of intransigence and loss. The themes of pride and the ... (Wikipedia)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
