My Favourite Fall Fiction Novels
My favourite reads from the past two months
I love Fall
I live in rural Manitoba, so it’s already essentially winter here. The ground is white and the weather is cold. The good news is I love playing hockey, and Fall marks the beginning of hockey season.
Another of my favourite pastimes is drinking coffee and reading books. When the weather is lousy I love to curl up with a hot mug, a soft blanket, and a good read.
If you share my love for literature (and apparently alliteration), perhaps you’ll enjoy some of my favourite reads of the past couple months.
The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah
I’ve read quite a few historical fiction novels set around the second world war, and this one really highlighted the personal impact of the war on the families left behind.
This story centres on Vianne — sister, wife, mother, woman — who was left to fend for herself and her daughter in France after her husband was sent off to war, and her sister joined The Resistance.
Like any story about WWII, it is heart-breaking and sad, but also beautiful. It is told with exquisite and painful detail, bringing to life the human cost of war. I was so enthralled by the story that it often kept me up reading late into the night.
The Winners, by Fredrik Bachman
The Winners is the third book in a trilogy called Beartown. I’ve read everything by Fredrik Backman, I love his awkward and unique characters — In fact, there is conjecture that some of his characters are Autistic, or at least canonically Autistic.
The Winners, like the first two books in this series, is set in Beartown. It’s a remote, forest community in Northern Sweden, but it feels like it could just as easily be a small rural hockey town right here in Canada.
There are many complex characters, and Backman develops them with incredible nuance, but the primary story-tellers are the teenagers in this small forest town.
Most of the residents in Beartown are obsessed with hockey, but the stories go much deeper than this. Backman explores themes of sexuality, homophobia, racism, and poverty. This book is enraging, engaging, and very compelling — just like all of Backman’s novels.
Shadows of Pecan Hollow, by Caroline Frost
This story was very entertaining and the characters conflicted. I enjoy books where I struggle to either love or hate a character, where there is enough complexity and depth that I am constantly changing my mind.
The story is full of complicated and turbulent relationships, coming-of-age, and learning life’s lessons the hard way. Perhaps that’s why I liked it, that’s typically how I have to learn everything.
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
Set in South Carolina in 1960s, this novel follows Lily Owens, a white girl who is wise before her time and older than her years.
Lily’s father convinced her that she killed her own mother when she was very young, an apparent accident with a gun she found hidden in her parent’s closet. Lily endures much to discover the truth about what really happened, and to discover the truth about who she is and who she wants to become.
Honourable mention: Galatea, by Madeline Miller
I just read Miller’s new short story. It’s a very new and different take on an old mythological story, and I loved it.
The original story of Pygmalion is all about women (one in particular in this case) dutifully fulfilling the desires of men. In this tale, Miller turns this antiquated notion on its head and puts the power in the hands (and minds) of the women.
What I’m currently reading
Fiction: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nonfiction: A Different Kind of Normal, by Abigail Balfe
What are you reading?
What books do you recommend?
© Jillian Enright, Neurodiversity MB
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