The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. A literary master (
Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go), Ishiguro has written his first novel in a decade, and it appears to be worth the wait. It will be in indie bookstores this week, and rave reviews have already begun to pile up. Among the best I've seen so far is this one from the March Indie Next list:
"Ishiguro's new novel is a work of wonder, transport, and beauty. A recurrent theme in his earlier books, always shown with great originality, is the matter of what happens after we have lost our way. In
The Buried Giant, Ishiguro explores losing direction, memory, and certainty, as the primary characters cling to remnants of codes of behavior and belief. Which is the way through the forest? Where might our son be? And where is the dragon, and who shall seek to slay her? Set in the time just after King Arthur's reign, Ishiguro's tale, with striking, fable-like rhythm and narrative, shows how losing and finding our way runs long, deep, and to the core of things."
- Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. I'm not sure anyone captures specific historical events better than Larson, with his unparalleled skill in narrative nonfiction. Books like
Isaac's Storm, Thunderstruck, and
In the Garden of Beasts make for fascinating reading, and his
The Devil in 
the White City is an outright classic. So it's no surprise that
Dead Wake is another riveting and page-turning account; I'm not sure Larson is capable of being boring. For those of you who are fuzzy on the details, the Lusitania was a top-of-the-line British passenger ship that sailed from New York City on May 1, 1915, and was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland six days later. Of its 1,959 passengers and crew, only 764 survived. Among the dead were 123 Americans, and the sinking of the Lusitania is often cited as the reason President Wilson (eventually) dropped his vow of neutrality and led America into World War I.
Larson leads his readers onto the ship and introduces them to some of the many extraordinary characters on board, and also recreates life on the German U-boat as it stalks the seas, indiscriminately seeking prey. He also delves into the mindset of Winston Churchill, who knew of the German threat, and offers a convincing portrait of a torn Woodrow Wilson. All in all, it's a compelling recreation of a singular historical moment with its many ripple effects.
as one of the world's most vicious predator. But there's much more to the story, as described in the newsletter of Point Reyes Books, located in Northern California.