Looking for something new to read? Interested in what books are hip at Rye High? We asked five local English teachers for recommendations. Their suggestions:
Anthony Frabizzio highlighted a book that has been “unfairly forgotten:” “Everything Is Illuminated,” by Jonathan Safran Foer. “It was a big deal 20 years ago,” he said, “but I don’t know if it’s held up in the public consciousness as one of the best novels of the past 25 years, and that’s a shame.”
The book, about a young man traveling to Ukraine to find a woman who may have saved his grandfather in the Holocaust, offers shifting perspectives, which intrigues Frabizzio. “Everything is Illuminated” is “totally outside the box,” he said. The author is a character within the text, and parts of the book are a narration of his journey from the perspective of his translator, Alex, while other parts are an imagined history by Foer of his grandfather’s hometown.
Roni Sarig also recommends a book set in Ukraine, “Death and The Penguin,” by Andrey Kurkov.
The book originally was written in Russian, and is about a man who takes a lucrative job writing advance obituaries for prominent people. The man also cobbles together an unusual family with a young girl abandoned by her father, a nanny hired using the young girl’s inheritance, and a penguin the zoo couldn’t afford to keep feeding.
“Death and the Penguin” is “full of mysteries” that capture “the absurdity of life in Ukraine in the era between the downfall of the Soviet Union and the current war with Russia,” Sarig said.
If you are searching for “love, profundity, and humor,” you should pick up Joel Edminster’s recommendation, “It,” by Stephen King. The author is a famous a writer of horror stories, and “It” has a terrifying, other-worldly villain; but Edminster assures readers that the novel features “everything one wants in a read.”
The book weaves together two narratives, one that follows seven children as they seek to destroy an evil shapeshifter terrorizing their town and another depicting those same children as adults returning to finish the job. Released in 1986, “It,” is what Edminster described as “a seminal book in [his] reader’s life.” Each year, he runs a popular one-semester course called “Modern Gothic Literature,” with much of the curriculum centering around Stephen King and his work.
The book’s depth of emotion and thematic complexity, plus the “lavishly titled parts, chapters, and interludes,” make “It” “a true one-volume epic” and “the ultimate example of King’s story-telling genius,” Edminster said.
David Hartman is also a King fan and recommends King’s “Fairy Tale,” which he calls “a great example of modern fantasy” and a perfect read for those who may not love horror.
In the book, an old man reveals to a child looking after his dog that a sundial in an alternate dimension has allowed him to live 120 years. After the old man suffers a heart attack and his dog becomes sick, the boy seeks out the sundial in hopes of saving the dog’s life. In doing so, he inadvertently involves himself in a grand conflict between forces of good and evil and must fight to return home.
In particular, Hartman encourages readers to check out the award-winning audiobook of “Fairy Tale,” which he describes as “a great way to experience” the novel.
Jennifer Fall recommends “Demon Copperhead,” by Barbara Kingsolver, which was published in 2022 and is loosely based on Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield.” She calls the work “a beautiful and heartbreaking story” with a “fascinating title character.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel explores themes of poverty and addiction while tackling the issues of our country’s social welfare system. “I know that sounds depressing,” Fall said, “but Kingsolver’s vivid prose and her knack for creating characters … makes the book so hard to put down.”
Readers will find themselves in a world “very different from their own,” Fall said, adding that most will “come out of the experience illuminated.”
“I read the book almost a year ago,” she added, “and I still often find myself thinking about Demon.”
