The first is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, a tiny book 
about two educated, city boys relocated to the backwoods of China as part of the Cultural Revolution. They stumble across a suitcase of illicit Western classics and come of age accompanied by nighttime readings of French literature and daytime attempts to woo the local beauty. The tale is so tiny and light it was over almost as soon as it started but along the way I realized the beautiful writing and very human tale had swept me up and I wasn't ready for it to end.
The second is a National Jewish Book Award winner I tripped over by accident at my beloved Powells Bookstore. The book is The World to Come by Dara Horn and the central family is introduced via the theft of a Chagall painting from the local Jewish Art Museum (security against bomb threats, little security for actual art) by a recently divorced man who remembers the painting from his childhood. I never dog-ear (shudder at the thought!) but I used receipts, notepad pages & ribbons to mark passages to read over and over again for the sheer pleasure of the lovely thought(s) (on love, family, death, rebirth) captured in a paragraph.
about two educated, city boys relocated to the backwoods of China as part of the Cultural Revolution. They stumble across a suitcase of illicit Western classics and come of age accompanied by nighttime readings of French literature and daytime attempts to woo the local beauty. The tale is so tiny and light it was over almost as soon as it started but along the way I realized the beautiful writing and very human tale had swept me up and I wasn't ready for it to end.The second is a National Jewish Book Award winner I tripped over by accident at my beloved Powells Bookstore. The book is The World to Come by Dara Horn and the central family is introduced via the theft of a Chagall painting from the local Jewish Art Museum (security against bomb threats, little security for actual art) by a recently divorced man who remembers the painting from his childhood. I never dog-ear (shudder at the thought!) but I used receipts, notepad pages & ribbons to mark passages to read over and over again for the sheer pleasure of the lovely thought(s) (on love, family, death, rebirth) captured in a paragraph.
One such paragraph, "When twins are in the womb and one of them is 
born - the twin who remains behind watches his sole companion vanish and suffers an agony almost too devastating to bear. Only a moment later, he will understand that his twin has not died, but quite the opposite, that his vanished friend is closer to him than he can know. This, is also the way of real death and the world to come. Just because we think people have disappeared doesn't mean they have. They are closer than we think.
born - the twin who remains behind watches his sole companion vanish and suffers an agony almost too devastating to bear. Only a moment later, he will understand that his twin has not died, but quite the opposite, that his vanished friend is closer to him than he can know. This, is also the way of real death and the world to come. Just because we think people have disappeared doesn't mean they have. They are closer than we think.Sara was the younger Ziskind twin by a matter of minutes. But even before she heard this story, Sara had been aware of a silence within her bones, a residual sorrow that flowed quietly in her bood - the legacy of the ten minutes before her life began, when her twin brother left her behind. Those ten minutes also gave her something that few others had: a knowledge, a hard fact that she carried within her like a dark and polished stone, that people who were supposed to have disappeared really hadn't. She had seen Ben disappear and knew better. Vanished people were a breath away. One only needed to breathe."
In case you're not onhand to foist these books upon your persons, please be advised: YOU MUST READ THESE BOOKS - THEY ARE NOT TO BE MISSED!
