3 Novels to Devour Over a Long Weekend (Plus 4 Other Entrancing Reads)
We found the juiciest, most
page-turning stories out there, just in time for the beginning of fall.
(P.S. They go perfectly with a midnight piece of apple pie.)
1 of 7
Small Blessings
By Martha Woodroof
320 pages;
St. Martin's Press
Imagine: A tall, middle-aged, college-dropout
bookstore clerk with just the slightest bump in her nose (from an old
basketball injury) moves to a university town full of insular, gossiping
academics—and bewitches the entire community. Respectable, pompous
male professors fall for her. Brilliant but socially maladapted female
professors revere her. Why? Because "Here, at this isolated seat of
southern learning, where everyone clung to busy-ness as though it were proof of
an importance in the larger, more meaningful world, was a person who dared to
seem relaxed, as though she had time to draw breath and listen to what someone
was saying and even think about it for a moment or two." Although the
romance of Rose Callahan and a certain Shakespearean scholar named Tom Putnam
drives the story—complicated by the death of his wife and the
appearance of his illegitimate young son—it's Rose herself who
entrances. You even end up falling in love
with her—as if you were a character in the story, seeking her wisdom
on, say, what a chaotic childhood can teach you ("change was not only
dependable, it was omnivorous"). Like the word "magical," the
word "charming" has been used—and misused—so much
in book reviews that it sometimes feels as if you can no longer trust it. But
this book is a charmer: quirky, clear-hearted and
effervescent.
— Leigh Newman
Published 08/15/2014