November 2024 Book Vote
This month's genre: Prize Winners
Welcome to November's book vote.
Take a look at the synopses below and vote for the one that appeals to you most as a Gloss Book Club selection.
Each month we spend a considerable amount of time researching books to include in our vote, we consider a wide range of factors such as global availability, price per market, author diversity, book length, and reader review ratings. It's not a quick process, but it's an important one. We hope you'll enjoy our selections.
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Brotherless Night
by V.V. Ganeshananthan
Pages:348
Women's Prize for Fiction
Synopsis
In this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka.
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K's invitation to work as a medic at the field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.
Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman's moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
by Safiya Sinclair
Pages:349
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
Synopsis
With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.
How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.'
Calling for a Blanket Dance
by Oscar Hokeah
Pages:258
PEN America/Hemingway Award Winner
Synopsis
A moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man struggling to find strength in his familial identity, from a stellar new voice in literary fiction.
Told in a series of voices, Calling for a Blanket Dance takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle through the multigenerational perspectives of his family as they soldier through a myriad of difficulties: his father's sudden kidney failure and subsequent disability, his mother's struggle to hold on to her job and care for her husband, the constant resettlement of the family, and Ever's own bottled-up rage at the instability all around him. Meanwhile, all of Ever's relatives have ideas about who he is and who he should be. His Cherokee grandmother urges the family to move across the state to find security; his dying grandfather hopes to reunite him with his heritage through traditional gourd dances; his Kiowa cousin reminds him that he's connected to an ancestral past. And once an adult, Ever must take the strength given to him by his relatives to save not only himself, but also the next generation of family.
How will this young man visualize a place for himself when the world hasn't given him a place to start with? Honest, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting, Calling for a Blanket Dance is the story of how Ever Geimausaddle found his way to home.
Prophet Song
by Paul Lynch
Pages:259
Booker Prize
Synopsis
A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society. How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
39 Comments
Prophet Song
by Paul Lynch
Prophet song
Brotherless night – would be so interesting to learn more about the Sri Lanka civil war.
Prophet Song
Prophet Song.
Brotherless Night is my vote
Fingers crossed for Prophet Song.
Prophet Song gets my vote
Prophet Song
Calling for a blanket dance
Calling for a Blanket Dance!
Prophet Song
Prophet Song
Prophet Song hopefully
Prophet Song
Brotherless Night
Prophet song
How to say Babylon
How to Say Babylon
My vote is for How to Say Babylon
How to Say Babylon
Prophet Song
Prophet Song
Prophet Song
Brotherless Night! 📚📖
How to say babylon
Profit song
Babylon. It says the poll is closed but the email from 40 minutes ago said it’s open until September 4. ;(
Prophet song is my vote!
voting for: How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
Brotherless Night! 📚📖
How to Say Babylon
Voted Prophet Song as well!
Prophet Song is my ultimate choice although all of them sound like excellent reads. Anxious to read which one is the winner 🏆
They all sound excellent, but my Irish roots got the better of me, so I voted for Prophet Song! I may tackle the others at some point, as well!
Any of these choices would be good. I’m interested in learning about the Sri Lanka civil war because I’m friends with a family from Sri Lanka.
-Brotherless Night
How to say Babylon
How to Say Babylon
How to Say Babylon