Patchett's new novel, set mostly in the Amazon basin, lures the reader into her story - and invites inevitable mention of Heart of Darkness.  When Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil on a mission to discover a colleague's fate there, she enters a land of ambiguity that she must struggle to understand, and in doing so, slowly comes to terms with the relationships of her own life.  Patchett is such a luminous writer and her descriptions are so vivid that this novel takes on a special pleasure in its reading.

This long, layered novel leaves the reader haunted by the love stories it tells, the beautiful drama of medicine and countless surgical procedures, the tastes, smells and sounds of Addis Ababa and Ethiopia and the Bronx in New York, and the flawed and noble characters whose lives are revealed.  It is, simply, a wonderful book that every one of us has read and loved, and it comes with our collective highest recommendation!

This is a deeply satisfying story of friendship, family, love and responsibility.  When Andras Lévi arrives in Paris from Hungary as an architecture student in 1937, the world seems almost normal.  His brother Tibor is a medical student in Italy, while their youngest brother seeks a life on stage.  Orringer builds these lives meticulously, with relationships and details that feel real. Slowly, the worm of horrors that became World War II edges into their existence and changes each of them irredeemably.  Yet, that terrible time at last comes to an end and life and love and even family continue.

This story of a book-obsessed, Shakespeare-quoting band of sisters (and their parents) is filled with pith and wit and the bare, raw honesty of their lives and relationships.  Events conspire to draw the three sisters back to their childhood home.  They are fabulously out-of-step with the world (and one another), and it seems impossible that they can ever add friendship to the love that binds them.
 

Here is another novel so  good that it is just about impossible to put down!   If you missed this in the hardcover, give yourself a treat this summer and pick up the new paperback edition.  The three women of this story, set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, are simply good company.  They are smart, lively, decent people, and it is a pleasure to spend the hours of reading this book in their company.  Two of them are black servants in the town, the third is white, a new grad of Ole' Miss with a yen to write.  The narrative of what their lives are like and how they intersect will stay in your mind long after the last page is finished.