Three Literary Blockbuster choices by Charlie

Three Literary Blockbusters by American Authors That Will Make Perfect Book Club Choices, by Charlie Gladstone.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach. This is a funny, sad, and deftly written story of a woman who arrives at a luxury hotel to find that she is the only guest not involved in a  week-long wedding party. To compound matters, she has booked into the hotel in order to kill herself after a divorce and the death of a beloved pet. She happens to mention this to the bride, which kickstarts an unexpected friendship and a very complicated wedding. Choc-full of wonderful characters and tenderness, this is my book of the month.

Same As It Ever Was by Clare Lombardo. This is a long, beautifully-observed family saga that ebbs and flows, slows down and speeds up, is funny and sad, mysterious and highly relatable and which finally reaches an achingly beautiful climax that left me deeply affected. It is funny, true, warm and it has characters and passages that linger in the mind. The Guardian called it ‘a literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler’ which had me hooked, and how right that is. Don’t be put off by the slight lull in the middle.

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akker. I loved Brodesser-Akker’s debut novel  Fleishman is in Trouble. That was a smash hit, spawning a bells-and-whistles TV series. This sophomore novel has already been bought by a TV company. If all of this pressure is playing on the author’s mind you wouldn’t know it. This is a family saga with hints of Succession about it (indeed that TV series plays a cameo). It’s about the chaotic collapse of a Jewish family, mentally, physically and financially and is often darkly funny. I didn’t love it as much as the debut, and found it a little hard to live with the characters for a full 450 pages but there it’s a great read for lovers of Franzen et al. And, if you haven’t read  Fleishman…  give that a go.