Fiction

Anthony Doerr – Cloud Cuckoo Land
The title is a famous description of living in a dream world that’s ridiculously optimistic. I’m expecting a heavy dose of magical realism, a difficult genre to get right when absurdity comes into play. The plot, such as it is, seems to be three impoverished/imperiled characters, from three separate timelines (past, present, future), with one book binding them together. I’ll see if Doerr has the chops to walk that super-fine razor’s edge to keep the fanciful from becoming farce.

Still Life by Sarah Winman
Normally, I avoid WWII books because they tend to be ghosts of each other. This one caught my interest because it’s doesn’t do the annoying dual timeline device, and because it’s not about recounting wartime heroics. Instead, it’s a straightforward story of a young British soldier who finds himself trapped in what he thought was a deserted Tuscan wine cellar…only to find an elderly art collector seeking abandoned paintings to save them. He goes home after the war to his old life of drinking and carousing with his mates…until the day he learns that he’s inherited a Tuscan home. Somehow we’ll meet a Shakespeare-quoting parrot. The parrot sealed it for me.