Every Happiness by Reena Shah

As childhood friends in India, Deepa and Ruchi were inseparable. Bound together by shared experiences that left no room for anyone else, their lives are rebooted when Deepa marries a rich doctor and moves to Connecticut. Ruchi follows closely behind, marrying a software engineer whose teetering career places Ruchi and her husband in a different class than her richer friend. Navigating the unsaid complexities of class, mining the contours of their friendship, adjusting to life as an immigrant — it all presents challenges. Shah’s expert writing weaves a nuanced story where there’s gold buried in every understated sentence. A knockout debut. 

Country People by Daniel Mason

 

What does the family dog know about the real Vermont than two newly arrived California intellectuals? As it turns out…a lot. Kate Krzelewski has a one-year appointment at a Vermont college teaching the works of Milton and Blake to eager students. Kids in tow, the family decides to move to Bernie-land. Husband and Dad Miles hopes this will be the year he’ll complete his doctoral thesis, which had taken many detours. But, in trying to befriend the real Vermont country people, Miles stumbles on hollow-earth conspiracy theorists. A departure from Mason's earlier work, this is nevertheless a clever and raucously funny romp. 

Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran

 

The goose often attacks because its vision is skewed and misleads it to think the goose is bigger than everyone else. It’s an apt metaphor for nanny Yu Ling, a 30-year-old nanny in Beijing, whose efforts to dare and dream big are repeatedly thwarted by her circumstances and her past. Within 200 pages, the author expertly weaves in commentary about both class and gender, in a tightly knit story. The story takes many fresh turns as Ling has to constantly recalibrate her situation with her seven-year-old charge, Kuan Kuan, but it never loses the plot. Fluid translation is a bonus.

A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee

 

The treasured son of Korean immigrants, Jeon-Gi understandably has a foot in both Korean and American worlds, while also negotiating puberty. In his apartment building in the New York area tenements, he finds his place in the pecking order until that delicate equilibrium is upset and he’s sent away to summer camp. Lee delivers another winner, drawing a brilliant portrait of a boy who doesn’t understand what to make of the embers of cruelty that silently burn within him. That they may or may not have anything to do with a formative experience at camp is almost beside the point. 

Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put – A Memoir of Humor and Hope in a Small-Town Life by Annie B. Jones

 

The idea of setting roots in a new place, of traveling “West,” is as all-American as apple pie. Yet, Jones is content with staying home in Thomasville, a small town in Georgia, where she owns an independent bookstore. In a series of essays, Jones recreates the joys of finding contentment in the everyday and of forming deep connections. Even superficial acquaintances are useful, she argues. A popular book podcaster, Jones is also a devoted Christian, something I couldn’t relate to. I skipped the entire section. But the rest is earnest and appealing in its homage to small-town life lived big. 

Under a Metal Sky by Philip Marsden

 

The book has a neat premise: learn facts about various metals and then tour a related mine. So it is that we combine and travel in one neat package. We travel to a small town in the Czech Republic, to the gold-rich mountains of Georgia (the country). I enjoyed the travels that explore the remnants of a bygone industry. But the facts about each metal got a tad boring. The format would have been better served if the author had narrated a story related to just a fact or two. A small nit to pick in an otherwise delightful book.

Mule Boy by Andrew Krivak

 

Themes of survivor guilt and death loom large in this slender novel set in a coal mining disaster that took the lives of everyday workers in 1929. Ondro Prach, the son of Slovak immigrants, was just 13, in charge of the mule that transports loads of coal from the shafts to the surface. Haunted by what he witnessed during his critical teen years, Ondro can’t shake off the resulting sorrow and guilt. A search to find new meaning leads him to remote New Hampshire. Soulful with not an extra word, a haunting story told in a stream of consciousness narrative.