Notable Books

Lila tells the story of the young wife of elderly pastor John Ames, who was the protagonist of Robinson’s novel Gilead. The story begins with Lila as a young child locked out of her house because she won’t stop crying. A mysterious woman, Doll, rescues the child, nurses her back to health, and raises her. By the time Lila reaches Gilead, she’s a deeply wounded person who is alone in the world. Beautifully written, the novel explores grace amid suffering, and Robinson doesn’t hesitate to tie the theme to Scripture—Ezekiel 16 in particular.

Gray Mountain

A young female attorney gets laid off from her big New York firm and ends up working in a legal aid office in coal country. She’s mourning the loss of her Manhattan job, adjusting to small town life, and learning that big coal companies are destroying the environment in their greed. Cue the sermons. The lawyer finds she likes helping poor people with their legal troubles and tries to avoid getting sucked into the big environmental cases. Grisham serves up more gratuitous sex than in his other books and ends the book without resolving many plot lines.

All the Light We Cannot See

In Doerr’s page-turning WWII story, a blind young girl flees Paris with her father. They take refuge with a WWI-traumatized great-uncle in the fortress city of Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. A German orphan with a flair for radio mechanics earns a place at an elite Nazi school, where he becomes desensitized to everyday cruelty. By war’s end, both young people become trapped on Saint-Malo during intense allied bombing. The novel contrasts human ugliness and degradation with natural beauty and seems to ask whether all the human sound and fury signifies anything.

The Storytelling Animal: How stories make us human

Gottschall believes humans evolved to be storytellers, and asks why. Believers in creation say that man was designed that way, but the evolutionist has to explain why the universal human desire and need to tell stories gives an advantage. As he puts it, “Evolution is ruthlessly utilitarian. How has the seeming luxury of fiction not been eliminated from human life?” I don’t think many Christians will find his answers satisfying, but it’s interesting to follow the reasoning of a materialist trying to explain why his daughters adore dress-up and fairy tales.

Spotlight

Tim Clissold lived in China for two decades before returning to England with his family. One day he received a frantic call from someone needing his help to rescue a faltering Chinese business deal. The troubled deal had to do with carbon credits—a field Clissold knew nothing about. In Chinese Rules (Harper Collins, 2014), Clissold tells about that deal and all the cultural misunderstandings that frustrated the British partners. He tells funny stories about his own foray into carbon trading, describing the numerous miscues and wrong turns he and his partners made. Out of those experiences and his understanding of Chinese culture and language, he derived five rules for doing business in China. Business people will find the book useful and entertaining, but so will others who just want insight into that fascinating culture. —S.O.