Books | October 2019

By Naperville Magazine
October 2019 View more Books

Fiction

The Fountains of Silence By Ruta Sepetys (Philomel Books) Madrid, 1957. Daniel, Ana, Rafael, and Puri together provide alternating lenses for viewing Spain during one of its most repressive periods. Their lives run parallel and intersect as each tries to answer questions about truth within a regime that crushes any opposition and murders dissidents in this novel about the postwar struggles of Spain.

All This Could Be Yours By Jami Attenberg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) With their patriarch on his deathbed, the family of Victor Tuchman gathers to say their goodbyes and figure out why he was the way he was. An exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man; it shows how those webs can tangle a family for generations, and what it takes to break free.

Nonfiction

	When Life Gives You Pears By Jeannie Gaffigan (Grand Central Publishing) The writer, director, producer, and wife of comedian Jim Gaffigan writes with humor and heart about the pear-sized brain tumor she had removed and the toll it took on her family. Gaffigan shares the challenging conversations she had with her children and how she learned to be more present in life.
	American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way By Paul Freedman (Liveright) In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation’s palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there is an exuberant and diverse, if not always coherent, American cuisine that reflects the history of the nation itself.