Pulitzer Prize Winners and Nominees

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

Dee updates the classic American tale of the self made zillionaire by eliminating his usual fall from grace and focusing instead on the downside of a privileged upbringing for his offspring.

Power couple Cynthia and Adam Morey navigate the economic realities of contemporary Manhattan so well that they can support a privileged lifestyle for themselves and their offspring. The children, Jonas and April, are cut off from meaningful encounters with others by their parents’ wealth and obsession with discarding their own pasts, and so go on naive quests for authenticity and responsiveness. The book is open ended, so we are not entirely sure of the children’s fate. In the end, it’s left to the reader to suss out the author’s intention.

Dee has written literary fiction innovative enough to be the runner-up for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize but accessible enough to spark lively discussions in neighborhood book clubs. The book is short, written in simple language, and touches on subjects of current interest: the social responsibility of the ultra rich, the wisdom of permissive child rearing, and the effects of fractured family ties, among others. Principals and secondary characters comment perceptively on the action, generating questions for debate. Whatever the reader’s positions are on current social conditions, he will find a topic dear to his heart to discuss.

For Read-alikes, try Eleanor Lipman’s My Latest Grievance for its family focus, brevity, and dialog, Ha Jin’s A Free Life for a contemporary test of the American Dream from the opposite end of the economic spectrum, Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City for a wide ranging portrait of contemporary Manhattan reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Freedom for the pitfalls of modern family life among the American middle class.


                                                                                                                   Jackie Malone, North Bellmore Public Library



A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan portrays the interlacing lives of men and women whose lives converge and collide all through the book. Bennie Salazar, a punk rocker in his teenage years, is facing middle age as a divorced and disheartened record producer. His cool, competent assistant, Sasha, keeps everything under control—except for her unconquerable compulsion to steal. Those are the main characters in Egan’s latest novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which is full of characters from the San Francisco music scene. If you like unique, unforgettable individuals, this is the book for you.

Read-alikes

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson (1st time novelist)
The Children’s Book by S. Byatt
White Noise by Don DeLillo
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things Jon McGregor
Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin
When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead by Jerry Weintraub – memoir of the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars.

                                                                                     Kathleen Carter, Retired, Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for this lively, sometimes humorous and often endearing story Calliope Stephanides, a second generation Greek American growing up in Detroit. Due to a genetic anomaly, Calliope (now called Cal) was born a hermaphrodite; raised as a girl but now lives as a man.

The story begins with her grandparents in the small Asia Minor village of Smyrna in 1922 and continues with their emigration to Detroit and raising a family. Actual events like Prohibition, WWII and the Detroit race riots are intertwined with Calliope and her family’s struggle for normalcy and a piece of the American dream. We then follow Calliope through her awkward teenage years with conflicting emotions and physical developments that concern both her and her parents, prompting a visit to a specialist. When a peek into her medical file reveals shocking news, Cal decides to embark on a journey of self discovery, leaving her family behind. Only upon his return home does he discover a family secret that ties everything together.

Although a bit wordy sometimes, Middlesex is a thoroughly engrossing read; try the audiobook for a spirited narration by Kristoffer Tabori.

Read-alikes:
Annabel by Kathleen Winters (gender identity fiction)
The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (gender identity fiction)
Crossing California by Adam Lancer (multi-generational families influenced by world events)

                                                                                                                       Cathi Nashak, Deer Park Library

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford


The Sportswriter is the first volume in the Frank Bascombe trilogy, continued by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day and The Lay of the Land.

The Sportswriter is basically a story about a man alienated from life and family, although you might not know it from his words and actions. Frank Bascombe is a sportswriter who tries to write heartwarming stories about sports and athletes in an attempt to basically avoid dealing with real life problems and issues. Bascombe has an almost childlike, hero-worship view of athletes. He is a man who claims not to be searching for anything, but really seems to want stability and a family back in his life.

Frank is divorced from his wife and two surviving children. His oldest son died from Reye’s syndrome. He resides in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam with his African boarder. His ex-wife, referred to only as X, seems to have adjusted to divorce better than him. Frank spends his time having an affair with Vicki, an attractive nurse, and attending meetings of the Divorced Men’s Club.

Two events conspire to shake Frank’s optimistic view of life up a bit. Frank and Vicki first go to Detroit to interview a disabled football player, who seems to shake Frank’s rosy view of athletes. Then, Walter, a new member of the Divorced Men’s Club confides in Frank a dark secret.

The Sportswriter is primarily an examination of attitudes toward life, dealing with issues such as love and marriage, divorce and death.

Read-alike authors could include such names as Russell Banks, Walker Percy, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, John Updike, and Richard Yates.

                                                                                                                          Bruce Silverstein, Patchogue-Medford Library


Tinkers by Paul Harding


George Washington Crosby’s deathbed thoughts, and his unusual family history, form the center of this imaginative debut novel (Pulitzer Prize 2010). Crosby was a form of tinker, a clock repairman, but his father Howard, whose story is also told in a parallel narrative, was a true tinker, a peddler who wandered about eastern Maine with his mule and wagon. Howard abandoned his family when George was twelve, an event that shaped the sons life and personality in countless ways. Harding uses diary entries, excerpts from clock repair manuals, and stream-of-consciousness reflections to tell these stories. His lyrical, nearly poetic, language has been much praised, as is the novels craftsmanship.

Harding, a former drummer for the rock band Cold Water Flat, received an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “Tinkers,” loosely based on the life of his own grandfather, began as a story he submitted for admission. The author is now a teacher of creative writing, working on several other books, also about the Crosby family. The success of “Tinkers” is a true Cinderella tale: countless rejection letters preceded publication by a small literary press, the Pulitzer and a Guggenheim Foundation grant.

“Olive Kitteridge” and “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet”, novels that also focus upon reminiscing in old age, would be read-alikes. The classic Faulkner “As I Lay Dying “ has a similar feeling of intertwining voices exploring a life. “Birds without Wings” and “Cutting for Stone” present father-son relationships as well. “Bird Sisters” and “Gilead”, too, would appeal to those who enjoy “Tinkers”: life is a wonderfully mysterious creation as framed in all these novels!

                                                                                                                      Suzanne McGuire, Commack Public Library

The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee


The Surrendered is about the lives of people who have been damaged by war, by “shocking acts of violence and love.” Lee gives us dense visual details. Not for the faint-hearted; the characters’ misfortunes are relentless.

To read The Surrendered is an exhausting journey, both emotionally and physically. As the novel opens, June appears as a starved and motherless 11-year old, fleeing from the Korean War at a time when "the whole country is orphaned." Having already lost three siblings, June has to leave her little brother bleeding to death on a railway track in order to survive. She is close to death herself when she is taken in by an orphanage. There she meets Hector Brennan, a former GI who has been in a state of shock since witnessing the hideous torture of a Korean soldier, and Sylvie, a missionary's wife who helps to run the children's home - and whose own parents suffered violent ends at the hands of Japanese soldiers in occupied Manchuria in 1934.

It is Lee’s aim to examine how war has damaged the lives of his characters, marking them dysfunctional in varying degrees. Sylvie turns to drugs, Hector to drink, and June loses herself in dogged work.

At the end of the book, June is dying of stomach cancer, an ironic twist to the starving girl at the beginning of the story. It is beautifully written, with fine character development. The author displays an intimate knowledge of his characters’ inner lives and an understanding of the echoing fallout of war – the interplay of fate and free will.

Read-alikes:
The Lotus Eaters, T. Soli
The Cellist of Sarajevo, S. Galloway
Atonement, I. McEwan

                                                                                                                 Grace O’Connor, West Islip Public Library


The Road by Cormac McCarthy


The Road is the depiction of an apocalyptic world and the struggle of a father and son to endure the devastation. A landscape of ashen remains, a lack of shelter and food, and a relentless effort to continue traveling down a road that bears nothing but peril and destruction is explicitly described by McCarthy in stark yet, at times, exquisitely poetic terms. There is no “plot” to this novel—it is the portrayal of a desperate journey and a brutal tale of survival. The format the narrative is written in reflects the fruitlessness of the characters’ efforts—many sentences are just fragments; the book is a single, long narrative devoid of the use of chapter, and punctuation is often disregarded—this novel is written in a style so severe that it both creates and embodies the harsh mood of the story itself.

This novel is not a light read. It is not a book for the faint-of-heart. It is not a book for everyone. The subject matter is frightening and full of the stuff that occupies nightmares. McCarthy provides vivid descriptions of carnage, cannibalism, and a barren landscape where life as we know it has ceased to exist. It is a portrait of the unthinkable, yet a depiction of what we know, in our most fearful moments, to be very possible. Even given the chilling scenario, there is a tenderness that is conveyed throughout the story in the relationship between the father and son. The lengths that a parent will go to in order to protect a child are evident throughout the course of one horrific situation after another.

An easy read in its simplistic writing style, yet a difficult read in the subject matter tackled, The Road makes an excellent book discussion selection. Its provocative themes and situations lend themselves to lively dialogue, if not vigorous debate. Thematic read-alikes would include The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye, and the classic novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute.

                                                                                                Deborah Formosa, Northport-East Northport Public Library

After This by Alice McDermott

Spanning from just after World War II through four decades, the reader is immersed in the lives of the Keane family. A chance meeting inside a cafe in New York City is where Mary and John's story begins. Both Irish and Catholic they marry and have two sons and two daughters. The family resides in an unnamed, middle class suburb on Long Island. The reader follows the family through their lives against the social and political backgrounds of the different decades. Family, relationships and the possibilities in life are the heart of this book.

Structurally the book is divided into two sections. The first focused on the family as a whole. The second focused on each individual family member and read more like a series of short stories. Some characters are more developed than others, while foreshadowing, repetition and symbolism are heavily used. Overall, After Alice is mostly a character piece that doesn't have a true plot. McDermott's eloquent and beautifully written prose help to make this an engaging read.

Readers who enjoy literary fiction and family sagas would enjoy After This.

Read-alikes
The Condition Jennifer Haigh
Run Ann Patchett
Compass Rose John Casey

                                                                                                          Donna Brown, Northport East Northport Public Library


Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener


Michener served in the Pacific during World War II in aviation maintenance and was inspired by the breathtaking beauty of the Pacific Islands as well as the isolation of the distant place. To the Twenty First Century reader these tales seem extremely politically incorrect with nicknames such as “Japs” and “yellow bastards” casually bandied about. But rather it is a snapshot of an exotic distant arena during wartime. The GIs are depicted with warts and all and the reader finds all of them unforgettable.

We suffer Lieutenant Cable’s intoxication with Liat an island girl and even empathize with Liat’s mother, Bloody Mary, and her ambition for her daughter to marry an American soldier. We applaud Dr. Benoway, the base psychiatrist with his unconventional therapy techniques, such as including his wife in some of the therapy sessions. We suffer with Nellie Forbush who falls in love with a handsome French landowner, Emile de Becque, and agrees to marry him until she is introduced to his black children. The children are a product of a past union with a Polynesian woman and poor Nellie, Arkansas born, is stunned by this revelation. She must deal with the mores and crippling prejudice with which she has been raised and dismiss them if she hopes to marry Emile. Michener also deals with timeless concerns as the importance of letters from home to a lonely GI suffering palpable homesickness; prejudice at it basest, French officials governing the islands actually made it illegal for the natives to sell grass skirts because the trade was too lucrative and would give the natives financial independence from their European governors. When “South Pacific” was presented as a Broadway musical it was heralded as ground-breaking in its revolutionary content but “Tales” had reproached these destructive attitudes years before. “Tales” was a worthy recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for literature.

                                                                                                               Peg McCarthy, Smithtown Public Library, Retired

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar


This Pulitzer Prize finalist for biography is based on the life of mathematician John Nash. The book follows the life of Nash from his first entrance into academia, through the onset of his schizophrenic break and his arrival on the other side of said break. This volume not only takes us through the life of Nash but through the period in which he lived; characterizing the world of academia during the middle 20th century as an exclusive and often times anti-Semitic atmosphere. The book also describes the emergence of the new Ivory League, institutions such as MIT and NYU, which won their prestige in part by accepting Harvard and Princeton’s bias cast-offs.

Nasar writes a beautiful biography that any non-fiction reader would enjoy, especially so if they have a mathematic background, however, such background is not required.

In addition to being a Pulitzer finalist, this book was also a 1998 New York Times Notable Book and the Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Sylvia Nasar is a professor of business at Columbia University and is a trained economist who has worked for many top news organizations including The New York Times, Fortune and US News.
Read-alikes:
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar
A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder by Rober B. Oxnam
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman
The Soloist by Steve Lopez

                                                                                                                            Pamela Wells, Lindenhurst Public Library



A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley


In a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, it is 1979 and Ginny’s father, Larry Cook has just decided to retire, leaving the farm to Ginny and middle daughter Rose. Youngest daughter Caroline is booted out of the deal when she wants time to think about it.

What follows, is the family’s downfall. Larry becomes a mean drunk, bored without the farm; Ginny’s and Rose’s marriages begin to disintegrate; and the revelation of Larry’s sexual abuse of his two eldest daughters helps to set off the train wreck of their lives.

Read-alikes:
A Mother and Two Daughters by Gail Godwin
The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Meyers
Friday's Daughter by Patricia Sprinkle
Sister by Ansay A. Manette


                                                                                                                            Lori Ludlow, Babylon Public Library

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout


Olive Kitteridge is a large, brassy woman who shows up throughout this series of short stories whether as a main character, a secondary character or as a mention through someone else’s eyes as they’ve crossed paths with her. As the stories move from one to the next, we get a picture of Olive first as a young mother, then as a middle-aged woman and finally as a senior in her seventies trying to reconnect with her son and deal with an ailing husband.

These short stories move quickly and capture moments in small town Maine with characters that are both likeable and easy to relate to. Although Olive can come off as a tyrant at times, the reader develops an attachment to her and her not so subtle nuances. This book can be picked up at leisure reading one or multiple stories in a sitting without feeling like you’re going to lose your place. Lovers of short stories and human nature shoul find this book quite enjoyable.

Read-alikes:
Belong to me, Marisa de los Santos
Blackbird House, Alice Hoffman
Maine, Courtney J. Sullivan

                                                                                                                       Azuree Agnello, West Babylon Public Library