AJ Dunn Reads

  We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin We Are All the Same in the Dark is a complicated book, but makes total sense when reading. So, bear with me. The story follows Odette Tucker, a Texas police officer who lost her leg when she was a teenager in a car accident and now uses a prosthetic. She has been obsessed with the disappearance case of her teenage boyfriend's sister, Trumanell, since that time. Odette works tirelessly on figuring out what happened to Trumanell and Trumanell's abusive father, Frank Branson. Wyatt (the ex-boyfriend) has been blamed by the town for these disappearances, and labeled a murderer, even though no bodies have ever been found. But there is a rash of evidence pointing to possible homicide. Odette has a bunch of evidence and crime scene items squirreled away in her house, which she inherited from her father, himself a Sheriff in a line of Sheriffs. Odette was close to her cousin Maggie, whose father was Sheriff Tucker's brother and ...

  Jack by Marilynne Robinson Jack is the fourth book in the Gilead series with this volume following Jack Boughton and his developing relationship with Della, a black Methodist high school teacher he meets in St. Louis in the 1940s. Both are children of minister fathers living during a time when it is illegal for them to be together. The plot of the story is straightfoward. Jack sees Della and the two strike up a friendship that leads to a romance, however they have to keep their affair a secret and can only really be together in public in Della's part of town, where folks may look down on the relationship, but the fear of being arrested is lessened. Jack and Della navigate these trials and Jack often fights with himself about whether or not it would be kinder and better for Della if he just left her alone. I found Jack in this book to be fearful, cowardly, and meek to the point of fault. He sees himself as a nobody and believes that others see him as even less. He is awkward and...

  Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo Donald "Sully" Sullivan is living with the ghost of his father, whose abuse and neglect pervades Sully's daily doings in the small town of North Bath, NY where the 60-year-old child in a man's body lives and works. Sully is the embodiment of a person who gets in his own way and refuses to change. And he doesn't really change much during the entirety of Nobody's Fool . Sully lives a bachelor's life in a second floor flat in a house owned by his 8th grade English teacher Miss Peoples, whom he holds some affection for. He spends his days at his various hangouts (a diner, a bar, the OTB betting parlor, and his juvenile boss's office), always short of cash and carting around his dimwit best friend. He is romantically involved with a married woman, flirts with various other women, and nurses a bum knee. On top of this, he has quit college, a prerequisite to getting disability benefits. Another friend, Wirf who is his lawy...

  Julie & Julia by Julie Powell Julie & Julia tells Julie Powell's year long adventure story cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking . It follows the ups and (mostly) downs of this venture while Powell tells her blog readers about her experience. Powell is a secretary adrift in her 29th year, feeling that she has not really done anything to show for her life, other than marrying a man who supports her no matter what she does. The blog and cooking project is, for Powell, a way to revitalize her life. The prose is very funny, with Powell refusing to sugar coat the fact that she is self-absorbed, selfish at times, and prone to crying fits on the kitchen floor. She never glosses over her failures or her shortcuts, and takes us through the ways she navigates relationships with her husband, mother, and friends along the journey. It's not pretty! This was a fun companion piece to the film, though written before, obviously. It is different...

  Normal People by Sally Rooney Normal People follows Marianne and Connell as they navigate relationships, with one another and with their families and friends, as they go from high school through college. Marianne is a quiet, intelligent, rich girl whose mother and brother treat her like she believes she's better than everyone. They despise her for this. Her brother is abusive, her mother narcissistic. Connell lives with his mother in council housing. He is well-liked at school, though he is also relatively quiet. He plays sports and socializes regularly. His mother works for Marianne's family as a cleaner. Though Marianne is "the weird girl," Connell is fascinated by her and often speaks to her while he waits for his mother to finish her work. The two teens, getting ready to end their high school careers and choose a college, strike up a secret sexual relationship. Marianne is sworn by Connell to keep it a secret, openly stating that his reputation would be ruined ...

  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall is the first in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy and my first experience with Hilary Mantel. All I can say is WOW! What a powerhouse of a write! Mantel is a genius. This first book tells the story of Cromwell's rise from a poor, beaten child through his work as an assistant to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in England, to his rise as King Henry VIII's right hand man. It is the story of a man who changes his life, who raises a family of mutual love, loses most of them, and decides he has nothing to lose, so he uses his intelligence, his ability to read people and to sway them in order to make something of himself. To give his remaining son a better life than he had with all of the possibilities open to the nobility. Along the way Cromwell makes those who thought they were above him worship the ground he walks on and puts them in a servile position. He also takes into his house and employ a collection of outcasts and downtrodden people who, because of h...

  The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King This is probably King's biggest departure from his previous books other than The Gunslinger , and it has direct linkages to that book, specifically. The story follows two young princes whose father, King Roland, dies when his magician (Flagg) poisons him with a rare and deadly green sand in his wine. The logical heir is Peter who has all of the makings and commanding presence of a king. However, Flagg favors the younger brother, the jealous and easily manipulated Thomas. Flagg orchestrates the murder of the king to be blamed on Peter who is sent to prison in the Needle, a tall tower impossible to escape. Thomas is then crowned king and is guided (because he is young and afraid) by Flagg who is hell-bent on bringing destruction to the kingdom of Delain. A cast of characters all play their parts in either seeing Flagg's plan to fruition or foiling it by discovering what really happened and helping Peter to freedom. This is a fantasy story ...

  Cleanness by Garth Greenwell Cleanness is an intimate look at shame, regret, longing, freedom, searching, pain, desire, intimacy and distance. It is taboo to be out in Bulgaria where the unnamed American narrator is working as a literature teacher. He and the other gay men he knows and encounters need to be discreet and hide their true selves. Still, they find ways to meet under the noses of the straight world, with a lot of sex in parks, public bathrooms and other hiding places. The book is told in vignettes that mirror one another, with the first have a thematic opposite of the second half. These sections include: a gay student confiding in the narrator who feels helpless to guide the student toward a fulfilling conception of what it means to be a gay man; the narrator submitting in an s & m fling that goes too far, to the point of fear for his life; a government protest during the time of the Arab Spring which starts and ends peacefully, with a sidestep into near danger; ...