The book is a novel, but it packs in a huge amount of 20th-century history. The story follows two young men, both living in New York, both representing to various degrees the past of their people; however, the plot also follows for periods of time a Jewish professor who claimed to be Episcopalian in order to get a job in 1940s Chicago, a young Jewish girl in Poland in the years just before WW2 and then later in the camps, a beautiful black social worker whose marriage is crumbling, and many many more.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Lamont Williams, a young black man recently released from prison after serving his sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. Lamont is a fundamentally decent man who more than anything lacks self-confidence. He lives with his grandmother, and wants desperately to find his daughter, now 8, whom he hasn’t seen since she was 2. He has been given an opportunity—a job in Building Services at Sloan-Kettering Cancer hospital, where he is on probation for six months. During his first week on the job, a patient who’s been left out on the sidewalk insists that Lamont help him return to his room. Lamont does so, and a reluctant friendship springs up between the two. The patient, a survivor of Auschwitz, insists on telling Lamont his story, and has Lamont repeat it until he has it memorized, learning the difference between death camps and concentration camps, and about inside uprisings at Auschwitz. Shortly before his death, he gives Lamont a present, and you don’t need the gift of prophecy to foretell that will spell trouble for him.

The other main character is Adam Zegnelik, whose career as a history professor at Columbia is on rocky ground, and who is struggling out of the great shadow cast by his father, a Jewish lawyer who was hugely instrumental in the civil rights movement. When we first meet him, Adam is lying awake at night reliving moments in black American history—the desegregation of schools and how terrifying it was for the first black students in white schools, the 1963 church bombing that killed 4 black girls, and more. He is paralyzed by the future, and breaks up with his long-term girlfriend because he knows he won’t make tenure. His life turns around when he discovers a huge cache of first-person interviews with Holocaust survivors in refugee camps.

“Tell everyone what happened here,” says one of the women. “Tell everyone what happened here,” says Lamont at one point after he is false accused, yet again, of crimes he hasn’t committed. The Street Sweeper moves between vantage points and times, but it is ultimately a story of connection, of human beings, of unimaginable crimes but also of small beauties and justice. It’s an incredible book.

Elizabeth enjoys learning history through novels. This one made her thankful for the times and place in which she lives. Learn more at her blog Planet Nomad.

I enjoyed the writing in each one of these stories, and even the brain-hurting part of dissecting some of them, but sometimes I just wanted a plot! Some of them delved into character and prose at the expense of plot.

The stories are not at all connected, but do have some similarities: a few, including the title story, are set in New York, and as with any good story set in New York, the city becomes part of the story. “The Starveling” was one of my favorite stories, though it was light on plot, in which a man spends his day seeing movie after movie — taking to the streets of New York and using the subway maps to navigate from one showtime to the next.

“Hammer and Sickle” and “Midnight in Dostoevsky” each deal with institutions of a sort — prison and a college campus. They also both nod to Russia, and were also stories that I enjoyed, because the characters completely came to life. What’s more “Midnight in Dostoevsky” was especially effective in the audio version that I listened to, because of the plotline involving peppy TV hosts that the narrator really brought to life.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The 9 stories have 5 narrators: some male, some feamale; some reading only one story, and others appearing a second time. Each story is read wonderfully, and I think that listening to them as opposed to reading them made it more enjoyable. Because they are short stories (though some are fairly long “short” stories), I was able to keep the discs in my car and listen to one over a period of time without having to invest hours and hours on one novel, if that makes sense.

Jennifer Donovan loved her English major days, but she also enjoys just slipping away into a book. She blogs at Snapshot.

Livesay says, “I wanted (my heroine) to come of age just slightly before the rising tide of feminism—the pill, equal pay, discrimination—broke…I am…recasting Jane’s journey to fit my own courageous heroine and the possibilities of her time and place.” Although the book opens with Gemma living with a cruel aunt and 3 cousins (one boy, two girls), none of whom like her, follows with her being sent to a fantastically horrible boarding school, and ends up with her becoming an au pair to an orphaned wayward girl in a remote setting with a brooding, darkly handsome, rich uncle who is gone most of the time, that is where the similarities end. There are enough events to make this book an homage, but plenty of changes to keep you engaged and guessing. This isn’t simply “Reader, I married him,” but rather “I leaned forward and kissed him.”

So, some of the differences. Gemma was born to an Icelandic father and Scottish mother in Scotland, and orphaned when she was 3. Her kind uncle comes to take her to live with his family. One of the great parts of the book is the filling in of Gemma’s backstory and the development of the uncle’s character; he is a true father-figure, kind and generous and loving. After his death and the deterioration of whatever relations existed between Gemma and her aunt and cousins, she is sent to live-in as a “working pupil” at a boarding school. Her teacher is one person who is reliably kind, and before she leaves she entrusts to him a box containing all the things she has left from her parents.

As a working-pupil, Gemma and a few others are there to provide free child labour, so although they do attend a few classes, they are constantly put down and not expected to succeed. That Gemma does is due not only to her natural intelligence and tenacity but also to her previous education and the help of a friend.

When she leaves school, she takes a position as an au pair on the Orkneys, a remote group of islands north of Scotland. Nell, her pupil, has been running wild; her uncle works in London and only comes to visit occasionally.

Livesey manages the gothic elements with ease too. My main regret with this story is that there is no madwoman in the attic. How can one have Jane Eyre without Bertha and her streaming black hair and night pyrotechnics? I must admit that Hugh Sinclair’s dark secret wasn’t quite dark enough for me, although it’s enough to send Gemma stumbling away, getting her purse stolen on a bus, sleeping in a church, and ending up with a postman’s family in north Wales.

I feel I have told you enough—maybe more than enough. I won’t tell you what comes next and where she ends up, if she ever feels she has a family of her own or not. This is a modern retelling, and there are nuances and shadings and secrets that belong more to our own age.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a lovely book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Best of all, one of you can enjoy it too! Just leave a comment below to be entered to win a free copy. The winner will be announced on January 25, 2012.
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• The winner of The World We Found is #13 Beth C.

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Elizabeth has been a fan of Jane Eyre since she was about 12 and her parents made her read it. She recently introduced Jane to her own daughter, and is happy to report that another fan is born. Learn more at her blog Planet Nomad.

The Invisible Ones is told by 2 narrators in 2 times. The novel opens with Ray in hospital in August, but moves back and forth between that time and several months earlier, when the events that put him there come into play. The second narrator is a Romany teen named JJ, and he provides a fresh perspective on life for a British Romany in the late years of the 20th century. He lives with his mum, a single woman, in a trailer, and camps out with his uncle, cousin, great-uncle and grandparents in an extended family group. His part of the narration opens with a trip the family is taking to Lourdes to pray for a miracle healing for his cousin, young Christo Janko, who at 6 is weak and sickly. It becomes apparent early on that Christo’s mother was the missing Rose, and that the family claim she ran off with a gorjio man.

The family Rose married into is pure-blood, “the pure black blood,” as the Romany themselves put it, but that blood seems to carry a disease that kills the young males of the line. Throughout the novel, the theme of blood appears again and again—both in the sense of bloodline and in the physical reality. That the family is hiding something is apparent early on, but the extent of the secret is revealed bit by tantalizing bit. Ray is tireless in his search for the missing Rose, and when human bones are discovered in an old camp-site, he thinks he’s found her. Meanwhile, JJ invites a girl from school over for tea and realizes how shocked she is at his living conditions–it opens his eyes to all sorts of things. He finds hidden things in his Uncle Ivo’s trailer that he can’t explain. And his long-lost great-aunt, who’s left the family in disgust, meets Ray to discuss what she knows of Rose’s disappearance.

The Invisible Ones is a great novel—you won’t be able to put it down. It’s suspenseful, a mystery novel, but what makes it so fascinating is that it’s very character-driven, and introduces the reader to a new culture hidden within a familiar one. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

Elizabeth can understand the call of the open road; she’s even been known to threaten to run away with the Gypsies. Read more at her blog Planet Nomad.

Madeleine Hannah is a pretty English major, about to graduate from Brown, who wrote her senior thesis on the marriage plot that was central in novels by Jane Austen and other Elizabethan authors. Mitchell and Leonard are both in love with Maddie and they couldn’t be more different from each other.

Mitchell has pined for Maddie throughout college, stuck in the “friend” role. After graduation he travels through Europe and works for Mother Theresa in India, all while trying to get over Maddie and finding out some truths about himself along the way.

Leonard is a manic depressive who is brilliant, and Maddie finds herself handling him and his illness while trying to find her own way in life as a literature scholar.

While The Marriage Plot takes place in the early 80s, save the lack of cell phones and other technology, the story is still relevant in today’s time. Mental illness, religion, the recession, and of course, marriage are all themes that continue to resonate.

While I enjoyed the parts of the book that concentrated on Maddie’s relationships with either Leonard or Mitchell, there were passages I could have done without. Lengthy descriptions of semiotics and other topics along with conversations that have little do with the plot were interesting but unnecessary.

Fans of Eugenides’s past novels will recognize his prose and dialog-heavy style, and will also enjoy The Marriage Plot.

Nancy is happy to have a relatively boring life. She writes about her 2 boys, books and life in Colorado at Life With My Boys and Books.

Most of the book is the story of Hanna, a woman with synthesia who “hears” colours. Occasionally we slip back to modern-day Laurel and Isabella. I loved that Isabella did not know all of her mother’s story. Usually in books like this, it seems that somehow the modern person knows everything that happened, and that’s not how life works, especially with someone like Hanna, who was a reticent person not given to spilling her thoughts and emotions.

We follow Hanna’s life, from her ‘escape’ from her parents’ farm to working as a maid in the home of rich Jewish art collector and gallery owner Moses Fleischmann. Hanna becomes a personal maid to Fleischmann’s second wife, the sickly Helene, and fills her free time life-modeling at a nearby art school where she meets some of the same artists who come for dinner at Fleischmann’s. After Helene dies, Hanna and Moses fall in love and honeymoon in Italy. Hanna, educated in art by Moses, becomes an expert in modern art. She works in the gallery and has personal relationships with such luminaries as Kandinsky and Franz Marc. She is also the one to turn down a young, aspiring artist, whose work isn’t up to par and lacks vision. She remembers his name; A. Hitler.

Hanna and Moses have one son who is mentally handicapped. After her return from a visit to her sister in America, on which she meets a young Swiss banker and art lover, she gives birth to a daughter, Isabella.

As the storms of Hitler’s rise to power gather on the horizon, Hanna takes her children to America to live with her sister and returns to take care of Moses, whose health is failing. Although she longs to join her children in America, leaving Germany proves difficult. She’s caught up in Hitler’s regime and reverts to her maiden name, Schmid. Hitler, of course, hated modern art—viewed it as Jewish and subversive and vulgar—and promoted “wholesome” art of country scenes and such. Under his rule, thousands of priceless paintings were destroyed, while others were stolen and claimed by the Nazis.

Did Hanna help the Nazis steal art or not? Laurel, hearing bits and pieces from Isabella, still isn’t sure, and she continues to look for clues in the tale.

The Woman Who Heard Color makes it clear that circumstances can force people into making less-than-ideal choices, yet holds out the ideal that one can always choose the best within limited possibilities. Hanna emerges as a courageous, spirited, and quick-thinking woman. It’s a thoughtful book, rich in history, and an engrossing read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

A word on the cover. I’m pretty sure that the art department was told “This is a book about a young woman who life-modeled and loves art” and the person in charge of the book cover never cracked the manuscript open. I can, off-hand, think of several covers that would have been better—atmospheric pictures of Germany in WWII, or perhaps something by Klimt or Kandinsky, or someone looking at pictures in a gallery. All these would have had something to do with the actual story-line. Also I advise you to ignore the quote on the cover by Nicolas Sparks—this book isn’t a silly romance, but a serious novel. I think Hanna Schmid Fleischmann would have hated the cover. But don’t let that stop you from reading this excellent book.

Elizabeth thinks you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but she does it all the time anyway. Read more at her blog Planet Nomad.

The novel opens in the 1880s in the Ukraine. We meet 16-year-old Minna, a poor laborer. She’s being examined — quite crudely and roughly — by a doctor. We later find that it’s because she’s signed up to be a mail order bride to go to America. She wants to escape the hopeless poverty and filth and sees this as her ticket out. The scenes are stark and almost coarse, which underscores the bleakness of her situation in her life there.

When she arrives in New York City, her excitement at everything new and her anxious anticipation of her new life is palpable. She is met at the station by Jacob, sent by Max, her husband to be to fetch her and take her to her new home in South Dakota.

Once she gets there and meets her husband for the first time, she is surprised to find her Orthodox Jewish husband to be much older than she is. In fact, her two stepsons are much closer to her age and temperament than he is, and there is even an attraction between Minna and one of the sons.

She’s lonely. She’s unsure, and she’s isolated. And though she’s worked to support herself for many years, she’s really just a child, emotionally. Her crisis of facing this discouraging atmosphere day after day helps her to figure out who she is, what she’s made of, and who she wants to be.

I liked The Little Bride for its unique look at the little-known Jewish culture on the American homestead frontier and for the interesting characters and original story.

Jennifer read both Laura Ingalls Wilder and Janette Oke, which gave her fantasies of a romanticized life on the prairie, but she appreciated this alternative view. She blogs at Snapshot.

The book’s opening will turn off the more faint-hearted readers. We are introduced to Tristan Mourault, a 34-year-old French expatriate who is urbane, educated, fabulously wealthy, and sole owner of a huge collection of Impressionist art, along with his new obsession—15 year-old Karen Miller, a middle-class teenager in San Francisco. From his first glimpse of her, he knows he must have her. He stages a campaign of romance and enchantment—flattering her, enticing her. She is willing to be enticed, coming from an abusive home, but she is close to her little sister. Although she willingly goes with him in the end, he fakes her death to keep them from being followed and lies to her to keep her in his thrall.

Karen is transformed into Gisèle, and presented to the world as Tristan’s daughter. The novel moves backs and forth between Tristan’s voice, tracing the events of the years from their first meeting to the present, and the voice of 11-year-old Nicola, Gisèle’s daughter. When Karen/Gisèle is found floating in the swimming pool, her scarlet robe blossoming like blood around her, the hunt is on for who the killer could be, which of the men who profess to love her could have done such a deed. The novel twists and turns, but it’s that sort of novel, and it’s well-written enough that I didn’t start rolling my eyes at all the events of the last few chapters—mostly because they all fit the plot and characters nicely, and because you sensed all along there were other layers and meanings.

Tristan, Gisèle, her “husband” (who fills the role only for appearances, a fact clear to everyone but himself) and daughter, live in a gorgeous European house in the imaginary Devon, Washington, which is rather like Carmel-by-the-Sea if it was located in the Cascade Mountains—a small, ultra-chic and expensive town filled with galleries, artists, and people who profess to love art and have the money to buy it. A revolving cast of artists and friends come through, each with his or her own interpretation of things and his or her own plans and desires.

In Malice, Quite Close is kind of a creepy novel and you don’t necessarily love the characters—there are only about 2 I’d want to have coffee with, for example—but at the same time it’s a really good book. It’s tightly plotted and the characters are true to themselves. It stays with you.

Elizabeth often fantasizes about having coffee with her favorite characters from books. Read more at her blog Planet Nomad.