Derailment! On the first of December, I flew to Ontario from my home in Nova Scotia, after receiving word the evening before that my mother had died at home, suddenly and unexpectedly.

My mother was the next-thing-to-a-hoarder and her house had four floors stacked from top to bottom, and wall to wall with STUFF. It fell to me to move in and start going through it. I worked 12-14 hour days on this project and was usually too exhausted to read when I finally got into bed. When I did find the time, I found it very hard to concentrate—a natural grief reaction.

Here is the sum total of my reading for the month, and–YAY–that’s 2013 DONE.

SUITE FRANCAISE by Irène Némirovsky (Fiction, WWII, French)

This is the first two parts of what the author evidently intended to be a five part opus. Némirovsky was arrested in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. This manuscript, then, was written in the early years of the war in Occupied France, in which she set the novel.

In Storm in June, wealthy Parisians flee the city before it falls. The second “movement”, Dolce, concerns the complicated relationships between the inhabitants of a French country village and the German soldiers who are occupying that village.

This is lyrical writing, sustained in the translation from the French by Sandra Smith. How I wish the author could have completed this work!

Read this if: you enjoy beautiful writing. 4½ stars

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson (Fiction)

Wow – how to classify this book? By now, you’ve either read the book or heard the premise: Ursula dies at birth, is reborn and this time does not die; Ursula drowns at age 4, we try again and she doesn’t drown; and so on. (So many ways to die!)

But the book is not as linear as it sounds. In fact, it’s not linear at all, and by the conclusion of the book, although we have many versions of Ursula’s life, none is the ribbon-tied ending you might have expected, and none is so awful that it couldn’t be borne. Extremely well-done.

Read this if: you loved those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books as a kid; or you just want something to think about. 4 stars

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Jill McCorkle (Fiction, Contemporary)

Published in 2013, within two weeks of Atkinson’s book of the same title, McCorkle’s novel seemed to have gotten buried.

This Life After Life is about the residents and staff of a nursing home for the elderly, each of whom had a life before their life in the facility.

Enjoyable to read, but not really any new ideas.

Read this if: you think you’re going to get old one day (it’s either that or the grave). 3½ stars

WAYS OF GOING HOME by Alejandro Zambra (Fiction, Literary, Chilean)

This book showed up in my library inbox in late November because I was trying to complete an unofficial A to Z Reading Challenge using authors’ last names.

Amazon tells me that the book “begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy” in Santiago, Chile. I vaguely remember that, but nothing else.

I plead extreme fatigue. I plead grief. I plead the passage of 2½ years. This may well be “A brilliant novel from ‘the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction’” but I can’t remember and can’t rate it.

As I said at the beginning of this post – that’s 2013 done. Wish me success completing 2014.

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.