A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday): Four college classmates move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma.

Green on Blue by Elliot Ackerman (Scribner):
A young Afghan orphan is forced to join a US-funded militia to save his brother, who is hospitalized after an attack on their village. Written from the Afghan perspective, the novel is a gripping, morally complex story about boys caught in an elliptical war, and the sacrifices we make for love.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press): This is the story of a man of two minds, whose lofty ideals necessitate his betrayal of the people closest to him. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, the novel explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau): The author shares with his son—and readers—the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences. Taken together, these stories map a journey from fear and confusion to a full understanding of this country, this world and the pursuit of freedom.

Nagasaki by Susan Southard (Penguin Random House): The author relates the eyewitness accounts of five survivors of the bombing of Nagasaki – all teenagers at the time – intertwining their stories with examinations of their injuries and illnesses, as well as perceptions about the atomic bombings today. In this gripping narrative, a small number of survivors have spoken publicly to ensure history is never repeated.

The Reason You Walk by Wab Kinew (Penguin Random House): When his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew spent 2012 reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who'd raised him. Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond.

As an introduction to the novels of Marilynne Robinson, we are quoting from the citation written by Carol Loranger, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Wright State University.

“The novels, like most of the essays, have one-word titles—Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila—as though they too name the questions they will take up. But these questions have a more human scale than those of the essays and, as befits novels, pose the questions in terms of personal relationships. Her characters traverse the vast interpersonal spaces between belonging and alienation, most without ever leaving town. Each novel follows a small group of people, the last three centering on essentially the same community of people living in mid-twentieth-century middle-America, and the action is for the most part small: a prodigal returns; an elderly dying man contemplates his life and writes a letter to his son; a homeless young woman finds a home; a young woman leaves home and finds her true family. But the issues are big: the wages of America’s original sin of slavery; the care and keeping of the environment; the debt owed our children and their children; the burdens and blessings of reconciliation.”

The lives of the characters of Robinson’s novel are lived at a pace where they can be observed and absorbed, much in keeping with the lives of those who now spend time in quarantine—with time to read and to reflect.

If you'd like to read more about Marilynne's work, this great article is a compilation of The First Reviews of Every Marilynne Robinson Novel.