One of the considerations for Long Island Reads was the novel Lucia Lucia by Adriana Trigiani. The novel was a bit fluffy but it was a lot of fun to read. It takes place in Greenich Village in the 1950s and is a bit love story, a bit mystery, a bit fluff. So I was excited to give Trigiani's series Big Stone Gap a try. The first book was a total yawn. The characters are not engaging and the plot .... wait, what plot? You find out early that the main character's daddy is not really her daddy but then there are pages about her pharmacy, then pages about the coal mines, then pages about the chubby girl in town who gets picked on. To be honest, I didn't finish the book. I really didn't care if she finds her real daddy.
On the other hand, I am very impressed with Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. This is a beautiful and sad portrait of normal people living in and around Paris in 1940. As the city is evacuated, each person deals in a different way, not really believing what is happening, always expecting the war to end. Knowing what we know now, and knowing that Nemirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz and killed before her book was completed, heightens the saddness and meaning in each story.
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