A Working Theory of Love, Scott Hutchins
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781594205057-6
"In Stegner Fellow Hutchins's ambitious debut novel, the writings of Dr. Neill Bassett, who committed suicide in 1995 and kept extensive diaries for two decades, form the basis of a linguistic project to create the first software program to process natural language. Though the doctor's son, Neill Jr., is not a programmer, he's the only native English speaker at Amiante, the tiny three-man tech firm taking on the task, and his job entails humanizing the program so that it responds like a real person rather than a computer. During the course of the project, the emotionally distant Neill, a divorced 36-year-old living in San Francisco who thinks of himself as 'an experienced practitioner at the art of falling apart on the inside while appearing catatonic,' becomes involved with Rachel, a 20-year-old member of a cultlike group that employs questionable methods to engage its members. The relationship never sizzles because Rachel remains a cipher, but Neill's interactions with the software, which becomes more and more a stand-in for his dead father, and a rival software developer's provocative end-use plans for a successful Bassett-like program, create intriguing ethical dilemmas and force Neill out of his indifference. Neill's unusual 'one-on-one' with the program is revelatory and exciting. Agent: Bill Clegg, WME Entertainment." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Where'd You Go Bernadette, Maria Semple
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780316204279-2
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle — and people in general — has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence — creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Jan Philipp Sendker
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781590514634-1
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.
The Round House, Louise Erdrich
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780062065247-5
One of the most revered novelists of our time — a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life — Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich's The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction — at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed
http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780307592736-0
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe — and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780385536820-0
[Powells staff pick]:
Ian McEwan's latest novel is a Cold War–era spy
tale that is not exactly what it appears to be. . . . I guess I was fooled once
again by the amazing mind of Ian McEwan. His inexplicable ability to crawl into a character and expose every
flaw, every rationalization, every weakness, yet at the same time,
expose their vulnerability and insecurity, is just flat-out astonishing.
He doesn't tell the story so much as let you live inside it. His
setting, his characters, and his tale feel as if they are your own — so
perfectly do they dovetail into your world. It's uncanny. After reading
my eighth Ian McEwan novel, I'm convinced that he just gets better and
better. The man is at the absolute top of his game. Let me just say that
Ian McEwan is the greatest writer living today.
For the 2012 National Book Award finalists, see http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2012.html#.UJXpAr9Lq2Q.
