Under The Lamplight

DAME suggests gifts for your favorite bookworm

By Caroline Leavitt
Published: Dec 21, 2007

This month, Santa’s bag is full of books to give and get. (Yep, I know it’s better to give than receive, but no one said you can’t surprise yourself with one of the titles below!)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
By Maggie O’Farrell
Harcourt, $23.00
O’Farrell’s After You’d Gone, about a young woman revealing her life as she lays in coma, was one of those novels I carried around with me for months, unwilling to let it go. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox seems destined for the same fate. This hypnotizer is about a woman who discovers she has a relative she didn’t know—Esme, who was put into a mental hospital for 60 years and is now about to be released. As the novel unfolds, so does the story of the tangled family dynamics that put and kept Esme confined. Dazzling, risky, and like a blow to the heart.

The Sound of Language
by Amulya Malladi
Ballantine Books, $13.95
Set in the Danish countryside, Malladi’s novel tells the mesmerizing story of Raihana, a young Afghani widow and refugee haunted by her past. To her surprise, she forges a bond with a local beekeeper struggling with grief and alcohol. United by the bees they keep together in the course of one bee season, these two grapple with their lives, their complicated pasts, and with the very real racism going on in Denmark today. Gorgeously written from a writer who is herself an American living in Denmark.

Monkey Portraits
by Jill Greenberg
Little Brown, $17.99
Come on, who doesn’t love monkeys? Celebrity and advertising photographer Jill Greenberg focuses her lens on our closest biological cousins—monkeys and apes—in what is arguably one of the most gorgeous and unusual photography books I’ve ever seen. The full color and full page primate photos speak for themselves, with only an occasional quote to give some reference point. Seventy six simians show us how sublimely similar they are to us, as the handsome creatures pout, frown, ruminate, and yes, even smile. Absolutely irresistible.

The Female Thing
by Laura Kipnis
Vintage Paperback, $12.95
Dirt. Sex. Envy. Vulnerability. According to Laura Kipnis’ spikily entertaining observations, the problem why women haven’t achieved full equality lies in the female gender’s relationship to one of those four words. Women want femininity, which has a weak connotation, as well as feminism, which seems bold and brassy. But somewhere, she argues, women have to make a choice. Want power in the boardroom or the bedroom? Is always cleaning the bathroom keeping the peace or keeping pizzazz out of your sex life? Punchy, provocative, and about what women really want and what they will and won’t do to do to get it.

Valor, Virtue & Vanity
The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame
by Eric Burns
Arcade $25
Think our politicians today are a little bit gargantuan in their opinions about themselves? Well, they had nothing on our founding fathers, says Eric Burns. Franklin, our very first celebrity, was so famous in France that his image graced chamber pots while John Adams was so desperate for fame that he posed for a portrait more than two dozen times. Burns puts a gossipy and very human face on the men who made our country, and in doing so, he makes history bubble to life. Buoyant, whip-smart, and dare I say it, revolutionary.

Caroline Leavitt is the award-winning author of 8 novels, most recently Girls in Trouble. She has begged Santa for books and a trip to China, and she can be reached at http://www.carolineleavitt.com.

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