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Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes (winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 2002), The Whole World Over, and I See You Everywhere, but she may have surpassed them all with The Widower’s Tale.  Again, she weaves a web of interconnected characters, creates a beautiful and believable setting, and writes with emotional truth about the people she has brought to life – in this case, the Darling family. Seventy-year-old Percy Darling realizes that while you can retire from work, you cannot retire from life, or from your family – in Percy’s case, his workaholic daughter Trudy, his floundering daughter Clover, and his high-achieving and beloved grandson Robert. Through these characters, Glass explores the bonds of family and friendship, and the strength of personal and political beliefs. Fans of fairytale endings, however, might want to skip this one: the ending is sadder and less uplifting that one might expect.

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This book was one of my book club reads about three years ago and whenever we talk about a good beach read, this book still bubbles up to the surface as a good example. It is a well written, humorous account of one man’s pursuit of the “iconic symbol of fashion, luxury, and wealth”, the Hermes Birkin handbag.  The author is a Massachusetts native, who on a whim moved to Barcelona, Spain and found himself in need of money.  For quick cash, he decided to sell a Hermes scarf on eBay. That sale sparked the idea that he could sell the much-in-demand Hermes handbags on eBay if he could find a way to buy the coveted items from Hermes stores that tended to only sell to select buyers.  In finding a way to do this, the author takes the reader on a fun romp around the continent enjoying a quest worthy of Don Quixote.

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Vaclav and Lena meet when they are five years old. Though they both emigrated from Russia to Brooklyn, their family lives could not be more different. Yet they are best friends, magician and magician’s assistant, until they are nine; then, Lena disappears. Vaclav misses her terribly, and always wonders about her – and then one day, when they are seventeen, they meet again. Vaclav and Lena is about growing up, discovering the truth, and protecting those you love; but most of all, it is a beautiful and deeply felt story about love and friendship, written with wonderful empathy and voice.