5 Star Books: General Fiction, Part 1

Guarantee of satisfaction not promised or implied, but I thought these were all excellent books.

All He Ever Wanted - Anita Shreve
Academic satire and one-sided love story. (Warning: protagonist is not likable.)

All is Vanity - Christina Schwartz
Cruel, funny story of two childhood friends grown up.

The Ax - Donald Westlake
Extremely dark comedy about a man's career and the lengths he will go to save it. Amazingly funny and sort of scarily plausible. It is a rare book that deals in any real way with the centrality of work in people's lives (unless those people are college professors or writers...or cops/soldiers/etc. in genre fiction). Maybe this book should get 6 stars on a 0 to 5 scale or maybe Donald Westlake just totally hits the sweet spot for me in his non-crime-caper novels.

Black Mountain Breakdown - Lee Smith
Smith has written many excellent books set in Appalachia. This one concerns a sexually troubled woman returning to her hometown.

Body Surfing - Anita Shreve
A woman working as a tutor is caught in a weird rivalry between two brothers in the family.

Outlander series - Diana Gabaldon
An outlandish (ahem) time-traveling historical romance on a grand scale that is hella fun if you just go with the premise. The girl sitting beside me in diff. eq. class had just started reading the first one and was totally blown away; I sort of envied her for not having read this series yet. Our gorgeous, smart, brave, sarcastic, wonderful, etc., hero is not just the kind of man every woman wants and every man wants to be; some men want him, too. Recommended even for those who are not typically into the "romance" genre.

The Cornish Trilogy - Robertson Davies
Absolutely my favorite R.D. series, which is saying a lot. Of course, I die for the context of the three books - the university, the art world, and the music world. This is one of those rare books (or 3) that I do not own but frequently wish I did because I'm often in just the right mood to read them. (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus)

The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
3 college friends, years later. I don't remember why I rated this one 5 stars - it's definitely not one of the great books of all time - but it was a lot of fun and a rather compulsive read and as such, was very satisfying. Maybe I should add "story about school friends grown up" as another Sally favored theme or setting. (Warning: characters can be very annoying)

Horse Heaven - Jane Smiley
A delightful satirical novel about horse-racing. (See also Moo, a delightful satirical novel about academia, set in an ag college.)

Humans - Donald Westlake
An angel is sent to earth to bring about the end of the world. It is quite possible that I have re-read this book more times than any other that I read for the first time after the age of, say, 16. I admit that it hit super-hard at my "heaven as bureacracy" and "hierarchy of angels" interests, but I think it would be amusing to many people.