Oprahlikes
Oprahlikes
Sula by
Toni MorrisonOprah's last selection is also one of her very favorite books. As girls, Nel and Sula are the best of friends, only children who find in each other a kindred spirit to share in each girl's loneliness and imagination. When they meet again as adults, it's clear that Nel has chosen a life of acceptance and accommodation, while Sula must fight to defend her seemingly unconventional choices and beliefs. But regardless of the physical and emotional distance that threatens this extraordinary friendship, the bond between the women remains unbreakable.
Fall On Your Knees by
Ann-Marie MacDonaldThis epic tale of family history, family secrets, and music centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father. Set in
the coal-mining communities of Nova Scotia in the early part of this century, the story also shifts to the battlefields of World War I and the jazz scene of New York City in the 1920s.
The five main characters converge in a crowded apartment in a nameless Indian
city and face a variety of horrors-a lingering, repressive caste system, the corrupt and callous government of Indira Gandhi's Emergency, the heartlessness of unchecked capitalism, and an environment that is both unhealthy and demoralizing.
As her husband's health deteriorates, Enid faces the disappointments in her life including her three grown children. This wry book about family dyfunction from city to city was never discussed on the Oprah Show because of the author's wishes.
This riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However,
neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River its bite.
The adopted daughter of the king of Morocco, Oufkir and her family were banished to a desert prison in
1972 and left to die. Her memoir is an astonishing tale of persistence and survival.
Compared by some critics as a cross between Oliver Sacks and Wally Lamb, this debut novel about growing up poor, orphaned, and with Tourette's syndrome in a small Appalachian town is a painful and poignant read.
The author's 26th novel is a rich, complex saga about a seemingly ideal family that is suddenly and forever altered by the date-rape of 16-year-old Marianne Mulvaney. This shattering event touches off an extraordinary journey into 25 years of shameful secrets and despair, culminating in the unforseen miracles that can bring a family closer together.
In his breathtaking 1999 National Book Award Nominee, the author portrays the simple choices made by ordinary people that doom them to sensational destruction. This unique American tragedy combines a traditional story of immigrant success and a modern love story as both arcs turn upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences.
In a mesmerizing debut, this novel is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed.
A woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her
heart.
An evangelical American clan ventures forth to the Belgian Congo, circa 1959--and is hit with a major case of culture shock.
Jo has everything she ever wanted: a successful veterinary practice, a devoted husband, and three grown daughters. But that is before a flirtation that returns her to the darkest moment of her past and imperils all she loves.
Morrison's first novel is the story of a black girl who prays -- with unforeseen consequences -- for her eyes to turn blue so she will be accepted.
A debut novel set among the back roads of Pennsylvania's mining country about a nineteen-year-old boy/man who should be in college and away from his closed-minded, stricken coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, his mother is in jail for killing his abusive father, and he is an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager.
Set in the mid-1800s, this novel follows the fortunes of Eliza Sommers, Chilean by birth but adopted by a British spinster, Rose Sommers, and her bachelor brother, Jeremy, after she is abandoned on their doorstep.
Set in turn-of-the-century Appalachia, this book describes tragedy after tragedy in compassionate clarity.
A farmer's wife has possibly been responsible for the death of a child. The horrifying events that follow make powerful reading and pose crucial questions about life in the heartland of America.
Ellen Grier and her family return to the rural home of her unhappy in-laws in Wisconsin after her husband, James, looses his job in Illinois. Even after James gets another job, Ellen must cope with her abusive in-laws who dislike her almost as much as they despise each other. The memory of James' long-dead grandmother gives Ellen the courage to rescue herself and her loved ones from despair.
This first novel takes place in Georgetown in 1925, where a large and close-knit African American community took shape beneath the shadow of segregation. At the center of the story is baby Clara, who is swallowed by the Potomac as her sister, Johnnie Mae, cools off in the brackish water. It's the only place the girls can find relief--they're banned from the new, clean swimming pool the white kids use.
This is at tale of two women, one from Ireland, one from America, who switch lives, and in doing so learn much about each other, as well as much about themselves.
Twenty-eight-year-old Even Grade is a black man who was orphaned as a child; 15-year-old Valuable Korner is a white girl who might as well have been. Petal, Mississippi, circa 1956, seems an unlikely spot for these two to connect, but it soon becomes apparent that a friendship across race lines is just one of many miracles waiting to happen in this small Southern town.
An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her
daughter, Astrid, that they are ancestors of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes.
The news all pilot's wives dread comes and a mystery unfolds as the reader discovers with Kathryn that the man she was married to was not the same one who dies in midair leaving her with a teenage daughter and too many questions unanswered. Click here for review.
A powerful novel of shared guilt and the redemptive power of love, set in postwar Germany. The story revolves around a teenage boy's affair with an older woman and chronicles the devastating secret she has kept from everyone.
A forty-year-old woman gives birth to a Down's Syndrome Baby and witnesses all the challenges of raising the child in Missisippi in the 1940s.
Set in a small Massachusetts town, this novel tells the story of a doomed love affair, a return engagement between long separated former teenaged lovers.
Abandoned by her boyfriend at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma, Novalee Nation, 17 years old and seven months pregnant, soon discovers the treasures hiding in this small Southwest town.
A talented midwife is arrested for murder when she saves a baby by performing a Caesarian section once she believes the mother has died -- only to have her assistant insist later that the woman was still very much alive. Told in the mesmerizing voice of the midwife's daughter, Midwives depicts the aftermath of the tragedy.
This is a story about a man and a woman who try to free themselves of the limiting circumstances of their lives so that they can love. An HIV+ woman also helps herself see what is real when she helps her sister's dreams come true.
A book about brothers and the expectations that family members have about one another; it is also an honest, moving account of one man's search, denial, and acceptance of self.
The story of a young Haitian woman's coming to terms with her country, her mother, and her own identity.
A stunning novel about a marriage that begins in passion and becomes violent. After she runs away from her abusive husband, Fran Benedetto lives in fear of discovery, yet also with increasing confidence, freedom, and hope, as she struggles to create a new life for herself and her son.
In this powerful novel, four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near an all-black town in America in the 1970s. Morrison covers the subjects of the era--the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the counter-culture, and generational conflict.
A real survivor, 11-year-old Ellen Foster tells of her day-to-day troubled life in a family full of trauma. Both Ellen Foster and Rudy Pitt Woodrow of
A Virtuous Woman are damaged people who find the love that they both need to heal
In this novella, 20-year-old Rudy meets 40-year-old tenant farmer Jack Stokes and lets him take care of her, discovering that love is sometimes wrapped in plain everyday paper.
African American teacher, Grant Wiggins, trapped in a career he does not enjoy, resentful at his station in life, and angered by the injustice all around him in the 1940s Louisiana town he inhabits promises Miss Emma to teach her grandson, convicted of murder and on death row, to die like a man. Both learn lessons from each other that neither knew could be taught.
This novel captures 1960 small town life and the household of an overworked single mom during the summer the family deals with a con man.
The fourth in an autobiographical series
(I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
Gather Together in My Name,
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas), describes one of the most exciting and formative periods of Angelou's amazing life: her beginnings as a writer and an activist in
New York.
This coming-of-age novel centers on 14-year-old Ninah Huff and her prayer partner, 15-year-old James, and the consequences of their love affair for both them and the strict religious community they live in.
Trudi Montag tells the story of the people of Burgdorf, Germany from World War I to the 1950s.
The tragedies of her life which include desertion, divorce, madness, rape and disease test Delores Price, but never truly break her.
Ruth, her bitter and demanding mother, and her unfocused husband are a family who struggle with their dysfunction and the pain and occasional tenderness living together brings. A young African American man's search for his family's secrets transforms itself into a celebration of his ancestry.
Oprah's first pick, this is a story of a woman whose small son disappears while she checks into a hotel.
Originally Adapted from an annotated list provided in Booklist, "After Oprah," (September 1997): 64-5; "After Oprah 2," (June 1 & 15, 1999): 1796-7; "After Oprah 3," (August 1999): 2024-5; and "After Oprah 4," (June 1 & 15, 2000): 1848-1850.
A Fine Balance by
Rohinton Mistry
The Corrections by
Jonathan Franzen
Cane River by
Lalita Tademy
NON-FICTION.
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by
Malika Oufkir
Icy Sparks by
Gwyn Hyman Rubio
We Were the Mulvaneys by
Joyce Carol Oates
House of Sand and Fog by
Andre Dubus III
Drowning Ruth by
Christina Schwarz
Open House by
Elizabeth Berg
The Poisonwood Bible by
Barbara Kingsolver
While I Was Gone by
Sue Miller
The Bluest Eye by
Toni Morrison
Back Roads by
Tawni O'Dell
Others like it:
Daughter of Fortune by
Isabel Allende
Others like it:
Gap Creek by
Robert Morgan
Others like it:
Map of the World by
Jane Hamilton
Others like it:
Vinegar Hill by
A. Manette Ansay
Others like it:
If you like the "difficult mother, loyal daughter" aspect, try:
River, Cross My Heart by
Breena Clarke
Others like it:
Tara Road by
Maeve Binchy
Others like it:
Mother of Pearl by
Melinda Haynes
Others like it:
White Oleander by
Janet Fitch
Others like it:
The Pilot's Wife by
Anita Shreve
Others like it:
The Reader by
Bernhard Schlink
Others like it:
Jewel by
Bret Lott
Others like it:
Here On Earth by
Alice Hoffman
Others like it:
Where the Heart Is by
Billie Letts
Others like it:
Midwives by
Chris Bohjalian
Others like it:
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
Others like it:
I Know This Much Is True by
Wally Lamb
Others like it:
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Others like it:
Black and Blue by
Anna Quindlen
Others like it:
Paradise by
Toni Morrison
Others like it:
Ellen Foster by
Kaye Gibbons
Others like it:
A Virtuous Woman by
Kaye Gibbons
Others like it:
A Lesson Before Dying by
Ernest J. Gaines
Others like it:
Songs in Ordinary Time by
Mary McGarry Morris
Others like it:
The Heart of A Woman by
Maya Angelou
Others like it:
The Rapture of Caanan by
Sheri Reynolds
Others like it:
Stones From the River by
Ursula Hegi
Others like it:
She's Come Undone by
Wally Lamb
Others like it:
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
Others like it:
Song of Solomon by
Toni Morrison
Others like it:
The Deep End of the Ocean by
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Others like it:
And a very special acknowledgement to Fiction-L, the gurus of RA who have provided the raw material that has suggested the additions and refinements to this list, especially Kaite Mediatore's
compilation at The Kansas City Public Library.
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Lucius Beebe Memorial Library - - lme