| What Makes a really good book? Recently my husband brought home Peace Like a River by Leif Enger from a Little Free Library. It looked familiar and I opened it up and started reading it. I had only read a few paragraphs when I realized it was written by a really gifted writer. Curious, I went to Amazon where I saw that it was a best-selling novel with 2,649 ratings and had reviews from major newspapers. The San Francisco Chronicle said, “Peace like a River is a book that serves to remind us why we read fiction to begin with.” That got me thinking about what makes a good book. What qualities does a really good book have that draws you into the story world and keeps you there? What makes you want to spend time with the characters? What challenges and moral decisions does the character have to face? What universal theme is the author exploring? Peace Like a River is narrated by an eleven-year-old boy, Reuben, who is asthmatic and believes in miracles. The story is set in my home state of Minnesota and takes place in 1961. Reuben witnesses a terrible event that threatens to destroy his family. The writer shows the love between the family members and the events that lead up to tragedy when the oldest son takes the law into his own hands. I pondered the morality of what happened as I read the book. The father is a religious man, always reading from the Bible, and miracles surround him. It’s could be classified as religious, speculative fiction, or magical realism. Regardless of how the novel is classified, the writing is exceptional: lyrical and beautiful. Novels like this are why we read. We don’t read just to be entertained but to go on a journey with the characters. We see something we didn’t see before, experience things from someone else’s perspective, and gather our own conclusions about right and wrong. |
