Read Alikes
A Thread of Grace
by Mary Doria Russell
Magic for Beginners
by Kelly Link
Icebergs
by Rebecca Johns
Manhattan Nocturne
by Colin Harrison
You’re Not You
by Michelle Wildgen
No Good Deeds
by Laura Lippman
My Latest Grievance
by Elinor Lipman
Pandora’s Star
by Peter Hamilton
Traction Man is Here
by Mini Grey
Our Kind
by Kate Walbert
Whales on Stilts
by M. T. Anderson
The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
by Kate diCamillo
The Emperor’s Children
by Claire Messud
Morningside Heights
by Cheryl Mendelson
Little Big Man
by Thomas Berger
The Year of Secret Assignments
by Jaclyn Moriarty
Happiness Sold Separately
by Lolly Winston
So Sleepy
by Uri Shulevitz
Adèle & Simon
by Barbara McClintock
The Brambles
by Eliza Minot
Book! book! book!
by Deborah Bruss
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
by Eva Rice
Blow the House Down
by Robert Baer
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
by Susanna Clarke
The Inhabited World
by David Long
Minaret
by Leila Aboulela
Piece of My Heart
by Peter Robinson
The Night Journal
by Elizabeth Crook
Dealing with Dragons
by Patricia C. Wrede
Love Walked In
by Marisa de los Santos
Interface
by Neal Stephenson (Stephen Bury)
Uniform Justice
by Donna Leon
Guess How Much I Love You
by Sam McBratney
American Born Chinese
by Gene Luen Yang
The Man of My Dreams
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A Safe Place for Dying
by Jack Fredrickson
What is the What : the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
by Dave Eggers
The Abortionist's Daughter
by Elisabeth Hyde
The True Account
by Howard Frank Mosher
Birds without Wings
by Louis De Bernieres
Racketty Packetty House
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Dirt Music
by Tim Winton
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
Anahita’s Woven Riddle
by Meghan Nuttall Sayres
A Place of Greater Safety
by Hilary Mantel
Napoleon’s Pyramids
by William Dietrich
The Reconstructionist
by Josephine Hart
The History of the Siege of Lisbon
by Jose Saramago
The Shakespeare Stealer
by Gary L. Blackwood
Gloriana’s Torch
by Patricia Finney
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones
In this Rain
by S. J. Rozan
Ilium
by Dan Simmons
Un Lun Dun
by China Miéville
As She Climbed Across the Table
by Jonathan Lethem
Book Description
Some books begin with such an imaginative premise that you worry they won’t be able to live up to their beginnings. Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist fully delivers on the promise of its premise. Part science fiction, part noir mystery, Whitehead's novel creates its own world and its own genre. Set in an unnamed city filled with skyscrapers (made possible by the invention of the elevator – the history and technology of which therefore play a central role in its culture and this novel), Lila Mae Watson is the first black female elevator inspector. Not only is she set apart by her race and gender, but Lila Mae is among those inspectors known as "Intuitionists," who belong to the minority philosophical school which advocates judging an elevator's safety by instinct, as opposed to the "Empiricists," who depend upon scientifically derived checklists of elevator safety factors. As the novel opens, the Elevator Guild's elections are coming up, and both Intuitionists and Empiricists are searching for the lost writings of James Fulton, the father of Intuitionism, and his plans for the perfect elevator which will render all current vertical transport systems obsolete, and resolve the conflict between the two philosophical systems once and for all. As Lila Mae becomes involved with this search and all its ramifications, the novel explores race and gender issues relevant to 21st century American society. Whitehead’s stylish prose will bring to mind the novels of both Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.
|
