A Closer Look at the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Paperback Finalists

The 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards will be announced at the Celebration of Bookselling, on Friday, June 4, during this year's BookExpo America in Chicago. Here, BTW takes a look at the five finalists in the Paperback category. (For the complete list of finalists, click here.)

All nominated authors and illustrators are being invited to attend the award ceremonies and the Book Sense 76 Lunch, also to be held on Friday, June 4, at BEA.

All current ABA member bookstores can vote for the Book Sense Book of the Year. A ballot was mailed to all ABA bookstore members on April 1, and is available in downloadable PDF format by clicking here.

The 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Paperback Finalists

ATONEMENT, Ian McEwan (Anchor)
British novelist McEwan's first book since his 1998 Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker. The book's multi-layered journey begins with child's play in a comfortable English country house in 1935 and moves through the horrors of the battlefield and the grim war years in London hospitals, ending in contemporary England. Three different tales are told in the book about the power of writing and perception.

From the Book Sense 76 recommendation:
"McEwan weaves an absorbing tale that starts with the activities of one afternoon in 1935 and unfolds for years to come. As the afternoon progresses, readers are entrapped by a tale that commands attention from start to finish. A masterfully crafted story of growing up, finding love, and the dangers of a runaway imagination." --Kyle Beachy, Verbatim Booksellers, Vail, CO

THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER: A Novel, by Ann Packer (Vintage)
Packer, who received the Great Lakes Book Award for her debut novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, was a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. The book presents the daunting moral dilemmas of a provincial 23-year-old Wisconsin college student who is not prepared to steep herself in the tragedy that surrounds her. Ambivalent, but not heartless, the young girl escapes to Manhattan and struggles with her own needs and ethical obligations.

From the Book Sense 76 recommendation:
"Packer's first novel is the beautifully told story of Carrie Bell. When her boyfriend breaks his neck and is paralyzed, she is faced with having to decide what it is she owes to those she loves. The writing is wonderful, not the least bit sentimental, and the people in the book are at once distinctive and familiar. At the book's close, I felt an unexpected satisfaction and pleasure with the heroine's decisions." --Leslie Reiner, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

LAMB: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore (Perennial)
"Ever wonder what Jesus did during his formative years before that first miracle at Cana?" The missing 30 years in the life of Christ are finally revealed. No passion play, here the Gospel is recounted by a resurrected Levi bar Alpheus, aka Biff. Young Jesus, or Joshua to his friends, is a Messiah without a cause, who journeys with Biff to find out his life's purpose. The breezy tone of the book is balanced by the author's obvious wealth of knowledge and spiritual insight. Moore's good-natured treatment of all faiths is evident in this quote from the book's introduction: "May you find that which you seek in these pages or outside them."

From the Book Sense 76 recommendation:
"This is, by far, the funniest book I've read in quite awhile. This was a hit in our store in hardcover, and, now, in paperback, we'll put this into the hands of many more readers." --Ginnie Traver, Bishop Bookstore, Bishop, CA

LIFE OF PI: A Novel, by Yann Martel (Harvest)
A 2003 Book Sense Book of the Year Fiction Finalist
A story that one character says "will make you believe in God," and about which the Los Angeles Times Book Review said, "[It will] make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators." The Life of Pi places the son of an Indian zookeeper, along with several uncaged zoo animals on a 26-foot-lifeboat after a shipwreck. Ultimately, young Pi and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker remain for a harrowing 227-day journey. This novel, Martel's second, won Canada's 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.

From the Book Sense 76 recommendation:
"Martel weaves a brilliant tale that is part adventure story and part spiritual quest. The part of the book that relates how Pi becomes a practicing Hindu/Moslem/Christian is worth the price of the book, and the portion that deals with Pi and a Bengal tiger adrift on the ocean in a lifeboat together is everything you might imagine and more." --Stephen Grutzmacher, Passtimes Books, Sister Bay, WI

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES, Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin)
The book begins with a road trip featuring a 14-year-old motherless white girl and her older black nanny on the run from the law and from the Georgia peach farm owned by the girl's vicious father. Both are more frightening than the uncertainty of life on the lam in 1964, guided only by a faded picture of a legendary Black Madonna and the words "Tiburon, South Carolina," found among the girl's mother's possessions. The unlikely convergence of the two runaways with a spiritual community of sisters who produce honey and dispense wisdom, faith, and love forms the heart of this coming-of-age tale. The Secret Life of Bees is Kidd's first novel; her previous books were about her own spiritual journey.

From the Book Sense 76 recommendation:
"Kidd creates a narrator whom the reader will grow to love. White, 14, and a runaway, she finds the true meaning of family in a very unusual place: the home of three black sisters who raise bees." --Kathy Westover, The Bookworm, Edwards, CO