Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (Random House, $25) is without a doubt my favorite novel of the year. Helen Simonson’s extraordinary debut brings us to the small English village of Edgcombe St. Mary, where the widowed Major Ernest Pettigrew lives a quiet, refined life in his family home. Unexpected circumstances bring him into contact with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the village’s widowed Pakistani shopkeeper. The two soon develop a friendship over cups of tea, and their shared love of literature slowly blossoms into love. Not only was it a pleasure to read about older characters finding love the second time around, but there is also a lot of fun along the way involving the eccentricities of the village and its residents.
Left mostly to her own devices, six-year-old Aasha spends her days lurking in the shadows, bearing witness to the astonishing goings-on in the Big House on Kingfisher Lane. That’s how she knows the true circumstances surrounding her grandmother Paati’s mysterious death, the real reason why her suddenly-distant older sister Uma can’t wait to leave for Columbia University, and why the servant girl, Chellam, once her only ally, is being banished from the family’s home. Set against the sweeping backdrop of post-colonial Malaysia, Preeta Samarasan’s extraordinary debut novel, Evening Is The Whole Day (Mariner, $13.95), uses a fresh, lyrical voice to paint a poignant, intimate portrait of a troubled family.
