The Bone People by Keri Hulme

This book begins when a troubled young boy, Simon, breaks into Kerewin Holmes's tower. Kerewin, a loner, gradually becomes closer to Simon and his adoptive father Joe. But as Kerewin learns more about the family, including Simon's traumatic past, she begins to realize that there are still real troubles plaguing this family. There are no simple or easy answers here. Simon's past is something of a mystery--and it always remains mysterious. All of the characters are damaged, and engage in morally questionable behaviors. While the majority of the book is written in English, it's littered with Maori phrases (translated in the back) and it eschews conventions--inner monologues are set off almost as if they are block quotations, for example. These stylistic differences required attention, but were easy to get used to. In the end this book is lyrical and haunting. Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize.

Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre

This book is a send-up of US media culture. In the wake of a school shooting, the shooter's best friend--and the book's narrator and protagonist--is suspected of being involved with the plot. As the aftermath unfolds, however, we see the incompetent police, news media, and legal system, unfairly target Vernon Little. Although many descriptions of the book describe it as humorous, I was more horrified than amused. Winner of the 2003 Booker Prize.

Cane by Jean Toomer

This book crosses all sorts of lines, both generic and social. It's a collection of short stories, dramatic pieces, and poetry that explores the conditions of culture in the United States. The first section is about life in the South and has a feminine feel; the second section is about life in the North and is masculine and sterile, and the third section is about a Northerner coming South, and has a synthesis. The book tries to rewrite our ur-myths from the rape fantasies that spurred lynching (instead of Southern white men needing to protect white womanhood, the real sin, according to the story, is hiding the root story, that of desire between a white man and a black woman), to Genesis itself (refigured in "Blood Burning Moon."). The book imagines that a Messiah figure could be replaced by an artist who might offer absolution for all the violence that marks US culture. Cane never fully gives us this healing, restorative art, however. Instead, we get the fragments. The poet can gather the fragments, but the collection implies that we need a community to assemble them into a whole. A beautiful, troubling, and ultimately moving meditation on race, culture, and the United States.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

In this book Murakami weaves a complicated, beautiful love story in which the protagonists, having met briefly at the age of ten, are not reunited throughout most of the novel. The story teems with references to Proust, Orwell, Janacek, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov, among others. In addition to the beautiful strands of magical realism (in which the moon is imbued with as much meaning as Proust's madeleines), the novel also reflects on estranged families--how children cope with being emotionally abandoned by their parents. There's also a fairly harrowing portrayal of the effects of domestic violence (although this interest is far more prevalent in the earlier sections of the book). While the book never fully explains the Sakigake cult, or the Little People who speak to them, or even how the two worlds (1984 and 1Q84) work together, I really enjoyed the story.

The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell

This murder mystery is like many of Mankell's: it has the mystery, but it also deals with the question of what the role of the police in civil society is. As in other books in this series, the murders are prompted by the murderer's sense that justice is not being done, and the victims are reprehensible. Still, Mankell (and Wallander, his detective) demonstrate a faith in justice and in the police to solve even the most carefully-planned and executed murders.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

I enjoyed reading this book, which chronicles the last job of a pair of hired killers, the Sisters Brothers, who are instructed by the mysterious Commodore to find and kill Herman Warm after extracting the formula (for what we discover only late in the novel) from him. I found the dynamics between Charlie and Eli Sisters particularly moving--deWitt does a great job of showing the characters' nuanced and changing morality and the shifting power dynamic between the brothers. A great Western!

Amexica: War Along the Borderline by Ed Vulliamy

This book looks at the violence currently raging in the cities along Mexico's border with the United States. Vulliamy doesn't shy away from portraying the corruption, violence, and shattered lives present in these cities, but he doesn't blame only the narcocartels, either. Instead, he insists that the reader understand that the money which fuels the destructive cycles comes from the United States's seemingly insatiable appetite for drugs, and from its willingness to sell guns south. The book is clear and well-researched, and I appreciated Vulliamy's obvious respect for the borderlands and most of the people trying to make their lives there.

Negroes with Guns by Robert Franklin Williams

This book recounts Robert Williams's experiences in Monroe, NC, where he helped organize African Americans to respond to white racists with violence when they threatened lawful NAACP organization. The book is a radical call for increased goals (Williams contends that while bus boycotts and sit-ins accomplish worthy goals, the real change that needs to happen is economic) and an attempt to hold whites responsible for administering the justice that the Constitution promises. Written in a clear style, this book offers a clear social vision and an alternative that can work with non-violent methods as a means of achieving racial justice.

John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War by Franny Nudelman

This monograph looks at the ways that Civil War-era practices of portraying the body, starting with the song "John Brown's Body" incorporate people into the nationalistic labor of supporting the war effort. Nudelman reads a wide variety of cultural texts, from "Benito Cereno" and Melville and Whitman's war poems, to battlefield photographs, to practices of dissection. The book's arguments were convincing--and Nudelman sold me on her work's relevance to modern instances of violence.