Sunday Book Coveting

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville

Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again. Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know-does not want to know-where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister near by and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner.

Only as Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known.

Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis

Tatiana, the narrator, is one of five children whose parents run a Jewish deli in Mexico City. For several years now, this woman in her 20s has been living in Berlin, having minimal contact with her family, getting by on low-paying jobs and seeing almost no one. Her Sundays are a wasteland of loneliness during which she takes long walks through the city; her weekdays, when she is not freezing in her unheated apartment, are spent transcribing the never-to-be-published notes of an elderly German-Jewish historian.


Both these books are coveted courtesy of the http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html