I read two really great books this past week. What they had in common was beautiful writing that conveyed a deep understanding of and compassion for this dilemma called life, as well as the kind of page-turning suspense you'd expect from the best mystery. But in every other way--setting, characters, style--they were as different as could be. William Trevor's Love and Summer, which takes place in the Irish countryside, centers on the life of a young woman who, after her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, is sent to be the maid to a widowed farmer. I surveyed reviews of it after reading, to see if it was as appreciated as it deserved to be, and was relieved to discover that there was considerable angst when it was long- rather than short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

It's hard to write about Scott Spencer's Man in the Woods without giving part of the plot away, so suffice to say that it is set in the northeast United States in our time (around the year 2000) and delves deeply into the question of how and why we live. But far from being heavy-handedly philosophical, Spencer keeps you guessing, until the very last page, how these questions will be resolved for one man and his makeshift family--himself, a woman, child, and dog.

"Found in Translation," Michael Cunningham's New York Times op-ed piece of Sunday, October 2, begins with insightful musings on the translation process but quickly plunges into the heart of the matter to discuss writers, readers, and creativity. You must read it all, but here's a sample sentence: "We, as a species, are always looking for cathedrals made of fire, and part of the thrill of reading a great book is the promise of another yet to come, a book that may move us even more deeply, raise us even higher. . ."