《紐約時報》年度十大好書
今年你的閱讀計劃都完成了嗎？讀過哪些讓你深思的好書？近日，美國《紐約時報》評出2019年度十大好書，一起來看看哪些還沒在你的書單裏吧。
《消失的土地》
By Julia Phillips
茱莉亞·菲利普斯著
In the first chapter of this assured debut novel, two young girls vanish, sending shock waves through a town perched on the edge of the remote, brooding Kamchatka Peninsula. What follows is a novel of overlapping short stories about the various women who have been affected by their disappearance. Each richly textured tale pushes the narrative forward another month and exposes the ways in which the women of Kamchatka have been shattered — personally, culturally and emotionally — by the crime.
在這本自信的處女作小說第一章中，兩個年輕的女孩消失了，給這個坐落在遙遠且靜謐的堪察加半島邊緣的小鎮帶來了巨大沖擊。接下來的小說由一系列相互交疊的小故事組成，講述了她們的失蹤給許多女人造成的影響。每一個情節豐富的故事都將敘事向前推進一個月，揭示了堪察加的女人們如何在個人、文化和情感層面受到這起犯罪行爲的打擊。
perch [pɜːtʃ]：v.棲息；就位；位於
《託皮卡學校》
By Ben Lerner
本·勒納著
Lerner’s exhilarating third novel, after “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04,” rocks an emphatically American amplitude. Adam Gordon returns as the protagonist, but this time as a high school debate star, and mostly in the third person. Equal portions of the book are given over to the voices of his psychologist parents, and to a former classmate whose cognitive deficits are the inverse of Adam’s gifts. The earlier novels’ questions about art and authenticity persist; but Adam’s faithlessness is now stretched into a symptom of a national crisis of belief. Lerner’s own arsenal has always included a composer’s feel for orchestration, a ventriloquist’s vocal range and a fine ethnographic attunement.
這是勒納令人振奮的第三部小說。繼《離開阿託查車站》和《10:04》之後，本書展現了一種極爲美國式的寬廣。亞當·戈登再度成爲主人公，但這次是作爲高中辯論明星，而且主要是以第三人稱出現。他的心理學家父母，以及一個有認知缺陷、和亞當的天賦形成鮮明對比的前同學，得到了同等的篇幅。勒納早期小說對藝術和真僞的質疑依然存在；但是亞當的信仰缺失如今已經擴展成一個國家信仰危機的症狀。一名作曲家對管絃樂編曲的感覺，一個腹語表演者的音域，以及一種細膩的民族和諧，一直都是勒納所倚仗的。
amplitude [ˈæmplɪtjuːd]：n.豐富，充足；廣闊
protagonist [prəˈtæɡənɪst]：n.主角，主演；主要人物
ventriloquist[venˈtrɪləkwɪst]：n.腹語術者；口技藝人
《呼氣》
By Ted Chiang
特德·姜著
Many of the nine deeply beautiful stories in this collection explore the material consequences of time travel. Reading them feels like sitting at dinner with a friend who explains scientific theory to you without an ounce of condescension. Each thoughtful, elegantly crafted story poses a philosophical question; Chiang curates all nine into a conversation that comes full circle, after having traversed remarkable terrain.
這本合集收錄了九個美麗動人的短篇小說，其中好幾篇都探討了時間旅行的重大後果。閱讀它們就像和一位朋友坐在一起吃飯，席間他向你解釋科學理論，毫無居高臨下之態。每一個深思熟慮、構思優雅的故事都提出了一個哲學問題；在經歷了一段非凡的旅程後，特德·姜將這9則故事構織成了一場圓融的談話。
condescension [ˌkɒndɪˈsenʃn]：n.傲慢態度
《失蹤兒童檔案》
By Valeria Luiselli
瓦萊麗婭·魯塞利著
The Mexican author’s third novel — her first to be written in English — unfolds against a backdrop of crisis: of children crossing borders, facing death, being detained, being deported unaccompanied by their guardians. The novel centers on a couple and their two children (all unnamed), who are taking a road trip from New York City to the Mexican border; the couple’s marriage is on the brink of collapse as they pursue independent ethnographic research projects and the woman tries to help a Mexican immigrant find her daughters, who’ve gone missing in their attempt to cross the border behind her. The brilliance of Luiselli’s writing stirs rage and pity, but what might one do after reading such a novel? Acutely sensitive to these misgivings, Luiselli has delivered a madly allusive, self-reflexive, experimental book, one that is as much about storytellers and storytelling as it is about lost children.
這位墨西哥作家的第三部小說——也是她的第一部英文小說——以一場危機爲背景展開：孩子們穿越邊境，面臨死亡，被拘禁，在沒有監護人陪伴的情況下被驅逐出境。小說以一對夫婦和他們的兩個孩子（都沒有名字）爲中心，他們正沿着從紐約市到墨西哥邊境的公路旅行；在進行獨立的人種學研究的同時，這對夫婦的婚姻正處於崩潰的邊緣，女人試圖幫助一名墨西哥移民找到她在試圖越過邊境時失蹤的女兒。魯塞利的寫作才華引起了人們的憤怒和憐憫，但讀了這樣一部小說之後，人們會怎麼做呢？魯塞利對這些疑慮極爲敏感，她帶來了一本充滿暗喻、自我反思與實驗性的書，既是關於故事講述者，也是關於失蹤的兒童。
misgiving [ˌmɪsˈɡɪvɪŋ]：n.疑慮，擔憂，不安
《開往丹吉爾的夜船》
By Kevin Barry
凱文·巴里著
A desolate ferry terminal on the Spanish coast isn’t a place where you’d expect to encounter sharp-edged lyricism or rueful philosophy, but thanks to the two Irish gangster antiheroes of Barry’s novel, there’s plenty of both on display, along with scabrously amusing tale-telling and much summoning of painful memories. Their lives have become so intertwined that the young woman whose arrival they await can qualify as family for either man. Will she show? How much do they care? Their banter is a shield against the dark, a witty new take on “Waiting for Godot.”
你不會想到在西班牙海岸一個荒涼的渡輪碼頭遭遇銳利的抒情文字或悲嘆的哲學，但由於巴里的小說中有兩個愛爾蘭黑幫反英雄人物，兩者都得到了不少展現，與此同時還講述了粗俗有趣的故事，喚起許多痛苦的回憶。他們的生活已經變得如此緊密地交織在一起，以至於他們等待的年輕女子可以成爲他們兩人的家人。她會露面嗎？他們真的很在意嗎？他們的玩笑是抵禦黑暗的盾牌，一部《等待戈多》的詼諧新版本。
《什麼都不說》
By Patrick Radden Keefe
帕特里克·拉登·基夫著
Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book — as finely paced as a novel — Keefe uses McConville’s murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga.
1972年，蒙面者闖入38歲的寡婦、10個孩子的母親珍·麥康維爾在貝爾法斯特的家中，將她拖了出來。在這本精心敘述的書中——步調精巧猶如小說——基夫以麥康維爾謀殺案爲棱鏡，講述了北愛爾蘭動亂的歷史。他採訪了衝突雙方的人，把那個時代的悲劇性破壞和損耗變成了一個灼熱的、扣人心絃的傳奇故事。
《俱樂部》
By Leo Damrosch
利奧·達姆羅施
The English painter Joshua Reynolds just wanted to cheer up his friend Samuel Johnson, who was feeling blue. Who knew that the Friday night gab sessions he proposed they convene at London’s Turk’s Head Tavern would end up attracting virtually all the leading lights of late-18th-century Britain? Damrosch brings the Club’s redoubtable personalities — the brilliant minds, the jousting wits, the tender camaraderie — to vivid life, delivering indelible portraits of Johnson and Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, the actor David Garrick, the historian Edward Gibbon and, of course, Johnson’s loyal biographer James Boswell: “a constellation of talent that has rarely if ever been equaled.”
英國畫家約書亞·雷諾茲只是想讓他情緒低落的朋友塞繆爾·約翰遜高興起來。誰知道他提議的週五晚上在倫敦土耳其人頭酒館舉行的夜聊會，最終會吸引18世紀末英國幾乎所有的領袖人物？達姆羅施將《俱樂部》裏令人敬畏的個性——聰明的頭腦、機智的口水戰、溫柔的友情——帶到生動的生活中，呈現出一幅幅不可磨滅的肖像：約翰遜和雷諾茲、埃德蒙·伯克、亞當·斯密、演員大衛·加里克、歷史學家愛德華·吉本，當然還有約翰遜忠誠的傳記作者詹姆斯·鮑斯威爾：“一羣很少甚至無人能及的天才”。
redoubtable [rɪˈdaʊtəbl]：adj.令人敬畏的
《黃房子》
By Sarah M. Broom
薩拉·M·布魯姆著
In her extraordinary, engrossing debut, Broom pushes past the baseline expectations of memoir to create an entertaining and inventive amalgamation of literary forms. Part oral history, part urban history, part celebration of a bygone way of life, “The Yellow House” is a full indictment of the greed, discrimination, indifference and poor city planning that led her family’s home to be wiped off the map. Tracing the history of a single home in New Orleans East (an area “50 times the size of the French Quarter,”yet nowhere to be found on most tourist maps, comprising scraps of real estate whites have passed over), from the ’60s to Hurricane Katrina, this is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future of the city of New Orleans, and of America writ large.
在她非凡、引人入勝的處女作中，布魯姆超越了對一本回憶錄的基本期待，創造了一種娛樂和創造性相融合的文學形式。部分是口述歷史，部分是城市歷史，部分是對過去生活方式的讚美，《黃房子》是對貪婪、歧視、冷漠和糟糕的城市規劃的全面控訴，正是這些導致她家的房子從地圖上消失。追蹤新奧爾良東部（一片“有法國區50倍大的區域”，大多數旅遊地圖上卻無處可尋，其中有零星被白人忽略的房產）一個家庭的歷史，從上世紀60年代到卡特里娜颶風，本書立刻成爲了一部必讀文本，審視着新奧爾良市乃至整個美國的過去、現在和未來。
writ large：顯而易見的
《無可見挫傷》
By Rachel Louise Snyder
雷切爾·路易斯·斯奈德著
Snyder’s thoroughly reported book covers what the World Health Organization has called “a global health problem of epidemic proportions.” In America alone, more than half of all murdered women are killed by a current or former partner; domestic violence cuts across lines of class, religion and race. Snyder debunks pervasive myths (restraining orders are the answer, abusers never change) and writes movingly about the lives (and deaths) of people on both sides of the equation. She doesn’t give easy answers but presents a wealth of information that is its own form of hope.
斯奈德在書中詳盡報道了世界衛生組織所稱的“流行病式的全球健康問題”。僅在美國，半數以上被謀殺的女性是被現任或前任伴侶殺害的；家庭暴力不分階級、宗教和種族。斯奈德揭露了普遍存在的迷思（限制令是答案，施虐者從不改變），並動情地描寫了施暴者和受害者的生活（和死亡）。她沒有給出簡單的答案，而是提供了豐富的信息，這些信息本身就是一種希望。
debunk [diːˈbʌŋk]：vt.揭穿；拆穿…的假面具；暴露
《切爾諾貝利的午夜》
By Adam Higginbotham
亞當·希金博特姆著
Higginbotham’s superb account of the April 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is one of those rare books about science and technology that read like a tension-filled thriller. Replete with vivid detail and sharply etched personalities, this narrative of astounding incompetence moves from mistake to mistake, miscalculation to miscalculation, as it builds to the inevitable, history-changing disaster.
希金博特姆對1986年4月切爾諾貝利核電站爆炸的精彩描述，屬於那種讀來像緊張衝突不斷的驚悚小說的罕見科技圖書。故事充滿生動的細節和深入刻畫的人物性格，從中可以看到令人震驚的無能，一個接一個的錯誤，一個接一個的誤判，最終導致了不可避免的、改變歷史的災難。
etch[etʃ]：vt.蝕刻；鮮明地描述；銘記
