A Selection of the Year's Best Books
ENTERING EPHESUS, by Daphne Athas. Genteel poverty in the South, growing pains, jinks (both high and low) for three teen-age sisters and their slightly ante-bellum family--circa 1939.
THE BOOK OF DANIEL, by E.L. Doctorow. A highly dramatic and emotionally intense novel about a brother and sister whose parents, like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were tried and executed for treason.
THE DICK GIBSON SHOW, by Stanley Elkin. An aging radio announcer turns his life and profession into a sensitive but comic American myth.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, by Ernest J. Gaines. One of America's best but least-known novelists pursues the enduring seasons of the heart as an ancient black woman reviews the troubles she's seen since the Civil War.
GRENDEL, by John Gardner. Beowulf from the monster's viewpoint, in which the Norse heroes of the epic are revealed as bloodthirsty murderers, thieves and hypocrites.
FARRAGAN'S RETREAT, by Tom McHale. The Catholic piety and prejudices of a rich Philadelphia family done up with genial savagery.
FIRE SERMON, by Wright Morris. An 82-year-old codger tries to save his eleven-year-old great-nephew's soul from the modern world during a symbol-paved journey in a trailer hitched to an ancient Maxwell.
BOUND TO VIOLENCE, by Yambo Ouologuem. A young Mali novelist's exuberant mock epic of the bloody history of a real but imaginary African empire.
LOVE IN THE RUINS, by Walker Percy. In a blending of science fiction and theology, the author of The Moviegoer fondly satirizes man's attempts to alter his fate.
RABBIT REDUX, by John Updike. A sequel to Rabbit Run, in which 36-year-old "Rabbit" Angstrom must cope with a runaway wife, a drug addict and a black militant who calls him Super Chuck.
NONFICTION
BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, by Dee Brown. A litany of Indian voices and Brown's incriminating prose tell how the West was lost.
THE CLOSING CIRCLE, by Barry Commoner. To date, the most cogently argued ecological indictment of technology for its destructive effect on the only world we've got.
365 DAYS, by Ronald J. Glasser. A U.S. Army doctor assigned to care for wounded G.I.s provides some of the saddest and most brutal accounts to come out of Viet Nam.
A SORT OF LIFE, by Graham Greene. The novelist's quiet, self-deprecating memoir of his youth, which reveals many of the spiritual strains that became major themes in his art.
ELEANOR AND FRANKLIN, by Joseph P. Lash. A fine biography that manages to bring all of Eleanor Roosevelt alive to those who remember her and those who don't.
KENT STATE, WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY, by James Michener. An evenhanded account of what really led up to those shots heard round the world.
THE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF AMERICA: THE NORTHERN VOYAGES, by Samuel Eliot Morison. The 1,000-year saga of those ancient mariners who did not fall off the edge of the world.
BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY, by B.F. Skinner. In the year's most controversial book, the well-known psychologist argues that society can no longer afford unbridled freedom and proposes that a system be adopted to condition "good behavior."
LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE, by Calvin Tomkins. High life in Paris and on the Cote d'Azur with two rich Americans, one of whom became F. Scott Fitzgerald's Dick Diver in Tender Is the Night. Slight but beautiful.
STILWELL AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA, 1911-45, by Barbara W. Tuchman. American military and diplomatic blunders and the rarely sweet, often sour effects of the culture gap between the U.S. and China during World War II.
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