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The Bibliophile

These three novels are set, respectively, in the past, present and future. Their characters confront crises that resonate with readers no matter the era.

Jack: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson, 320 pages, Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover, 2020, Picador paperback, 2021

This story unfolds with a sequence of incidents on the homefront during WWII as experienced by Jack, a white man, and Della, the Black woman he loves. Segregation lurks in the background, never far removed from the day-to-day lives of the protagonists. The two live in a society that promotes racism and enforces Jim Crow laws.

The author, septuagenarian Marilynne Robinson, has written three previous novels about the Boughton and Ames families. Jack is chronologically second in the series after Gilead, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005.

However, Jack stands alone on its own merits. You needn’t have read the other books in the series to be enthralled by the storytelling prowess of the author.

The Tunnel: A Novel, by A. B. Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman, 336 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover, 2020, paperback, 2021.

Tzvi Luria is a retired engineer who is in the early stages of dementia. He and his wife, Dina, live in Tel Aviv, Israel.

His neurologist advises the retired Tzvi to remain active physically and mentally and not succumb to — but fight — the beginning signs of dementia, which are visible on his brain scan.

Dina is the driving force that arranges to find him an unsalaried part-time position in his old department at the Israeli Roads Authority.

The Tunnel tells the story of the misadventures that beset Tzvi as he returns to his old stomping grounds in an advisory capacity. It is a tale, told with humor, irony and imagination, of how the aged confront their limitations.

An error or misstep by a young person would be readily dismissed without much ado. But when committed by the septuagenarian protagonist, it is perceived as another step down a long bleak road from which there is no hope of recovery.

Readers will enjoy following the interaction between generations, the deep love alternating with petty contention between long-married couples, and the cord that binds parents and their adult offspring.

The bureaucratic intricacies of governments the world over will resonate. The depiction of the humanity exhibited among individuals from different cultures whose leaders are in conflict in the Middle East is heartwarming.

Take a tour of Tel Aviv and the Negev desert in the south through the author’s descriptive writing. Follow Tzvi as he cannily and happily escapes the confines of his wife’s close surveillance while she is abroad on a business trip.

A.B. Yehoshua is an octogenarian who has been called the Israeli Faulkner. This is his 12^th novel.

2034: A Novel of the Next World War, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), 320 pages, Penguin Press hardcover, 2021

Escape into the future for a thrilling adventure as the U.S. military confronts evil forces in the Pacific and the Persian Gulf.

Needless to say, future warfare will be dominated by electronic communications and navigational guidance. Women will hold important decision-making positions in the military and political spheres. Tactical nuclear arms are in the arsenal, ready to be deployed. Some things haven’t changed: Vladimir Putin, now in his 80s, still rules Russia.

Characters exhibit the full range of human behavior — betrayal and loyalty, arrogance and wisdom, survival mode and go-for-broke bravado, cowardice and bravery.

Friendships that go back decades are the glue that attempts to stop the runaway train of events from disaster. The doomsday scenario is exploited for all its suspense, and the human element adds a twist to the denouement.

Novelist Elliot Ackerman, 41, is a part-time resident of D.C. who served eight years in the Marines. Co-author retired Admiral James Stavridis is in his mid-60s. Stavidris remains active as a consultant, media analyst and public speaker. This is his first work of fiction.