Holli, thanks SO MUCH for posting that Tomato Nation link! Sars rocks mightily, and I've been looking for that sort of article for yonks.
Did you ever read her article/essay about September 11? Made me cry.
ION, I read John Crowley's The Translator this weekend. I remember Micole reading it and not loving it, but I adored it. Ended up at the very end of the line getting onto a plane on Friday because I couldn't put it down.
It's about a young college student in 1961, befriending an exiled Russian poet at an unnamed midwestern college. It's about translation, and history, and love, and fate, and the Cuban missile crisis.
I thought the prose was just gorgeous, and the story heartbreaking. Interestingly structured, too, if you're into that sort of thing (like me). Prologue is set in 1959, novel starts in 1993, then it goes back to 1961 and pingpongs mostly between the late 1950s and 1961/62, with occasional visits back to 1993. God, it was beautiful.
I've read several other of Crowley's novels, including Little, Big, and Engine Summer, but this is very different.