Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, in her recent interview for the New York Times “By the Book,” suggested that a sign of a good book is one that makes you feel an emotion so deeply, you might be angry with the characters.  She identified Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers as such a book.

“At one point {I was} so mad at the main character, I had to remind myself, ‘Carla, this is fiction.’  But when that happens, you know a story has you hooked.”

  I identified with Hayden’s description of authors who evoke emotion; recently someone asked why I connected to favorite authors like Anita Shreve, Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, and others.  I look for their books as soon as they are published, often pre-ordering and reading the book as soon as I can download it.  Getting lost in a story, living through the characters, being in another place for a while – sometimes forgetting the story is fiction – all make reading the book so pleasurable.  I’ve read The Language of Flowers, but, like so many books I’ve read, I could not remember the plot, characters, details…  Luckily, my review jogged my memory.

Read my review here.

Diffenbaugh has written another since her first novel in 2011.  She addresses another social issue in We Never Asked for Wings;    it centers on a Mexican-American family headed by Letty, a mother struggling to make a life for her two children in a crumbling housing development outside of San Francisco.  Although written in 2014, the story seems eerily timely.  Have you read it?

What authors “hook” you into their stories?  What books make you forget you are reading fiction?