'A Mathematician's Lament' by Paul Lockhart; 'The Rights of Spring' by David Kennedy; and 'Towards Another Summer' by Janet Frame

He writes with great wisdom and experience about the idealism and the decline of the human rights movement, and the many obstacles it faces, most important, on the ground. He writes openly and eloquently about the unresolvable barriers between the victims and the people who act to help them. "Deep down, even the most dedicated human rights professional knows that what can seem urgent and noble is often also tawdry and voyeuristic."

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Towards Another Summer

A Novel

Janet Frame

Counterpoint: 208 pp., $24

New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story-writer Janet Frame died in 2004. "Towards Another Summer," she felt, was too personal to publish in her lifetime. It is easy to see why. The main character, a New Zealand writer named Grace Cleave, lives in London. She is determined to stay, in spite of a constant, gnawing homesickness. The halting interior monologue is highly reminiscent of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce -- her mind is a field of overlapping images, a cacophony of seasons and songs and phrases that do not exist in England. Her loneliness screams off the pages: "Another encounter with people successfully concluded without screams or tears or too much confusion," she thinks after a friendly visit. "I'm doing fine, she said to herself, as if she were one or two days old and had finally mastered the art of breathing."

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susan.reynolds@latimes.com