What are the names in the book you’re currently reading, and what do you think of them?

You can think of this as the Nameberry Book Club, where we talk not about plot and pacing and characters but about the characters’ names (sounds like our kind of book club, right?).

I just finished reading the new New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train, by my friend Christina Baker Kline who’s blogged for Nameberry on naming her three sons (and making some mistakes along the way).  Her characters’ names include:

Vivian — One of those names I’ve been hearing a lot of in fiction recently as in life, maybe because it means life?  Ann Hood recently wrote for us about using it in her novel The Obituary Writer.

Niamh — Vivian‘s original Irish name, changed when she was put on the orphan train because it was too “foreign and difficult.”  Couldn’t help feeling that losing her lovely name was one of the biggest tragedy’s of the character’s difficult life!

Molly — The Native American teenager that the old Vivian befriends….and my husband’s pick for our daughter!

But what are YOU reading, and what are the characters’ names, and what do you think of them?