The pink suit is both the description of the outfit worn by Jacqueline Kennedy when her husband was assassinated and the name of Nicole Mary Kelby’s new novel, The Pink Suit. The novel traces the history of the infamous suit, but Kelby goes beyond … [Read more...]
Amity & Sorrow
Earlier in the year I reviewed a novel (The Visionist) where a mother and her children run for safety to a religious compound. In Peggy Riley’s Amity & Sorrow it is the opposite situation. Amaranth and her two daughters, Amity and Sorrow, are … [Read more...]
The Visionist
In The Visionist: A Novel, Polly Kimball, her brother Ben and her mother are running for their lives. After her drunken father passed out on his bed, Polly accidentally dropped an oil lamp in his room and set the entire house on fire. As the three … [Read more...]
The Abominable
Our valley is in darkness, but Everest blazes far beyond and above us in a cold, powerful, self-contained isolation. That strikes me as terrifying. In 1924 the British alpine climbing community was dealt a serious blow when George Mallory and … [Read more...]
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt’s latest novel is The Goldfinch. Oh My. This is a B.I.G. book, figuratively (Tartt’s first novel in eleven years) and literally (weighing in at a dense 771 pages on paper that is as weighty and glossy as the words printed on it). Theo … [Read more...]
The Hive
There is no shortage of mommy-lit in the world. There are stories (fiction and non-fiction) about nannies, schools, and mothers who work pitted against those who don’t. What is new is Gill Hornby’s debut novel, The Hive, which looks at the … [Read more...]
Burial Rites
A young woman is condemned to death in Iceland at a time when there were no jails so a family is ordered to house her for her final months. A young priest is assigned to be her spiritual guide to repentance before her execution. All this in 1828 the … [Read more...]
The Maid’s Version
Daniel Woodrell’s last novel, Winter's Bonewas a contemporary look at a teen’s desperate struggle to save what is left of her family when her drug dealing father skips out on bail. In his latest, The Maid's Version, he returns to the Ozarks but in … [Read more...]