The Shore by Sara Taylor may qualify as one of the most unusually formatted books I’ve read in a long time. Take a family tree composed of over fifty members, stretching from the 1850s to 2143. Close your eyes, throw a dart at the tree and wherever it land--that’s a chapter. So, even though Medora Slater is the matriarch who gets this clan started, she doesn’t make an ... Read More...
Perfect Little World: A Novel
On Monday I wrote about Swimming Lessons, a novel with prose that evinced an emotional response from me, even when the story did not work so well. Today’s review is about a book that is almost the complete opposite. It’s unusual for me to like fiction that didn’t impact me emotionally, but I did with Kevin Wilson’s new novel, Perfect Little World. I was devoid of much ... Read More...
Swimming Lessons
When Claire Fuller’s newest novel, Swimming Lessons, begins Ingrid has been missing for eleven years. Her daughters, Nan and Flora, have grown up and her husband Gil now spends most of his time going through the books in their house. He’s always been obsessed with the marginalia and ephemera left behind inside their covers, but now there is something more. Because in ... Read More...
I Liked My Life
Shortly after we meet Madeline it becomes clear that she is dead and that I Liked My Life is going to be one of those books about a dead person hovering over the lives of the people they left behind. The good news is that this is not a bad thing. She doesn’t write the novel with much spiritual angst on Maddy’s part—either as to where she is now or why she’s there. ... Read More...
January Reading Wrap-Up
Well, all righty, the first month of 2017 is wrapping up. I’ve already noted that my reading is still in an odd place, but I’m working very hard to get my head and heart back into the game—what’s happening now is going to keep on happening. One very positive thing I did in January was participate in the Women’s March in Seattle. The city had planned for 40,000 people ... Read More...
The Chosen Maiden
If you’ve ever loved dance, specifically ballet, then you know the name Nijinsky. What you are less likely to know is that the world-famous Vaslav Nijinsky had a sister who was also a dancer. Thankfully, author Eva Stachniak rectifies that in her new novel, The Chosen Maiden, which is the story of Bronia Nijinsky. The novel begins when she is three and follows her life ... Read More...
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