Bourne has always been a small town, but after the chemical plant polluted its waters, killing off citizens with cancers and producing a generation of children all impacted by carcinogens and other destructive pollutants, the town drew further into itself. It’s been seventeen years since that disaster and for 16-year-old triplets, Mab, Mirabel, and Monday nothing of interest ... Read More...
Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty
It was only a matter of time before the Ivy League college admissions scandal was memorialized in fiction. I was happy to see that the first responder is a favorite contemporary chronicler, Lauren Weisberger, of The Devil Wears Prada fame. She’s back with Where the Grass is Green and the Girls Are Pretty and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a world where entitled white ... Read More...
May Reading Recap
I’ve only experienced one Michigan spring, but this May felt very different. We’ve had almost no rain and the temperatures jumped from the 50s to the 80s in days. Ugh. Except, as I write this, the heat is on again (after a/c for two weeks), I’m wearing a sweater and it’s pouring. Go figure. As far as reading goes, I was on a tear this month. Lots and lots of books, ... Read More...
Jennifer Weiner: Fiction and Fact
Daisy Shoemaker lives one of those perfect-on-paper lives. She has her own small successful cooking business, her marriage and life are comfortable, and she has a reasonable relationship with her teenage daughter, Beatrice. All good until Jennifer Weiner scratches the surface and removes the shine in her new novel That Summer. The cracks start to show when Daisy and ... Read More...
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
I often talk about fiction that evokes strong emotion, but I’m not as likely to find it in nonfiction. Until now. Patrick Keefe’s Empire of Pain has left me angrier than I’ve been in a long time. The book’s subtitle should clarify things: The Secret History of the Sackler Family Dynasty. If you’ve never read Dopesick or any news on the opioid crisis in America the name Sackler ... Read More...
Fast Fiction: Mini-Reviews
Fast fiction may sound like a pejorative, but I don’t mean it that way. Sometimes, particularly after deeper literary fiction I’m happy to jettison character development and lyrical prose for books that go down like any of my favorite sugary snacks—easily, mindlessly, and with no nutritional value. Empty calories, but yummy, and just how much kale should any one person ... Read More...
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