The Lemon Grove takes place in Iran in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. Behruz Pirzad returns from America to help his family after learning that his twin brother, Ruzbeh, was injured. He suffers from post-traumatic shock and often wanders off, leaving his wife and their mother alone in their hometown of Shiraz. Ruzbeh’s wife is their childhood friend Shireen and when Ruzbeh ... Read More...
The Song of Achilles
While it’s tempting to adopt an intellectual attitude, in this case I’m going to go with honesty and risk losing everyone’s respect: to date, my greatest interest in the Battle of Troy came when actors Eric Bana and Brad Pitt ran around fighting with no shirts on. There, I admitted it. I’ve never read Homer’s Odyssey or The Iliad. I’m a sexist cretin—until now. Author Madeline ... Read More...
Marrying Up
There is no higher aspiration amongst a certain type of British girl than to marry a royal and no author better suited to skewer this ambition with wit and a lightning fast plot than British author, Wendy Holden. For my money, no one does chick lit better than the Brits. Maybe it’s because they use words we don’t and it makes everything even funnier (dosh, plonk, quiff, and ... Read More...
The Map of Lost Memories
The one thing to remember about an adventure is that if it turns out the way you expect it to, it has not been an adventure at all. They traveled at night as it was only then that the heat released its grip enough to make movement through the jungle possible. By 8am the temperature and humidity combined to immobilize every living creature. Despite the difficulties, this is ... Read More...
Misfit: A Novel
The 50th anniversary of Marilyn’s death was this month and it’s been heralded by an uptick in new books about her life. I reviewed Lois Banner’s biography Marilyn last week but was interested to see what a fiction author would do, especially as so much of Marilyn’s life reads like fiction anyway. How would one choose which way to go from the trove of material available? In ... Read More...
Motherland
In case you’re not up on all the New York City realty news Park Slope is a much sought after neighborhood in Brooklyn. It is apparently also home to five unhappy, angry, put-upon parents trying desperately to figure out where their lives went so horribly wrong. Rebecca seems to have it all but finds her husband to be more interested in the kids than in her. When they first ... Read More...
