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Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

November 7, 2022

missing

What better time to review a novel set in an unspecified time in America’s not-too-distant future than the day before an election? Celeste Ng’s novel, Our Missing Hearts, could either be the way things should be or a dystopian hell, depending on your beliefs. I’ll leave it to you to suss out where I stand, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. Bird is 12-years-old and lives with ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, dystopia, literary

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

October 27, 2022

daughters

Jamie Ford’s new novel The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is a global, multigenerational novel about five women. It’s based on a true person, Afong Moy, who in 1834, was the first Chinese woman to come to America. Ford extrapolates her life into the fictional lives of five of her descendants in chapters from the 1800s to the not-so-distant future. Moy was brought to America by ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: historical fiction

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

October 25, 2022

signal

Author Dani Shapiro wastes no time plunging her pen into the marrow of human experience in her latest novel, Signal Fires. It’s a summer night in 1985 and the Wilf family, Ben, Mimi, and their teenaged children Sarah and Theo are about to go from a happy family living to four individuals reeling from unexpected trauma. Before that chapter can be completely digested Shapiro fast ... Read More...

13 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, family, literary

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

October 11, 2022

drown

Cara Romero is one of the many unfortunate workers whose job is lost in the 2008 recession. Now, in order to receive an unemployment check she must undergo 12 sessions with a work coach to help her find other job opportunities. What unfolds in the novel How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is the transcription of these sessions that ultimately focus less on work and more on ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, literary

Ordinary Monsters: A Novel

October 4, 2022

ordinary

In the world of hardcore readers (yes, that is a thing), there is something called a book hangover. It’s when you read a book so good that your mind can’t detach after you finish, leaving you with a period of time where everything you read is just wrong. Very wrong. I’m in that odd, frustrating space right now thanks to J.M. Miro’s Ordinary Monsters, a fantasy novel set in ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 19th century, England, fantasy, historical fiction

The Displacements

September 28, 2022

displacements

In the late 70s, early 80s disaster books and movies were most often centered around manmade situations—The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, The China Syndrome, and Airport. It was man’s technical overreach that was going to take us down or at least had us worried. The latest crop of disaster novels is again looking at man’s hubris, but in relation to our abuse of the ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: disaster, dystopia, thriller

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