Remember the movie The Shining? If so, forget what you thought about it in relation to Stephen King’s book and just recall its many amazing visuals. Now, turn it into a campy musical, turn it back into a novel and you have Kate Racculia’s Bellweather Rhapsody. Set in the Catskills in early November with a grand old hotel about to be the scene, once again, for a huge ... Read More...
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich
When a mother brutally murders one of her young children in the first quarter of a novel there is an expectation that the motivation behind the act will be a theme or, maybe, her backstory and how it led to such an act, but in Emily Ruskovich’s debut, Idaho, neither happens. I picked up, put down and tried to re-engage this novel multiple times in the course of several ... Read More...
Lucky Boy: A Novel
Despite its upbeat sounding title Lucky Boy is a novel saturated in desperation. Desperation for a better life, desperation for a child, for success…for happiness. Solimar is eighteen, lives in a dying town in Mexico and with money her parents procure she leaves with a man who is supposed to get her to California where she will meet up with a cousin who has already ... Read More...
The Second Mrs Hockaday
Placidia is seventeen when she meets Major Hockaday and when he proposes that very same day she says yes. That he is a widower and has a small son makes little difference to her. It’s 1865 and given the war there’s no point in waiting for a proper courtship and wedding. In fact, the very next day they set off for the Hockaday’s home. From there, Susan Rivers’s novel The ... Read More...
High School Trauma and Drama: Mini-Reviews
There are few people who look back on high school as the best years of their life and, quite frankly, I don’t trust them. These two novels encapsulate what may or may not be the truth of high school life in America today. Is it accurate? Dear God, I hope not, but I’m so far removed from that time that all I can do is share my thoughts on them as novels. Mostly, they made me ... Read More...
Small Admissions: A Novel
Small Admissions is an example of a book whose writing goes the same way as its plot. Confused? I know, it’s weird, but what I mean is that it’s the story of a young woman named Kate whose life goes off the rails when she is unceremoniously dumped by a boyfriend. She basically checks out of life in the most stereotypical ways possible, lingering in an almost catatonic ... Read More...
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