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Diamond Head

May 15, 2015

  Diamond Head is an ambitious debut from the school of Amy Tan multi-generational Chinese family drama. The Leongs are the premier family living on Oahu where they settle after leaving China prior to World War I. First time novelist Cecily Wong does an admirable job portraying the inter-generational relationships amongst the Leong women. She captures those that reflect ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: China, cultural, debut, Harper, Hawaii, historical fiction

Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

May 13, 2015

  Job’s father sends him from their homeland in Nigeria to America to study to become a doctor. Instead of doing so, Job flunks out of college but continues to tell everyone he is still studying. At twenty-four he uses some of the tuition money on a green card marriage thus ensuring he never has to move home and acknowledge his lies. This is the beginning of the quicksand ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Coffee House Press, cultural, debut, literary, nigeria

A God in Ruins

May 11, 2015

god

  In her new novel, A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson answers the question that arises when one is spared from death but others are not: Is my life worth it? In her previous novel Life After Life Ursula Todd is reborn back into her life for second and third chances to change history in World War II but rather than doing so on a global scale she opts for the life that allows ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, England, historical fiction, Little Brown and Company, WWII

Books about Books: Mini-Reviews

May 8, 2015

books

Every reader has a soft spot, a genre or author or both that they gravitate towards without their usual scrutiny. Some people will read any book about dogs, others will grab anything written by John Grisham or Stephen King. For me, it’s books about books or books with the word book in the title. My brain disengages from critical thinking and switches to the blind belief that it ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: lists, mini-reviews, mystery

The House of Hawthorne

May 6, 2015

hawthorne

Erika Robuck is an author who loves to explore the lives of other authors through her fiction. She continues this tradition in her latest, The House of Hawthorne, by following Sophia Peabody as she is courted by and eventually weds Nathaniel Hawthorne. With her outstanding attention to detail and thorough research Robuck uses Sophia’s perspective to provide insight into her ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, historical fiction, NAL, New England, writers' lives

The Book of Aron

May 4, 2015

book of aron

Set in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland The Book of Aron is, like any Holocaust novel, difficult reading. But what makes it so, is not graphic depictions of violence against Jews it is the interminable grind of life lived in circumstances that have nowhere to go but down. At first, it is simply that the community is being segregated as a health precaution against typhus. ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, Europe, historical fiction, Holocaust, Knopf, literary, WWII

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