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Above the East China Sea

May 1, 2015

above the east china sea

    How has he not had it drummed into him that brats don’t whine? We don’t plead. We don’t need. We require nothing. Not even real roots. We’re air ferns. In Sarah Bird's new novel Above the East China Sea the island of Okinawa is the centerpiece of a multi-generational drama that plays out during World War II and modern times. Tamiko is a native of the ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, historical fiction, literary, Vintage, world war II

Where They Found Her

April 29, 2015

  Kimberly McCreight’s new novel Where They Found Her opens with the discovery of an infant’s body on a college campus. Freelance reporter Molly Sanderson gets the assignment to cover the case for the local paper and McCreight frontloads the drama by sharing that Molly gave birth to a stillborn child a year ago and is only now re-entering the workforce. Thankfully, this ... Read More...

7 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Harper, mystery

The Given World

April 27, 2015

given

When Riley is thirteen her brother Mick is declared missing in Vietnam. This news kills what little desire she has to stay in their small town and by the time she is eighteen she is gone, making her way from Montana to San Francisco to see the ocean and to escape every facet of life that might remind her of her brother. She leaves behind her parents, a boyfriend and her newborn ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, Vietnam, Vietnam War

The Jazz Palace

April 22, 2015

  The Jazz Palace begins with a tragedy, the sinking of the SS Eastland while it was still tied to the dock in the Chicago River. The boat was full of workers for a local company headed out for a day of picnicking when the top heavy ship rolled over on it’s side trapping and killing 844 people. In this way author Mary Morris introduces us to Chicago in the early 1900s and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1920s, book clubs, Chicago, historical fiction, Jazz age, Nan A. Talese

The Sympathizer: A Novel

April 20, 2015

sympathizer

So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead. It is only fitting that the narrator in The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, is never named. He is a Communist spy, a man who has spent his entire life turned inside ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, Grove Press, historical fiction, literary, Southeast Asia, Vietnam War

Euphoria by Lily King

April 15, 2015

euphoria

It’s that moment about two months in, when you think you’ve finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It’s a delusion—you’ve only been there eight weeks—and it’s followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It’s the briefest purest euphoria —Nell   We meet Fen and Nell as they ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, historical fiction, literary

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