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 island in the 1940s when ... Read More...
Young God: A Novel
Within the first eight pages of Young God, thirteen-year-old Nikki jumps off a cliff into a pool of water below after being dared, flirts with her mother’s boyfriend, and then watches her mother die as she attempts the same jump from the cliff. By the end of the second chapter, she has had sex with the boyfriend, stolen his car and his bag of drugs, and moved back into her ... Read More...
The Vacationers
The second novel can be a stressful time for any novelist but more so if their first hit it big, as did Emma Straub’s Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures. How marvelous then when the second novel travels (literally) in a completely different direction but still delivers on-point prose and an engaging story. I’m talking about The Vacationers, Straub’s contemporary look at the Post ... Read More...
A Conversation with Stacey D’Erasmo
Several weeks ago I was fortunate enough to get to meet and talk with author Stacey D’Erasmo about her latest novel, Wonderland, the story of an indie rock star who returns to touring after a seven year absence. I reviewed the book here. What started with a straightforward series of questions digressed into a marvelous conversation about life, memory, and gender ... Read More...
War of the Words: Amazon vs. Hachette
Once again, Amazon model of e-reader books and higher margins has escalated into Walmart-like bullying against vendors who won’t play their way—namely, continually lowering their prices until said vendor goes out of business, at which point Amazon/Walmart buys up the broken pieces or moves on to another target. With no stake in any brick and mortar locations, just warehouses ... Read More...
Temporary Closure
To all my dear kind readers, this brief post is to let you know why I've been semi-silent for the last two weeks. Somehow, at my advanced age, I got an ear infection that spread to the bone behind the ear and landed me in the ER. I was pumped full of antibiotics and am slowly recovering but have no hearing in my right ear and a brain that is half functional. Sadly, the ... Read More...
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