There are times when what is needed is a story so utterly foreign that it plucks us out of our own world and drops us into one for which our background leaves us completely unprepared. I found this with Lisa O’Donnell’s debut novel The Death of Bees: A Novel. Set in Glasgow, it encompasses the world of Marnie and Nelly, two teens left on their own when their parents die. Well, ... Read More...
Sunday Sentence: The Apartment
Sunday Sentence: The best sentence(s) from this week, out of context and without commentary. Inspired by David Abrams at The Quivering Pen. But now I’m going on about something I don’t want to think about. Everything human beings can imagine has been thrown at injustice, and injustice just absorbs it, and enlarges. ... Read More...
Farewell, Dorothy Parker
Have you ever played the history game where you can choose points in history you’d like to visit? For me, the era of the Algonquin Round Table in Manhattan is one such time. Men of great wit and intelligence drinking cocktails and being dominated by one of the greatest wits of all: Dorothy Parker. Given that choice, finding Ellen Meister’s novel, Farewell, Dorothy Parker was ... Read More...
The Lion Seeker
The son of Lithuanian Jews who left the country in the 1920s and moved to South Africa, Isaac Helger grows up believing the only way to have self-worth is through money. “Working” for a living, as his watch repairman father does, is embarrassing. As the protagonist in Kenneth Bonert’s novel, The Lion Seeker, Isaac embraces his mother’s credo of “Are you a stupid or a ... Read More...
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
And that’s how it happens. Like a broken record, warped and scratched. Once I was music, now I am just noise. It requires a special gift to bring forth a largely unlikable character who can also evoke sympathy but Juliann Garey has done just that in her debut novel Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See. Greyson Todd is from one of the most unlikable genres of men in fiction ... Read More...
Sunday Sentence: This is Between Us
Sunday Sentence: The best sentence(s) from this week, out of context and without commentary. Inspired by David Abrams at The Quivering Pen. You got quietly sullen for a while. I could always tell your sullen quiet from your normal quiet—your sullen quiet had a buzz to it, like a television showing a tornado tearing houses apart but with the volume turned down. ... Read More...
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